[FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

[Marcus Daniels]

This video that has been making the rounds in my world.  That look on his face when he tries to explain the thing he knows is Really Important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7qH27g5Zoc

Anyway, people point at things as Really Important all the time, and on closer inspection they aren't pointing at anything.   They found some people to groove with, and that's all there is to it. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 11:42 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

Yeah, OK. I sympathize. But language doesn't work that way. There is a "thing" we call "free will". If the name bothers you so much, call it pooba or whatever. Who cares what we call it? We can all point at it ... like porn or being alive. So, if we can all point at something, then *what* are we pointing at? I couldn't care less about telling people who believe in crystal powers, or acupuncture, or God that they're wrong. But I do care to find out what they're pointing at when they use those words ... even if they don't understand what they're pointing at.

Pieter's assertion that we'll eventually grow things that exhibit what we call "free will" or pooba, is the right attitude. And being about to construct it (even if with an opaque algorithm) is the minimum requirement for understanding it (following Feynman's "What I can't create, I don't understand.").

On 4/2/21 11:31 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I'm objecting to the idea that recursion could result in anything but the distributions that drove it.  (Yes, even recognizing most of the inputs won't be measurable or precise.)   The process is not free.   It is a specific set of functions that could be written down by an oracle, and to say that some other function "should" have been there is just meaningless.   The use of the term of "free will" can be noted as a sign of magical thinking, not recast into "Oh they really mean Some Sort of Reasonable Thing", when they clearly do not.   

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