[FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

[Marcus Daniels]

Are there experiments one could conduct to say whether a metaphysics was plausible or not?  If nothing is falsifiable, then we are again in the realm of faith.
If one starts out selecting a metaphysics to justify some action or belief, this is also not helpful to clear communication or analysis.
We can select rules of the game that are the least controversial with the most empirical evidence supporting them.   This is not a failure of imagination, this is fair play.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 1:25 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

I agree fully. If something is inscrutable it might exhibit free will. But what happens in our brains is certainly scrutable. Maybe not yet with current technology, but how can it be inscrutable in principle? In principle we know that neurons are firing and communicate with other neurons using synapse. Just look how far deep learning has come. Okay, not yet compared to the human brain, but progress is made almost by the day. Like the example I mentioned above, AlphGo that came up with creative moves that stunned all Go experts. My point is that deep learning was inspired by the structure of the brain and is showing behavior similar to the brain's. Using David Deutsch's ideas as in Beginning of Infinity that science makes progress by good explanations. The explanation that the brain is  scrutable meets Deutsch's criteria for a good explanation. What's the alternative? That there is some sort of ghost giving us free will? No, that's not a good explanation.

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 21:53, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com<mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
In what acceptable scenario is the behavior not describable in principle?    The scenario that comes to mind is in the non-science magical thinking scenario.
I doubt that Tesla navigation systems are written in a purely functional language, but surely there is more to this condition than whether I have access to that source code and can send you the million lines in purely functional form?  If something is inscrutable, it might exhibit free will?

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com<mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 12:26 PM
To: friam at redfish.com<mailto:friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

I would say no if you can provide me the function.



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