Is free will a lie?

[Torn Mind]

What makes you think he's not been exposed to other forms of reasoning?

It's clear he'd be wrecked if he tried to argue "I got no free will, judge, so you shouldn't punish me", but he wants that as some sort of universal legal defense. Ultimately, it winds up being "don't bother and suck it up", and rewards the aggressive and/or criminally minded. Maybe if some country goes and conquers another...no free will...it was destined to be...He either never thought of the implications of his modus operandi or believes it's just what it is.

A little cross-examination would impeach him. Let's say he blew a stop sign and hit someone.

Did you see the sign? Yes.
Did you ignore it? Yes.
Why? I don't have free will, it's not a conscious act by me.

The elements of negligence would be failing to exercise a duty of care.

He himself appears to want change to the way people are "punished", thus he clearly has interest in how the American legal system operates.

“The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over,” Sapolsky said. “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.”

Law school students have to be raked through the coals with numerous books. Some of the major texts include the "Restatements" or American Jurisprudence. A legal claim is "won" when the elements of the claim are established, if even there are thousands of moral appeals; this is why people never should open their yap when police question someone or even talk too much in general. Because just one wrong answer can be the road to a judgment someone might not "ethically or morally" deserve, but the elements were proven.

I did not realize at the time, but providing dashcam footage to a GEICO insurance adjuster is such an example of given fuel to the opposition for them to judge in their favor(denying both drivers' claims, me and the other party). The insurance company wanted to deny both as much as possible, and footage gave GEICO grounds to claim contributory negligence(even though they never called it contributory negligence, that's the concept they were going after).

People this guy only further makes me realize that I've got a truly love-hate view of lawyers(who are also work as judges and and commonly as politicians). Because lawyers are corrupt, manipulative, exploitative, and predatory, but the alternative of rule by the masses, even "intellectual" ones is rife with "modes of operation" that are even more ridiculous.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Prove that you can smash your hand with a hammer, dummy.

Dumber than presuming a lack of free will. The desire to avoid pain and anguish does not equate to no free will.

 

[nakedfrog]

It's clear he'd be wrecked if he tried to argue "I got no free will, judge, so you shouldn't punish me", but he wants that as some sort of universal legal defense. Ultimately, it winds up being "don't bother and suck it up", and rewards the aggressive and/or criminally minded. Maybe if some country goes and conquers another...no free will...it was destined to be...He either never thought of the implications of his modus operandi or believes it's just what it is.

This is taking an awful lot away from an article about the guy, not having read his actual book on the subject. I would posit you're not actually informed enough to make the arguments you're making here.

A little cross-examination would impeach him. Let's say he blew a stop sign and hit someone.

Oh, FFS, stop turning everything into legal terms

Dumber than presuming a lack of free will. The desire to avoid pain and anguish does not equate to no free will.

I'll just be over here not believing that you have free will because you can't actually smash your hand with a hammer

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I'll just be over here not believing that you have free will because you can't actually smash your hand with a hammer

Alright, only because I enjoy philosophy. If ones actions are only results of external influences, consciousness is indiscernible from randomness, which is hardly predetermined. In addition, it must therefore follow that other randomly externally influenced systems are also conscious, to include nonliving systems like fire, quantum reactions, many computer programs, and the entire universe. One can claim that if they wish but it dilutes the concept of consciousness and requires another word for 'same as all the other stuff but self-observant while still not being self-determinant'. Which is dumb as well.

 

[nakedfrog]

Alright, only because I enjoy philosophy. If ones actions are only results of external influences, consciousness is indiscernible from randomness, which is hardly predetermined. In addition, it must therefore follow that other randomly externally influenced systems are also conscious, to include nonliving systems like fire, quantum reactions, many computer programs, and the entire universe. One can claim that if they wish but it dilutes the concept of consciousness and requires another word for 'same as all the other stuff but self-observant while still not being self-determinant'. Which is dumb as well.

And now how about if we're living in a simulation?

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

And now how about if we're living in a simulation?

Would be pointless if the 'npcs' didn't have free will, at least for any reason I could discern as to why any civilization would develop a simulation.

 

[nakedfrog]

Would be pointless if the 'npcs' didn't have free will, at least for any reason I could discern as to why any civilization would develop a simulation.

People enjoy The Sims, I wouldn't consider them to have free will. Creating a simulation capable of generating NPCs who can debate over whether they have free will, and running parallel instances where one instance has free will and one doesn't could be interesting in itself.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

People enjoy The Sims, I wouldn't consider them to have free will. Creating a simulation capable of generating NPCs who can debate over whether they have free will, and running parallel instances where one instance has free will and one doesn't could be interesting in itself.

I don't think they do either, but that's an exceedingly simple simulation designed for our interaction and entertainment. If you really want a good simulation, with something useful to extract from it, you need free will.

 

[sdifox]

If this were true, I'd own a much nicer video card.

So turn gigolo?

 

[IronWing]

So turn gigolo?

If I qualified as a gigolo, I wouldn't need a video card.

 

[sandorski]

It seems like we have some Will. If the Decider is just Random Choice, do we then have Free Will? What if the Conscious has deemed a decision not worthy enough or too overwhelming and just lets a Random Choice generator just take the wheel?

 

[sdifox]

If I qualified as a gigolo, I wouldn't need a video card.

BoomerD surely qualifies as a client

 

[Dirigible]

As in you think I am compelled to post here. But I am not.

Phew! I did not, in fact, win an argument on the internet. Things are back to normal.

 

[nakedfrog]

I don't think they do either, but that's an exceedingly simple simulation designed for our interaction and entertainment. If you really want a good simulation, with something useful to extract from it, you need free will.

Why the assumption that there needs to be something useful to extract from the simulation?

 

[nakedfrog]

Phew! I did not, in fact, win an argument on the internet. Things are back to normal.

No they aren't

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Why the assumption that there needs to be something useful to extract from the simulation?

A simulation requires a creator, and a creator needs to have intent to spend time and resources doing something as complex as developing a simulation that advanced. Even if it's entirely automated there's still a 'reason' behind the action.

 

[IronWing]

Free will mfers:

 

[nakedfrog]

A simulation requires a creator, and a creator needs to have intent to spend time and resources doing something as complex as developing a simulation that advanced. Even if it's entirely automated there's still a 'reason' behind the action.

This still doesn't explain to me why it's necessary for the individual components to possess free will in order for the simulation to provide value.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

This still doesn't explain to me why it's necessary for the individual components to possess free will in order for the simulation to provide value.

If it was random, without intent or decision making, there's no personality behind creation and no inventiveness behind the product. If for instance the whole point of our simulation was to extract art, it'd be meaningless garbage without free will. You don't need a simulation to replicate a million monkeys on typewriters, you just need a random number generator and sufficient time.

Even our rudimentary ai systems have 'free will' in the sense that it can make decisions as to what influences it incorporates into art, and how it does it. It doesn't get to decide whether or not it performs the act but it gets to decide how it approaches the request.

 

[Dirigible]

No they aren't

Yuh-huh.

 

[sdifox]

Cheesecake is a lie!

 

[Kaido]

You're in the situations that you're in. You have moral agency. You get to choose how to act & react within the situations you find yourself & put yourself in.

 

[PowerEngineer]

You're in the situations that you're in. You have moral agency. You get to choose how to act & react within the situations you find yourself & put yourself in.

Or perhaps our impression that we have a choice is just an illusion.

My understanding of the argument against true free will is that our brains are just very large and complicated biological machines that grind out reactions based on the sensory inputs fed into them. Too large by far to involve any quantum behavior, the processes are all just chemical in nature. Certainly incomprehensibly complex but nonetheless completely deterministic.

It seems to me that the only way around this argument is to identify some new non-physical aspect to our understanding of consciousness - something like a "soul". But prior to having any evidence for such an aspect, adopting one seems like a leap of faith aimed at allowing you to believe what you want to believe is true.

Or so I am compelled to observe... 😏

 

[TheELF]

Dumber than presuming a lack of free will. The desire to avoid pain and anguish does not equate to no free will.

It's not just that, if you were actually going to try it your self-preservation instinct would kick in and it would be incredibly difficult for you to overcome it, and if you would overcome it and do it it would gain you at least a psych eval in the hospital when doctors find out how it happened for them to make sure that this was a calculated move and not random self mutilation.

As long as we live in physical bodies we live by the rules of that physical body, we can have free thoughts on top of that but we can not just do things that go against our physical existence.
Q from star trek has free will because he can do whatever the heck he wants to do not being tied down by physics, we, not so much.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

It's not just that, if you were actually going to try it your self-preservation instinct would kick in and it would be incredibly difficult for you to overcome it, and if you would overcome it and do it it would gain you at least a psych eval in the hospital when doctors find out how it happened for them to make sure that this was a calculated move and not random self mutilation.

As long as we live in physical bodies we live by the rules of that physical body, we can have free thoughts on top of that but we can not just do things that go against our physical existence.
Q from star trek has free will because he can do whatever the heck he wants to do not being tied down by physics, we, not so much.

But we can, we're just inclined not to, hence the psych eval. Just because our brain makes rules for us doesn't mean we cannot break them, hence the whole 'free' part of 'free will' rather than 'imposed will'.