[FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

Fri Jan 26 11:59:52 EST 2024

The person that knows their path is bound, rationally discards the self-regulation of guilt, and in that sense has more “freedom”.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2024 8:41 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

Science fiction: The Traveler, by John Twelve Hawks is set in a dystopian (near future) 'Big Brother' world of absolute and constant surveillance. The hero, a "Traveler" uses a random number generator to make every action choice, else be eliminated by the evil forces controlling the world. The world of the Traveler is a simple and short extrapolation: the surveillance state, especially London and the accumulation of Big Data that allows the "Govt." to predict with almost absolute accuracy where you will be, within 10 meters, 24 hours from now; based on your on-line presence and meta-data from your cell phone.

That fiction seems to be a metaphorical expression of Sopolsky's argument—to me, at least.

Another kind of metaphor for 'Free Will' might be the behavior of those suffering from Cotard's Syndrome: thinking they are already dead, they act with no concern for consequences and their actions appear, to others, to be random or psychopathic.

Finally, the ideal of "non-attached" action and the omniscience that comes with achievement of Satori allows one to consciously and intentionally take the "correct," non karma accruing, action at every moment seems like the ultimate 'free will' in the sense that "you" intentionally make the correct turn at each juncture of Sopolsky's deterministic maze. Note this does not free you from the maze; merely allows you to actually choose each step of the path through the maze.

davew

On Fri, Jan 26, 2024, at 9:37 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

Does ChatGPT have choices?

I "can't help myself", so here goes:

I've been reading Sopolsky's "Behave" which paves the runway (or exit ramp) for his recent "Determined".  His deep background in neuroendocrinology leads to some very compelling arguments which pretty much degenerate to:

"do you believe in causality? if so, then where do you suppose the spirit or soul intervene to break the chain dominoes that have been set up by everything that you are and has happened to you up to that instant?"

He does a fancy little mocking dance, three card monte style, of homunculii he contrives for the purpose of debunking any fanciful regression/recursion escape plans you might have in that direction.

To hear him tell it we (as are all AIs/LLMs/etc) essentially giant pachinko machines:

:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko][https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Masamura_Gauge_All_15.jpg/225px-Masamura_Gauge_All_15.jpg]

His arguments on the topic seem unassailable in spite of my own deep and abiding sense of "choice" at many levels.  It also doesn't help my cognitive dissonance that he speaks entirely colloquially using many words we all associate with choice...  he speaks _as if_ he makes choices and others do as well even if he seems to ignore the specific word, choice.

I like the conceit of:  "the universe is deterministic but not prestateable"

I guess this is why they call it "the HARD problem of consciousness"?

For those of you who read this far, it would seem you "couldn't help yourself" or as my mother used to quip "you must not have had anything better to do", and for those who have not, the same goes for hitting <next> or <delete> (or having set up a spam-filter at an earlier time to avoid repeating the "decision" personally)...

PS re: Breaking Bad

I've only dropped a few Pachinko balls in my life, but I couldn't help agonizing over the trajectory of each one, feeling as if at every bounce they were at risk of "breaking bad" (or "good")...   since many here are at least part-time simulants (as Glen I believe refers to himself), even the most aggressive attempts at introducing "random" (noise, annealing, etc.) either degenerate to "pseudo-random" or engage with a physical system (e.g. sample a pixel-value from a webcam trained on a lava lamp) which of course is deterministic if arbitrarily complex.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko]

Anyone interested in feeding FRIAM Archive to a custom LLM. :-)

Prompt: Interpret Marcus use of gdb analogy in this thread:

GPT:

The analogy used by Marcus in the context of the TV show "Breaking Bad" and the concept of free will involves a comparison with using the "step" command in GDB (GNU Debugger). GDB is a tool used by programmers to debug code. The "step" command in GDB allows the user to execute program code one line at a time, observing the behavior and state of the program at each step.

In "Breaking Bad," the main character, Walter White, is drawn into a life of crime. The analogy suggests that watching Walter White's descent into this life is like using the "step" command in GDB. Each step represents a decision or action taken by Walter, leading him deeper into the criminal world. Just as a programmer observes the progression of a program one step at a time in GDB, the viewer observes Walter's journey into criminality in a step-by-step manner.

The implication here is that Walter's choices, while appearing to be individual conscious decisions, are part of an inevitable progression, much like the sequential execution of code in a debugger. This raises questions about free will and determinism, mirroring the discussion in the FRIAM group about whether free will is an illusion, especially in the context of strong compulsions or character traits that might limit one's range of choices.
____________________________________________
CEO Founder, Simtable.com
stephen.guerin at simtable.com<mailto:stephen.guerin at simtable.com>

Harvard Visualization Research and Teaching Lab
stephenguerin at fas.harvard.edu<mailto:stephenguerin at fas.harvard.edu>

mobile: (505)577-5828

On Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:20 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com<mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com>> wrote:

GNU Debugger?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 4:11 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com<mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:

Walter White was drawn into that life as sure as water runs downhill.    Watching him go deeper and deeper was like repeating “step” in GDB.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com<mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2024 1:34 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com<mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
Subject: [FRIAM] Breaking Bad and Free Will

Since one of you mentioned today that free will is a recurring FRIAM topic I was thinking about it and found this SCIAM article that argues that human beings do have the power to make conscious choices.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/free-will-is-only-an-illusion-if-you-are-too/

On the other hand the drug addicts in Breaking Bad and elsewhere clearly demonstrate that drug addiction inevitably takes away our free will and replaces it by a strong compulsion to get and consume the drug, no matter how devastating the consequences are.

Robert McKee says in his book "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting" that true character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure. Could you say that a strong character or personality reduce our free will too, because they restrict our choices and decisions?

-J.

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