[HN Gopher] What You (Want to)* Want
___________________________________________________________________
What You (Want to)* Want
Author : razin
Score : 95 points
Date : 2022-11-14 13:04 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulgraham.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulgraham.com)
| pgsandstrom wrote:
| When I was two I started wondered how I could reconsile my qualia
| with determinism. But when I was three I read Critique of Pure
| Reason by Immanuel Kant and laid the matter to rest.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Are doing and wanting really two different things?
|
| Both start by thinking, and choosing to think about X is
| certainly in our control1. So at the bottom of it, both are just
| chemical reactions in your brain, willingly set off by your
| ghost.
|
| 1that is not to say that _not thinking about Y_ is also in our
| control.
| hugepuppy wrote:
| Seems like he's saying that you can't change who you are at the
| core, which I disagree with.
|
| With each want, however, the meaning becomes more and more
| frivolous. Who cares what you want to want to want to want to
| want? That's not recognizable even on a subconscious level.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| > We can get arbitrarily close to a true statement by adding more
| "want to"s in much the same way we can get arbitrarily close to 1
| by adding more 9s to a string of 9s following a decimal point. In
| practice three or four "want to"s must surely be enough.
|
| Ultrafinite recursion strikes again!
| prionassembly wrote:
| PG becoming a Lacanian.
| asdadsdad wrote:
| PG is more and more like a reputation-building farm these days,
| churning garbage at an impressive rate lol
| auggierose wrote:
| I don't think the universe is deterministic. Why would you think
| such a thing? So, if you start from a wrong assumption, the rest
| that comes is not that interesting.
| mistermann wrote:
| One possibility:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic
|
| See also: how to train a neural network.
| auggierose wrote:
| Are these not at least two possibilities? Furthermore, what
| kind of heuristic is that? I don't see people being able to
| predict the future with much reliability.
| mistermann wrote:
| I'd say they're kind of a blend - heuristics _is what
| enables_ the Illusory Truth Effect.
|
| > I don't see people being able to predict the future with
| much reliability.
|
| Agree, but people seem generally unable to realize this
| (there is a similar problem with Truth, another thing
| people predict without realizing - see:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33593349).
|
| Now, what is the causality of this? Presumably it is a
| natural consequence/side effect/service of consciousness.
| But: so (presumably) are things like racism, but because
| that is harmful, society has deemed it inappropriate and
| this is socially enforced in various ways. Might the same
| be possible with clairvoyance and soothsaying, or at least
| in certain special scenarios/venues? The institution of
| science seems to have accomplished it, and realized
| substantial benefits as a consequence - might it have
| utility in domains other than science (politics, human
| relations, etc)?
| savryn wrote:
| this reminds me of the end of Lawrence of Arabia
|
| the entire film thus far about destiny, fate, making our own
| paths... and then to pinch a bit of flesh and understand what we
| are. magnificent and sorrowful, all at once
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think the regular expression would be at least as correct and
| make for a less ambiguous headline if it used + instead of *.
| vagab0nd wrote:
| You will do what you are programmed to do. "Free will" is an
| illusion that you don't know what you are going to do before you
| have computed the outcome. The Matrix said it best:
|
| > Neo: But if you already know, how can I make a choice?
|
| > The Oracle: Because you didn't come here to make the choice,
| you've already made it. You're here to try to understand why you
| made it.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Whenever I think about the universe being deterministic, I get
| caught up on things like the Monorail episode of The Simpsons.
| For some reason, that's always the specific example that pops
| into my mind when I think "does it make sense that the initial
| position of atoms in the universe would lead ineluctably to the
| exact state of the world today, without anyone making choices
| about it?"
|
| The idea that a materialistic universe made of unthinking,
| unchoosing matter bumping into each other would create the
| "Monorail" song, with all the specific cultural assumptions built
| into it, is just so much less likely to me than the alternative
| that I end up just siding with free will by default.
|
| Neither the free will argument, nor determinism, nor any
| attempted unification of the two that I'm aware of are fully
| satisfying. But, the idea that we're just atoms that, for no
| particular reason, happen to write the words "I call the big one
| Bitey", and then just happen to create the infrastructure to
| broadcast that out, and view it, seems like the more absurd of
| the available options.
| randomsearch wrote:
| The way I think about this is: physical laws lead to the
| emergence of information processing machines that form big
| networks together and develop cultural language of ever
| increasing sophistication. The monorail song is just the
| production of this large distributed thinking machine.
| dzink wrote:
| The brain feels like a quantum alien that took over a biological
| shell to survive on this planet and is now trying to optimize its
| casing options. (Deliberately changing the terms for a concept
| can help us see it in a new light.)
|
| - Some wants damage the casing but feel great to the brain
| (sugar).
|
| - Some wants take over a portion of the brain's activity and tax
| it to eternity (addiction), so its best to never ever try them.
|
| - Some wants are very very bad for other brains and casings, so
| carnivores draw the line making non-carnivorous varieties
| inferior and thus worth sacrificing (meat consumption).
|
| - Some wants damage the connections and relationships between
| human brains and thus ability for all of humanity to survive
| collectively, so religion and laws have stepped in to set the
| rules of engagement.
|
| - Some wants are psychological and financially a bad idea.
|
| - Few wants are fundamental, and most wants are based on
| something we've seen others done that we want to try.
|
| - Wanting not to want something is a tax and conflict with our
| own brain, and just like addiction it can be tackled if the want
| was caused by exposure to the activity, or exposure to the idea,
| or the subject/object of want and that exposure is reduced or
| removed from view.
|
| - If you are the subject of the want (an attractive person, a VC,
| a Billionaire, a person of influence), all of a sudden your life
| incurs an overhead and a cost for deterring everyone else's wants
| towards you.
|
| Psychology/Philosophy may have more insight into whether the
| origin of bad wants is curiosity, wrongful exposure, greed, or
| inborn instincts based on biological/genetically ingrained
| habits.
|
| Economics + Business has the job of satisfying the wants of an
| increasing number of intelligent agents in the system by
| encouraging those who want more to make more and increase supply
| of the the most wanted kinds of objects of want. Government has
| the job of satisfying the needs of everyone in its jurisdiction,
| while entrepreneurship has the luxury of picking which wants and
| needs to serve that are most profitable and desirable to the
| entrepreneur.
|
| Advertising has the job of involuntarily planting more wants in
| the brains of everyone.
|
| Fun paths to explore. Thanks PG!
| joisig wrote:
| > How do you reconcile being a machine made of matter with the
| feeling that you're free to choose what you do?
|
| First, accept the fact that "you" are _only_ that machine. No
| higher "soul".
|
| The machine (you!) has free will in that it decides for itself,
| through physical processes occurring within it, what it wants -
| albeit with some outside forces, circumstances and other
| individuals influencing this anywhere from a bit to a lot.
|
| You are this mostly-independent machine operated by physical
| forces. Therefore, you have free will.
|
| A secondary question is whether the state of the universe and
| therefore of you the machine at time T also pre-ordains what you
| will do and what you will want at time T+1. I think a more
| interesting question is whether that actually matters in any
| practical or even metaphysical sense, given that we experience
| time linearly in the direction we do?
| civilized wrote:
| I don't think this is a very productive direction because it
| seems like unfalsifiable speculation. Placing the hidden
| determinism enough "wants" away seems to make it obscure enough
| that you can think "sure, that's where the magic happens" and
| it's impossible to be proven wrong.
|
| IMO, the perception of free will comes from our observation of
| our deliberations and our actions. We observe that we often have
| choices and uncertainty about what to do, but something always
| breaks the impasse, because we always continue making choices and
| going on living. That "something" is what we call free will, and
| isn't entirely transparent to us.
|
| If you tried to crack open the black box, I think you'd see wants
| and want-to-wants driving things in there, but I don't think
| you'd see a clean system of n-th removed want-to-wants
| determining everything.
| darkerside wrote:
| Like many others, I've also thought about few will. By best
| answer at this point is, we have limited free will but we don't
| always know how to use it. It's like surfing. You can't do
| everything you want to do, but you can position yourself to make
| choices that better leverage the waves of your subconscious.
| mikewarot wrote:
| There are some hidden assumptions, including the idea that
| consciousness is a continuous phenomenon and/or experience. Our
| brain is amazingly good at making up retroactive explanations to
| match our observations.
|
| Also, our thought processes are sufficiently chaotic that no
| amount of inspection can catch all the starting conditions, so
| any model has to be statistical in nature.
| squaredot wrote:
| It happened to me to think about this (but from another
| perspective). It seems to me that the sentences "I want [A]",
| where A is an object outside me, and "I want [to want A]" are
| essentially different. But the sentences "I want [to want A]" and
| "I want [to want to want A]" are not really different since both
| have as object my own will. Or said in another way: wanting to
| want something is already wanting something.
|
| Moreover an essential differentiation that is not addressed is
| the difference between desire and will (not easy).
| wccrawford wrote:
| I've had things I wanted to want, but didn't want. They were
| usually things that would have put me closer to the values of a
| group I was involved in.
|
| An off-the-top-of-my-head example would be talking with friends
| about video games, and they start talking about physical art from
| the game that they bought and enjoy. I don't like having little
| knick-knacks around the the house, and I don't get enjoyment from
| them. But I see the joy they get from them, and I want that, too.
|
| So I want to want those things, but I still don't want them.
| jondeval wrote:
| I actually think PG is exploring something that is at the heart
| of what it means to be a human being.
|
| Interestingly, the traditional teaching of Original Sin is that
| we are broken at the level of what we 'want'. The phrase commonly
| used is 'disordered desire'.
|
| The key idea here is that if you want the wrong things, you are
| not actually free, even if you perceive yourself as choosing
| freely. As a corollary, the more you practice the good, the more
| you desire it, and the freer you become.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| The concept of original sin is garbage.
| originalmind wrote:
| Wow, thanks for sharing this deep insight. -- A fellow
| "original mind"
| Bilal_io wrote:
| As someone that believes in the Quran, which talks about the
| Adam&Eve tree incident, I agree.
|
| Then there is the whole definition of God being just, and for
| someone to die for someone else's sin is far from just.
|
| I personally believe in a God that I can ask directly for
| forgiveness and he forgives. That being said, he wouldn't
| forgive me for wronging someone else, I will have to settle
| it with that person in this life, or we'll meet and settle it
| in the day of judgement.
| xianshou wrote:
| You can read however many PG essays you want to, but you can't
| control what you think of them.
| informatimago wrote:
| IMO free will is only the guarantee by God that he won't be
| messing with our program while it's running. Ie. He won't use His
| debugger to change our state, or make us do things that are not
| in our programming. Free will is us programs running NOT under
| God's debugger.
|
| This is not to say that we don't have a say in our ultimate
| wants, assuming we can't change them. Perhaps we (our soul) still
| decided on them originally.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Was just thinking that religion was the one thing that caused
| me decades of unnecessary anxiety over my natural wants and
| interests. Would not recommend.
| leethargo wrote:
| I believe this to be similar to Epicurus' excuse [1]: He
| couldn't publicly say that there are no gods as creators,
| because that would have been blasphemy. But he wanted to take
| away the fear that everybody had of punishment by gods. So he
| argued that our (human) lives aren't important enough for the
| gods to mess with.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus#Theology
| bheadmaster wrote:
| > He won't use His debugger to change our state, or make us do
| things that are not in our programming
|
| I don't quite understand - you're using our "programming" as an
| argument that we have free will? Wouldn't our "programming"
| imply that our will is already deterministic?
|
| In other words, is there any difference between our will being
| driven by our programming, and driven by God's debugger? We're
| following orders either way...
| theGnuMe wrote:
| I don't really get what he means here.
|
| >you can't (want to)* want what you want
|
| It seems to me that "want to want what you want" is a tautology,
| if you want something you already want to want it.
|
| you can't (want to want what you want). you can't want to want to
| want what you want).
|
| And it is recursive:
|
| you can't (want to want to want it)
| fluoridation wrote:
| >It seems to me that "want to want what you want" is a
| tautology, if you want something you already want to want it.
|
| Tell that to an addict.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Tell what? I am not sure I am following you... can you be
| more specific?
| fluoridation wrote:
| That wanting something implies that you want to want it.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Why the focus on the "addict"?
| fluoridation wrote:
| Often addicts don't want to want they things they're
| addicted to.
| originalmind wrote:
| I want to watch porn. And I want to not want to watch porn.
| suslik wrote:
| I think this is just a wordplay that abuses the imprecision of
| the word 'want'. For example, a drug addict wants (as in has a
| very strong internal, biology- and subconsious-driven desire
| for) heroin, but doesn't want to want it (as in when thinks
| about it consciously).
| theGnuMe wrote:
| I don't see that beyond holding two one or more beliefs in
| juxtaposition which is the definition of uncertainty.
|
| A chemical addiction is not a "want".
| xnorswap wrote:
| itsoktocry wrote:
| 2022 feels like the year the sheen of genius wears off our tech
| overlords.
| [deleted]
| osipov2k wrote:
| hugs wrote:
| "You can do what you want, but you can't want to want what you
| want."
|
| I've read many of PG's essays, but this one feels like GPT-3
| wrote it. It's borderline gibberish. Like he trained an AI on all
| his other essays, fed it the essay title, and this was the
| result. I half-expect a year from now that he'll tell us all his
| recent essays were written by this AI and it's now the core IP in
| some recent YC investment.
| lisper wrote:
| Not only that, but he got it totally wrong. It's not that
| people _change_ what they want, it is that they _think_ they
| want something, but then they discover that they were _wrong_.
|
| Also, what you want changes over time, but not because you
| _decide_ to want something new, or to stop wanting something.
| It just _happens_. The best example of this is going through
| puberty, where you develop desires that you didn 't have
| before. This is not a decision that you make.
|
| Figuring out what you want is a process of _discovery_ , not of
| decision-making.
| [deleted]
| matt_s wrote:
| In the context of startups maybe he's referring to those that
| want to want something which I take to mean as a poser. It would
| be like someone starting a club for a favorite color and someone
| wants to want that favorite color to be their favorite color but
| the reality is you can't want to want a favorite color, you
| either want or don't.
|
| Or it could be any number of things being referred to. People
| wanting to want to work in tech. People want to want control of a
| social media company.
| doorman2 wrote:
| Basically, there is no free will. Think about it like this: where
| do your thoughts come from? They appear magically in your head.
| So you can choose between the set of things you think about, but
| the set of things you think about is out of your control.
| onlycoffee wrote:
| > How do you reconcile being a machine made of matter with the
| feeling that you're free to choose what you do?
|
| We have a soul, unlike actual machines or animals.
| csdvrx wrote:
| Maybe I'm the only one who liked it, but I found the essay nice
| as it gives a simple model to understand ourselves better.
|
| Here's my take on it: there're many things out there (musical
| genre like classical music, cooking like Indian, French,
| Ethiopian) and your utility function has coefficients for most of
| them.
|
| When you don't know the coefficient, you try, and you come with a
| quick conclusion (like or don't like) that can be further refined
| by experience (ex: like Indian food, vegetarian Indian food is
| ok-ish, vegan Indian food nope)
|
| Sometimes you want to alter the coefficient because it can create
| conflict with your identity (what if you're vegan? what if your
| parents are Indian?) or other things.
|
| Sometimes you succeed through different methods, sometimes you
| just can't.
|
| And there're things you like you shouldn't, because of society
| (taboos, or banned substances) or the consequences on yourself
| (addictions, risks for your future health) but it's just the same
| thing: trying to alter the coefficient in your utility function.
|
| It may be worth it (learning something new) or futile (something
| you just can't change) which leads us to Seneca prayer (the
| wisdom to separate the two, knowing the battles you can win to
| avoid wasting effort). And there's another dimension if it's
| possible: the amount of effort required, which might be measured
| in years (and what if you're old and bound to fail?)
|
| Personally, I find it simpler to go epicurian and if I find
| something new I enjoy (right now, Russian rap lol) just enjoy it
| without asking myself too many questions.
|
| And if I don't like something or have no want for something I
| should like (Drill rap, Trap rap), I don't force myself but don't
| exclude it out of my life either: I leave that to serendipity :)
| xianshou wrote:
| Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what
| he wills."
|
| I've wrestled with this question from time to time and, to the
| extent I've found a solution, the key is duration:
|
| In the short term, choices are mutable (but determined by
| character), and character is fixed.
|
| In the long term, character is mutable, and determined by some
| inner nature plus the integral of experience, influence, and
| choice.
|
| There's still a recursive element here, because the investments
| you make in yourself are strongly influenced by a prior version
| of that self. (In a limited sense, this resembles coherent
| extrapolated volition.) Still, I've found it more helpful to
| think about short-term vs. long-term processes - in the sense of
| stock vs. flow, intercept vs. slope, or short-term vs. long term
| elasticity - than about recursion. Adding time conveys an
| intuitive understanding not only of what you can and can't
| change, but what you should and shouldn't.
|
| To phrase it a simpler way: willpower is a muscle, as are most
| other traits. Most people can be strong, but not all at once, and
| when you see someone lifting a heavy weight it means they've been
| training for a long time.
| mjburgess wrote:
| So,
|
| Action: Act(Environment|Character)
|
| Reflection: Act(Character|Environment)
|
| An agent has free will iff it engages in action<->reflection
| cycles.
|
| Also:
|
| An agent A "could have taken" action X vs Y: ActX(Env|CharA) vs
| ActY(Env|CharB) in the sense that there is a graph "of some
| sort" linking their CharA to the CharB which could realise
| ActY.
|
| Eg., Bob can either steal the money or return it. Bob chooses
| to steal it. Bob is morally responsible for this act because
| there is a realisable "action<->reflection" path from bob's
| actual character to the one he should have had. If bob had had
| this character, he would not have stolen.
| xianshou wrote:
| This is a very interesting definition of "free will" and not
| one I would expect most philosophers to agree with, but more
| measurable and useful than most would propose. In this case
| "free will" reduces to self-modifying action with randomness
| injected by the environment, which feels more like a
| stochastic model than genuine self-determination. That said,
| the existence of a "reflection" function is still the primary
| determinant of any moral responsibility.
| 98codes wrote:
| As someone with a lifetime of fighting with the executive
| dysfunction end of ADHD, I very much understand what
| Schopenhauer has saying. I can know what I need to do and have
| the willpower to do it, but the door to the cupboard where the
| willpower resides is locked, unlocks randomly, and nobody knows
| where the key is.
| brudgers wrote:
| _We must believe in free will, we have no choice._
|
| Isaac Bashevis Singer
| biscuits1 wrote:
| I want someone to want to explain it to me like I'm five?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| If you're desires are not too weird, you can certainly find a
| fixpoint such that what you Want-To <repeated _n_ times > Want is
| the same as what you Want. I'm not seeing any paradox here.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Aspirational desires, like wishing you liked a band your cool
| friend did so that you could have that in common are real, but
| the object of desire (what is wanted) is not the band, it's the
| affection of the friend. You could say, "I wish all these things
| I had made me happier," but they haven't, and therefore do not.
|
| However, is this just not the logical artifact of the phrase
| "want to," relating to its subject as a negative counterfactual?
| To desire to want something is like trying to be funny, where if
| you are, you aren't - hence to want-to-want, or wish you wanted,
| means you don't actually want it. Maybe the solution is for each
| thing I want, to say out loud, I do not want it, and hear which
| statements give you the most peace?
| lliamander wrote:
| > Randomness destroys the ghost in the machine as effectively as
| determinism.
|
| I totally agree, and yet my encounter with academic philosophy
| was that most people with a free-will orientation see that
| randomness as precisely the origin of free will.
|
| Personally, the only notion of free will that makes sense (and
| the one to which I personally hold) is the notion of agent-
| causation[1].
|
| > it seemed to me that there might possibly be some way to get
| out of trouble by arguing that I wasn't responsible for my
| actions
|
| The philosophical notion of free will is actually completely
| irrelevant here. The relevant questions are a) "Is social
| accountability psychologically effective and altering someone's
| behavior?" and b) "what sorts of behavior modifications are
| morally permissble?"
|
| [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/incompatibilism-
| theories/...
| mhb wrote:
| Better versions considering the illusion of free will:
|
| https://www.radiolab.org/episodes/revising-fault-line
|
| https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-illusion-of-free-will
|
| It could be there are others..
| Errancer wrote:
| Eh, this article touches on something important but 1. the
| material aspect of determinism is the most boring one, if
| everything is materially determined then so is our feeling of
| freedom therefore it doesn't really change anything. Strawson has
| a nice article about this called "Freedom and resentment" which
| shows that the thesis of determinism doesn't really change
| anything about our ethics. 2. the programming lingo seems to me
| to make the issue more obscure rather than clear but the problem
| he is mentioning is discussed under the name "second-order
| desires" and is quite important since it leads to much more
| interesting problem of determinism - the psychological
| determinism. Usually we believe we have certain freedom in
| choosing our beliefs through weighing and choosing our
| interpretations of what is happening. The issue of psychological
| determinism is threefold. First proposition is that our beliefs
| change due to some causes, they don't simply pop into our head.
| Second proposition is that our given beliefs will dictate what
| interpretations will make sense to us. Therefore every cause will
| make us believe what our current beliefs allow. Third proposition
| is that our actions are driven by combination of beliefs and
| desires. So ultimately we can't chose our actions since we can't
| choose our beliefs and the hope for "freedom" is lost. What is
| left is the will which is not free but driven by beliefs and
| desires that are outside "our" control.
|
| Now I don't know if I believe in this formulation of the problem
| but among all formulations of determinism throughout history this
| one is in my opinion the only one worth arguing about. I learned
| about it by reading two texts by Bernard Williams and I would say
| that he should be named the author of this formulation even
| though he never used such name. The first text is his book
| "Ethics and the limits of philosophy" and the second is the essay
| "How free does the will need to be?". If someone is interested in
| this issue then I would recommend following the citation trail of
| the essay.
| hbarka wrote:
| What you want?
|
| Rolling Stones https://youtu.be/krxU5Y9lCS8, Joe Jackson
| https://youtu.be/XGqmiT7JJVg or New Radicals
| https://youtu.be/DL7-CKirWZE ?
| quantonomical wrote:
| v_london wrote:
| I saw lots of people criticizing PG's essay, but I really liked
| it. Free will and agency are interesting philosophical topics to
| wonder, even if they don't hold much practical value.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You can do whatever you want, but the wanting is the hard part.
|
| Once you realize what something truly requires, the interest
| usually dries up.
|
| TFA says this is the wrong model, and tries to get closer to
| something else. But it's right enough that it's helped me to
| avoid huge amounts of wasted effort and forced me to consider
| what I truly want.
| madrox wrote:
| This reads like an autodidact's rediscovery of psychological
| egoism: https://iep.utm.edu/psychological-egoism/
| teg4n_ wrote:
| Looks like PG finally took an Introduction to Philosophy class.
| jagrsw wrote:
| > the same way we can get arbitrarily close to 1 by adding more
| 9s to a string of 9s
|
| Technically 0.(9) == 1
| distcs wrote:
| What you say does not contradict what PG said. That is how
| limits are defined, technically.
| sph wrote:
| I probably don't have much to contribute, but I wanted to share
| some thoughts on the concept of free will Paul seems to brush
| against.
|
| I found the concept of free will at odds with my opinion that the
| brain and physics are very deterministic. But one thing the "free
| will doesn't exist" people tend to forget, is that the brain
| rewires and changes itself.
|
| You are destined to do what your brain is wired to do, but doing
| anything rewires your brain. Some say even thought is able to
| rewire your brain. The number of possible brain states at T+n
| increases exponentially. So our constant reconfiguration of the
| brain is our way out of determinism. That is, free will does
| exist in a completely deterministic universe [1]
|
| I shared because maybe someone can suggest some reading material
| along these lines from someone much smarter than me. But for now,
| I enjoy the idea that I have complete freedom in a very ordered
| universe.
|
| 1: there are some interesting corollaries to this idea. One among
| them is that the interaction between other entities with similar
| free will (other people) increases the complexity even further.
| We are agents of chaos.
| roberttod wrote:
| Your description of rewiring the brain is an extra feedback
| loop, makes the system more complex but doesn't break
| determinism.
|
| Regardless, even if the world isn't deterministic through e.g.
| quantum mechanics, throwing dice to decide your next turn isn't
| "free will" and doesn't make the case for free will any
| stronger.
| shrthnd wrote:
| Suppose there are n number of hidden, indeterminate variables
| in your environment... "You," the individual observer, are
| free to choose the important variables to navigate life. Your
| "mind" is the thing which assigns value to hidden variables
| in your environment but "the mind" is not you... the "mind,"
| from my perspective, is the mirror upon which we
| witness/experience every day reality/waking life, etc.
|
| If you think rolling dice is important, it is. If you think
| randomness will effect and experiment, it will. If you don't
| think randomness is important, it probably is... (a thing is
| defined by what it is not.)
|
| When you assign an indeterminate (X) value to randomness,
| this is chaos. If/when you think or realize chaos is an
| important part of free will... -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| Are you personally unable to select new variables or assign
| different "weights"? If so, I contend, you don't exist.
| oezi wrote:
| As far as we know the universe isn't deterministic.
| sph wrote:
| Do we know it is non-deterministic, or do we not have any
| proof it's one way or the other?
| api wrote:
| AFAIK hidden variable models have been ruled out in many
| quantum scenarios. It really does appear that the universe
| is not deterministic.
| jagrsw wrote:
| It opens itself up to interesting interpretations ;).
| god(s) aka the simulation developer(s) playing with
| outcomes of quantum events in order to manipulate your/my
| behavior, punish the bad, reward the good, make the
| bushes burn etc.
|
| Since quantum events can have macroscopic outcomes, this
| should be possible? :)
| sph wrote:
| It's probably due to artefacts and signal noise coming
| from the outer-system that contains our universe and/or
| the machine running our simulation, rather than God.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Combining this with an infinite universe theory, it could
| also just be random noise intentionally introduced to a
| specific "instance" of a universe.
| oezi wrote:
| To the best of our ability we haven't been able to detect
| any signs of any strings which might point to a puppet
| master or any mechanism by which anything as potentially
| informationally massive as randomness could be
| transferred to 'our' universe.
| mistermann wrote:
| Not quite: there are millions of people who claim the
| existence of a God(s), or claim to have had "experiences"
| with the same. However, to those raised in secular
| environments, these claims "have" "no" validity, but this
| is actually just the model of reality built by the mind
| (what "is", in "reality"), which is heavily influenced by
| the metaphysical framework one was raised/trained on, or
| _exists within_.
|
| Philosophy (logic, epistemology, etc) has more
| appropriate tools and techniques for dealing with such
| questions, but if one (one's mind) has been trained that
| only the scientific method can provide knowledge, they
| are kind of stuck at a local maxima (inside a "simulated
| reality dome") that they are unable to see out of, or
| typically even _want to_ see out of.
| oezi wrote:
| I think people do not deny those religious experiences
| because there are experiments to trigger them and the
| experiences can be observed for instance using brain
| scans.
|
| But what scientists deny is that we see any prove that
| these experiences have any supernatural cause.
| mistermann wrote:
| > I think people do not deny those religious experiences
| because there are experiments to trigger them and the
| experiences can be observed for instance using brain
| scans.
|
| Some people, sure....but many people deny the
| validity/genuineness of them, or the _potential_
| existence of the supernatural _all the time_ - it 's
| practically a sport on Reddit, not all that uncommon
| right here on HN, and something I have experienced many,
| many times with real scientists in zoom meetings. Let's
| not forget: scientists are first and foremost _humans_.
|
| > But what scientists deny is that we see any prove that
| these experiences have any supernatural cause.
|
| Some scientists practice strict/disciplined epistemology,
| and others do not (I have observed it with my own eyes)
| and go on to assert/imply that _it is a fact that_ there
| is no God(s), and that these experiences _are only [in
| fact]_ delusions, the drugs, social /psychological
| conditioning (ironically), etc.
|
| And if one is to ask them some pointed questions, the
| response typically descends rapidly to rhetoric and
| personal attacks. You can even explicitly point out to
| people what they are doing, but they are not able to stop
| - often, they will act as if they did not even see the
| text pointing out their behavior, even if that phenomenon
| is pointed out in subsequent messages!
|
| I truly believe that there are certain topics that throw
| even the most powerful minds into a state of disarray.
| Extra interesting: it seems like most can acknowledge
| that they are subject to bias, logical fallacies, etc _if
| the topic of conversation is directly about these
| psychological phenomena_....but if the topic is not that,
| but rather from _a particular subset of special ideas_
| (culture war topics, _certain instances of_ the unknown),
| this knowledge and ability vanishes.
|
| I think it would be rather hilarious if this phenomenon
| is actually a very big deal (with regard to affairs on
| Earth), but people are unable to address it (or even
| manifest curiosity) _because of the phenomenon_.
| Plausibly, ~success could be within reach, but we are
| unable to reach out and grab onto it.
|
| Meanwhile: things like climate change "are" (so it is
| claimed/perceived) "a big deal". So much wasted
| potential.
| oezi wrote:
| The things we can observe about the universe tell us that
| it is non-deterministic.
|
| You have to assume things we haven't been able to observe
| to construct our universe as deterministic.
|
| And it is pretty simple things such as radioactive decay of
| a single atom in a vacuum which are pretty easy to grasp.
| jagrsw wrote:
| > brain and physics are very deterministic
|
| Not to get too much into the 'quantum woo' territory, but my
| naive understanding is that the physics is only somewhat
| deterministic, b/c non-deterministic quantum events can have
| macroscopic effects?
|
| Say you decide for whether you'll eat a dinner, if a particle
| with half-time of 1 second will split within the next second.
|
| This you wouldn't be able to predict, even if you knew momenta
| of all particles within your local light-cone (of 1 light-
| second), no?
|
| (a variation of the Schroedinger's cat)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The problem is quantum effects are random. Even if they
| impact our behavior, RNG is not what most people think of
| when they say "free will".
|
| In my opinion, any coherent definition of "free will" implies
| a supernatural force - since it must be non-random yet not
| bound by deterministic chemical and physical processes. At
| this point it becomes a matter of faith/religion whether we
| have free will or not.
| pydry wrote:
| Are there any coherent definitions of free will?
|
| I dont think I've ever seen a disprovable definition. It's
| like "god" or "love".
| drdeca wrote:
| I think I can give some sufficient conditions for a case
| in which I would consider someone to have "ceased to have
| free will".
|
| If someone X with some manner of advanced brain altering
| technology was able to temporarily force someone Z's
| actions to be whatever X specified into the machine, with
| afterwards Z remembered the experience as their taking
| these actions for whatever reasons X specified in the
| input (where this is achieved by influencing whatever is
| going on in Z's head at the time, not via altering
| memories),
|
| then, during that duration, I think it would make sense
| to say that Z "did not have free will" for that duration.
|
| As for sufficient conditions for someone to _have_ "free
| will", I suppose I don't have a great description.
|
| However, "what/who we are is the primary explanation for
| what we do (and so in particular, no external
| influence/manipulation is a primary explanation)" seems,
| like it has at least something right towards the goal of
| a good definition.
| solarist wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism
|
| (But personally I don't think that your argument holds)
|
| Also http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/10/you-dont-have-
| free-...
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| > I found the concept of free will at odds with my opinion that
| the brain and physics are very deterministic.
|
| IMO, this is the prime example of theory vs practice. In my
| opinion, our universe is deterministic at a theoretical level,
| but will never be practically deterministic.
|
| * Everything is likely made of a fundamental building block
| that can be predicted and modeled. In isolation, there is a
| small enough system that can be represented deterministically.
|
| * The universe is far, far too complex to apply determinism in
| any meaningful way.
|
| * Any device able to model the determinism of the universe at a
| fundamental would itself be non-deterministic. That devices
| would either (1) need to model itself - which would be
| infinitely recursive since the model of itself would also need
| to model itself (2) isolated from the universe - which is
| currently impossible and also implies that our universe is a
| simulation within another system (3) operate on
| abstractions/simplifications - which leaves room for error.
|
| * Finally, determinism is only practically useful if it can be
| used to (1) repeatedly generate the same results for the same
| inputs (2) or, predict the results based on knowing the inputs.
| * 1. This will never be possible because we operate within the
| system being modeled. That system progresses forward and the
| same inputs can never be utilized more than once (some variable
| somewhere would be different). * 2. We are so
| incredibly far from modeling determinism that it's still
| impossible to predict results for known inputs. There will
| always be unknown in a model that leads to error.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > I found the concept of free will at odds with my opinion that
| the brain and physics are very deterministic.
|
| Physics don't have to be deterministic in order to be at odds
| with free will. Whether neurons fire due to a predefined
| pattern, or they fire with some probabilities do not change the
| equation for "how can a biological machine have free will?"
| Choice is at odds with both predefined rules and drawing from a
| random variable.
|
| > You are destined to do what your brain is wired to do, but
| doing anything rewires your brain. Some say even thought is
| able to rewire your brain. The number of possible brain states
| at T+n increases exponentially. So our constant reconfiguration
| of the brain is our way out of determinism. That is, free will
| does exist in a completely deterministic universe.
|
| I completely fail to see how you ended up at that conclusion
| from that argument. A recursive function, that mutates itself
| is still bound by it's rules for mutation and recursiveness.
| Choice doesn't grow out of an exponentially growing number of
| possible states.
| sph wrote:
| I have tried to answer to your last paragraph in 2 or 3
| different ways but it's such a complex argument I don't think
| I'm smart enough to express simply and eloquently in a forum
| comment.
|
| But I very much appreciate the food for thought and input
| you've given me.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > I completely fail to see how you ended up at that
| conclusion from that argument. A recursive function, that
| mutates itself is still bound by it's rules for mutation and
| recursiveness. Choice doesn't grow out of an exponentially
| growing number of possible states.
|
| Not if you add a few random variables. Radioactive elements
| disintegration seems random. May other things could be as
| well.
| wnkrshm wrote:
| Even without quantum effects, determinism doesn't enable us to
| do much with it, except statistical ensemble predictions. We
| can never know the initial state of a system to infinite
| precision, as is needed to predict its trajectory. [0]
|
| [0] Light-ish reading on nonlinear dynamics: James Gleick -
| Chaos: Making a New Science
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Regarding reading suggestions, you'd probably like Wolfram's
| cellular Automata theory.
|
| accessible intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez773teNFYA
| bjarneh wrote:
| > but I wanted to share
|
| Are you sure?
| slothtrop wrote:
| The weakness of the perfect determinism model is nothing would
| ever happen if it were true. The leap to bacteria to
| mitochondrion to humans was not pre-determined, randomness is
| part of the equation.
|
| I could buy that will isn't free in an absolute sense, but
| neither is it entirely deterministic. The question is whether
| the confounding factor for the latter has anything to do with
| the individual, but you can't divorce it from nature. There's
| no meaningful difference between "you chose x" and "your brain
| chose x".
|
| There's also a socio-cultural reason I dislike pure determinism
| which is that it's used as bludgeon to absolve one of
| responsibility, justify inaction, bad behavior, or Socialism.
| scott_w wrote:
| While I don't think the universe is deterministic, the
| existence of evolution isn't proof of this. It's possible
| that what we perceive as "randomness" is actually just the
| result of variables and things happening that we're not able
| to perceive.
|
| Take rolling a dice: which number comes up is determined by
| the starting conditions, the force you throw it with, what it
| lands on and any external forces acting during the throw.
| It's not random at all, just hard to predict.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Well you can't conflate the banality of rolling dice with
| evolution. Based on what I've read, randomness has been a
| necessity for it's fruition, but of course this isn't my
| field.
| distcs wrote:
| Why is PG writing these pseudo-scientific metaphysical posts? His
| last post on Alien Truth was a disaster. Now this?
|
| I normally enjoy PG's writings! His writings on Lisp had good
| influence on me. But these recent posts are embarrassing.
|
| How can someone who has had so much influence in tech communities
| bring themselves to write these pseudo-scientific posts so
| glibly?
| jlg23 wrote:
| A cursory reading gives the impression he expresses the ideas
| behind Sartre's "The Transcendence of the Ego"[1], which I
| consider one of the most influential texts I read as a
| teenager.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transcendence_of_the_Ego
| omarhaneef wrote:
| He writes whatever he wants to write about.
|
| And he would argue, he can't control what he wants to write
| about.
|
| What makes you want to make him not want to write what he wants
| to write about?
|
| Well, unfortunately, you can't control it either!
| trabant00 wrote:
| The post doesn't resonate with me either but it's not pseudo-
| scientific, it's philosophical. It might not be exactly
| Socrates but I was not aware that there was a bar for a blog
| post, nor do I think even Socrates produced great ideas only.
| It might be just a small step in creation of the model a man
| holds for free will, and he might even wake up tomorrow
| thinking he was completely wrong today. It's still valid to
| philosophize and put it in a personal blog.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| After a while the speed at which a fan turns in a circle in
| order to move heated air off a CPU stops being interesting and
| larger questions that aren't as falsifiable start to seem
| interesting since they have so many implications to the
| practical questions that do matter.
|
| For example, "does God exist?" has huge influence on how we
| think of why wars are caused.
|
| The trouble is that much of philosophy is castles built on
| sand. The first principles are accepted and then built upon
| with potentially faulty links from layer to layer until it all
| starts getting weird. Marxism, Objectivism, Spinozism, etc.
| [deleted]
| qsort wrote:
| At least for me -- and I'm certain I'm not alone on this --
| what makes a question interesting is not the question itself
| but rather how one approaches it.
|
| To what extent humans and other life forms have agency is a
| question one can approach with things like neuroscience or
| with things like vacuous word salad.
|
| > The trouble is that much of philosophy is castles built on
| sand.
|
| Most serious philosophers would agree with the idea that
| scientific evidence is a good way to rule out beliefs
| inconsistent with reality.
|
| Almost zero serious economists are marxists, almost zero
| serious philosophers embrace Spinoza with no revisions, and
| please don't read Ayn Rand.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| > Most serious philosophers would agree with the idea that
| scientific evidence is a good way to rule out beliefs
| inconsistent with reality.
|
| And how did they get to that conclusion? The answer of
| whether or not the mind or the senses can be relied upon as
| a path to bedrock truth is something that cannot be found
| with scientific inquiry because it begs the question.
|
| > Almost zero serious economists are marxists, almost zero
| serious philosophers embrace Spinoza with no revisions, and
| please don't read Ayn Rand.
|
| It is precisely that these philosophers were so well
| followed, and presently rejected, that I enumerated them as
| examples of castles built on sand. The very same thing
| could be said of Russell. If there were a public event,
| more apparent than even the nuclear explosions that went
| off in Japan, that was strong evidence for the First Cause
| argument much of Russell turns to mush.
|
| That a philosopher is serious or not is a function of time
| and opinion. Not veracity.
|
| > what makes a question interesting
|
| What makes your response interesting to me is that Russel
| had the very same counterargument to Solipsism and in my
| opinion Russel decided that he couldn't find the rock so he
| built his philosophy on sand.
|
| This question was important to me so I went searching in
| philosophy and I found some value there, some manners of
| perception that proved useful, but it, in my opinion, is a
| largely broken field.
| mistermann wrote:
| > Most serious philosophers would agree with the idea that
| scientific evidence is a good way to rule out beliefs
| inconsistent with reality.
|
| Only for the subset of beliefs that are related to physical
| reality - metaphysical matters are beyond the physical
| sciences, although psychology is generally considered a
| science and contributes some value to the discussion.
| abudabi123 wrote:
| There is a serious claim from a reputable source the impeller
| design is better than the fan for CPU cooling but the
| implementation is not widely used perhaps for reason of
| intellectualization appealing to faith in God at maintaining
| artificial scarcity.
| klpolg wrote:
| He's currently on the AI train. Humans are made of matter,
| neural networks, etc.
|
| Many of his recent essays are pushing a company or a group of
| companies. The original essays were much better.
| nullcipher wrote:
| He is free to write whatever he wants. What's the problem?
| qsort wrote:
| It's a long-standing tradition in the hacker community to delve
| into stuff one only has a cursory understanding of.
|
| At times it's productive, as it helps uncover intellectual
| impostures. At times it's just embarrassing.
| eckza wrote:
| It's gonna be super fun for absolutely nobody but the
| hecklers when he finds out about Lacan.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Or does he have so much free time because of how wealthy he
| has become through YC that he has lost touch with reality.
| Now he spends all his free time thinking you can't want to
| want what you want. Or is it you can't (want to)* want what
| you want?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| A variant of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease
| probably.
| jean_tta wrote:
| A very smart man, PG himself, once said [0]: > I actually worry
| a lot that as I get "popular" I'll be able to get away with
| saying stupider stuff than I would have dared say before.
|
| PG started writing essays about what he knows well
| (programming, start ups), then about things he knows a bit
| (painting) and then stuff like this, or his essays on economic
| policy. In any case, he predicted his own future quite well.
|
| [0] quoted here
| https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm from
| there http://lemonodor.com/archives/001091.html#c8508
| hef19898 wrote:
| Popularity and power seem to do that to people quite often,
| don't say? Which is said, especially in PG's case, because I
| like his older essays a lot. The now ones, well, not so much.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| His older essays are grounded in experience. These ones he
| is trying to be Socrates - it's embarrassing.
| starkd wrote:
| Well, at least he kept this one short!
| hef19898 wrote:
| True, others would have made a three hour podcast out of
| it. Potentially involving lobsters or something...
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a similar thing seen with authors - as they get
| more famous, apparently editors find it harder and harder
| to get them to rewrite their works, and later books can
| swell in size for no real advantage.
|
| As you get richer and more famous, it becomes harder and
| harder to find an editor/friend you will _trust_ to tell
| you you 're being stupid. You can use the internet at large
| (that's always full of people to tell you you're stupid)
| but it can be quite hard to filter.
| seafoam wrote:
| It is simple.
|
| In this case he is just trying to figure out how to write the
| macro the expansion of which is motivation.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Disaster...?
|
| It's a cool old dude sharing his shower thoughts on the
| internet. What exactly are the negative consequences of these
| writeups?
|
| It feels like such an overstatement that it makes me wonder if
| there's something else at play here...
| nopinsight wrote:
| Do people still read philosophical writings by the likes of
| Plato and Socrates?
|
| This piece like quite a few others is a kind of musings which
| many find interesting and PG doesn't claim it to be scientific.
|
| There are areas of human interests that lie well outside our
| scientific capabilities. People should be allowed to speculate
| on them. Reasonable conjectures often precede solid
| evidence/proofs in math and science.
|
| This reminds me of:
|
| "PhD student, c.2020: Here's a limited argument I made based on
| years of specialized research. Hope it's OK
|
| Philosopher dude, c.1770: Here are some Thoughts I had in the
| Bath. They constitute Universal & Self-Evident Laws of Nature.
| FIGHT ME."
|
| Source:
| https://twitter.com/ethicsinbricks/status/122555554335763251...
| papascrubs wrote:
| I was gonna say. This is very much discourse. It's someone's
| musings. What's so cringy about this? It never claims to be
| scientific; it never attempts to persuade or even really
| argue.
|
| 100% your twitter reference.
| mistermann wrote:
| My beef with it is that it is a series of opinions stated
| in the form of facts. If the topic was something like
| programming, CPU's, etc this approach would not go over so
| well, but for certain topics it seems like concern for the
| truth is ~unacceptable.
|
| And why does this matter, at least plausibly? In my
| opinion, because of this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
|
| I believe that if humans get the idea in their head that
| they have no free will, it could be detrimental to rising
| to serious challenges like climate change, inequality, etc.
| papascrubs wrote:
| I can understand that. And I appreciate you sharing your
| opinion and thoughts on it. I'm not familiar with the
| Illusory truth effect but will get some reading into
| today (thanks for the link!)
|
| In speaking. I try to approach things as always mutable.
| If I put a disclaimer in front of everything I state
| (when I perceive the I talk about to always be some form
| of a hypothesis based on the data that I currently have),
| it tends to slow down discourse and get very messy. In my
| mind, because I've already accepted the potential for bad
| data-- that's how I approach others works/papers. There
| are no absolute truths in anyone's words (or very likely
| period).
|
| I understand your concerns around this (and at least from
| my current understanding of our social/political issues)
| and I agree. It is extremely dangerous and detrimental to
| hold beliefs like that. However, one could argue that a
| substantial portion of our society already holds those
| beliefs. They ignore the free will that they have and
| operate inside of the system that they perceive.
|
| No real arguments/points here. Just chewing on
| things/"thinking out-loud". I think it's equally
| important for people to be able to share thoughts in an
| unformed state (in the right environment).
| mistermann wrote:
| Rarely do I get any agreement on these ideas, so many
| thanks for that.
|
| Unsurprisingly, I am interested in some clarification:
|
| > If I put a disclaimer in front of everything I state
| (when I perceive the I talk about to always be some form
| of a hypothesis based on the data that I currently have),
| it tends to slow down discourse and get very messy.
|
| The domain of science typically involves overwhelming (in
| a text conversation scenario) amounts of complexity as
| well....but they realized the problem, found a way to
| manage it, and went on to produce amazing results.
| Unfortunately, science does not have mastery over all of
| reality (confident claims and perceptions to the contrary
| notwithstanding). Perhaps something similar could be done
| in other domains.
|
| As it is, it seems to me that thinking on top of
| approximations of reality that are perceived as reality
| itself is sub-optimal, and dangerous. I think most people
| could appreciate this in the case of science, but in
| other domains it is very often considered _absurd_.
|
| > In my mind, because I've already accepted the potential
| for bad data-- that's how I approach others works/papers.
|
| "In my mind" - watch out! :)
|
| > There are no absolute truths in anyone's words (or very
| likely period).
|
| Disagree - if one has decent skills in set theory,
| abstraction/decomposition, and tautological framing of
| ideas, it is not difficult at all to achieve absolute
| (but vague/non-comprehensive) truth. That's not the
| finish line, but you can get WAY further down the track
| than someone who does not have such abilities.
|
| > I understand your concerns around this (and at least
| from my current understanding of our social/political
| issues) and I agree. It is extremely dangerous and
| detrimental to hold beliefs like that.
|
| And as far as I can tell: this is the methodology of the
| vast majority (90%+++) of people....and some of these are
| The _Literal_ Experts, or people who believe they know
| The Way humanity needs to go to solve climate change.
| _What could go wrong!!??_
| papascrubs wrote:
| > Rarely do I get any agreement on these ideas, so many
| thanks for that. > Unsurprisingly, I am interested in
| some clarification:
|
| >> If I put a disclaimer in front of everything I state
| (when I perceive the I talk about to always be some form
| of a hypothesis based on the data that I currently have),
| it tends to slow down discourse and get very messy.
|
| > The domain of science typically involves overwhelming
| (in a text conversation scenario) amounts of complexity
| as well....but they realized the problem, found a way to
| manage it, and went on to produce amazing results.
| Unfortunately, science does not have mastery over all of
| reality (confident claims and perceptions to the contrary
| notwithstanding). Perhaps something similar could be done
| in other domains.
|
| I think using science here was an exceptional example.
| It's good to note that the scientific process itself has
| evolved over time. I don't have all the answers, but I'm
| happy to re-analyze and adjust my processes given new
| data
|
| > As it is, it seems to me that thinking on top of
| approximations of reality that are perceived as reality
| itself is sub-optimal, and dangerous. I think most people
| could appreciate this in the case of science, but in
| other domains it is very often considered absurd.
|
| I can agree with that in part. Ideas must come from
| somewhere though. Sometimes that source is abstract and
| we don't understand all of the various
| linkages/connections; sometimes it's a known source and
| we understand in part all the things they are connected
| to. I think it's important to enable discourse and
| "thinking out loud" by labelling/tagging things as such.
|
| >> In my mind, because I've already accepted the
| potential for bad data-- that's how I approach others
| works/papers.
|
| >"In my mind" - watch out! :)
|
| I'm comfortable with having my ideas challenged because
| I'm open to revising them. I should probably change this
| to 'my methodology is' or something more distinct. Merely
| attempting to convey here that I (try) to use a conscious
| approach when approaching others works. And I attempt to
| challenge myself regarding my own ideas on a regular
| basis.
|
| > Disagree - if one has decent skills in set theory,
| abstraction/decomposition, and tautological framing of
| ideas, it is not difficult at all to achieve absolute
| (but vague/non-comprehensive) truth. That's not the
| finish line, but you can get WAY further down the track
| than someone who does not have such abilities.
|
| I would argue that's not an absolute ;) But instead, I
| think both of our points, the important thing to identify
| is that it's not the finish line. It can be modified or
| adjusted or simply re-analyzed given new data.
|
| Society seems to tend to think of ideas as a binary when
| there are often various levels of maturity involved.
| What's important to me in this instance is that the
| product isn't labelled as final. Change is a constant,
| even if things don't change directly, our information
| about them and perception of them do, which requires re-
| evaluating things often. Science is great at doing this,
| people (in general) are not. I think that many people
| would benefit from approaching things in a more
| scientific and/or philosophical fashion.
|
| > I understand your concerns around this (and at least
| from my current understanding of our social/political
| issues) and I agree. It is extremely dangerous and
| detrimental to hold beliefs like that.
|
| > And as far as I can tell: this is the methodology of
| the vast majority (90%+++) of people....and some of these
| are The Literal Experts, or people who believe they know
| The Way humanity needs to go to solve climate change.
| What could go wrong!!??
|
| Expert is a dangerous word. An expert to me is someone
| that can adapt a methodology/approach. Not dogmatic
| follow something. I'd argue that for someone to be an
| expert in their field, they need to be able to understand
| and account for incoming data. I'd agree with you on that
| point. Many experts spout dogma, sometimes we're just
| lucky/unlucky that they aren't spouting the dogma we
| agree with.
|
| I appreciate the discourse!
| Thursday24 wrote:
| A more stark example is that of Newton. A true philosopher,
| by hacker news standards he'd be considered a misguided
| madman, since he spent 2/3rd of his life on "unproductive"
| topics such as religion and alchemy. However, the
| "productive" 1/3rd cannot be separated from the rest.
|
| One must remember that the word "scientist" was coined merely
| in 1834...the word isn't 100 year old even. Newton saw
| himself as a philosopher, he studied the ancients intently,
| etc. The same applies to many of his contemporaries as well.
|
| My overall point is, one shouldn't judge a person too harshly
| for any particular piece, while ignoring their larger
| contributions and efforts.
| 63 wrote:
| I wouldn't go so far as to call this gibberish like other
| commenters, but I don't get the point. I follow the logic but it
| feels incomplete. Why does the thesis matter?
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| A common misunderstanding about the human brain is that we think
| of the higher part to be more or less in control of the rest,
| like a conductor with an orchestra or a pilot with an airplane.
|
| The reality is much weirder and complex.
| alfor wrote:
| My take at the moment is that each humans are like cells of a
| human where the human is a civilisation.
|
| We have autonomy but must generally work for the welfare of the
| whole organism. If some people are not aligned to the general
| good we try to dissuade them or punish them because if it become
| too big the whole system collapse in the same way that our
| organism would if there is too many cancer cells.
|
| Our consciousness operate on the scale of a human life but there
| is a similar "consciousness" of the civilisation that operate on
| a much larger timescale, thousand of years, we call those
| religions.
|
| While we can seek personal gain, it's much the same as a cell
| trying to outcompete it's neighborhoods, it's misaligned to the
| more important goal of global welfare. There is something inside
| us in our soul that know this and won't make you satisfied of
| yourself if you are not a net positive for the whole.
|
| Now we have looked everywhere to try to find the God of our
| stories but didn't (it's a pattern operating on a different
| timescale). So we are like cells that rebelled against the
| organism, discarting all the rules that we had because we don't
| understand them. The result will be a sickness of the organism up
| to a point where we see we have to go back to our ancients rules
| or the death of the organism (civilisation collapse)
|
| Those rules are: each must try to align himself with truth and
| love toward others, must try it's best, it's ok to fail, but
| recognised it and improve.
|
| Those rules are the preconditions for the survival and slow
| improvement of our civilisation.
|
| Other religions have other rules and other outcomes.
| kajaktum wrote:
| I used to think that free will existed but now I am surprised we
| even think that. Just looking inwards is enough to convince me
| that I have no idea what I am going to think next, type next, or
| how I am even going to finish this sentence. It simply arrives
| and I am the first (and possibly only) one to experience it. I
| cannot will the will to will.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| As someone who's struggled with addiction most of my life, the
| idea that free will doesn't exist is worse than useless to me.
|
| The way we experience our lives indicates that we make choices
| and they have consequences. I don't know what kind of life you
| would have if you suddenly decided to stop making choices one
| day, but you would probably end up institutionalized if it
| didn't kill you first.
|
| Even if my choices are predetermined somehow, I can do an end
| run around that by flipping coins or rolling dice when faced
| with multiple options. I have in fact done so on many
| occasions. At that point I didn't choose, RNG did. You could
| argue a particular coin flip was predetermined to land on
| 'heads', but I cannot see how that argument is useful if it
| doesn't lead to making better predictions.
| kajaktum wrote:
| If thinking about free will causes you suffering. I implore
| you to not read further. I do not intent to cause any
| suffering.
|
| >The way we experience our lives indicates that we make
| choices and they have consequences
|
| Even if we don't "make" our choices, why would that not
| matter? Experience matter (it's the only thing that matter).
| It still matters that some unconscious rock fell over your
| head. It matters that you "decides" to be better because that
| means that you will experience better life.
|
| I am sorry to hear that you struggled with addiction and I
| can understand that some knowledge is poison. We do not drill
| the concept of suffering to our young children every waking
| minute of their life. That does not mean that any of those
| things are untrue. If your doctor consistently denies that
| death is a concept you would rightly be asking for a
| different one. Truth matters.
|
| I have some addiction problems myself and I think free will
| is one of the most poisonous concept. It says that the lotus
| of blame is solely on me. _I_ have to decide to change and
| actually perform it. But we know better than that, we know
| that _I_ can be influenced. Therefore we know to avoid things
| that feeds into our addiction. I can't just "not do it".
|
| >I have in fact done so on many occasions. At that point I
| didn't choose, RNG did.
|
| You did not choose to follow this through. You could have
| easily said, "I am going to do the opposite of this to assert
| my free will! Take that!" and you didn't choose to do this
| either.
| jondeval wrote:
| > I used to think that free will existed but now I am surprised
| we even think that.
|
| How about over a longer time period? For example, say you want
| to pickup a new good habit and get rid of a bad habit. When you
| start to intentionally make thousands of little choices over
| time that all add up to a major change in your life, can't you
| say that you freely chose that path?
|
| Even if each individual impulse along the way maintains a
| connection to a more materialist/deterministic set of causes,
| you can still meaningfully talk about your own free will at
| this higher level of abstraction. What am I missing?
| kajaktum wrote:
| >want >intentionally >chose
|
| None of these words make sense. I can't want what I want
| (author's thesis here). This higher level of abstraction that
| you talk about is an illusion caused by not paying attention.
| I can ruminate for years about how I am going to do this and
| that; but at the end of the day, the impetus to actually do
| it is still mysterious. I can't want to change. I just
| change. I just do the little things that shifts my life for
| the better and then one day just simply stop. I can forge
| some reasons as to why I change but I could have easily
| muster my way through it. Can I choose how much will power I
| have?
|
| Now people will say because free will doesn't exist means
| that choices don't matter. It absolutely does. The fact that
| you "chose" to do good things matter. Because experiences
| matter. Because experience pain/suffering however you wish to
| define it is not a "good" thing.
|
| I can perfectly understand some issues people have with this
| concept because it causes them trouble with their
| addiction/depression. But just because we tell lies like we
| always do in programming to facilitate
| discussion/teaching/abstraction does not mean that those
| things are not real. You don't want to make decisions on a
| national/scale on lies that you tell yourself to get to
| sleep.
| jondeval wrote:
| Thank you. I appreciate you wanting and choosing to
| respond.
| kajaktum wrote:
| You're welcome (as I smile not out of my free will)
| superb-owl wrote:
| Schrodinger had an interesting resolution to this paradox, which
| I wrote about recently:
|
| https://superbowl.substack.com/p/church-of-reality-schroding...
| nnoitra wrote:
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