Free Will in the Atlantic

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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

jon zingale
This post was updated on .
"""
In a world that has no regularities at all, there is no benefit in trying to
find system-level mappings between action and reaction because will just be
different every time.    Our friend Will is tasked with navigating this
impossible space, but it is impossible as defined?   If there are some
regularities, conditional probabilities that can be tabulated, then  Will
can start to play the odds by learning the distributions that are observed
together with different trajectories that may become evident as it steps
into to the game.    Maybe there are hidden variables that explain the
apparently random generators?  For example, ought there not be some prior
state that can explain why the Will stepped into this game in the first
place?   Or do we assert, as the Free Will contingent do, that Will is above
the fray?
"""

I read you as outlining why Will *ought* to get to work feeling for
regularities (even if these regularities are simply local). But she *ought*
to (and in theory *will*?) only in a world where she is *free* to do so.
Regularity is ambiguous here:

1. local regularity: When Bayes sees 'he' it is often preceded by a 't', and so
Bayes gets to work.
2. global regularity: It will be the case that once all novelty has been
generated, the totality will be a compressible structure.

I agree that for agents with a choice (say), option 1 is an exploitable
strategy even if we ultimately do not get to rely on option 2. Ah, opacity
between worlds, was that David Lewis? I am not sure it is the kind of thing
that is solved by a big enough parallel computer, especially if we mean a
non-theoretical computer. Anyway, thanks for humoring me.




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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

jon zingale
"Or do we assert, as the Free Will contingent do, that Will is above the
fray?"

Will is above this time with respect to that thing and other times not,
perhaps? Some have mentioned Spinoza on this (or threads like it) and since
it is Jochen's thread, I name him. It's pantheism all the way down.



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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

jon zingale
This post was updated on .
In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
"Or do we assert, as the Free Will contingent do, that Will is above the
fray?"

Ok, so I continue to struggle with what it is that concerns me about the
assumption of determinism. Marcus's point about the loci of *will*
requires serious consideration. From where I stand, arguments opposing
free will to determinism are instances of dialectical argument, where
the former is posed as the pure negative to the latter. The particular
choice here then is seen to be part of a class of such opposites: chaos
and order, irrationality and rationality, randomness and computability,
non-representation and representation, absence and substance,...
Each negative object then is presented as either failing to have scrutable
qualities or have qualities explicitly defined relative to their positive
counterpart. What follows is an asymmetry that is baked into the form of
the argument, regardless of its content.

Now, as far as I can tell, an argumentative *mode* arises when we relate
positive objects to positive objects via metaphor, for instance, when we
say that determinism is computation or determinism is pure order, etc...
An effect of such metaphor making is the attribution of an object as a
quality of another (comprehension), i.e., ascribing determination to a
computation or tracing out a determination by a computation. Meanwhile,
in the opposite category, free will comes to be identified with randomness.

My concern, then, is that positive theories are objectifying whereas
negative theories are reflective[!], and since *will* here is presented
in its negative form, we are denied access to speak directly about its
qualities. Instead, we come to know *will* in terms of randomness via
coming to know determination in terms of computation. Ultimately, it
leaves me feeling like I am looking for my keys (will) under some nearby
streetlight (determinism).

[!] Evoking Raymond Guess in his analytic exposition "The Idea of a
Critical Theory".



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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

Marcus G. Daniels
No, it isn't ideal to pin free will on determinism.   There's some consensus reasonable people can come to about the physical world, and we can either agree that humans are a part of the physical world or that we are decoupled or partially decoupled from it.   If such a decoupling is suggested, then I think it is reasonable to want to know how that decoupling would work, and what experiments could shed light on that decoupling.   Why can't we just go beyond the Standard Model to understand that decoupling?   What is this pantheism and why can't we take it apart or study it?

So, sure, it is possible to pull the rug out from under the whole debate with other metaphysics where anything can happen.   If one is arguing with someone who insists that analysis of their metaphysics is not possible, then that's the end of the conversation.   To continue, there has to be some ability to reason about what happens in that metaphysics and what cannot, and why that is, and there has to be some rationale for how things we observe in our (physical) world could map to that metaphysics.  Otherwise why waste their time, they can go back to their important business with Q-Anon.

Maybe the physical world really is random.   On the other hand, superdeterminism does seem to address the measurement problem. [1]  
Either way, how does one get to free will, as in It Could Have Been Otherwise?  The real or illusory randomness collapses to definite measurements either way.   There has to be a magical homunculus that is shifting that random distribution around somehow if there is free will.   Or if the physical world is actually deterministic all the way down, then there is a big problem because Mind just defies causality.  

I'm an atheist, not an agnostic, because I have no patience for implausible models.   If you want to understand the world, you follow the evidence, not what you want to be true.

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.00139/full#h5

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Wednesday, April 7, 2021 2:33 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

"Or do we assert, as the Free Will contingent do, that Will is above the fray?"

Ok, so I continue to struggle with what it is that concerns me about the assumption of determinism. Marcus's point about the loci of *will* requires serious consideration. From where I stand, arguments opposing free will to determinism are instances of dialectical argument, where the former is posed as the pure negative to the latter[!]. The particular choice here then is seen to be part of a class of such opposites: chaos and order, irrationality and rationality, randomness and computability, non-representation and representation, absence and substance,...
Each negative object then is presented as either failing to have scrutable qualities or have qualities explicitly defined relative to their positive counterpart. What follows is an asymmetry that is baked into the form of the argument, regardless of its content.

Now, as far as I can tell, an argumentative *mode* arises when we relate positive objects to positive objects via metaphor, for instance, when we say that determinism is computation or determinism is pure order, etc...
An effect of such metaphor making is the attribution of an object as a quality of another (comprehension), i.e., ascribing determination to a computation or tracing out a determination by a computation. Meanwhile, in the opposite category, free will comes to be identified with randomness.

My concern, then, is that positive theories are objectifying whereas negative theories are reflective[!], and since *will* here is presented in its negative form, we are denied access to speak directly about its qualities. Instead, we come to know *will* in terms of randomness via coming to know determination in terms of computation. Ultimately, it leaves me feeling like I am looking for my keys (will) under some nearby streetlight (determination).

[!] Evoking Raymond Guess in his analytic exposition "The Idea of a Critical Theory".



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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

Frank Wimberly-2
If you have access via a library this article by Glymour might be of interest:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/521968?seq=1

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021, 4:47 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
No, it isn't ideal to pin free will on determinism.   There's some consensus reasonable people can come to about the physical world, and we can either agree that humans are a part of the physical world or that we are decoupled or partially decoupled from it.   If such a decoupling is suggested, then I think it is reasonable to want to know how that decoupling would work, and what experiments could shed light on that decoupling.   Why can't we just go beyond the Standard Model to understand that decoupling?   What is this pantheism and why can't we take it apart or study it?

So, sure, it is possible to pull the rug out from under the whole debate with other metaphysics where anything can happen.   If one is arguing with someone who insists that analysis of their metaphysics is not possible, then that's the end of the conversation.   To continue, there has to be some ability to reason about what happens in that metaphysics and what cannot, and why that is, and there has to be some rationale for how things we observe in our (physical) world could map to that metaphysics.  Otherwise why waste their time, they can go back to their important business with Q-Anon.

Maybe the physical world really is random.   On the other hand, superdeterminism does seem to address the measurement problem. [1] 
Either way, how does one get to free will, as in It Could Have Been Otherwise?  The real or illusory randomness collapses to definite measurements either way.   There has to be a magical homunculus that is shifting that random distribution around somehow if there is free will.   Or if the physical world is actually deterministic all the way down, then there is a big problem because Mind just defies causality. 

I'm an atheist, not an agnostic, because I have no patience for implausible models.   If you want to understand the world, you follow the evidence, not what you want to be true.

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.00139/full#h5

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Wednesday, April 7, 2021 2:33 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

"Or do we assert, as the Free Will contingent do, that Will is above the fray?"

Ok, so I continue to struggle with what it is that concerns me about the assumption of determinism. Marcus's point about the loci of *will* requires serious consideration. From where I stand, arguments opposing free will to determinism are instances of dialectical argument, where the former is posed as the pure negative to the latter[!]. The particular choice here then is seen to be part of a class of such opposites: chaos and order, irrationality and rationality, randomness and computability, non-representation and representation, absence and substance,...
Each negative object then is presented as either failing to have scrutable qualities or have qualities explicitly defined relative to their positive counterpart. What follows is an asymmetry that is baked into the form of the argument, regardless of its content.

Now, as far as I can tell, an argumentative *mode* arises when we relate positive objects to positive objects via metaphor, for instance, when we say that determinism is computation or determinism is pure order, etc...
An effect of such metaphor making is the attribution of an object as a quality of another (comprehension), i.e., ascribing determination to a computation or tracing out a determination by a computation. Meanwhile, in the opposite category, free will comes to be identified with randomness.

My concern, then, is that positive theories are objectifying whereas negative theories are reflective[!], and since *will* here is presented in its negative form, we are denied access to speak directly about its qualities. Instead, we come to know *will* in terms of randomness via coming to know determination in terms of computation. Ultimately, it leaves me feeling like I am looking for my keys (will) under some nearby streetlight (determination).

[!] Evoking Raymond Guess in his analytic exposition "The Idea of a Critical Theory".



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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

Frank Wimberly-2
Actually, I got access for free by logging in with my Google account as an independent researcher.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021, 5:19 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
If you have access via a library this article by Glymour might be of interest:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/521968?seq=1

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021, 4:47 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
No, it isn't ideal to pin free will on determinism.   There's some consensus reasonable people can come to about the physical world, and we can either agree that humans are a part of the physical world or that we are decoupled or partially decoupled from it.   If such a decoupling is suggested, then I think it is reasonable to want to know how that decoupling would work, and what experiments could shed light on that decoupling.   Why can't we just go beyond the Standard Model to understand that decoupling?   What is this pantheism and why can't we take it apart or study it?

So, sure, it is possible to pull the rug out from under the whole debate with other metaphysics where anything can happen.   If one is arguing with someone who insists that analysis of their metaphysics is not possible, then that's the end of the conversation.   To continue, there has to be some ability to reason about what happens in that metaphysics and what cannot, and why that is, and there has to be some rationale for how things we observe in our (physical) world could map to that metaphysics.  Otherwise why waste their time, they can go back to their important business with Q-Anon.

Maybe the physical world really is random.   On the other hand, superdeterminism does seem to address the measurement problem. [1] 
Either way, how does one get to free will, as in It Could Have Been Otherwise?  The real or illusory randomness collapses to definite measurements either way.   There has to be a magical homunculus that is shifting that random distribution around somehow if there is free will.   Or if the physical world is actually deterministic all the way down, then there is a big problem because Mind just defies causality. 

I'm an atheist, not an agnostic, because I have no patience for implausible models.   If you want to understand the world, you follow the evidence, not what you want to be true.

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.00139/full#h5

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Wednesday, April 7, 2021 2:33 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

"Or do we assert, as the Free Will contingent do, that Will is above the fray?"

Ok, so I continue to struggle with what it is that concerns me about the assumption of determinism. Marcus's point about the loci of *will* requires serious consideration. From where I stand, arguments opposing free will to determinism are instances of dialectical argument, where the former is posed as the pure negative to the latter[!]. The particular choice here then is seen to be part of a class of such opposites: chaos and order, irrationality and rationality, randomness and computability, non-representation and representation, absence and substance,...
Each negative object then is presented as either failing to have scrutable qualities or have qualities explicitly defined relative to their positive counterpart. What follows is an asymmetry that is baked into the form of the argument, regardless of its content.

Now, as far as I can tell, an argumentative *mode* arises when we relate positive objects to positive objects via metaphor, for instance, when we say that determinism is computation or determinism is pure order, etc...
An effect of such metaphor making is the attribution of an object as a quality of another (comprehension), i.e., ascribing determination to a computation or tracing out a determination by a computation. Meanwhile, in the opposite category, free will comes to be identified with randomness.

My concern, then, is that positive theories are objectifying whereas negative theories are reflective[!], and since *will* here is presented in its negative form, we are denied access to speak directly about its qualities. Instead, we come to know *will* in terms of randomness via coming to know determination in terms of computation. Ultimately, it leaves me feeling like I am looking for my keys (will) under some nearby streetlight (determination).

[!] Evoking Raymond Guess in his analytic exposition "The Idea of a Critical Theory".



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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

Marcus G. Daniels
In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

If the brain is like a planet, then simulate the planet on a deterministic computer.   A temperature knob or a field can help coax a fixed system from one phase of in-silico matter to another, and will give indistinct roles for microstates that don’t directly indicate macrostates.    I see how this has complicated reductionism a little but I don’t see how it facilitates free will.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Wednesday, April 7, 2021 4:19 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

 

If you have access via a library this article by Glymour might be of interest:

 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/521968?seq=1

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

 

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021, 4:47 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

No, it isn't ideal to pin free will on determinism.   There's some consensus reasonable people can come to about the physical world, and we can either agree that humans are a part of the physical world or that we are decoupled or partially decoupled from it.   If such a decoupling is suggested, then I think it is reasonable to want to know how that decoupling would work, and what experiments could shed light on that decoupling.   Why can't we just go beyond the Standard Model to understand that decoupling?   What is this pantheism and why can't we take it apart or study it?

So, sure, it is possible to pull the rug out from under the whole debate with other metaphysics where anything can happen.   If one is arguing with someone who insists that analysis of their metaphysics is not possible, then that's the end of the conversation.   To continue, there has to be some ability to reason about what happens in that metaphysics and what cannot, and why that is, and there has to be some rationale for how things we observe in our (physical) world could map to that metaphysics.  Otherwise why waste their time, they can go back to their important business with Q-Anon.

Maybe the physical world really is random.   On the other hand, superdeterminism does seem to address the measurement problem. [1] 
Either way, how does one get to free will, as in It Could Have Been Otherwise?  The real or illusory randomness collapses to definite measurements either way.   There has to be a magical homunculus that is shifting that random distribution around somehow if there is free will.   Or if the physical world is actually deterministic all the way down, then there is a big problem because Mind just defies causality. 

I'm an atheist, not an agnostic, because I have no patience for implausible models.   If you want to understand the world, you follow the evidence, not what you want to be true.

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.00139/full#h5

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Wednesday, April 7, 2021 2:33 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

"Or do we assert, as the Free Will contingent do, that Will is above the fray?"

Ok, so I continue to struggle with what it is that concerns me about the assumption of determinism. Marcus's point about the loci of *will* requires serious consideration. From where I stand, arguments opposing free will to determinism are instances of dialectical argument, where the former is posed as the pure negative to the latter[!]. The particular choice here then is seen to be part of a class of such opposites: chaos and order, irrationality and rationality, randomness and computability, non-representation and representation, absence and substance,...
Each negative object then is presented as either failing to have scrutable qualities or have qualities explicitly defined relative to their positive counterpart. What follows is an asymmetry that is baked into the form of the argument, regardless of its content.

Now, as far as I can tell, an argumentative *mode* arises when we relate positive objects to positive objects via metaphor, for instance, when we say that determinism is computation or determinism is pure order, etc...
An effect of such metaphor making is the attribution of an object as a quality of another (comprehension), i.e., ascribing determination to a computation or tracing out a determination by a computation. Meanwhile, in the opposite category, free will comes to be identified with randomness.

My concern, then, is that positive theories are objectifying whereas negative theories are reflective[!], and since *will* here is presented in its negative form, we are denied access to speak directly about its qualities. Instead, we come to know *will* in terms of randomness via coming to know determination in terms of computation. Ultimately, it leaves me feeling like I am looking for my keys (will) under some nearby streetlight (determination).

[!] Evoking Raymond Guess in his analytic exposition "The Idea of a Critical Theory".



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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

jon zingale
In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
"What is this pantheism and why can't we take it apart or study it?"

FWIW, I am also an atheist and I feel that I never had a choice in
being any other way. The free will-determinism discussion seems to
happen seasonally on Friam and it provides an opportunity to reason
differently. This round has proven intellectually fruitful for me, so
thank you for your thoughtful and determined contributions.

There are some here that post about pan-psychism/theism, posthumanism,
private consciousness, platonism, transcendentalism, buddhism, satanism,
libertarianism, goddess worship, you name it. For reasons beyond me, and
especially lately, I find inspiration in sympathizing with the positions
of others, others that present experiences radically different than my
own[0]. For our discussion, pantheism seemed like the kind of doctrine
that stands to benefit from finding *will in all things*, a generalized
vitalism[1]. My posted objection to the metaphysical framing of the
discussion was the result of my grappling with discomfort, a desire to
clarify something for myself. Ultimately, I am unsure whether we will be
able to take something like *will* apart. My feeling is that if it
remains a negative object, then like absence, we certainly will not. If
on the other hand, like vacuum, it comes to be defined positively, as
fields or substrate or whatever, well then who knows? It seems to me that
like a mechanistic description of the cosmos, we have to want to build
it. In response to your closing remark, I add that if you want to
change the world, will be granted, you follow the evidence _and_ what
you want to be true.

[0] Maybe it is from being couped up for a year? Maybe the echo-chamber
is boring me to tears? Yo no se.

[1] Generalized, perhaps, by abandoning the distinction that living things
are imbued with non-physical stuff and, instead, imagining *choice* to be
an inherent and ubiquitous quality of the unfolding universe. And yes,
this is clearly problematic too.



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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

Pieter Steenekamp
From a very high altitude perspective, humans are either:
a) the atoms in our bodies and behavior is the result of complexity that emerges from the interaction of all the different physical components in our body. To quote Yoshua Epstein "if you haven't grown it, you haven't explained it" 
or
b) the above plus something more.

Then there is the question of free will. 

If you accept (a) above and reject free will, your beliefs are congruent. 
Also, if you accept (b) and accept free will, your beliefs are also congruent.
I understand the positions of these two combinations and I can't really argue against either. 

What I do not understand is the acceptance of (a) and the rejection of free will. It's not that I'm saying it's wrong, it's just that I don't understand how one can reconcile the acceptance that we are the emergent complexity from the interaction of all the components in our system and nothing more with the acceptance of free will.

On Thu, 8 Apr 2021 at 07:02, jon zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:
"What is this pantheism and why can't we take it apart or study it?"

FWIW, I am also an atheist and I feel that I never had a choice in
being any other way. The free will-determinism discussion seems to
happen seasonally on Friam and it provides an opportunity to reason
differently. This round has proven intellectually fruitful for me, so
thank you for your thoughtful and determined contributions.

There are some here that post about pan-psychism/theism, posthumanism,
private consciousness, platonism, transcendentalism, buddhism, satanism,
libertarianism, goddess worship, you name it. For reasons beyond me, and
especially lately, I find inspiration in sympathizing with the positions
of others, others that present experiences radically different than my
own[0]. For our discussion, pantheism seemed like the kind of doctrine
that stands to benefit from finding *will in all things*, a generalized
vitalism[1]. My posted objection to the metaphysical framing of the
discussion was the result of my grappling with discomfort, a desire to
clarify something for myself. Ultimately, I am unsure whether we will be
able to take something like *will* apart. My feeling is that if it
remains a negative object, then like absence, we certainly will not. If
on the other hand, like vacuum, it comes to be defined positively, as
fields or substrate or whatever, well then who knows? It seems to me that
like a mechanistic description of the cosmos, we have to want to build
it. In response to your closing remark, I add that if you want to
change the world, will be granted, you follow the evidence _and_ what
you want to be true.

[0] Maybe it is from being couped up for a year? Maybe the echo-chamber
is boring me to tears? Yo no se.

[1] Generalized, perhaps, by abandoning the distinction that living things
are imbued with non-physical stuff and, instead, imagining *choice* to be
an inherent and ubiquitous quality of the unfolding universe. And yes,
this is clearly problematic too.



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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

gepr
I'm assuming you meant that what you don't understand is accepting (a) and free will. I'll lay out how I think it can happen. I don't necessarily believe what I'm about to write. But I don't believe anything ... so there's that.

If will is a kind of historic, hysteric, momentous trajectory within one's skin and freedom is a very small scale symmetry between multiple stable trajectories, then free will might be a small scale symmetry breaking that results in large scale trajectory changing. The argument is, then, about whether or not there's some thing, a higher-order process [⛧], that can purposefully break the symmetry, i.e. make a "deliberate" choice about which trajectory obtains. If there is no such higher order process, then that "freedom", that symmetry breaking, is either determined or random and it's irrelevant. If there is a higher-order process, then *what* is it? What's its structure? How do the structures compose and decompose such that the whole mechanism is *more* expressive than without the higher order process?

And, even then, with such a higher order process, the free will believers have to demonstrate it to be a will as well. I.e. the higher order processes have to be wills/trajectories, somehow similar to the lower order trajectories. If they're not, if they violate that "closure", then the freedom, the symmetry breaking, is either determined or random and, again, it's irrelevant. But if the higher order process is a *will* similar to the lower order trajectories, then the higher order will can choose between the lower order wills.

Of course, here we're at risk of an infinite regress (and/or aggress?). Is there a bottom turtle for the wills? That's where panpsychism fractures. Is there a top turtle, the "largest will", God/Nature? And the capping of both those ends, again, might result in either determinism or randomness, at the top and/or bottom.

So for a free will believer to make their argument, they have to suggest a structure in the middle somewhere that's special, where the regression and aggregation stop (or change character in a closure breaking way). Examples of such middle-ground specialness are Robert Rosen and Maturana & Varela. But there are others.

The problem is that most of the free will believers don't (or can't) yet carry their burden of showing how such a stack is built, much less take the extra step required and show why their middle spot is special. But unlike the disbelievers, I think it could happen one day ... just like strong (general) AI or non-carbon life. The free will believers need to work a lot harder than they do, though.


[⛧] I hope it's understood that by "higher order", I mean operating over collections of things. Lower order operates over primitives. Higher order operates over collections of primitives. I don't really mean *levels* so much as various ways to collect things.

On 4/7/21 11:14 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

> From a very high altitude perspective, humans are either:
> a) the atoms in our bodies and behavior is the result of complexity that emerges from the interaction of all the different physical components in our body. To quote Yoshua Epstein "if you haven't grown it, you haven't explained it" 
> or
> b) the above plus something more.
>
> Then there is the question of free will. 
>
> If you accept (a) above and reject free will, your beliefs are congruent. 
> Also, if you accept (b) and accept free will, your beliefs are also congruent.
> I understand the positions of these two combinations and I can't really argue against either. 
>
> What I do not understand is the acceptance of (a) and the rejection of free will. It's not that I'm saying it's wrong, it's just that I don't understand how one can reconcile the acceptance that we are the emergent complexity from the interaction of all the components in our system and nothing more with the acceptance of free will.

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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

Marcus G. Daniels
In reply to this post by jon zingale
Jon writes:

< Generalized, perhaps, by abandoning the distinction that living things are imbued with non-physical stuff and, instead, imagining *choice* to be an inherent and ubiquitous quality of the unfolding universe. And yes, this is clearly problematic too. >

In quantum computing, one typically regards measurement as the thing to be deferred or planned, as one can't take them back.    If entanglement is a means for distributed communication that might be way to make choice a first class thing (in a model at least).   Similarly if the metaphysics involves a multiverse one could brainstorm about how choice could arise.   To me it all seems like fancy kinds of lookahead that play well in sci-fi but don't fundamentally change the story.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Wednesday, April 7, 2021 10:02 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

"What is this pantheism and why can't we take it apart or study it?"

FWIW, I am also an atheist and I feel that I never had a choice in being any other way. The free will-determinism discussion seems to happen seasonally on Friam and it provides an opportunity to reason differently. This round has proven intellectually fruitful for me, so thank you for your thoughtful and determined contributions.

There are some here that post about pan-psychism/theism, posthumanism, private consciousness, platonism, transcendentalism, buddhism, satanism, libertarianism, goddess worship, you name it. For reasons beyond me, and especially lately, I find inspiration in sympathizing with the positions of others, others that present experiences radically different than my own[0]. For our discussion, pantheism seemed like the kind of doctrine that stands to benefit from finding *will in all things*, a generalized vitalism[1]. My posted objection to the metaphysical framing of the discussion was the result of my grappling with discomfort, a desire to clarify something for myself. Ultimately, I am unsure whether we will be able to take something like *will* apart. My feeling is that if it remains a negative object, then like absence, we certainly will not. If on the other hand, like vacuum, it comes to be defined positively, as fields or substrate or whatever, well then who knows? It seems to me that like a mechanistic description of the cosmos, we have to want to build it. In response to your closing remark, I add that if you want to change the world, will be granted, you follow the evidence _and_ what you want to be true.

[0] Maybe it is from being couped up for a year? Maybe the echo-chamber is boring me to tears? Yo no se.

[1] Generalized, perhaps, by abandoning the distinction that living things are imbued with non-physical stuff and, instead, imagining *choice* to be an inherent and ubiquitous quality of the unfolding universe. And yes, this is clearly problematic too.



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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

Marcus G. Daniels
In reply to this post by gepr
Glen writes:

< If will is a kind of historic, hysteric, momentous trajectory within one's skin and freedom is a very small scale symmetry between multiple stable trajectories, then free will might be a small scale symmetry breaking that results in large scale trajectory changing. The argument is, then, about whether or not there's some thing, a higher-order process [⛧], that can purposefully break the symmetry, i.e. make a "deliberate" choice about which trajectory obtains. If there is no such higher order process, then that "freedom", that symmetry breaking, is either determined or random and it's irrelevant. If there is a higher-order process, then *what* is it? What's its structure? How do the structures compose and decompose such that the whole mechanism is *more* expressive than without the higher order process? >

It could also be chaotic, or, like a conjugate gradient optimization working in high dimensionality and finite precision, apt to stumble across new subspaces by accident, even though it is just being greedy.   The apparent randomness just comes from evaluating a function against large input vectors that have both known and (mostly) unknown values.   How one could possibly tease out subtle symmetry breaking roles in such a cacophony is unclear to me.   That cacophony could give the appearance of freedom, which makes me suspicious.

Marcus
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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

gepr
Yeah, I tend to agree. The default position is "no such thing" and the burden is on those making a positive claim. I feel that way about actual infinity, moral intuitionism, natural law, etc. as well. Appeals to common sense and pragmatism are the most suspect, but often the most useful.

On 4/8/21 8:41 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> It could also be chaotic, or, like a conjugate gradient optimization working in high dimensionality and finite precision, apt to stumble across new subspaces by accident, even though it is just being greedy.   The apparent randomness just comes from evaluating a function against large input vectors that have both known and (mostly) unknown values.   How one could possibly tease out subtle symmetry breaking roles in such a cacophony is unclear to me.   That cacophony could give the appearance of freedom, which makes me suspicious.


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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

Marcus G. Daniels

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02019.pdf


On Apr 8, 2021, at 9:15 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yeah, I tend to agree. The default position is "no such thing" and the burden is on those making a positive claim. I feel that way about actual infinity, moral intuitionism, natural law, etc. as well. Appeals to common sense and pragmatism are the most suspect, but often the most useful.

On 4/8/21 8:41 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
It could also be chaotic, or, like a conjugate gradient optimization working in high dimensionality and finite precision, apt to stumble across new subspaces by accident, even though it is just being greedy.   The apparent randomness just comes from evaluating a function against large input vectors that have both known and (mostly) unknown values.   How one could possibly tease out subtle symmetry breaking roles in such a cacophony is unclear to me.   That cacophony could give the appearance of freedom, which makes me suspicious.


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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

gepr
Ha! OK. I'll try to read that. I read the abstract 4 times and still don't know what I'm about to read. I read the introduction once and still don't know what to expect. My next step is the Discussion, then the meat. If you care to toss a bone, I'd appreciate it. But then again, you might be rewarding me for being lazy.

On 4/8/21 9:58 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02019.pdf <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02019.pdf>

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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

Marcus G. Daniels
't Hooft has been has a book on these topics.[1]  He has papers periodically like this one where he socializes the idea in different ways.  The argument in this paper is if there were fast background variables, in quantum experiments like the double slit experiment, it could explain how these probabilistic measurements occur, with only deterministic drivers.     He goes on to speculate that it may have implications for modifications to the Standard Model at the highest energy domains, such as the muon experiment Frank mentioned might be hinting at.   It is much easier for me to believe than 11 and 24 dimensional spaces, branes, and all that.    Perhaps that's what Jon is suggesting:  Sure,  I do have some sort of agency (personality) that makes me favor some hypothesis over others, and thus some kinds of evidence over others -- it is a preference for premises and conclusions that aren't buried in layer after layer of math that could very well be wrong.    The deterministic story of entanglement -- the giant CA of the universe -- seems to work.   I can't help wonder if some people hate it JUST because it does take away their understanding of what science is?

[1] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-41285-6

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Friday, April 9, 2021 8:36 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

Ha! OK. I'll try to read that. I read the abstract 4 times and still don't know what I'm about to read. I read the introduction once and still don't know what to expect. My next step is the Discussion, then the meat. If you care to toss a bone, I'd appreciate it. But then again, you might be rewarding me for being lazy.

On 4/8/21 9:58 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02019.pdf 
> <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02019.pdf>

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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

David Eric Smith
I also found this post fascinating, Marcus, thank you.

T’Hooft has been on this program for a long time, and the whole thing mystifies me.  He’s a just-enormous mind, and very fastidious in what he considers acceptable argument, so someone very much worth listening to.

But why does he think a classical description is somehow to be preferred to a quantum description?  Why does anyone?  If I propose a formalism of state vectors, evolving under unitary operators, with observables formalized as various projection operators, and multi-point, multi-time correlation functions of observables subject to splitting into fingers that are coherent within and non-interfering between (and no residual primitive concept of “measurement”, just decoherence of the collections of correlation functions that correspond to the experiential concept of “histories”), then I have a formalism with a fairly small number of primitives that gives a vast and apparently reliable empirical compression of everything we can see.  The state vector is not an observable.  A whale is not a fish  We learn these things about nature as we go along.

Supposing some very clever people could complete T’Hooft’s project and push a bunch of unobservable properties of some classical description up to high enough frequencies that they don’t impact the empirical tests we do — thus delivering the same answers we have checked with QM — then by what standard is the classical description to be preferred over the other one in terms of states and unitary evolution and decoherent histories?  I don’t understand where these priors come from, which seem to be so strong in people.  It seems to me like a bias to retain the familiar, and we have been familiar with classical abstractions for longer, and in more processing channels for sensory experience, than we are for quantum abstractions.  But to think that is informative about the world and not merely about one’s own situation as an observer seems to have been hoping the Copernican lesson didn’t really have to be learned.  Or is there a better reason that I am not seeing because I am obstinate?

Yes, the QM description doesn’t seem to include gravitation, which by every standard of evaluation that has worked for everything else looks like a low-energy theory with an inaccessible high energy foundation.  That looks hard, yes.  But I don’t see it as looking hard in a way that makes classical descriptions any more preferable than they would have been if we didn’t take the problem of gravitation into consideration.

On the muon experiment, if I understood the NYT article correctly, there are two claimed calculations, one in accord with the Brookhaven measurements (which I guess are further reinforced in the new experiment?) and one claiming a difference.  We’ll have to sort out whether either of those calculations of g-2 is correct, and if so which one.  Sabine Hossenfelder doesn’t believe it.  But then she didn’t like Life cereal either.  So I smile that that was the comment they wanted from her, which she was happy to provide, and move on.  She gave a public lecture in Santa Fe a few years ago, and didn’t want to go out to dinner with the host-gang afterward.  On one hand I felt bad/sad about her being put in a spot of having to turn them away (which probably didn’t bother her at all), on another hand I felt something was being missed, because off-line comments from here would probably have been interesting, and on a third hand I think it’s all good that people answer to themselves and not to social expectations.

Eric



> On Apr 10, 2021, at 3:16 AM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> 't Hooft has been has a book on these topics.[1]  He has papers periodically like this one where he socializes the idea in different ways.  The argument in this paper is if there were fast background variables, in quantum experiments like the double slit experiment, it could explain how these probabilistic measurements occur, with only deterministic drivers.     He goes on to speculate that it may have implications for modifications to the Standard Model at the highest energy domains, such as the muon experiment Frank mentioned might be hinting at.   It is much easier for me to believe than 11 and 24 dimensional spaces, branes, and all that.    Perhaps that's what Jon is suggesting:  Sure,  I do have some sort of agency (personality) that makes me favor some hypothesis over others, and thus some kinds of evidence over others -- it is a preference for premises and conclusions that aren't buried in layer after layer of math that could very well be wrong.    The deterministic story of entanglement -- the giant CA of the universe -- seems to work.   I can't help wonder if some people hate it JUST because it does take away their understanding of what science is?
>
> [1] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-41285-6
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
> Sent: Friday, April 9, 2021 8:36 AM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic
>
> Ha! OK. I'll try to read that. I read the abstract 4 times and still don't know what I'm about to read. I read the introduction once and still don't know what to expect. My next step is the Discussion, then the meat. If you care to toss a bone, I'd appreciate it. But then again, you might be rewarding me for being lazy.
>
> On 4/8/21 9:58 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>
>> https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02019.pdf 
>> <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02019.pdf>
>
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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

Marcus G. Daniels
Yes, for me, it is that entanglement in a CA is consistent with my world.   No spooky action at a distance and without invoking much of any machinery to get there.    
When I was a child I loved taking things apart and in my teenage years spent a lot of time disassembling codes.   I liked the feeling of "Ok, that was as low as one could possibly go here.  I now know what really happens."   But ending with a _probability_?  That doesn't feel right.  Sure, for the purposes of analysis or synthesis, it is ok if the rules of the game involve probabilities.  I put down my debugger watchpoints and start tabulating samples.   But I do all kinds of things to get to the next day, not like I'm proud of it.

An example is radioactive decay.   What do you mean we're just going to throw up our hands and accept aggregate statistics?   Before you know it we'll be giving up on predicting the location of the next earthquake!   What kind of reductionists are we?   😊

Anyway, 't Hooft doesn't say QM is flawed, just that QM isn't an explanation.   He makes the distinction between the value of his idea as an interpretation vs. the possibility it (CAT) is how the universe works.   He's got nothing to prove, so I guess he has the luxury of expecting people to be reasonable about him daring to offer a suggestion.

Hossenfelder proposes an experiment.[1]    I think that is close to possible now (maybe the evidence is already available in some form).   The timescale she mentions of 1e-6 doesn't seem particularly challenging for modern electronics.  I know people that talk about the possibility of calculations on a quantum computer that can outrun the impinging environment rather than trying to correct for it.  This seems along the same lines.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.0286
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Friday, April 9, 2021 1:16 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

I also found this post fascinating, Marcus, thank you.

T’Hooft has been on this program for a long time, and the whole thing mystifies me.  He’s a just-enormous mind, and very fastidious in what he considers acceptable argument, so someone very much worth listening to.

But why does he think a classical description is somehow to be preferred to a quantum description?  Why does anyone?  If I propose a formalism of state vectors, evolving under unitary operators, with observables formalized as various projection operators, and multi-point, multi-time correlation functions of observables subject to splitting into fingers that are coherent within and non-interfering between (and no residual primitive concept of “measurement”, just decoherence of the collections of correlation functions that correspond to the experiential concept of “histories”), then I have a formalism with a fairly small number of primitives that gives a vast and apparently reliable empirical compression of everything we can see.  The state vector is not an observable.  A whale is not a fish  We learn these things about nature as we go along.

Supposing some very clever people could complete T’Hooft’s project and push a bunch of unobservable properties of some classical description up to high enough frequencies that they don’t impact the empirical tests we do — thus delivering the same answers we have checked with QM — then by what standard is the classical description to be preferred over the other one in terms of states and unitary evolution and decoherent histories?  I don’t understand where these priors come from, which seem to be so strong in people.  It seems to me like a bias to retain the familiar, and we have been familiar with classical abstractions for longer, and in more processing channels for sensory experience, than we are for quantum abstractions.  But to think that is informative about the world and not merely about one’s own situation as an observer seems to have been hoping the Copernican lesson didn’t really have to be learned.  Or is there a better reason that I am not seeing because I am obstinate?

Yes, the QM description doesn’t seem to include gravitation, which by every standard of evaluation that has worked for everything else looks like a low-energy theory with an inaccessible high energy foundation.  That looks hard, yes.  But I don’t see it as looking hard in a way that makes classical descriptions any more preferable than they would have been if we didn’t take the problem of gravitation into consideration.

On the muon experiment, if I understood the NYT article correctly, there are two claimed calculations, one in accord with the Brookhaven measurements (which I guess are further reinforced in the new experiment?) and one claiming a difference.  We’ll have to sort out whether either of those calculations of g-2 is correct, and if so which one.  Sabine Hossenfelder doesn’t believe it.  But then she didn’t like Life cereal either.  So I smile that that was the comment they wanted from her, which she was happy to provide, and move on.  She gave a public lecture in Santa Fe a few years ago, and didn’t want to go out to dinner with the host-gang afterward.  On one hand I felt bad/sad about her being put in a spot of having to turn them away (which probably didn’t bother her at all), on another hand I felt something was being missed, because off-line comments from here would probably have been interesting, and on a third hand I think it’s all good that people answer to themselves and not to social expectations.

Eric



> On Apr 10, 2021, at 3:16 AM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> 't Hooft has been has a book on these topics.[1]  He has papers periodically like this one where he socializes the idea in different ways.  The argument in this paper is if there were fast background variables, in quantum experiments like the double slit experiment, it could explain how these probabilistic measurements occur, with only deterministic drivers.     He goes on to speculate that it may have implications for modifications to the Standard Model at the highest energy domains, such as the muon experiment Frank mentioned might be hinting at.   It is much easier for me to believe than 11 and 24 dimensional spaces, branes, and all that.    Perhaps that's what Jon is suggesting:  Sure,  I do have some sort of agency (personality) that makes me favor some hypothesis over others, and thus some kinds of evidence over others -- it is a preference for premises and conclusions that aren't buried in layer after layer of math that could very well be wrong.    The deterministic story of entanglement -- the giant CA of the universe -- seems to work.   I can't help wonder if some people hate it JUST because it does take away their understanding of what science is?
>
> [1] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-41285-6
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
> Sent: Friday, April 9, 2021 8:36 AM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic
>
> Ha! OK. I'll try to read that. I read the abstract 4 times and still don't know what I'm about to read. I read the introduction once and still don't know what to expect. My next step is the Discussion, then the meat. If you care to toss a bone, I'd appreciate it. But then again, you might be rewarding me for being lazy.
>
> On 4/8/21 9:58 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>
>> https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02019.pdf
>> <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02019.pdf>
>
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Re: Free Will in the Atlantic

David Eric Smith
Hi Marcus,

Yes, this gets to the nut of it for me:

> On Apr 10, 2021, at 6:48 AM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Anyway, 't Hooft doesn't say QM is flawed, just that QM isn't an explanation.   He makes the distinction between the value of his idea as an interpretation vs. the possibility it (CAT) is how the universe works.   He's got nothing to prove, so I guess he has the luxury of expecting people to be reasonable about him daring to offer a suggestion.

I don’t understand what status “interpretations” of QM have in science.  To the extent that an interpretation is another activity one performs that must align with all the data-correspondences one has already checked, it doesn’t affect them.  If, sometime later, the interpretations one chose in the past affect the course of proposals for what to build next, then they do have a role, with respect to inference.  But the way they are discussed now is all for the period when they haven’t yet affected anything more.

After browsing Wikipedia on these questions to try to get a feel for what the society considers a stable condition for this discussion, I went to the Stanford Encyclopedia to see what the philosophers are comfortable with, and that made things even worse.  In particular, the people who believe there is a role for measurement as a primitive which is not simply a reference to decoherence phenomena completely lose me.  I don’t understand what is left for “measurement” to do if one is trying to provide a quantitative account of phenomena in terms of decoherence of correlation functions.

Similarly, the formulation of spooky action at a distance is one that feels to me like an artifact from an antique language, but not one we would be forced to create today if we had not inherited it from smart and uneasy people of the past.  I know how they arrive at this language, but since within QM the same phenomena do not appear as action at a distance, but simply as the existence of some correlations and the absence of others, within the structure of the state vector, it doesn’t seem like there was anything within the science that ever required arriving at that language.  

As for what probabilities “are”?  I don’t know.  If one took that they are a property of correlation functions of observables that satisfy a certain set of axioms for composition and conditioning (kind of like Jaynes constructs them in his book The Logic of Science, but due to somebody else whom he cites but whose name I don’t recall), then again we aren’t taking our notion of probability as a primitive we have always “known” and are now trying to formalize, but rather as a phenomenal pattern, the properties of which we want to account for from some structure in a formalism as a way of assessing the formalism's validity.  Then again, to me, it sounds as if we are saying that our objection to probabilities is that they aren’t things that aren’t probabilities.  It is consistent, but doesn’t feel obligatory to me.  

I think I am very stupid in not being able to “get” this.  That doesn’t surprise me.  I don’t understand string theory.  I never even tried to understand twistors, or loop quantum gravity.  When a paper by a philosopher lands on my desk asking for a review, about the foundations of “reality” that fall prior to empirical observations, with applications to the nature of life, but drawn from twistor theory and loop quantum gravity, I don’t even know how to distinguish between something by a profound person and a hoax by a Sokal-bot.  So it isn’t strange that I wouldn’t understand this either.

I guess the Clint Eastwood line is the best off-route to get on with the day: a man’s gotta know his limitations.  Gets easier year by year, and failure by failure.

Eric




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Re: The CA Interpretation of QM

Jochen Fromm-5
In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Interesting book. IMHO neither the weird rules of Quantum Mechanics nor the Standard Model can be really fundamental. Why do we have 3 generations of matter (electron, muon, tau & up/down, charm/strange, top/bottom quarks) and not 1, 2 or 4? 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepton

Where do the strange rules from Quantum Mechanics come from? It would be nice if the rules of Quantum Mechanis would somehow emerge from waves propagating in the quantum fluctuations of empty space. 

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]>
Date: 4/9/21 20:17 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

't Hooft has been has a book on these topics.[1]  He has papers periodically like this one where he socializes the idea in different ways.  The argument in this paper is if there were fast background variables, in quantum experiments like the double slit experiment, it could explain how these probabilistic measurements occur, with only deterministic drivers.     He goes on to speculate that it may have implications for modifications to the Standard Model at the highest energy domains, such as the muon experiment Frank mentioned might be hinting at.   It is much easier for me to believe than 11 and 24 dimensional spaces, branes, and all that.    Perhaps that's what Jon is suggesting:  Sure,  I do have some sort of agency (personality) that makes me favor some hypothesis over others, and thus some kinds of evidence over others -- it is a preference for premises and conclusions that aren't buried in layer after layer of math that could very well be wrong.    The deterministic story of entanglement -- the giant CA of the universe -- seems to work.   I can't help wonder if some people hate it JUST because it does take away their understanding of what science is?

[1] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-41285-6

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Friday, April 9, 2021 8:36 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Free Will in the Atlantic

Ha! OK. I'll try to read that. I read the abstract 4 times and still don't know what I'm about to read. I read the introduction once and still don't know what to expect. My next step is the Discussion, then the meat. If you care to toss a bone, I'd appreciate it. But then again, you might be rewarding me for being lazy.

On 4/8/21 9:58 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02019.pdf
> <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02019.pdf>

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