[ExI] free will.

[Will Steinberg]

John,

You won't get anywhere with analogies which are constructed to obscure
information.  When I make a decision, I am conscious that I am at a node in
the world's timeline where multiple distinct realities can occur.  It is
the CONSCIOUSNESS of this feeling which causes so many people to believe
that free will exists.

In fact, I might even go so far as to say that if you took a human and
threw it into a proto-human tribe in the past, or raised it in a selective
environment, that free will would be absent from that human's brain.  That
is to say, free will is a memetic construct centered conscious perusal,
understanding, and hammering-in of itself.  Free will was miraculously
produced in an Edenic apeish tribe somewhere, and our species now passes it
down through the imposition of today's free-will-centric society.

Do you know the color red exists?  Sure.  I KNOW what the qualia red is.  I
can produce it in my mind's eye.  Does a bird KNOW what the color red is?
 Maybe.  It certainly experiences its own qualium of red.  Does a bug KNOW
what the color red is?  No.  Can it sense and react to different
wavelengths of light?  Yes.

My problem with your argument is that you seem to think we experience free
will much like a bug's brain or ganglion or whatnot experiences a
computation telling it to fly somewhere to get food.  I KNOW I don't
experience free will like that.  Maybe it is deterministic.  But if you
truly think that free will is the same as a cow's moo, you are more than
misinformed.

I will pose this dilemma to you:

1) You (John K Clark) experience qualia but do not have conscious
understanding of it.  You are a zombie; my best guess is that you are an
experimental AI that has been programmed to believe it is a human.  In this
case I cannot blame you for your argument, because I've got a beetle in my
box over here.

2) You have free will.

If and when you respond to this, do a close mental read of how you put the
words on the page. Really observe your "decision."

Of course maybe you're right.  We'll know soon enough!

(Though if it IS fake, I wouldn't want to tell anyone.  A society that
thinks every human can decide, after all, is what has propelled us so far,
to here.  It would suck to become a bunch of morose zombie computers.)

Cheers,

(free) Will
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