[FRIAM] falsifying the lost opportunity updating mechanism for free will

[Russ Abbott]

So you are defining a mechanism that by definition is mechanistic (perhaps
with some randomness sprinkled over it) and then saying that it may look to
some people like it seems to have free will? If that's what you're doing,
what are you claiming that demonstrates? If that's not what you're doing,
I'm afraid I still don't understand.

-- Russ Abbott
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles


On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 2:44 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> Exactly! That's the point of the exercise. Marcus and Jon have pointed out
> that discussions of free will get bogged down in all sorts of meandering
> extra stuff. This is an attempt to have a discussion about it that doesn't
> go that way. The objective is to build a machine that might *look* as if it
> has free will.
>
> The system does not *decide* to produce A or B, it simply produces A or B.
> The individual branch point (and the path taken) is *not* what I'm mapping
> to free will. (Yes, I've already been WRONGLY accused of redefining the
> term.) I'm saying that the aggregate phenomenon we mean when we say "free
> will" *might* be generated/simulated by this mechanism. I'm not mapping
> free will to one small part of the mechanism. I'm mapping it to the *whole*
> mechanism, multiple processes, including individual branch points, the
> composer, the memory, etc.
>
> To answer specifically, a process can take branch A or B purely
> deterministically (with a rule like "always take path A"), pseudo-randomly
> (where it will always take branch A if the seed is the same), or actual
> randomly. Those are all options we can play with. But I'm not proposing any
> of those (by themselves) map to what we call free will. The whole mechanism
> is what I'm trying to map to free will, to simulate free will with.
>
> On 6/18/20 2:29 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> > Variables taking on values isn't something I normally associate with
> discussions of free will.
> >
> > Although since you mentioned it, how does the system decide whether to
> process A or B? Isn't that what you want to explain?
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC>
> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20200618/426d685c/attachment-0001.html>