[ExI] Randomness and Free will

[Keith Henson]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2025 at 12:13 AM Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

snip

> At times, irrationality is the smartest attitude.

In the paper Arel and I wrote,"Genetic Selection for War in
Prehistoric Human Populations", the logic worked out that going to war
was irrational for the individual, but rational from the viewpoint of
the individual's genes.

I think I posted a draft of that article here.  If not Genetic
Selection for War in Prehistoric Human Populations. H. Keith Henson,
Arel Lucas (2025) Journal of Big History, VIII(2); 124–127. DOI |
https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v8i2.8207

Keith

PS, as a side note, irrational behavior by the German dictator was
instrumental in the course of WW II.

>
> >
> > Regarding free will, you previously said there may be some true randomness in the universe.


> >
> > And finally, if you do believe in randomness, what form do you see it taking:
> >
> > - Events in the universe that don't have causes (i.e. "God playing dice")
> >
> > - Hidden variables which we cannot in principle access (QM is incomplete)
> >
> > - Unpredictability arising from chaos combined with incomplete or imperfect information (Like my deterministic simulation example, or how pseudorandom number generators work)
> >
> > - Self-locating uncertainty in the face of duplication (Many worlds's answer, or "Tegmark's cloned while sleeping" example)
> >
> > - The "un-anticibility" (for lack of a better word) of computationally irreducible processes (e.g. Wolfram's answer, that we can't always predict what complex computer program will do until it does it)
> >
> > - Something non-algorithmic (or hypercomputation) exists in physics (e.g. like Penrose and his quantum gravity speculations)
> >
> > - Libertarian free will (i.e., the brain's will breaks free from or is independent of the ordinary determinism of the physical laws).
> >
> > - (something else)?
> >
> > Jason
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