[FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

[jon zingale]

"""
In a world that has no regularities at all, there is no benefit in trying to
find system-level mappings between action and reaction because will just be
different every time.    Our friend Will is tasked with navigating this
impossible space, but it is impossible as defined?   If there are some
regularities, conditional probabilities that can be tabulated, then  Will
can start to play the odds by learning the distributions that are observed
together with different trajectories that may become evident as it steps
into to the game.    Maybe there are hidden variables that explain the
apparently random generators?  For example, ought there not be some prior
state that can explain why the Will stepped into this game in the first
place?   Or do we assert, as the Free Will contingent do, that Will is above
the fray?
"""

I read you as outlining why Will *ought* to get to work feeling for
regularities (even if these regularities are simply local). But she *ought*
to (and in theory *will*?) only in a world where she is *free* to do so.
Regularity is ambiguous here:

1. local regularity: When I see a 'he' it is often preceded by a 't', and so
Bayes gets to work.
2. global regularity: It will be the case that once all novelty has been
generated, I will compressible structure.

I agree that for agents with a choice (say), option 1 is an exploitable
strategy even if we ultimately do not get to rely on option 2. Ah, opacity
between worlds, was that David Lewis? I am not sure it is the kind of thing
that is solved by a big enough parallel computer, especially if we mean a
non-theoretical computer. Anyway, thanks for humoring me.




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