[extropy-chat] Best To Regard Free Will as Existing

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 4/7/07, scerir <scerir at libero.it> wrote:

I do not think that genes and environment
> play a major role when people buy, or sell,
> (or keep) shares of IBM, or Apple.
>

No? What else could *possibly* be at play here?

> Some people find a place for free will in indeterminacy,
> > perhaps the indeterminacy in QM (or at least the CI of QM).
> > But at best, that means free will is *randomness*,
> > and why should we be any happier to believe that our
> > behaviour is random than that it is determined?
>
> Asher Peres wrote several pages (with calculations)
> about free will, especially in case of (possible)
> physical 'entanglements' between a subject and
> another subject. But he found that the 'will' was
> 'free' enough, in any possible condition.
>
> Note that the 'free will' of the observer is itself
> a precondition if one wants to prove Bell
> theorems. If you remove the essential assumption
> of 'free will' you can also explain the so called
> quantum nonlocality, via a sort of 'superdeterminism',
> as Bell called it.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism


The "free" choices in Bell inequality type experiments are really random
choices. Is there a difference between free will and randomness? My view of
it is that the feeling that we are not constrained in making a choice is
what we term "free will", and it doesn't feel any more or less free if the
choice really is constrained or if it is random.

Stathis Papaioannou
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