<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Dec 14, 2010, at 1:02 PM, Damien Broderick wrote:</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "> if you conducted the S's cat experiment using a macroscopic randomizer like a series of spinning coins, it wouldn't prove a thing.</span></blockquote><div><br></div>I think that's true provided you make the pretty reasonable assumption that the outcome of a spinning coin is a deterministic event.<br><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">If this is correct, the M-W universe doesn't split if you walk left instead of right, unless that decision is somehow triggered by an indeterminate or stochastic quantum-scale event in your nervous system</span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>If that human decision is deterministic (and sometimes it probably isn't) then you always walk left and there is no universe where you go right, so obviously there is no split.</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">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.<br></span></blockquote><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br></body></html>