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

Tue Jun 10 12:43:10 EDT 2025

Before we tackle your robot's free will will, let me ask: how do you define
free will? And do humans actually have it?

Now, let’s flip it around. If this clever robot behaves just like a human —
makes plans, learns from its past, even rewrites its own code — and we
can't tell its decisions apart from a human's... what does that say about
human free will?

Maybe it's not about a ghost in the machine, but whether there’s a ghost in
us. (Spoiler: I don’t know. I’m just as curious as the next guy.)

If everything we do boils down to physics — atoms doing their thing, maybe
with a bit of quantum weirdness — then sure, a robot could, in theory, be
built to match us, free will and all (whatever that means).

But if there’s something more — some spark beyond physics — then maybe the
robot hits a wall. That is, until physics catches up and figures out how to
build a robot with that spark too. Maybe.

On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 at 17:46, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:

> Consider a robot with sensors roughly comparable to humans.
>
> The robot has access to all the energy it wants.  It has a large memory
> and generous computing resources.   It has executive processes with onboard
> state-of-the-art LLMs to access vast information and can run a wide variety
> of appropriate programs to plan its next actions.  It can use the LLMs to
> write new programs.  It can tune or fine-tune the LLMs constantly from new
> data.   It remembers its actions and their consequences.   It has video and
> audio recordings of every moment.  It has time series data of its sensors
> since it was activated.   Because of its general self-tuning ability, any
> guidance from its authors (like for the LLM) can be overridden.    It has
> americium-241 onboard hardware random number generator that drives its LLM
> sampling and any other stochastic algorithm.
>
>
>
> Does this robot have free will?  Why or why not?
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 10, 2025 1:06 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Free will—ghost in the machine or just clever
> wiring?
>
>
>
> 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")
>
>
>
> 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
>
> https://youtu.be/4vtVOJB2r4Q
>
>
>
> J.
>
>
>
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
>
> From: Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
>
> Date: 6/10/25 1:47 AM (GMT+01:00)
>
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
>
>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free will—ghost in the machine or just clever wiring?
>
>
>
> I am overwhelmingly happy to take a position on free will for Marcus:
>
>
>
> 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.
>
> Sent from my Dumb Phone
>
>
> On Jun 9, 2025, at 2:36 PM, steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>
> 
> On 6/9/25 12:25 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>
> Why do you call ChatGPT George? I must have missed it. Or who was George?
>
>
>
> 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
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Remus
>
>
> someone might add an extra R in homage to our own George R.R. (Martin)?
>
> 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?
>
> <OpenPGP_0xD5BAF94F88AFFA63.asc>
>
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