[ExI] Whistling past the graveyard

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Fri Apr 8 00:52:04 UTC 2016


On 8 April 2016 at 08:30, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> ​Well, for one thing it means that I cannot answer the question about
> Einstein without taking a stand on free will.​
>
>
> ​The computer cannot do otherwise than what it was programmed to do.
> There is no human parallel to this, unless you want to go down to the level
> of DNA and say that it is responsible for all that we do since it
> programmed us to learn.  If you want to look at it this way, then we are
> indeed automatons.  And Einstein gets no credit;  given the makeup of his
> brain and what was put into it, he had no choice other than to create his
> physics and math.  This is a tough philosophical position to dispute.
>

What you say here is quite reasonable. What is your problem with it?


> Free will exists because we hope we have it, and we must assume it so that
> we can punish antisocial people.
>

If antisocial people have free will (whatever that means) but we know that
punishment would have no effect on their behaviour we would not waste our
time with it. On the other hand, if they have no free will (whatever that
means) but we know punishment would stop them doing bad things then we
would punish them. Free will (whatever that means) is irrelevant.


> If there is any hard evidence for it I don't know of it.  I have no
> conception of what that would be.
>

Neither do I. Free will does not mean that behaviour is random, and it does
not mean that behaviour is deterministic. It seems that it means nothing at
all, if you think about it at more than a superficial level.
​

> The AI may produce unexpected results, but that was known beforehand, if
> the code was OK.  So, credit to the programmers, none to the AI.
>

The same could be said of people and their teachers, as discussed.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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