[ExI] The Quantum Zeno effect

[Darren Greer]

John wrote:

>as for free will, people don't mean anything by it, it's just a noise made
by the mouth.<

I like to think of it as temporarily denying one evolutionary imperative in
favour of another. Kind of like what Quentin Crisp said politicians have
perfected the art of doing: making the inevitable seem like a matter of wise
human choice.

Darren



On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 4:41 PM, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>wrote:

> On 12/14/2010 12:38 PM, John Clark wrote:
>
>>
>>  the sort of thing Nobelist Eccles got all excited about, because he
>>> thought that might be a place where a non-physical entity or soul
>>> might couple to the machinery.
>>>
>>
>> I suppose so, but I don't understand why he got all excited, randomness
>> is not what people usually mean by the soul; as for free will, people
>> don't mean anything by it, it's just a noise made by the mouth.
>>
>
> I haven't read Popper&Eccles for a while so I don't recall the exact
> argument, but I assume he thought that if a metastable state was somehow so
> delicately poised that it could flip any allowable way, a shove by a magical
> soul could tip it in the desired deterministic direction. In other words, it
> would be a hidden variable. Doesn't make any sense to me, either. But maybe
> Eccles-type souls live in the seventh rolled up dimension and can do shit
> like that.
>
>
> Damien Broderick
>
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-- 
"In the end that's all we have: our memories - electrochemical impulses
stored in eight pounds of tissue the consistency of cold porridge." -
Remembrance of the Daleks
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