[Zagan] "Intelligent" robots does not imply "free-will" robots, so such robots, while intelligent, may have no choice but to follow instructions given to them.
------------------------------------- AI implies learning from experience, not programming, but they are really the same, in that this is NOT "free will".
WE don't have free will either, because we cannot change our beliefs about anything without an external cause making us choose to do that, and then we cannot prevent ourselves from doing it either.
We are beings of cause and effect, just like a robot, but we are self-aware in that our mind models us as a character in a story called Our Life, and when robots can do that as a means of analysis and planning to the degree we do it, then they will be self-aware just like we are.
Still, there is NO such thing as supposed "Free Will". Our brain works by chemical cause and effect, and the causes are either external, or internal to our brain but still not precisely "ourself".
[Zagan] We humans are not driven only by external causes, but internal processes as well. I agree that our belief system "control" us to a great degree, but do not agree that we cannot overcome external and internal "drives," and thus have free will. We often do not exercise our free will, but it is there for those with sufficient fortitude.
[Zagan] Cause and effect is an idea central to classical physics. Quantum physics has demonstrated that reality is governed by random processes. Cause and effect is a result of probability. Certain things are very likely under the rules of probability, and we may mistake this as cause and effect. Quantum physics has also shown us that the outcome of an experiment is observer-dependent. Some have suggested that these quantum properties are the source of our consciousness. Since cause and effect is probabilistic only, to me this suggest "free will."
---------------- The things that are internal that govern us are every bit as out of our control as are externals.
------------------ You're merely dense. There's nothing to overcome or overcome it WITH! We cannot change what we believe for NO reason, AND when we HAVE a reason, it is not OUR reason, it acts SEPARATELY from us, so we are DETERMINED by these OTHER causes. We do NOT choose from among a set of choices for some strange reason that is "within" us, we choose according to what other separate reasons dictate that persuade us. We cannot make them untrue by any imaginary "force of will". There is no such "force of will", since without these internal but separate reasons that stand on their own, and which we cannot change, we would have no ability to decide AT ALL!
------------------- You're blathering an insipidly ridiculous circularity. The reasons you hold for your beliefs are not you, they are true without you. You do not choose whether to believe them, you believe them without being able to decide for yourself whether they are true or untrue. You can't merely change your mind on some non-existent whim, you need a reason altogether external to what you call "you", some fact that is true even without you that persuades you.
---------------------- You don't understand QM very well. No reality is NOT "governed" randomly. The ONLY single thing that CAN happen DOES happen after every single extent of time. The only other event that "might have happened" is imaginary. That there is a distribution of DIFFERENT events around a common prediction is NOT a randomness, a statistical difference in DIFFERENT events is due to the fact that they ARE DIFFERENT events, that is, NOT THE SAME EVENT!
------------------------ But each single thing that happens can only happen in that exact way and in NO OTHER, or else it WOULD HAVE!
---------------------------- No.
--------------------------- No, you're not speaking of one experiment but of a set of DIFFERENT experiments at different times and in different universes because the universe in which each occured was UNAVOIDABLY DIFFERENT!
------------------------- Yes, people who also do not understand QM or physics.
Consciousness is not some "magic", it is obviously the internal modeling of our own existence in a space now called "the mind" as a means of planning and predicting our responses to situations.
Nothing can "exist" outside of it because there would be nothing to see it with as a being, "Being" is a story told to oneself about existing.
----------------------------- Nope. Cause and effect is what happens in each separate unchangable case. It is not probablistic, it merely appears so because of the inherent differences in the actual events which are depicted erroneously as a data set.
-------------------------- Thanks, but I really don't have time to do it justice.
[Zagan] Since by your own admission, you cannot, by free will, choose what you will believe, but must be "made" to believe, then I must be "made" (in your terms) to question your sentience. But yet I believe you are a conscious, sentience being. You can say I was forced, but I believe I chose to believe by the evidence before me. If I chose NOT to believe, then I would consider you a robot who cannot think freely.
[Zagan] Yes, we DO have external and internal influences, and we have the ability to decide by free will how we will allow the influences to affect our thinking and actions. I agree that we do not change what we believe for "NO reason," but that does not imply lack of choice or free will.
If we depend only on reason "that stand on their own" then we are no more than automatons. If this is what you believe, then what a dull life you must live.
[Zagan] Perhaps my "blathering" is an example of free will, of which you chose (were forced?) not to have.
You say my beliefs are "true without you." On this point, I agree. I never said something had to be false to believe it by free will. I believe free will to be true by experience (your force, perhaps?). The difference between you and I is that I chose to live by free will. You chose to be an automaton, and of course that is your right.
You live in a world of "cause and effect." You say your "choices" are forced upon you. This is a contradiction in terms. One does not chose that which is forced. However, I suppose that your classical belief system is one you cannot escape. I tend to feel sorry for you, but perhaps you don't know the difference and do not suffer.
[Zagan] As long as you lock yourself into the world of classical physics, you cannot understand the implications of QM. A point you don't seem to understand is that according to the standard model, the distribution of "DIFFENENT events" are viewed as existing in a state of superposition, meaning that all events are real until such time as an observer collaspes the wave function. I realize this is a difficult concept, and one that is not allowed in classical physics. You should try to lose your "cause and effect" illusion. A whole new world will open up to you if you do.
[Zagan] Not according to the standard model of QM.
[Zagan] You cannot have probability and "[deterministic] cause and effect" at the same time. QM suggests probability, your classical physics suggest determinism. In QM, what we call cause and effect is a matter of what is most likely as learned from experience. A book resting on your desk is not likely to suddenly fly to the ceiling. But QM allow for the possibility however remote that may be.
[Zagan] This is not the view of the standard model of QM.
[Zagan] Who said anything about magic? I agree that consciousness is a model of the external "world" created by stimulus of our senses and the processes of the brain. I think we agree on this point.
But if so, are there as many universes as there are conscious beings? And what if this being dies? Does his/her universe disappear? Or is there only one universe, and we each have out own interpretation of this one universe?
[Zagan] This is not the view of the standard model of QM. All things are probabilistic. "Cause and effect" is an illusion resulting from incomplete knowledge that predates QM. Even QM has incomplete knowledge, but it admits this as probability and superposition. The data set is not erroneous. It is a superposition of sets that require an observer to collaspe the wave function. Without an observer all members of the set are true.
--------------------------------------- You do not choose. Your beliefs are the result of external info being processes in ways not under your conscious control that result in your beliefs.
--------------- Prove it to yourself, here and now, change something you know you believe by nothin more than a "whim/force of will" and come to now believe something that seems to be nonsense to you. You can't do it, nor can you do it with anything you think, because you DO NOT control your beliefs, you are ONLY a victim OF them!
----------------------------------- Of course it does. The reasons come from external experience or from information or experiences from without that are wholly beyond your control. What else would you call it? The chemical processes in your brain follow the rules of chemistry, they are determined and have a specific outcome, and you can't change them or else all of chemistry and physics is violated.
----------------- Nonsense, the fact that we are determined and our life has a specific outcome is irrelevant, we still do not know that outcome. The fact that we are controlled by natural laws means nothing, since it feels, to whatever degree that it does, as if "we" are "doing" something merely because we believe in it and assume credit or blame for it.
Actually we are entirely incapable of changing the future, and are not even to blame for what we do. We should be WAAAAY more charitable and forgiving toward others because of these facts. Jesus told you that, why does it seem unreasonable to you??
We cannot change ourselves, but we can change others as we are destined to do. People advance as a society by the way they change each other for the better, because we cannot turn and change ourselves since we ARE ourselves. That which you ARE you cannot change, because it IS the "YOU" that you propose changing YOU WITH!!
--------------------------- If you had "Free Will" then you could decide to perceive any world you wished and then by a few simple experiments with your belief system you would find yourself totally outside and entirely of this reality in mere moments, and be unable to find your way back!
You would not exist in any certain world, but you would be stuck in whatever experience you found yourself in, and you would do whatever you did, and your life would still be one certain experience of life, uncontrolled by you, in fact it might seem like this one.
You see, you can't escape, you can't leave, you can only find that you went where you were supposed to go.
----------------------- You have an ignorant erroneous belief that doesn't make sense, nothing more. You will also find you are unable to change your beliefs without being compelled to from information or experiences coming in from outside you.
------------------------------ You are unable to change the tiniest thing you believe merely by wishing to, because you cannot form the wish. You don't decide anything!
[]
----------------- Having two degrees in physics within the last 25 years, I VERY much doubt that I have done any such thing!!
----------------------- And that is a non-real view, which the MWI shows clearly.
The "collapse of wave functions" had many problems that the Many Worlds Interpretation does away with. MWI must be only theory and admits so boldly because it is precisely true that no one will ever live in more than one specific path of instantaniety in the MWI Multi-Verse.
--------------------- There is no such thing. Models are numerous.
----------------- Of course you can, that is what MWI is all about.
------------------ You're under the misinformed delusion that QM supports something other than determinism, but Determinism is exactly what is DOES support! Probablistic studies are merely an approach to what is seen, it does NOT mean that cause and effect does not have solitary final outcomes.
--------------------------------- Certainly, but in another universe because it did NOT in all of the experienced pasts, since in all of them I know SO FAR that it did NOT occur, and therefore CANNOT occur to MY Universe when I am at my death and look backward. Birth and Death and the boundaries of myt Universe, my regime of cause and effect rules.
------------------------- There is no such thing, and MWI DOES INDEED say this!
There are an infinite number for each alternative conscious version of ourselves. The MultiVerse is the Infinite Imagination. There is no physical universe at all outside of our Life, only perceptions within the Stories that are called Lives.
---------------------- You know how once you didn't exist, and then you did, and you didn't have the vaguest idea what you were, and there was NOT even any kind of well-developed WHO that you were? Well, every Life is like that, you don't know what you will become or which life this is, and the same Entity is born into all lives, because it has no inherent nature. You was/were/will have lived every single Life that is possible to live. Why? For the adventure. And you won't remember any of the others except in those Lives where you're supposed to.
---------------------------- The Past is the ONLY reality, there is NO Future till it is Past, and NOT EVEN A Present until it is the Past. The ONLY thing that exists is the PAST!!
The Past is the form of incomplete knowledge that is "as complete as knowledge ever really gets", thus it is complete. We know that either something happened, or it did not, and whether it is uncertain is only because we didn't watch it closely enough to know.
QM is theory, it is all about the NON-Past, and thus is nothing but a depiction, a heuristic fantasy.
--------------------------------- There is no collapse of the wave function, it was never expanded.
That is merely a depiction, a heuristic. Whatever happened was destined to happen or else something else would have happened. That's cause and effect. No principle of QM can possibly violate that.
Saying that inumerable other nearly same experiments have a statistical distribution but only one finally happens and you don't know which one is nothing but double-talk from unknowledge.
[Zagan] While I am confused that someone with two degrees in physics is not aware of the standard model of QM, I see no point in discussing the issue further. I believe we have reached an impasse. I am unwilling to believe in a purely deteministic universe as you seem to prefer. You cannot change my mind, nor I yours, so there is nothing to discuss.
I do appreciate you taking the time to express your views, however, and I did enjoy the challenge to my thinking.
[Zagan] I meant to invite you too news:alt.sci.physics.new-theories if you haven't been there already. I think your views should offer some interesting threads.
-------------- There is no such thing. Only the math is standard.
---------------- Then you should stop typing, liar!
------------- No, you have.
--------------- I wouldn't know how to have a universe any other way THAN Determinism.
If we had "Free Will" we could change our minds about where we were and instantly be elsewhere. The desire would become the fact. That would be nonsense, since you could do anything without reason.
---------------------- You COULD change my mind if you could tell me something new I didn't known, but nobody's done that about anything important in a while.
-------------------------- Your mind's made up.
------------------------- They aren't views, they are simply facts.
----------------- Glad to have been entertaining for you.
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