[FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

[Marcus Daniels]

I once wrote an agent model of some of my colleagues.  It was a minor catharsis.   If I were to write one for agents that have first names that start with the letter “S”, I’d have a predicate that waited for a long thread to evolve, and then summarized them with a few tangential snarkier-than-thou remarks.    It would be a better accomplishment to learn the deterministic agent behavior with a hidden markov model, maybe.  Authorship comes with the ability to embellish, which is maybe one appeal of ABMs.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:05 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Willy in the Atlantic

Dave West wrote:

Pieter quoted: "the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat".

But we do have the ability, and can "will" our heart to beat in a particular way.

Not only that, we (at least some individuals in the world) can control pretty much every aspect of our "autonomous nervous system." I learned how to generate alpha waves in my brain while awake and talking. Researchers recently conducted cogent conversations with individuals in the middle of lucid dreams. Then there is all the "bio-feedback" data and practices. Hundreds of similar examples could be cited.

Just because we don't, as a general rule, does not mean we cannot.

Not saying anything in this post is an argument for free will — just that the quoted argument against free will is fatally flawed.

nahhh...   it just looks like you (and the Swamis) can modify your autonomic functions and your brain waves...  the fact is, given who you/they are in those circumstances, you *had* to, you couldn't have chosen to do otherwise!   In fact you can't help but *believe* you had free will and exercised it, just like *I* who am sure you *don't* have free will have no choice but to believe *that*.    Anything else is *inconceivable* ! ("there's that word again" -Inigio Martinez)

Or at least *that* is what I choose to believe today.  I wonder if I will have a choice about what I feel about all this today?  Or after some more limp-noodle-beatings of the topic here?

Arg,

 - Smarg

PS... Don't free Willy in the Atlantic, his entire pod is in the Pacific.   Was that a Trump-administration rule, that unaccompanied minor Orcas stuck in Seaworld can only be released in an ocean other than that of their origin!  Happy onecet of April!

davewest



On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
From a strict scientific perspective I accept that we don't have free will. I don't argue that we have free will. I accept, and I quote from the article quoted above:
"the brain is a physical system like any other, and we have no more will to operate it in a particular way than we will our heart to beat". But...

From how humans perceive our own actions, I assert that we do have free will of "some sorts''. Similar to some computer programs that also have free will of "some sorts". We all agree that AlphGo who beat Lee Sedol in Go does not have free will, it did exactly what the computer code instructed it to do, but it came up with creative play that the human programmers did not even know about. This is in my view also "some sorts" of free will.

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:15, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net<mailto:jofr at cas-group.net>> wrote:
Was it only 150 years ago when Charles Darwin first published 'On the Origin of Species' ? It feels longer. Interesting story from Stephen Cave
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

-J.

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