Free Will, Doppelgangers, Choice

How does science work? And what's all this about quantum mechanics?

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themightyboosh
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Free Will, Doppelgangers, Choice

Post by themightyboosh »

Hi everyone. I've read a few forums on here and elsewhere about free will and choice - but i have a few questions of my own. I'm not challenging any theories or shooting anything down just like hearing different points of view. I know there is no real answer, only different ways of asking or viewing the questions.

What I've come to understand after all I've read online and books (Braine Greene..Hawkings..) about parallel universes and quantum mechanics.

If in an infinite and ever expanding universe (multiverse). There are endless versions of me playing out every conceivable event, then my actions (catching a ball) will determine what another version of myself will/must do (drop the ball) or visa versa. If this is true then no one version of me has any 'free' will and we are all just acting out our parts as predetermined by previous actions in a play across the multiverse.

I don't ever want to hurt some one but if I have no choice am I really responsible (in the eyes of say a supreme, I couldn't be as 'he' would know I had no choice as it was predetermined for me). Why...who knows.

Could all versions of me be the same with a shared consciousness (or just look like me), could one version take delight in something 'i' would find morally wrong and unethical.

I only ask all of this as it just seems pointless if that's the case. You are not responsible for your actions, it only seems like you have free will as you cannot escape the illusion of this reality...

Thanks Guys :P :lol: 8)
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henry quirk
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Post by henry quirk »

"multiverse"

My inclination: there ain't no such animal.

However: even if such a thing 'is', can't see how that has any bearing on 'me'.

There may be an infinite number of 'Henry Quirk(s)' but -- since each of 'us' is inaccessible to any of the others (no traipsing from one universe to another) -- seems to me each 'Henry' is on 'his' own.

As to 'free will': certainly I have (am) a will, but that 'will' is bound up and restrained by the flesh that comprises it (me).

I'm not free (but, then, I'm also not 'pre-determined').

My choices are always limited (by the restraints of my flesh, by the way the world works) but still I choose.

#

"You are not responsible for your actions"

Let's say, for the moment, that you and me and the guy over there, we're all bio-automata...so what?

The illusion that you and me and that guy over there are (at most) free-willed or (at least) choosers is powerful and persistent.

Can't imagine that illusion (or the sense of self-efficacy or -determination that goes along with it) will disappear any time soon.

Why?

Cuz folks mostly wanna take credit for their victories and blame the other guy for his or her failures.

Simple as that.
Blaggard
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Re: Free Will, Doppelgangers, Choice

Post by Blaggard »

The choices people present in these so called arguments are really not very clever, or not very much like an argument for or against anything be it free will or the price of bread in a free market economy. It hence seems to me that if you are discussing this question more often than not, you're trying to drive the ball through a narrow goal post. Perhaps amongst the philosopher or philosopher of science Croquet is their national sport, but to me at least it seems to be all balls. ;)

The free market economy is it good, and the free will debate hence will roll on; it's kind of like a standing philosopher joke isn't it, the debate about free will. I mean no offence but even a moron could of made a point by now? Or is that the point...

Suffice to say infinite universes are sophistry unless, and let me make this clear you are just trying to prove that maths is reality and physics at least as it pertains to science and something that is actually anything about actual science, can go take a long walk off a high cliff. :P

Welcome to the forum though. Try looking up Leplace's Demon that will really bake your noodle. ;)
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
—Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities..[]
[]Arguments against Laplace's demon

According to chemical engineer Robert Ulanowicz, in his 1986 book Growth and Development, Laplace's demon met its end with early 19th century developments of the concepts of irreversibility, entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics. In other words, Laplace's demon was based on the premise of reversibility and classical mechanics; however, Ulanowicz points out that many thermodynamic processes are irreversible, so that if thermodynamic quantities are taken to be purely physical then no such demon is possible as one could not reconstruct past positions and momenta from the current state. Maximum entropy thermodynamics takes a very different view, considering thermodynamic variables to have a statistical basis which can be kept separate from the microscopic physics.[4]

Due to its canonical assumption of determinism, Laplace's demon is incompatible with mainstream interpretations of quantum mechanics, that stipulate indeterminacy. Whilst indeterminacy is the majority position amongst physicists, the interpretation of quantum mechanics is still very much open for debate and there are many who take opposing views (such as the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation).[5]

Chaos theory is sometimes pointed out as a contradiction to Laplace's demon: it describes how a deterministic system can nonetheless exhibit behavior that is impossible to predict: as in the butterfly effect, minor variations between the starting conditions of two systems can result in major differences.[6] While this explains unpredictability in practical cases, applying it to Laplace's case is questionable: under the strict demon hypothesis all details are known and therefore variations in starting conditions are non-existent.

In 2008, David Wolpert used Cantor diagonalization to disprove Laplace's demon. He did this by assuming that the demon is a computational device and showing that no two such devices can completely predict each other.[7][8] If the demon were not contained within and computed by the universe, any accurate simulation of the universe would be indistinguishable from the universe to an internal observer, and the argument remains distinct from what is observable....Recent views

There has recently been proposed a limit on the computational power of the universe, i.e. the ability of Laplace's Demon to process an infinite amount of information. The limit is based on the maximum entropy of the universe, the speed of light, and the minimum amount of time taken to move information across the Planck length, and the figure was shown to be about 10120 bits.[9] Accordingly, anything that requires more than this amount of data cannot be computed in the amount of time that has elapsed so far in the universe.

Another theory suggests that if Laplace's demon were to occupy a parallel universe or alternate dimension from which it could determine the implied data and do the necessary calculations on an alternate and greater time line the aforementioned time limitation would not apply. This position is for instance explained in David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality, who says that realizing a 300-qubit quantum computer would prove the existence of parallel universes carrying the computation.
It's a funny old world. :P

link from wiki.

You are of course right though, but the consequence of being right just brings up more confusion and consequences, if I am doing something only because that is what I will always do how then am I freely willed, of course the compatibilists say that you are if you are doing something whether you are compelled or not, if and only if the consequence values are unknown by the subject, and this unknown hence means free will can exists in an objective sense at least, but this in itself seems incomplete, and raises even more pertinent questions. It's one of those questions perhaps that if we ever do answer, it will mean we had free will or not, but that we clearly spent so long debating it that we never really used it or didn't. ;)
uwot
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Re: Free Will, Doppelgangers, Choice

Post by uwot »

themightyboosh wrote:If in an infinite and ever expanding universe (multiverse). There are endless versions of me playing out every conceivable event, then my actions (catching a ball) will determine what another version of myself will/must do (drop the ball) or visa versa.
The thing is, dropping the ball or not dropping it are hardly infinite possibilities. The point was made by Douglas Adams and his Infinite Improbability drive. Somewhere amongst the infinite 'you's there is a version that throws a ball into the air and catches a bowl of petunias. There's also the oaf you that drops it. I've never witnessed such a thing, but people do report very strange events. One possibility is that they are accurately relating what actually happened, infinity is very big, but odd things will inevitably happen in every version. Alternatively, there is only one version and the people claiming to have witnessed unlikely events are bonkers. Who knows?
Anyway, I don't see that events in one reality affect what happens in another, a point made by Henry. Some physicists think that the many worlds interpretation of QM (not to be confused with multiverse) could explain the piffling strength of gravity, compared to the other forces. The idea being that gravity operates across all versions, whereas others are discrete. Given that the force of gravity isn't nil, though, that would seem to put a limit on the number of possible worlds.
themightyboosh wrote:If this is true then no one version of me has any 'free' will and we are all just acting out our parts as predetermined by previous actions in a play across the multiverse.

I don't ever want to hurt some one but if I have no choice am I really responsible (in the eyes of say a supreme, I couldn't be as 'he' would know I had no choice as it was predetermined for me). Why...who knows.

Could all versions of me be the same with a shared consciousness (or just look like me)
They can't all look like you, because some will have had terrible accidents involving sulphuric acid, farm machinery and tattoos that seemed a good idea at the time.
themightyboosh wrote:could one version take delight in something 'i' would find morally wrong and unethical.
Yup! Don't forget revolting.
themightyboosh wrote:I only ask all of this as it just seems pointless if that's the case. You are not responsible for your actions, it only seems like you have free will as you cannot escape the illusion of this reality...
The appearance is all you have. It makes no difference whether it is real or illusory. Funnily enough, themightyboosh, I was doing some work for Noel Fielding this afternoon.
Blaggard
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Re: Free Will, Doppelgangers, Choice

Post by Blaggard »

This is of course completely beside the point but my last user name on a forum was Themightyboosh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8kkwXnTmMc

Cheese think on...
uwot wrote:Funnily enough, themightyboosh, I was doing some work for Noel Fielding this afternoon.
Oh yeah or was it for Old Gregg. We know your game space cowboy.
Ginkgo
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Re: Free Will, Doppelgangers, Choice

Post by Ginkgo »

themightyboosh wrote:Hi everyone. I've read a few forums on here and elsewhere about free will and choice - but i have a few questions of my own. I'm not challenging any theories or shooting anything down just like hearing different points of view. I know there is no real answer, only different ways of asking or viewing the questions.

What I've come to understand after all I've read online and books (Braine Greene..Hawkings..) about parallel universes and quantum mechanics.

If in an infinite and ever expanding universe (multiverse). There are endless versions of me playing out every conceivable event, then my actions (catching a ball) will determine what another version of myself will/must do (drop the ball) or visa versa. If this is true then no one version of me has any 'free' will and we are all just acting out our parts as predetermined by previous actions in a play across the multiverse.

I don't ever want to hurt some one but if I have no choice am I really responsible (in the eyes of say a supreme, I couldn't be as 'he' would know I had no choice as it was predetermined for me). Why...who knows.

Could all versions of me be the same with a shared consciousness (or just look like me), could one version take delight in something 'i' would find morally wrong and unethical.

I only ask all of this as it just seems pointless if that's the case. You are not responsible for your actions, it only seems like you have free will as you cannot escape the illusion of this reality...

Thanks Guys :P :lol: 8)


If it turns out that the many worlds interpretation for quantum mechanics is correct then this would necessitate the existence of free will. If the universe was completely deterministic then there would be no need to make a choice in any given situation because the outcome will always be determined. We have no need for many different worlds.

I would say that all interpretations of quantum mechanics is compatible with free will.
uwot
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Re: Free Will, Doppelgangers, Choice

Post by uwot »

Blaggard wrote:Oh yeah or was it for Old Gregg. We know your game space cowboy.
Bah! Curse you, Blaggard, you've found me out.
uwot
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Re: Free Will, Doppelgangers, Choice

Post by uwot »

Ginkgo wrote:If it turns out that the many worlds interpretation for quantum mechanics is correct then this would necessitate the existence of free will..
It will be a job proving many worlds, but what is the argument for free will from it?
Ginkgo
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Re: Free Will, Doppelgangers, Choice

Post by Ginkgo »

uwot wrote:
Ginkgo wrote:If it turns out that the many worlds interpretation for quantum mechanics is correct then this would necessitate the existence of free will..
It will be a job proving many worlds, but what is the argument for free will from it?
Hi uwot,


The many worlds interpretation is probably wrong, but there would be a number of classical physicists that subscribe to the theory. Prima facie it might see as though many words is deterministic, but I would probably disagree.

It is a bit like the cat in a box whereby the cat in the future is either dead or alive, not actually both. Quantum mechanics is not deterministic in terms of the future we will actually see.

But like most things in philosophy it is up for debate.
uwot
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Re: Free Will, Doppelgangers, Choice

Post by uwot »

Ginkgo wrote:But like most things in philosophy it is up for debate.
I must admit, I chickened out of philosophy of mind. I thought the only way you could nail it would be to build a machine capable of analysing all the physical states of your brain, such that it could predict your next action and tell you what you will do next. If you are powerless to do otherwise, your behaviour is determined. Such a machine is so far beyond our technical capabilities, and given that we cannot predict the behaviour of a single electron with any certainty, probably always will be. So, to my mind, the question is insoluble, but there's a part of me that cannot be persuaded that if such a machine were possible, I would not be able to tell it to kiss my arse. Or something else, if that is what it predicted.
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