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

[Frank Wimberly]

Humans suffer from internal conflicts.  They want incompatible things.
This causes suffering from mild discomfort to pain causing suicide. I
suppose this could be simulated but...

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 3:27 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:

> This conversation is well into bad faith now.  I’m done.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *steve smith
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 10, 2025 2:24 PM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Free will—ghost in the machine or just clever
> wiring?
>
>
>
>
>
> On 6/10/25 9:44 AM, Marcus Daniels 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?
>
> Probably not unless it's brain is *positronic*.
>
> For a *proof by anecdote*, read the corpus of Asimov's work.  ;/
>
> Then go release an Orca into the wild and holler "Free Willy" at the top
> of your lungs.  If you survive being arrested and convicted for your
> declaration of putative "public exposure", then note that the entire global
> population are taking up the practice of head-butting sailboats....   free
> will much?
>
> The perils of Free Will(y)?
>
>
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