[ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment

[Samantha Atkins]

On Aug 19, 2007, at 8:28 AM, Lee Corbin wrote:

> Samantha wrote
>
>> [John Clark wrote]
>>> So one has free will if one's will is free. I said it before I'll
>>> say it again, free will is an idea so bad it's not even wrong.
>>
>> Do you have the ability to choose among alternatives or not?
>
> But in another email, Samantha goes on
>
>> [Stathis evidently wrote]
>>> If we could re-wind the clock to the moment before the
>>> crime, to the exact same circumstance, he would certainly
>>> choose to commit the same crime again.
>>
>> This does not follow in the slightest and is totally false by my
>> experience of most critical choice points in my life.
>
> It seems that you are dismissing out of hand the possibility
> that you could be living in a deterministic simulation.

Not really and most likely not relevant if we were.  A simulation of  
the complexity and variation we experience would have to include our  
own rather chaotic mental processes and choosing methodologies.    
Humans are not difficult to predict in many aspects but are not  
perfectly predictable by any means.  On second consideration of a  
decision point I might very well take a road not taken before.   
Perhaps some of that is just me as I seem to often be of at least two  
minds on many things.  I quite often find myself wishing I could try  
all or several of some set of alternatives.

> Besides,
> the very wide tracts of neurons that determine a decision a
> few seconds before you make an action are, well, "deterministic"
> and I think that we can safely regard people as very akin to
> programs.

They are not deterministic in the useful form or being precisely  
predictable in macro level outcome.  That it is all physics  
underneath is not terribly useful in this domain.

- samantha