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

[∄ uǝlƃ]

"Generate the phenomenon" means that some machine, by its operation, behaves according to some recognizable pattern. The *phenomenon* of "free will" does exist. We know it exists because people talk about it so much. It's ingrained in our legal system. Etc. Maybe you'll remember the quote "I can't define it. But I know it when I see it"? Now, as I've typed ad nauseum at this point, whether that phrase ("free will") refers to what people *think* it refers to is another matter. This mechanism is an attempt to refine what people might think the phrase refers to.

Validation/falsification in modeling and simulation is a relatively mature discipline. There are many ways to falsify some mechanism by the phenomena it generates (face, data, trace, etc.). Of course, you're right that it isn't simple. Just like "intelligence", some people are impressed with the achievements of AI and some aren't. Regardless, the act of designing AI machines that *try* to generate intelligence has lead to a fantastic refinement of what "intelligence" means. I think the same can be done with "free will" if people would focus on building machines that fail at the task.

It's relatively easy to establish that a *particular* mechanism fails to generate some pattern. Brute force parameter sweeps is feasible with the computational power we have now. But there are many ways to search and sample a behavior/phenomena space that aren't as difficult. What's difficult is trying to falsify some hypothesis that's NOT based on a particular, concrete mechanism.

If anything, I'm tossing a rope down the hole. Anyone who talks about "free will" *without* proposing a mechanism for it is digging the hole deeper.

On 6/18/20 6:53 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> What do you mean by "generate the phenomenon"? If the phenomenon is non-existent, it can't be generated. Even if that weren't a problem, who is to judge whether "the phenomenon" had been generated? And how is that judgment made? 
> 
> On the other hand, how do you establish that "it *cannot* generate the phenomenon"?  That sounds like a pretty hard thing to establish on the basis of empirical evidence.
> 
> This all seems to be digging a deeper hole.


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ