

Do Fruit Flies Have Free Will? - amichail
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070516071806.htm

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darkxanthos
I'm all for fruit flies having free will (I go back and forth with humans
having it fairly often even) but an experiment like this would require that we
have absolute control over all inputs into the insect's brain and upon sending
a series of data vectors into its brain we would need to be able to surmise
whether the output was random or deterministically patternized, and if so how
much.

I think an experiment like this would also need to account for the fly's past
experience and would need to control that to be exactly like another's.

It also needs to be temperature controlled (since most creatures come equipped
with heat sensors) and even things like how quickly the fly flaps its wings
can change conditions such as those (especially in such a tiny space).

It would seem as though the scientists were less trying to answer an age old
philosophical problem and more trying to answer how predictable a fly is (i.e.
how simple its decision process is).

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sheriff
"I go back and forth with humans having it fairly often even"

I'm curious what kind of things tip you back and forth. I've been a staunch
"undecided" for quite a while on this one.

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darkxanthos
I'm sorry, I basically go back and forth between we don't have free will or I
don't know. :)

My line of reasoning is that free will would appear to break causation and I'm
not sure what the ramifications of that are in the grand scheme of things
(i.e. magic?). I'm more inclined to think we're just an insanely complex
chaotic system, but then what is consciousness really?

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chrismear
If you're interested in these topics, I highly recommend a couple of books by
philosopher Daniel Dennett: 'Consciousness Explained' and 'Freedom Evolves'.

His way of reconciling determinism with free will goes something like this.
Assuming determinism, then we are living in one of a huge number of possible
universes. As limited intelligences, we have no way of figuring out exactly
which history we live in, and so no way of accurately predicting the future.
That's the free will we have -- the ability to 'play the game' and participate
in this deterministic world, using our limited knowledge to try and understand
what's going on; and how we can affect it, within the rules of physics.

Yes, this means that we don't have total free will in an unlimited fantastical
sense; and, from the point of view of an all-knowing being who knows which
history is the real one, all our actions are predetermined. But for all
practical purposes, our participation as information-seeking, decision-making
agents embedded in this elaborate ball game gives you all of the usual
qualities that we worry losing with the loss of 'real' free will --
culpability for our actions, for example.

Even if you're not convinced by Dennett's position, the books do give useful
ways of thinking about these problems, and go a long way towards removing the
baggage that has accumulated around concepts of 'free will', 'determinism',
'responsibility', 'consciousness' and so on, so that one can reason about
these ideas with more pragmatism.

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steve19
I read the title as "Do Fruit Flies Have Free Wii" and read half the article
expecting some connection between Wii sales or AI or programming and fly
behavior.

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outcyde
I don't care if they have free will or not. I just ordered a bunch of fruit
fly killer traps a store just 2 hours ago. I can't stand fruit flies and I'm
not sure who can. You should kill all fruit flies as well.
<http://www.fruitflysolutions.com>

