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Do you predict Tulsi will get a cabinet post?
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My Role For President Donald Trump's Transition To The White House
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Dr. Michio Kaku: "James Webb Telescope Discovers One of the Oldest Galaxies of All Time!"
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What the heck does the refined commonplace thesis (RCT) mean?
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Liz Cheney endorses Kamala Harris
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"There's No Going Back from This" James Webb Telescope Uncovers One of the Oldest Galaxies Ever Seen
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Why are all of my replies marked as read before I open them the first time?
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Which side shoulders the burden of proof?
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The difference between causality and determinism
created by diogenesthehopeful on 20/08/2024 at 07:53 UTC* - 0 upvotes (https, www.reddit.com)
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 16/09/2024 at 07:14 UTC
0 upvotes
Yeah that is kind of what I figured you'd say which is why I hesitate to prove anything about that on this sub anymore. People are entitled to their opinions and this sub could be nothing more than people discussing their dogmatic beliefs. However I see a threat to political freedom. In the US the average person doesn't see the Bill of Rights as something that we need to protect and why would anybody actually believe that if they didn't believe that had free will in the first place? Who needs a bill of rights if there is no free will?!? The Bill of Rights is absurd based on that premise. What can I possibly do with a Bill of Rights if I cannot make any free will choices anyway?
I guess it doesn't matter anyway because we are going to keep teaching AI until it gets so smart that it will take away any rights that we have left assuming the free will deniers don't give up what we have left first.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 16/09/2024 at 06:46 UTC*
1 upvotes
Discussion and debate please, not attacks.
Until you acknowledge the difference between causality and determinism it is not too likely you we understand LFW.
For example:
**Premise 1:** A free choice must be either determined by reasons (such as desires, beliefs, and values) or not determined by reasons.
Even if your syllogism is valid it won't be sound because desires beliefs and values are causes because reasons are causes. Causality is logical and reason is logical.
Therefore your premise #2 blows up. premise #3 blows up.
As a libertarian, I don't seek freedom from random. I believe I cannot have freedom without random. Most likely what confuses the determinist is that he often doesn't quite have any working knowledge of the difference between chance and necessity. I used to struggle a lot with the word random. It took me years to work that out, but once I began to look at chance and necessity I begin to undertand that the common concption of random so bogus. Therefore if you desire a discussion with me, I recommend starting here:
https://www.informationphilosopher.com/chance/[1][2]
1: https://www.informationphilosopher.com/chance/
2: https://www.informationphilosopher.com/chance/
Chance is often defined as the opposite of Necessity[3].
3: https://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/necessity.html
Dictionary definitions refer to the fall of the dice in games of chance. Perhaps the most famous die ever cast was the one Caesar threw to decide whether to cross the Rubicon, his Roman civil war. The Latin was *iacta alea est*, from the Greek Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος (anerriphtho kybos - "let the cube be thrown"), which Caesar quoted in Greek. The fundamental idea was for random chance to cause a necessary and irreversible[4] future.
4: https://www.informationphilosopher.com/problems/irreversibility/
Leucippus[5] (440 B.C.E.) stated the first dogma of determinism[6], an absolute necessity.
5: https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/leucippus
6: https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/dogmas/
I guess I have to give you kudos for actually trying to come up with an argument for determinism. I hesitate to say your argument is valid because it seems like some of the premises of the argument are based on the truth of other premises and I don't believe that makes a valid syllogism. In the classic syllogism, "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal" The minor premise doesn't depend on the truth of the major premise so this is a valid argument in that sense. It isn't sound unless we can prove all men are mortal and Socrates is a man.
In the post modern era gender is based on perspective and Socrates could have identified with different pronouns than his "sex" may have stipulated.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 16/09/2024 at 06:01 UTC*
1 upvotes
the question I have is will the algorithm work without a random number generator in the work flow and if there is "random" there is that element that I need to see in order to make learning possible.
What a lot of empiricists on this sub don't seem to get is that deduction is a narrowing down process and if there is only one possible outcome, then there is nothing to narrow down as we make some determination.
edit: In the 2+2=4 example, I can use induction to say every time I count two apples and two more apples I count four apples and wonder if the next time it will be five, or I can use the mathematical deduction method and understand that I don't have to count any apples if I already know that 2+2 necessarily equals 4. Formal logical deduction is more powerful than than many empiricists are willing to acknowledge.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 16/09/2024 at 05:54 UTC
1 upvotes
It isn't arguable unless you deny science. Anything is arguable if we deny logic. Even compatibilism is arguable if we deny logic. However if determinism is true then quantum mechanics and relativity don't work and they are our best science. Therefore if you intend to argue determinism is true, that could involve of a lot of science denying when you try it.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 16/09/2024 at 05:48 UTC
1 upvotes
If you don't want to see a reason then you probably won't see one. That is basically the way a faith based opinion works. Quantum mechanics is not going to make any sense until you abandon this premise. It has been working fine for almost a century. Heisenberg was given the Nobel prize for it in 1927 so that is about 97 years ago. Applied science didn't really get going until the 1940s so maybe 80 years if I'm being as generous as I possibly can be. Once a nuclear bomb was detonated there was no denying the veracity of quantum mechanics. Solid state electronics and nuclear reactors being used to generate electricity came later because we didn't want Nazi Germany to get the bomb before it was defeated. Therefore that drove a sense of urgency.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 16/09/2024 at 05:32 UTC
1 upvotes
Determinism does not *miss* the fact that we have conscious thought processes, it just relegates them to the same status as everything else in existence, which some people find unpalatable
It is "unpalatable" because it doesn't hold up in science. Some people find denying science unpalatable. I for one think denying science is untenable, scientifically speaking.
It says that your logical thought processes, your imagination, your sense of inner self, your personal attributes, all of that, is made all of the same stuff and subject to the same physical processes as everything else.
Yep that is physicalism pretty much in a nutshell and this premise renders proven science inexplicable. The science works fine. The US and Russia have nuclear arsenals that are more than sufficient to send this planet back to the stone age if it is habitable at all. Nuclear power plants work. Solid state electronics works. Quantum mechanics is fine. Quantum gravity not so much. Physicalism would be dead if not for scientism keeping it on life support. Lies keep physicalism alive. We can make up any story we want but not every story holds up in established science, and determinism is just one of those stories. Physicalism is another. The big bang is another. The James Webb Space Telescope allows us to see so far, if determinism was true, then these galaxies are too old to have be formed by the big bang according to how long ago it was assumed to have happened. The BBT has failed twice so far and good 'ol scientism is keeping it alive.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 16/09/2024 at 05:10 UTC
1 upvotes
I don't know why you say Newton was not a determinist.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-principia/#DefAbsSpaTimMot[1][2]
1: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-principia/#DefAbsSpaTimMot
2: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-principia/#DefAbsSpaTimMot
It is important to recognize that, in calling the referents of the defined terms “quantities,” Newton is assigning them to the ontological category of quantity in Aristotle's sense. Thus force and motion are quantities that have direction as well as magnitude, and it makes no sense to talk of forces as individuated entities or substances. Newton's laws of motion and the propositions derived from them involve relations among quantities, not among objects. In place of “no entity without identity,” we have “no quantity without definite proportions;”^([)^(19)[3]^(]) and the demand on measurement is to supply values that unequivocally yield an adequate approximation to these definite proportions.
3: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-principia/notes.html#19
As you can see Newton's causality is firmly planted in the correct side of Hume's fork (where Hume put it and where Kant acknowledged that it belongs).
Einstein, who should have known something about relativity, was explicitly a determinist.
So in other words, he didn't like "spooky action at a distance" and therefore argued QM was incomplete in the 1935 EPR paper:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2%80%93Rosen%5C_paradox[4][5]
4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2%80%93Rosen%5C_paradox
5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2%80%93Rosen_paradox
The **Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen** (**EPR**) **paradox** is a thought experiment[6] proposed by physicists Albert Einstein[7], Boris Podolsky[8] and Nathan Rosen[9] which argues that the description of physical reality provided by quantum mechanics[10] is incomplete.
6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment
7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Podolsky
9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Rosen
10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 16/09/2024 at 04:37 UTC
1 upvotes
It is possible to "understand" things without free will. An intelligent agent will try to understand the world around them (in some fashion, such as an internal representation and whatever inferences can be derived from it) in order to decide how to act in this world.
I doubt learning can occur without some free will so I don't think understanding will occur without learning.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 16/09/2024 at 04:32 UTC
1 upvotes
What free will seems to require is that there is a possible world that is identical up to the point of decision but in that world I do not choose chocolate.
This is why the difference between causality and determinism is important. Determinism is based of the idea that we can only choose based on the state of the external world. The determinist doesn't acknowledge the internal world because to him, in many cases, only the physical matters so the internal world does not exist. Only the world from a third person perspective matters to the physicalist. He thinks the "internal world" is just brain states and the first person perspective is the illusion.
That doesn’t necessarily mean I choose vanilla, maybe I just pass on having ice cream, or maybe I check to see if other options are available. But whatever I do it is not “choose chocolate”, because if in every possible world I choose chocolate then how can there be any sense in which my choice was free?
If you want or desire chocolate that doesn't seem to be as free as what you choose to do. Some call it free won't instead of free will because just because you desire chocolate doesn't necessarily mean you will try to to eat it. You could be diabetic or lactose intolerant and decide not to eat the chocolate based on the counterfactual that it might make you sick and they desire to not be sick outweighs the desire to eat chocolate. For me, free will is more about the intention to eat the chocolate. This is different because now if you want chocolate and I ate it all, the you cannot have chocolate whether you desire it or not.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 16/09/2024 at 04:08 UTC
1 upvotes
If you understanding why it may seem counterintuitive to other people then you probably understand what I'm saying. I mean who gets bit by a mosquito and blames the universe instead of smacking her? These miniature vampires get a lot of blame from people I know.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 16/09/2024 at 03:57 UTC
1 upvotes
Okay so we can synthesize free will so, what other reasons are there that stop us from synthesizing thinking? I understand there is more to thinking than computing and if there is something supernatural in play then thinking could be transcendent. I'm not so sure that thinking is transcendent. Maybe it is.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 20:56 UTC
1 upvotes
Well he is smart and a tool of the oligarchy. If the oligarchy wanted Trump gone, Congress would have ran him out of the whitehouse as soon as he pulled that stunt. I watched his handles. They were all over the media trying to get damage control for that Leviathan and as soon as he went on TV and dared anybody to come after his administration and the media didn't call him out for the Comey move or warning the public not to pursue this, that figured all was 'good in the hood" so to speak and damage control was not longer needed because Trump had the issue well in hand.
It was so disgusting. Obama was correct when he said in his final sotu that the nation gets the government it deserves. It reminds me of another final sofu when a sitting potus warned the nation of the MIC.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 20:44 UTC
2 upvotes
Understood. Personally I feel the free will denier isn't playing fair anyway, so I want to shut down every mistake he makes. He is going for the double standard which is free will for the rich and no free will for the masses who cannot figure out if they have free will or not. As my uncle used to say about religion, it is a whip stick. Determinism is the knew whip stick to replace the old when the enlightenment made "religion" less compelling.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 20:37 UTC
1 upvotes
if and only if signifies control is contingent on possibility. In other words the modality is the game changer because all the control in the world doesn't matter if the outcome is inevitable. We need multiple possible outcomes first. Then and only then does it matter if we have sufficient control to pick one path vs another to travel.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 16:36 UTC
1 upvotes
I think the format is challenging. We have the OP, Khemani and possibly David Deutch weighing in in a wall of text.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 16:21 UTC
3 upvotes
Classical physics emerges from Quantum Physics by the averaging all of the particles that make up an object. In this way any indeterminism is minimized such that we can use averages like center of mass and moment of inertia to give us our familiar Newtonian Laws of Motion.
I don't agree with #4. for two reasons:
1. Relativity is classical and it isn't deterministic either
2. Newton didn't believe in determinism so if anybody should have ever believed in determinism it should have been the guy who formulated Newtonian physics.
I realize that you didn't say anything about determinism. I'm suggesting La Place's demon was wrong headed even in the hay day of classical mechanics. We, as determinists, ignored Hume and it should have never happened. Therefore there is nothing emerging out of QM that changes the calculus unless we insist the calculus needs to be changed. It seems like #4, the way it is worded, is implying we can ignore Hume until we get to the quantum level. I think Hume on causality should be acknowledged so I don't agree with #4.
I think #1 is self evident. Therefore I don't conflate causality and determinism.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 16:01 UTC
1 upvotes
I will comment more in a little bit, but in the meantime, I’m still not sure what the probabilistic part has to do with your definition of libertarian free will.
For me, any kind of free will (LFW or CFW) requires the ability to do otherwise. If there is no possibility to do otherwise then there cannot be any ability to do otherwise. First we have to establish the fact that it is possible to have free will because if everything we do is as inevitable as the deterministic implies, then there is no possibility of doing otherwise.
Once we establish that it is possible to do otherwise, then and only then do we need to consider whether or not we have sufficient control to impact the outcome.
This is why I **stress** the difference between causality and determinism. Determinism, like fatalism, takes away the possibility to do otherwise. Meanwhile causality gives us the control that we would require for free will, iff there is the possibility to do otherwise. Even if there is no possibility to do otherwise, that is to say if I'm unable to control the sadness that I feel, does that mean I cannot smile so others don't notice my despair? I believe I can try to hide my true feelings even if I cannot succeed in the deception. Funerals are not fun because people try to hide their sadness until they figure the time is right to let it all out. Sometimes it comes pouring out anyway. We are there to celebrate the life of our dearly departed and not to get together so we can cry on each other's shoulder.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 15:37 UTC
1 upvotes
Then why ask that that question and then get all defensive when i said it's more religion than reason? You were upset that i wouldnt make unsupported assertions.
Because I've been debating for decades and this isn't my first rodeo.
But of course you're fine with saying Bell's inequality proves Copenhagen, which is more of blatant lie than any unsupported assertion.
Well Bell's inequaltiy being violated proves local realism is untenable. I'm just saying "Copenhagen" is still standing even though it is clear that Wigner, Bohr and Heisenberg were a lot more comfortable with it than Schrodinger, Einstein and Rosen were.
I've been banned from a lot of subs not because I'm not a patient man, but rather because my patience has limits. I'm fine with the way this dialog is going but I'm starting to get a bit concerned about the direction it might be heading. If you don't want to dialog any more, we can stop now if you like.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 14:50 UTC
1 upvotes
> I figured that if you looked at one through six earnestly, I wouldn't have to define it.
I hope you are being facetious, because expecting someone to impute a definition from a bunch of non-definitional statements is unreasonable.
Facetious is a good word.
> ability to judge and misjudge the initial conditions
It's not clear what you mean by "judge" here and whether or not "misjudge" is carrying any additional semantic weight.
Judge is part of the deliberation about the intial conditions (IC) and misjudge is about introducing factors that are not inherent in the IC
Also, "initial conditions" is vague. Do you mean the initial conditions of the universe? The current conditions an agent finds themself in when faced with a decision? Something else?
Excellent. When I say IC I mean the state of the universe. Saying the agent finding himself is based on his sensibily and not based on the way the universe is so he can misjudge the IC and his reaction is based on his perspective rather than the IC. This whole concept is lost on the determinist because he doesn't think there is any relevant judgement by the agent and in some cases he denies the agent exists at all! Excellently done.
> iff the chosen course is not too far away the probability of a likely outcome taking place
You lost me here. What does this mean?
At the risk of being facetious, I'm just saying the probabiity of me choosing to pee in the shower and succeeding is significantly greater than a cow jumping over the moon and suceeded in that pipe dream. I've at least seen horses jump before so it is interesting that they choose a cow in the nursery rhyme as they talked about the dish running away with the spoon.
You are reifying "choosing the winning lottery number" as a thing and then comparing it to "the likelihood of a player picking it". This makes no sense as an act of choosing and a likelihood are different categories of objects, and there's no metric that would allow us to talk about how "far" they are from each other.
Yes the principle of alternate possibities (PAP) is about the whether another outcome is even possible. For example 2+2=4 and the probability of another outcome is zero. On the other hand if there are a billion possible winning combinations and I buy a billion tickets insuring each ticket is a different combination of numbers, then the probability of me having the winning ticket is one. However if I only bought one ticket, then the chances of winning are so close to zero they may as well be zero but they are not zero. I still have a one in a billion chance, whereas my chance of 2+2=3 is a correct answer to an arithemic problem is less than one in a googleplex of being correct. In fact is is zero.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 14:01 UTC
1 upvotes
I'm not interested in making unsupported assertions. That is dogmatism and I don't debate opinion. It is a waste of my time. I have enough to do with the majority of determinist saying things they cannot support. Sometimes I think rather than the big bang being the god of this sub it is Robert Sapolsky with Sam Harris and Sean Carroll being members his support group.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 13:55 UTC
2 upvotes
Well I'm arguing against determinism. That isn't the same thing as arguing for free will.
Just because compatibilism is incoherent doesn't make free will and determinism a dichotomy.
Determinism can be false and free will can be false.
If the FSM determines it and the scientist still cannot determine it, that is fatalism and not determinism. Determinism is tethered to the laws of physics in a way that fatalism is not so tethered. Fatalism is not constrained by space and time. In contrast, determinism is causalilly constrained by space and time. That is to say causality is a logical relation only, but determinism is this logical relation restricted by the laws of physics which imply faster than light communication is impossible and the cause has to literally travel to the location of the effect prior to having that effect. For example, it takes eight minutes for a photon to travel from the sun to the earth so the determinist is under the delusion that whatever happens of the sun cannot have any effect on us here on earth until eight minutes after the fact. That has been debunked for almost a decade now and it became official when Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger won the Nobel prize in 2022
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 13:35 UTC
1 upvotes
I figured that if you looked at one through six earnestly, I wouldn't have to define it. That not being the case, LFW is the ability to judge and misjudge the initial conditions and take a course of action based on judgement iff the chosen course is not too far away the probability of a likely outcome taking place. For example choosing the winning lottery number is so far from the likelihood of a player picking it that it is a good bet for the government to assume it won't be picked.
Also, why are you trying to convince an indeterminist that determinism is false?
Hmm
or (b) not actually LFW.
okay please tell me why what I said is not actually LFW
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 13:21 UTC
1 upvotes
It’s an instruction, not an instinct.
Instinct is just a word the scientists use to say about life when they don't have an answer and I fearful that today there are enough answers.
However, all AI does is mimic its training data.
Agreed, but unless we are doing something supernatural, eventually these nitwits will figure out how we think as this wouldn't be inexplicable. We simple teach AI to do we do and then AI can train itself rather than follow our instruction. Then the slave becomes the master and the master the slave.
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 09:18 UTC
1 upvotes
I think maybe Schopenhauer and Kant diverge on the thing in itself. This is where the rubber meets the road because this exposition lists four theories of experience.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/[1][2]
1: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/
2: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/
QM renders one of them untenable. The rest are up for grabs. Personally I think phenomenology is too close to naïve realism (I think the exposition calls it intentionalism).
Comment by diogenesthehopeful at 15/09/2024 at 09:09 UTC
1 upvotes
I've read his other book "why materialism is baloney" and it was really good.
Sadly, I haven't finished reading it yet but the part I did read was good.
Because everything is made of the same mind, all first person perspectives are that universal mind having different perspectives of itself. Like you and I are both the same mind, exploring itself from different points.
That word "mind" is key here because at what point does the separation became apparent? If we are in fact all ontologically the same, at which point does the separation yield the different perspectives?