
Ask HN: Is my argument for the existence of free will correct? - amichail
The argument is that subjective experience would not have evolved without free will.<p>If there&#x27;s no free will, then an animal with subjective experience would not have an evolutionary benefit over one without it.<p>P.S.  I&#x27;m assuming that subjective experience exists for at least one animal, which is true, since it exists for at least me from my perspective and for at least you from your perspective.<p>For a definition of &quot;subjective experience&quot; see http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Qualia
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csmdev
There is no free will. You can do what you will, but you cannot will what you
will. It all comes automatically and you blindly follow it without any real
control.

And if we think of the universe as a whole, your subjective perspective is
like a worker thread in a computer program. You start with some specific
parameters and evolve based on them. And at the same time there are multiple
threads doing the same thing, but they have different parameters and a
different evolution.

Your will boils down to simple programming. You make decisions based on your
anatomy and life experience. Input parameters and program evolution (if/else
mostly). When you're hungry your brain already decided if it needs glucose,
protein or something else. Your will allows you only to satisfy the hunger or
not. And that decision is made based on past experiences. What you ate and
liked, what you didn't like, the fact that you decided at some point to lose
weight, or to gain weight. A simple decision to eat a hamburger is powered by
your entire life so far.

But if you really want something interesting to think about and you're a true
hacker, look at the universe as a whole. At any point inside it matter either
exists or it doesn't. Do you know any other binary-based ecosystem which
contains different arrangements of data that evolve in time and space?

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lutusp
> The argument is that subjective experience would not have evolved without
> free will.

That's not an argument, it's an assertion. By its nature, subjective
experience can't be used as an argument, because it's not accessible to the
other parties to the debate. This is how subjective experience is defined.

> If there's no free will, then an animal with subjective experience would not
> have an evolutionary benefit over one without it.

This is easily refuted by examples in which computer programs, neither
conscious nor possessing free will, without any behavioral latitude whatever,
in a rigidly defined computer environment with no random or unpredictable
elements at all, evolve according to the usual rules of natural selection.
Therefore evolution and the existence of natural selection cannot be used to
argue in favor of free will.

> Is my argument for the existence of free will correct?

It's not only not correct, it's not, strictly speaking, an argument. This is
not to say there is no such thing as free will. We just don't know.

The evidence for an argument in a debate must be accessible to all
participants in the same way. This is not to say they will agree with the
premise, but they will all experience the evidence in the same way before
drawing their own conclusions.

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PaulHoule
I think practically you are a nonintegrable and thus unpredictable process so
your actions are not determined by your inputs thus you have free will.

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lutusp
That's an example of an argument that assumes what it should be proving, the
original meaning of the expression "begging the question."

The question at the center of free will is whether there are any deliberate,
choice-driven elements in human behavior that also _and coincidentally_ defy
advance prediction. Your argument is that the presence of unpredictable
elements proves the existence of unpredictable elements. It's also a
tautology.

And finally, unpredictability doesn't prove free will, it only proves the
existence of unpredictability. Free will would be a deliberate steering of the
process toward some goal, something that true randomness contradicts.

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blacksqr
Please demonstrate the existence of subjective experience.

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amichail
You are having one right now.

See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia)

