[ExI] [Extropolis] determinism

[William Flynn Wallace]

Whether a radioactive nucleus decays is fundamentally random: there is
nothing about the nucleus, its history, the environment that determines
whether it will decay or not in the next minute.

I have extreme reservations about whether they know all of this and even if
they know what to look for, or indeed have the tools to do so even if they
did.  To me and Einstein, random is just a word for our ignorance.  bill w

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 6:38 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 08:02, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> understood what undetermined behaviour would entail.
>>
>>> Stathis Papaioannou
>> Here's random behavior:  your left big toe itches; you right hand mimics
>> playing a scale on the piano; one eye in batting to the beat of a Sousa
>> march; you feel like eating; your bladder empties; you recall going to 1st
>> grade; and so on.  And it's unpredictable what any part of your body or
>> mind is going to do next.  bill w
>>
>
> That description is consistent with your behaviour being determined, since
> there may be reasons for it, even if the reasons are unknown. Random
> behaviour is behaviour that occurs for no reason at all. The only example
> we have of random events are at the quantum level. Whether a radioactive
> nucleus decays is fundamentally random: there is nothing about the nucleus,
> its history, the environment that determines whether it will decay or not
> in the next minute. That is, it’s not just our ignorance, it is a
> fundamental aspect of the universe. Einstein objected to this, because he
> thought that there must be a reason for every event in the universe, and
> maybe we just haven’t discovered it. Most physicists have subsequently
> thought that Einstein was wrong about this.
>
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 4:58 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 01:50, SR Ballard <sen.otaku at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> You can’t control your actions IF they are determined. If actions are
>>>> simple cause and effect (determined), then there is no choice, only the
>>>> illusion of choice.
>>>>
>>>> If you don’t mean “determined” as in “actually determines”, then
>>>> picking the word determined was a huge fuckup back in the day by whoever
>>>> decided that was the way to talk about it.
>>>>
>>>> If actions are determined, then there’s no such thing as guilt — just
>>>> like truly random actions, there was no choice, so no guilt.
>>>>
>>>
>>> If your actions are not determined, they are random. There is no third
>>> possibility, neither-determined-nor-random. You could perhaps get away with
>>> a little bit of randomness, but too much would make it impossible to
>>> function. There are random events on the world, such as nuclear decay, but
>>> at large scales, including at biological scales, the world behaves
>>> essentially deterministically. Our notions of freedom and choice require a
>>> reliable causal connection between thought and perception, one thought and
>>> the next, thought and action, so determinism is assumed. People who claim
>>> that determinism and freedom are incompatible haven’t understood what
>>> undetermined behaviour would entail.
>>>
>>>> --
>>> Stathis Papaioannou
>>>
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> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
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