<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 3:11 AM Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:</span><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><br></div></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span class="gmail-im" style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"> <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">>> <font size="4"></font></span><font size="4">If something caused you to do X rather than Y then you're a deterministic machine regardless of whether you know what the cause was or not.</font></span></blockquote></div></blockquote><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> </blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>Not if I am part of that something. </i></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4">I don't know what that means<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">. </span>You either did what you did for a reason or you <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">did </span><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">what you did for no reason; I don't pretend that's a profound statement but it's undoubtedly true. I</span>f you <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">acted as you </span>did <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">for</span> no reason <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">then most would</span>consider that to be a bad thing<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">,</span> we <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">would </span>say you were <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">being un-</span>reasonable<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">.</span> </font></div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><i><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>Perhaps we exist in both this<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>reality and a "beyond" behind a Turing Oracle interface (see e.g.Physical (A)Causality by Karl Svozil) and our free will originates in<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>the beyond. </i></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">The beyond? I think it might be wise to explain what in the world is meant by the term "free will" before you present a theory concerning its origin. Other than a noise made by the mouth I know of only one definition of "free will" that isn't complete gibberish, and almost nobody uses it; free will is the inability to know for certain what we will do next before we do it. A coin doesn't know which way it will fall until it falls, and a calculator doesn't know how much 42 times 57 is before it's finished making the calculation. But for some reason not many want to grant this mysterious property called "free will" to a coin or a calculator. So we're back to square one and the question remains, forget about where it came from what does "free will" even mean? I don't demand a rigorous mathematical definition, I'd be happy with just a general idea, a hint of what we're talking about that is not full of self contradictions.</font></div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><font size="4"><br></font></div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"> John K Clark</font></div><br></div><br>
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