[ExI] Free will was: Everett worlds

John Clark johnkclark at gmail.com
Tue Aug 25 21:08:56 UTC 2020


On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 4:04 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> Truly random *from our perspective and ability to measure it*.  Doesn't
> mean there isn't a cause behind it, just not a cause that we can see.
> Which is pretty much what the source of free will,*
>

If you mean that even in a 100% deterministic universe sometimes you could
not know even in principal what you're going to do next until you actually
do it then I would agree. From the work of Godel and Turing I know that
there are an infinite number of statements that are true but have no proof,
that is to say there would be no way to show they are true in a finite
number of steps. if the Goldbach Conjecture is one of those statements, and
if it isn't there are a infinite number of similar statements that are,
then if you write a simple computer program that will look for the first
even number greater than 2 that is not the sum of two primes and then stop
there is no way to know if it will ever stop. There is no shortcut with a
proof, you just have to try every number. If the Goldbach Conjecture is
false then it will eventually stop, but there is no what to know how long
it will take, and if the Goldbach Conjecture is true then it will never
stop, but there is no way you could know it will never stop and thus no way
to know that the Goldbach Conjecture is true.

 John K Clark
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