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

Tue Jun 10 14:06:25 EDT 2025

Your simple program could not have done otherwise.   It followed a casual chain from its inputs.   Had it encountered a “true” random source, it would have relinquished control the is environment and become driven by the environment.

Science aims to find the rules.   Probabilistic rules, like quantum mechanics, are still rules. 

So no, it is not worth “investigating” whether human biochemistry is not governed by rules.    That would not be science, or an investigation, that would be mysticism.  

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2025 10:43 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?

In response to: "To have free will means that one really could have done otherwise."

I can write a simple optimization algorithm that evaluates alternatives and selects the best one. Would you say this algorithm possesses free will according to your definition—that it "could have done otherwise"? I'm not asserting, just genuinely exploring whether such behavior satisfies the criteria you're proposing.

In response to: "From a mechanistic perspective, it is impossible. If we decide people aren’t mechanisms, then we abandon science."

Again, I’m not asserting a position but raising a question: Isn’t investigating whether humans are more than mechanisms a legitimate scientific pursuit? Or are we prematurely closing off inquiry by simply declaring that humans are mechanisms and thereby rendering further exploration unnecessary?

For instance, would you consider Seth Lloyd’s proposed Turing Test for free will (https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/lloyd/Turing_Test.pdf) unscientific? It seems to offer a rigorous and testable approach to a very difficult question.

On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 at 19:00, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com> > wrote:

To have free will means that one really could have done otherwise.   

>From a mechanistic perspective, it is impossible.  If we decide people aren’t mechanisms, then we abandon science. 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2025 9:43 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free will—ghost in the machine or just clever wiring?

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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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?

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