[FRIAM] Free will—ghost in the machine or just clever wiring?

[Marcus Daniels]

Here’s an idea that’s been helping me to procrastinate. 


1. Suppose that spacetime is an embedding of entanglement. An evolved quantum error correcting code (QEC) that enables a network to form geometries like the reality we see. 

2. Suppose the Big Bang the result of a unifying supermassive black hole. 

3. Like other black holes, it had high entropy. 

4. That final black hole, lacking an exterior, launches a new universe. 

5. The new universe might appear to be smooth in its geometric expansion, but that would only because of the embedded QEC. It would be rich with unseen entanglement that was not subject to the QEC. 

6. In this view, universes could evolve or even be nested. Universes with no or crude QECs would be unstable and prone to collapse. Universes with strong QECs could have orderly environments where life could emerge, as Eric describes in his book.


7. A Big Crunch would be like checkpointing a virtual machine. The evolved QECs could still be in the checkpoint and cause the next version of the universe to inherit its desirable properties. Maybe it would be like a junkyard with some interesting parts that would find novel uses in the next go.

8. Speculating further, very sophisticated civilizations (after billions of years) might discover how to stack the deck to invent new metaphysics at the next Big Bang. Simple beings, like humans – not being billions of years old -- might invent words for that like God. 

9. The whole thing could be deterministic and not facilitate any free will!

Now I should get back to work. 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Pieter Steenekamp <pieters at randcontrols.co.za>
Date: Sunday, June 8, 2025 at 10:38 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: [FRIAM] Free will—ghost in the machine or just clever wiring? 

Seth Lloyd’s Turing test for free will (https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/lloyd/Turing_Test.pdf <https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/lloyd/Turing_Test.pdf>) is to consciousness what EPR was to quantum physics: a challenge to the theory's completeness. EPR said quantum weirdness must hide something deeper; Bell said “let's test that”—and nature replied, “nope, it’s weird all the way down.” Nobel Prize, case closed.

Lloyd asks: can we prove the mind is just machinery? His test says: build a machine that behaves indistinguishably from a human and believes it has free will. If you succeed—great. But failure proves nothing.

Unlike Bell’s inequality, this test can only confirm, never deny. No ghost-busting here.

Until then? It’s speculation. The Standard Model explains almost everything—except the quantum gremlins and how observation messes things up. So maybe the mind still has an ace up its sleeve. Or a soul. Or a bug in the code. 


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