[FRIAM] Time travel and the hard problem of free will

[Jochen Fromm]

Russ, your replies are always thought-provoking. I think it is fascinating that the "hard problem of consciousness", the problem of predictability and the "problem of free will" are related. Hard problem of consciousness: we think we can not know what it is like to be someone else. But Hollywood has found ways to solve it. It uses time travel. Movies allow us to travel to different times and places. They allow us to acquire intimate knowledge of the other person. Movies are based on stories, which are contained in books. They can show us what it is like to be someone else by providing us intimate historic knowledge.Problem of predictability: because of the hard problem we can not know in principle how someone will act or why someone would commit a crime. But whodunit movies always give a convincing explanation. Investigators interview the participants to find out what happened. This allow us to acquire intimate knowledge of the delinquent. In hindsight it is possible to say why someone acted in a certain way if we have intimate historic knowledge.In both cases understanding of adaptive systems boils down to intimate historic knowledge. Guiding future developments is also possible if we can influence the future, which allows us to solve the...Problem of free will: we think we can control ourself because we have we free will. But modern neurocience says we can not. Our decisions are determined by the wiring in our heads (=our personality), by our emotions (=the hormones in our body) and by the environment. Yet humans have found a way to control themselves. Self-consciousness allows us to block certain actions by imagining the consequences. And we can control our future self by using the environment. We can pray (=speak to our future self), or we sign up for a course (=force our future self to learn), or write an entry in our diary or calendar (=remind our future self). All these activities influence the future self to act in a certain way.In all cases language in written or spoken form allows us to break the limitations of the current moment, to escape the tyranny of the present. In the words of Carl Sagan: free will can emerge because language breaks the shackles of time. And I thought in school that language is boring.-J. 
-------- Original message --------From: Russell Standish <lists at hpcoders.com.au> Date: 7/5/20  08:18  (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] God On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 04:06:01PM +0200, Jochen Fromm wrote:> I am not sure I agree with the arguments from you Russ. You say "People aren't> the same, but they are similar - and human society functions because we can> predict to some extent what other people are likely to do [...]. We have also> evolved the ability to 'put ourselves in somebody else's skin', taking into> account the obvious external differences."> > But we cannot predict what someone else will do, only if we know the person> really well - for instance if it is your wife or husband for 30 years. In> whodunit films it becomes clear in the end why people have acted they way they> did, but only in hindsight. In hindsight we almost always can say why people> acted the way they did, but we cannot predict it beforehand. You say hindsight> is 20/20 for this in English, right?Leave a $100 bill on a park bench. What do you predict the next personto sit at that seat will do?Yes - someone you know well will be more predictable - my wife says so!I might also predict that if I disturb a magpie's nest, the bird willattack me.Also humans have the ability to reason what others predict they mightdo (3rd order reasoning), and deliberately do a contrary thing if thatgames the interaction. Not many other species have that ability (someother great apes have been shown to reason that way, IIRC, but that'sabout it). But humans are also capable of seeing through that sort ofdeceit too, via 4th order reasoning, but that recursive capabilitymaxes out at 5th order IIUC.I would say most humans are actually quite predictable most of thetime. But some are distinctly less so, and quite possibly successfulas a result. Donald Trump is probably like this. He comes up with alot of crazy stuff, so it's really hard to figure out what he'sthinking.> > We also haven't evolved the ability to "put ourselves in somebody else's skin".> It is not impossible, but can be very difficult and requires detailed knowledge> and imagination. This is the reason why Hollywood has invented cinemas to show> us how what it is like to be somebody else (the GoPro cameras in modern days> have the same function).>Contrariwise, in a game where an object is hidden in one spot, thenwhen a person leaves the room, and the object is moved to anotherspot. Upon returning to the room, where do you think that person willstart looking for the object. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally–Anne_testApparently, children under the age of 4 have difficulty with thistask, but older humans successfully see the situation from someoneelse's point of view. So yes, the task is difficult, and undoubtedlyrequires detailed knowledge, but adult humans are able to do this with ease.> Therefore I tend to disagree with both statements. > > -J.>Maybe we don't disagree, but just misunderstand each other :).-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------Dr Russell Standish                    Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)Principal, High Performance Coders     hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au                      http://www.hpcoders.com.au----------------------------------------------------------------------------- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listservZoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriamun/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.comarchives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
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