

Quantum Entanglement Can Be A Measure Of Free Will, Say Physicists - ca98am79
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25665/?ref=rss

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_delirium
From the paper, they appear to be using a rather extreme definition of free
will: that free will means a radically unconstrained-by-the-material-world
decision-marker, who lives somewhere outside the world (perhaps in some sort
of Cartesian "mind" or Christian "soul"), making completely free decisions on
some ethereal plane, and then swooping into the material world to enact those
decisions now and then. Hence their "bits of free will" metric, which appears
to measure just how ethereal and outside-of-physics's-control each bit is. But
that's hardly an uncontroversial definition of free will, and probably
actually a strongly minority view among modern philosophers (it was dominant
in the middle ages, but not anymore). For alternative views, see, say, Daniel
Dennett, who argues that free will isn't even incompatible with determinism---
the "free" in "free will" doesn't mean "free of physics", but a description of
a certain kind of behavior _within_ physics.

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bitdiddle
If you're interested in this sort of thing Vaughan Pratt has an excellent
paper explaining all this mindy/body dualism using Chu spaces[1]. When I was
reading linear logic I found it a pleasant diversion

[1] <http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf>

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adamfeldman
This reminds of of a very cool concept that Orson Scott Card made up in his
"Ender's Game" series: philotic physics –

"A philote is the basic building block of matter, the true indivisible
particle that is not made up of smaller ones. Philotes take up no space and
are essential to the theory of philotic energy. Each atom has a philote of its
own, each molecule likewise, and ultimately each human has an aiùa, an
intelligent philote." Philotes have the desire/will to connect and join in an
organized pattern and form matter.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Enders_Game_ser...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Enders_Game_series#Outside))

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arethuza
These kinds of things always remind me of the central concept in Pullman's His
Dark Materials - that dark matter is original sin.

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saint-loup
+10 points on crackpot index.

