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Maybe you have a different definition of free will.

But to me those examples are just knowledge. Regardless of how many possible options, the process of making the choice would be free will, if it existed.


Feel free to give your definition of free will.

My one is that one is more free if one is aware of the full scope of one's options. This is not an ephemeral idea, it is not related to the 'what might have been' aka the 'opportunity cost' of choosing. One's present awareness (and potential expansion of that awareness) has an impact on how free one is.


I mean, no one has a well defined definition of free will, much like the worlds intelligence and consciousness.

With this said having more knowledge expands your ability to explore the problem space of existence. Lets imagine that you are a single bit, you have the 'choice' of being one or zero. From an outside observer the problem space of the outcome is very predictable in the sense we know it's going to be a 1 or 0. Now, keep adding random bits and our ability to predict the outcome of any state drops dramatically very quickly. But that's choosing at random, what if most bit states are bit random at all? For example this digital creature we're talking about now is millions of bit states long set by a learning algorithm, it so advanced it has an internal Turing machine that can simulate potential outcome states far into the future when executing code. You would look at this and say "well, it doesn't have free will, it just has an incomputably large set of potential bit states" But an outside observer unaware of the programs nature and it's starting state (for example it's performing a Turing test against the machine) would probably think the entity has free will.

You are a very large set of states, because of this you cannot prove free will. You've reversed causality in your summary.


I prefer "flexible" stoicism, like Seneca.

In the scale of the universe (time and space) we are all insignificant, like tiny ants. One ant has more money than the others. Another ant is famous.

Don't be afraid of death. Enjoy living in the present. Try to do good.

Of course easier said than done.


Sometimes they can be a prerequisite for talk therapy to be useful. Or lets say, without them, the chance of success would be very low.


If your working on a distributed system, i think Erlang still has better tooling compared to Elixir. For example common test for integration/system testing and snabbkaffe for trace based testing.


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