[ExI] Everett worlds

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Mon, 17 Aug 2020 at 19:26, Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 11:14 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 17 Aug 2020 at 18:52, Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:35 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat
>>> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > On Mon, 17 Aug 2020 at 00:04, Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> Thanks John. Yours is the standard Everettian answer. Others dislike
>>> Everett’s fully deterministic QM because it leaves no room for free will.
>>> Some kind of post-decoherence selection could allow for free will in a
>>> quasi-Everettian framework.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > There are various definitions of “free will” but if you use the
>>> incompatibilist one, requiring that our actions be undetermined, Many
>>> Worlds still allows for that because there is true randomness from the
>>> first person perspective due to the impossibility of self-locating. Having
>>> said that, we would not be able to function, or even survive outside of a
>>> nursing home, if to a significant extent our actions were undetermined.
>>> >
>>>
>>> Good point. I have never understood compatibilist free will. It seems
>>> to me that if I am an automaton with a delusion of being a free agent,
>>> I am still an automaton.
>>>
>>
>>
> Compatibilists say that you act freely if your actions are determined by
>> your preferences, and you do not act freely if your actions are determined
>> by someone coercing you or by a mental illness. This is the definition of
>> what it means to act freely used by most people; for example, it is the
>> definition used in courts, and it is put to the test many times a day
>> around the world.
>>
>> Incompatibilists add to the above that you cannot act freely if your
>> actions are determined. What they can't explain is how it would be possible
>> to function if your actions were not determined. It might not matter much
>> if you were choosing a flavour of ice cream, but it would quickly kill you
>> if you were trying to cross the road, for example.
>>
>
> Not predetermined does not necessarily mean random. I claim that I CAN
> choose a flavor of ice cream or when to cross the road independently of the
> present and past states of the universe. Of course, since I want to stay
> alive, I would take the state of the world into account in deciding when I
> want to cross the road. In Everett's terms, the measure of the region of
> the multiverse where I cross the road carelessly and get killed is small.
>

A determined event is one that is fixed due to prior events, such that if
the prior events occur the determined event necessarily occurs.

An undetermined event is one that is not fixed due to prior events, such
that if the prior events occur the undetermined event may or may not occur.

Suppose you want to cross the road, but you see cars coming which you think
would hit you, and you don't want the cars to hit you. Normally, you would
delay crossing until the cars have passed. You would do this every time
given the circumstances, so your action is determined. If your action were
not determined, sometimes you would cross the road under these
circumstances and sometimes you would not. You would not survive for long
if you had this sort of "free will".

Of course, you could cross the road anyway if there were cars coming,
perhaps because you thought you could outrun the cars, or you were
suicidal. But then you would be crossing under DIFFERENT circumstances,
which is consistent with determinism. If your actions were not determined
you would cross under the EXACTLY THE SAME circumstances:  you see cars
coming which you think would hit you, and you don't want the cars to hit
you. You would be crossing for no reason, not even a bad reason. You would
not survive for long if this is how you made your decisions even some of
the time.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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