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<p>J.</p>
<p>This continues to be a very slippery/tenous project for me... not
surprising as there seems to be no persuasively concluding
"opinion" anywhere, no matter how assertive some (e.g. Sapolsky)
seem to be in support of their position. <br>
</p>
<p>I really appreciate the Schopenhauer quote you offered up... it
very much fits my own self-reflection.</p>
<p>I do agree that we (humans and perhaps a few other
species/entities) do seem to have the ability to *imagine* a
future and experience the fact (illusion) of our actions leading
to some reasonable facsimile of that future? Sometimes I can
recognize in myself for this closed loop
(intention->action->results->perception) to be
confirmation bias... it feels as if I have *predicted something*
based on a *planned action* which then *appears* to come true.
Other times it feels excruciationgly real that my
intention->action yielded a result (perfectly?) aligned with my
intention.</p>
<p>My recent fascination with Friston Free Energy and Markov
Blankets and Active Inference has provided me with something
*like* an intuitive bridge between the mechanistic and the
experiential as well as a mechanism for potentially extending (an
analog to) what I experience around this loop of
intention->results which might apply to AI/ML in a vaguely
convincing way? I think there would have to be some
meta-meta-levels involved which of course feels a bit like "hand
waving"... the jury (in my overfull head) is still out. It also
aligns well with my (lame?) understanding of Hawkin's 1000
brains/cortical column theory of brain (cortex) functioning.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 6/10/25 2:05 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:202506100807.55A8747f030833@ame1.swcp.com">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<p style="margin-top:0.0pt;margin-bottom:0.0pt;" dir="ltr"><span
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">You
argue "free will is a pattern, a relentless stubbornness in
doing". It fits to Robert Sapolsky who says it is all wired
and (pre-)determined and there is no free will. And to
Schopenhauer's pessimistic view "A man can do what he wants,
but not want what he wants" ("Der Mensch kann tun, was er
will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will")</span></p>
<br dir="auto">
<p style="margin-top:0.0pt;margin-bottom:0.0pt;" dir="ltr"><span
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">To
me it looks like free will is the opposite: we are the only
animals which have the ability to break the patterns that
govern our behavior. You have the freedom to choose what you
want to be on fire about - at least in principle</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.0pt;margin-bottom:0.0pt;" dir="ltr"><span
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/4vtVOJB2r4Q">https://youtu.be/4vtVOJB2r4Q</a></span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.0pt;margin-bottom:0.0pt;" dir="ltr"><span
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br>
</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.0pt;margin-bottom:0.0pt;" dir="ltr"><span
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">J.</span></p>
<p style="margin-top:0.0pt;margin-bottom:0.0pt;" dir="ltr"><span
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br>
</span></p>
<div><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto" style="font-size:100%;color:#000000" align="left">
<div>-------- Original message --------</div>
<div>From: Nicholas Thompson <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com"><thompnickson2@gmail.com></a> </div>
<div>Date: 6/10/25 1:47 AM (GMT+01:00) </div>
<div>To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"><friam@redfish.com></a> </div>
<div>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free will—ghost in the machine or just
clever wiring? </div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<div>I am overwhelmingly happy to take a position on free will for
Marcus:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>You don’t have it, I don’t have it. George doesn’t have it.
Will is not the sort of thing that can be had. It is a pattern,
a relentless stubbornness in doing.</div>
<div>
<div dir="ltr">Sent from my Dumb <span style="font-size: 17pt;">Phone</span></div>
<div dir="ltr"><br>
On Jun 9, 2025, at 2:36 PM, steve smith
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com"><sasmyth@swcp.com></a> wrote:<br>
<br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr"><span></span><br>
<span>On 6/9/25 12:25 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:</span><br>
<blockquote type="cite"><span>Why do you call ChatGPT George?
I must have missed it. Or who was George?</span><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"><span>We have a bar named George R in
Berlin by the way, in the quarter where I live. It is
named after George Remus, an American bootlegger during
the Prohibition era</span><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"><span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Remus">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Remus</a></span><br>
</blockquote>
<span></span><br>
<span>someone might add an extra R in homage to our own George
R.R. (Martin)?</span><br>
<span></span><br>
<span>I'm surprised the "George" reference slipped by you, I
don't know if it was Stephen or Nick who first started
making the reference to GPT (any version) in that mode, but
it was a variant on another personal name I think Stephen
used for a while with "Gupta" as the surname? I think it
was intended to suggest a serious collaborator, but somehow
(d)evolved to George? If I weren't so lazy, I'd go dig
through the archives... I think someone with a higher
fidelity memory or implicated in that origination will pile
on here?</span><br>
<span></span><br>
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