
High-powered mathematicians take on free will - nickb
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S23/75/58A30/index.xml?section=featured
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dinkumthinkum
They've missed one very important point; one that Hobbes, Hume, and others
realized long ago. The utterance "free will" is literally meaningless. What
would that even mean and why would you even want that?

~~~
narag
That's a big surprise for me. I've defended that freedom and determinism are
not mutually exclusive in many discussions for a very long time... and been
told that I'm alone in that. I had no idea that it's a position hold by
classic philosophers like those. Could you cite some concrete works from them?

~~~
timb
Check out <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/>

~~~
narag
Thank you.Great resource.

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enoqu
Here's the link to John Conway's lecture videos. It includes links to the Free
Will Lectures, although it isn't currently working for me.

<http://www.math.princeton.edu/facultypapers/Conway/>

~~~
peregrine
Can we get a youtube of that? Or something with better load times.

Thanks for the link though.

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jwilliams
Their thesis is that if Humans have free will so do elementary particles (in a
defined respect).

Anyone know much more on this? -- Does this relate to the theory that
everything was predefined at the big bang - e.g. a big random number was
generated and everything since then has simply been cause and effect? Or is it
on another tack?

~~~
jerf
Based on this article, there isn't enough information to answer your question.
The authors are clearly aware of quantum theory and you'd have to dig in
deeper.

It is generally accepted that quantum events are "truly random", so the random
number generation is ongoing. The standard proof of this is Bell's theorem
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_Theorem> ), but I feel a deeper
understanding of the theorem shows rather that it constrains what hidden
variables could exist and that the conventional understanding is impossible,
not that hidden variables in all senses are completely impossible. (Still, the
hidden variables people were "hoping" for are impossible; if there are hidden
variables they will be undeniably "quantum".)

~~~
DaniFong
"I feel a deeper understanding of the theorem shows rather that it constrains
what hidden variables could exist and that the conventional understanding is
impossible, not that hidden variables in all senses are completely
impossible."

That was my conclusion too: I've been meaning to write about it, but time
constraints keep getting in the way.

The thing I like about the Free Will theorem is that it highlights the
importance of the experimenter's choice, as opposed to in Bell's theorem,
where demonstrations mostly take this as given. There's room for 'hidden
variables' of a certain type in the decision making process of the
experimenter and the state and process of the measurement apparatus. Having
blind faith that important state is located there is perhaps unwise, and
certainly it is hard to demonstrate, but assuming that the experimenters are
entirely un-entangled and uninfluenced causally, that there's no interesting
modified state in the experimenters or measurement apparatus at all, would, to
my mind, also be a mistake.

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ams6110
"if a human experimenter can make decisions independently of past events, then
the particle can also make a free choice"

The article does not make clear how "free choice" is different from "random
chance" -- at least not to me.

~~~
frig
<http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~jas/one/freewill-theorem.html>

    
    
      When the floor was opened for questions, one member of the 
      audience questioned Dr Conway's use of the term "Free 
      Will". She asked whether Dr Conway was "confusing 
      randomness and free will".
    
      In a passionate reply, Dr Conway said that what he
      had shown, with mathematical precision, that if a  
      given property was exhibited by an experimenter than 
      that same property was exhibited by particles. He had 
      been careful when constructing his theorem to use the same 
      term "free will" in the antecedent and consequent of his
      theorem. He said he did not really care what people chose
      to call it. Some people choose to call it "free will" only
      when there is some judgment involved. He said he felt that
      "free will" was freer if it was unhampered by judgment - 
      that it was almost a whim. "If you don't like the term Free 
      Will, call it Free Whim - this is the Free Whim Theorem".

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andreyf
_They have packaged their arguments in an airtight mathematical theorem that
rests on what they say are three unassailable axioms which happen to rhyme --
spin, fin and twin._

Aside from most discussions of "free will" arising from semantic confusion, I
think pretty clearly points toward this being a bit of a joke...

~~~
dfranke
If you'd ever been to a Conway lecture you'd know that this is _entirely_ par
for the course for him.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Knowing Conway as I do, this is not only par for the course, it is actively to
be expected. If there weren't comments like this then it would be a spoof.

And there is no semantic confusion about "Free Will". The naming of the
theorem is stated in those terms, but the work itself is independent of the
precise meaning. That's why this is such an interesting result. The care taken
to make it independent of the semantics attached to that term is, again,
entirely to be expected, and makes the result compelling.

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coglethorpe
If they prove we don't have free will and somebody gets upset, they can always
say "Hey, it wasn't like we _choice_ in what we studied. It just happened that
way."

~~~
DaniFong
It might have been predetermined, but there's still an act of choosing, a
weighing of possibilities, a judgment between them, and action. And those
judging them later will too be able to judge their judgment, their character,
and make decisions based on that.

The existence of free will in a strong sense, has, as far as I can tell, no
logically valid implications in practical terms, though it does do something
profound to our psychologies: it certainly injects fatalism.

~~~
eru
Shouldn't the absence of free will inject fatalism?

~~~
stcredzero
I could imagine a race of egghead hyper-rationalists who would feel depressed
at the thought of the absence of determinism. They would be horrified at the
thought of living in an unpredictable, chaotic universe.

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shader
I think this article explains the idea much better:
[http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35391/title/Do_su...](http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35391/title/Do_subatomic_particles_have_free_will%3F)

~~~
koningrobot
I agree. Actually I find the idea (if not the proof) kind of obvious: our
thoughts are as deterministic as the processes that effect them. Whether they
_are_ deterministic is another story.

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nazgulnarsil
free will is what optimizing a decision tree feels like when you're the
evaluation function.

~~~
eru
Perhaps. Only --- most evaluating functions don't pass the Turing test.

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kamens
I always knew that Whitehead was a pretty smart guy. Process philosophers must
love this.

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xenophanes
Why do experts in one field (like math) often think they must be brilliant at
other fields (like philosophy)?

They are trying to prove stuff about free will, but have no expertise on the
question of what free will is.

If you disagree, please post a comment saying why. I'd like to hear it.

~~~
wynand
Their lack of (supposed: I don't know how well read either mathematician is in
philosophy) philosophical credentials might justifiably invite scepticism.

But surely we can only dismiss this if their argument has a flaw. And the
burden of disproof is on us, not them.

~~~
xenophanes
They seem to think free will is a part of physics, not philosophy, and
reductionist physics at that. They didn't address any actual problems in the
field. They missed the point. That is a flaw in their non-argument.

The burden is on them to say what is a problem in the field they want to
address, to know something about the history of the problem, other candidate
solutions to it, and how their solution differs, and then say what the answer
is. They simply haven't done that.

~~~
sketerpot
What they've done is define a property, tack the name "free will" onto it
because it resembles some people's definitions of free will, and prove some
things about it. If their math is sound, then good for them. Whether this is
applicable to anything is certainly up for discussion, of course.

