Free Will, Quantum & Orchestrated Objective Reduction
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 29 июн 2024
- An extended exploration of what science tells us about free will and consciousness in a quantum universe, including Sir Roger Penrose's theory of Orchestrated Objective Reduction.
Watch my exclusive video ISRU: nebula.tv/videos/isaacarthur-...
Get Nebula using my link for 40% off an annual subscription: go.nebula.tv/isaacarthur
Get a Lifetime Membership to Nebula for only $300: go.nebula.tv/lifetime?ref=isa...
Use the link gift.nebula.tv/isaacarthur to give a year of Nebula to a friend for just $30.
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @isaacarthursfia
Visit our Website: www.isaacarthur.net
Support us on Patreon: / isaacarthur
Support us on Subscribestar: www.subscribestar.com/isaac-a...
Facebook Group: / 1583992725237264
Reddit: / isaacarthur
Twitter: / isaac_a_arthur on Twitter and RT our future content.
SFIA Discord Server: / discord
Episode 353a, June 30, 2024 Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound epidemicsound.com/creator
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images 
Наука
![The moment we stopped understanding AI [AlexNet]](/img/1.gif)
I feel compelled to stick around for the rest of the episode
A clear example of lack of free will
I have no choice but upvote both your comment and the episode
Clearly proof that your choices matter
@@cosmictreason2242lol no disrespect but through observing changes the outcome. It's like put them different pieces/observances of it together, and you'll be a little closer to what it is was, not what it is. It's like being stink on poop. Just is like that.
I enjoyed watching Isaac's previous video's, so I choose to keep watching the whole episode to see if I enjoyed this one too.
We still need an episode about free fall cuisine; how freefall effects taste, how cooking works in microgravity, what foods are easier to produce, utensils, customs and even architecture
Actually, lemme write a story...
To Serve Spaceman
Sounds like a video you could make.
This is a great Arthursday idea!
@@dickyboi4956 lol
I've been hearing "ORC-OR" for about six months now as you've been talking up the Nebula version since winter, and I'm hugely disappointed to see absolutely no green people, no tusks, barely anything painted red at all. This is going to come up at the next meeting, I assure you.
Ikr, nary a pig snout was mentioned.
I love sci-fi sunday. Thanks for years and years of edutainment Isaac!
Our pleasure!
Hi @@isaacarthurSFIA!
GREAT channel!!!
Just like science can't explain non-living from living matter, science can't explain free will and self-aware consciousness in the human mind.
A scientific investigation wouldn't be possible without "free will". Without "free will", our minds ("brains") wouldn't know how to separate true information or usable data from influenced information or false data. The results from all scientific investigations would be corrupted. Although computers can be programmed to separate data, a computer can only process data by following a human programmer's instructions. For example, a computer can't decide on it's own to choose another way to separate data, it wasn't programmed to recognize as true information or usable data, and influence information or false data. Human beings can have unlimited creativity, like a professional master artist painting on a blank canvas (computers are limited by it's program and circuits), because of our unlimited imaginations.
A human mind is more than chemical reactions reacting to the environment, or a product of the physical universe (God created us). We all have a mind ("self-aware consciousness") that is uniquely ours (including genetically identical twins). A human mind probably exist at the quantum energy level (quantum vacuum energy state of matter) that supersedes classical physics (the ordering of cause and effect of the observable physical universe). This superseding property is necessary to have free will. It allows human beings (with God's help) to overcome their emotions, biases, other preconceived ideas, and instantaneous temptations.
Time is also needed to evaluate all possible choices accurately and completely, before a decision is made. Dr. Ruth Kastner PhD.; philosopher at physics department at New York State University (who believes "free will" is real and obeys the laws of quantum physics.
The uncertain nature of people is not explained by randomness. Quantum phyics is not random. The positions of the subatomic particles only appear to be random, because exact measurements aren't possible (only probability measurements) with modern-day instruments.
The Quantum Eraser experiment shows that quantum entangled particles, like a photon, can influence each other instantaneously across great distances in a timeless and spaceless quantum vacuum energy state of matter- "Is what really defines reality in this space-time" -PBS Space Time.
The decision to watch this episode was already made. Now I'm exploring why that decision was made.
I like to imagine that if free will doesn't exist that means the entire universe past, present and future is like a giant motionless work of art with no other variations to spoil the originality.
@@archysimpson2273 from God's eternal perspective, all of time and space can be considered a single 4D image. Think of your 3D environment as a "frame." Now every planck second is a new image. But all those images exist simultaneously and can be viewed simultaneously by an infinite eternal mind. This is the Calvinist teaching of God's "eternal now"
@@cosmictreason2242 That might handle the omniscience and the omnipresence aspects, but the idea of God breaks down when it comes to omnipotence. There's an endless stream of excuses and rules God supposedly follows, to explain how the world is a mess and prayers not getting answered. There is no "can't" regarding an omnipotent being, just humans looking to convince someone of something that very much falls into "too good to be true".
@@cosmictreason2242 I find the concept of higher reality life fascinating but I wouldn't believe all that just to reinforce something as small as religious beliefs.
You just described the Block Universe, as it's known in physics. That's actually kinda implied by the light speed limit. Your past is always viewable by some distant observer, just as we see into the past when we peer through our telescopes. And your future is too, from the opposite perspective. You can't see it, but someone else always can - indeed that's all they'll see, not your present.
@@archysimpson2273 the way you phrased that made it seem s as if you think that the single instantaneous timeline concept a) stands on its own without God b) is extraneous and as hoc to attempt to reconcile sovereignty with the flow of time. It's not. It derives naturally and directly from the Biblical teaching on God's nature. It's simply more explicitly concise. Like how you won't get all of a MLB player's career stats from a letter he wrote to his wife. What is of more interest to different people gets collated over time. That doesn't make it arbitrary or desperate.
NGL issac, if I could I would not hesitate to get a lifetime sub. I'm completely certain it would be worth the value after my free trial. Even if you never released another video it would be worth it.
Alas, I'm pretty much as poor as it's possible to be. Totally reliant on charity and the state. These videos keep me going, as its hard and hot out here on the streets. Maybe one day I'll be able. Til then, I like and share, then rewatch and rewatch and rewatch...
I chose to squeal out loud when I saw a new upload this morning.
Thanks Isaac. I have no humorous or snarky comments to make, just heartfelt gratitude.
Free Will is always an interesting topic.
Im not so sure that "free will" isn't just an ego story that we tell ourselves to feel special.
I always find cellular automata 'Rule 30' to be an interesting study in why determinism doesn't require us to descend into Nihilism. Go take a look at rules 1 to 29 - they look no different to rule 30. That is until you iterate them, then you see amazing arbitrary complexity only on rule 30 and just simple, periodic, symmetrical or self similar patterns on almost all the others. Last I heard, and this was like 6 years back they've iterated rule 30 over a billion steps and it has never repeated. So if such exquisite complexity can pop out of nowhere in just about the simplest system we can describe, how wonderfully novel can the whole universe (however deterministic) truly be?! I think our name for that 'ultra-novel' deeply unpredictable role we inhabit is 'free will', and even if that's an error it doesn't make the ride any less beautiful for me to be on... Thanks Issac and Team - Always a pleasure, the quality and general standard of this channel just keeps improving (somehow), it's really better than ever right now. Just great work.
Well, we can't descend into nihilism by choice if everything is pre-determined.
We all live inside Rule 30.
You might be interested in checking out Wolfram Physics which has some interesting implications for consciousness as a computationally irreducible emergent process and the notion that finite computation affects our perception of reality as macroscopic "observers".
SFIA is so good I have no choice but to listen with drink and a snack in hand.
I also started with several drinks and snack. Then continued with my first dinner (in good Hobbit fashion). 😅
I am having a salted caramel ice cream sandwich and a chocolate milk. Determinism is delicious!
Nothing like a little existential dread to fill out a lazy weekend... I choose to enjoy these videos so keep em coming my man!
I already made the choice to stick around. Now I i just need to understand why.
My personal feelings on free will are that each and every decision we make was a stepping stone in getting us to do whatever we were meant to do. For instance, me having a day in which I was incredibly depressed led me to self sooth, in doing so I watched some animations as comfort food, one of those animations inspired me, and in turn caused me to work on projects I had long left to rot.
For me it is a kind of causality. That all things work with eachother and are deterministic. That if you were a being entirely divorced from rigid linear time that you could see a persons entire life cut into a series of fragments that each compound on eachother to eventually add up to what they become in the end.
Kind of the logic of "you were always going to have to go through this hardship to be in the right mindset for what comes next". In this way of looking at things the idea that we have free will doesn't effect anything, in fact it works quite a bit better. This idea as well for me comes from the fact that we are creatures entirely controlled by chemicals, chemicals in our brain tell us we need to eat and thus we consider ourselves hungry, chemicals in our brain make us horny and thus we seek out copulation. Each and everything we do is controlled by chemicals, thus it stands to reason that our thoughts too are controlled by chemical combinations. That for instance a bout of depression will in turn leave prime real estate for creativity and passion, that too much joy will in turn leave prime real estate for sorrow and ennui.
As well for me there is a liberating aspect to this idea of a lack of true free will. I can trust that each and everything that happens to me has a purpose, that there was logic to it, and not the opposite that the world is a cruel, random, uncaring place. In a way this idea has religious intonations, as those of abrahamic faith consider everything to be out of their hands to a large degree.
In that regard in terms of spiritualism I am much more in the camp of feeling as though there is this collective unconscious. That all things are for the furthering of ourselves. That for instance my role to play may be as simple as inspiring a person who goes on to inspire another, so on and so on down the line until eventually culminating in some larger change that must occur in the timeline of our species.
Free will as a concept is incoherent. Not that it "doesn't exist", it's a contradiction of terms. Your decisions can either be causally unrelated to reality (unpredictable, "free") or causally related to reality (meaningful, "willful") but they can't be both simultaneously. It's founded on a false notion of self as something existing outside the universe. It's better to identify with the decision-making process itself; that way, it doesn't matter if it's "deterministic" or not because they're still *your* decisions.
Completely agree never understood "freewill" for something to be "free" it would have to exist in some sort of vacuum... How can anything be "free" in this universe when everything else is exacting forces onto it?
An absolutely inchoherant notion. Determinism vs free will is a red herring. Free will isnt even a self consistent idea. Glad im not the only one who sees it.
An important question in this discussion is: Does consciousness affect mental processes?
To put it another way: Would being a philosophical zombie affect behaviour?
Lets make a thought experiment: We have two exact copies of the same person. One is truly conscious, one is a philosophical zombie. In an experimental setting we put them through a lot functionally identical situations. Everything from solving logic puzzles to social situations. Would they in any way act differently?
In other words, is consciousness merely a silent observer of the mental processes (and the outside world through the medium of said mental processes), or can it affect said mental processes?
The mechanistic model sort of assumes the former. I mean, it really does not take consciousness into account at all. But let's be real. I know for a fact I am conscious. I can intellectually disregard that fact for some though experiment, but in reality, it's the thing I know before even "I think therefore I am." (Technically, I *don't* know I am not the only one, but for the purposes of this discussion I'm going to assume I am not.)
@@mattisvov in fact, if consciousness is a silent observer then it's not material because of Newton's second law, so that idea stands tautologically refuted. Either we should be fleshsuits with no awareness, no different than video game NPCs, or we do have awareness and thus the ability to interact with the physical
@@cosmictreason2242 You could have consciousness just be a by-product of the brain working. Then, in the above thought experiment, trying to have an exact copy of a person minus the consciousness to do tests against the conscious one would just result in an brain dead individual, where the differences in behaviour would be obvious. But that wouldn't necessarily mean consciousness was needed and will free exists, it could just be that the brain functions, that amongst doing other things, cause consciousness, are needed. I am not saying this is the case, just that it isn't only 2 options, having no awareness or having the ability to interact with the physical.
You can't know that anyone else is conscious, so this experiment is impossible in practice. At least for now.
Most likely consciousness in an emergent property of the brain's operation, so not really a separate thing.
@@D_Cragoon it doesn't make sense that my perception of continuation of existence in association with this body is a by product of material phenomena. That would be the biggest cruel joke conceivable.
@@cosmictreason2242 Eh, it wouldn't be that bad. We would still get to experience everything we experience, including the perception of having (even if we don't) free will, which, even if we strongly prove is false, we would never know absolutely for sure, so could always hold out hope. At the very least, I can certainly think of worse stuff.
The way I've always looked at the philosophical debate was that even if free will existed I could convince myself that everything was predetermined, and if everything was predetermined I could still be compelled by my programming to assume free will was the norm. Since the only situation where my actions have real and conscious meaning would be if I had free will, I therefore choose to believe that I have free will. If everything is predetermined then it doesn't really matter what I pretend to think, so believing that I have free will is the optimum outcome either way.
I find it to be quite the opposite. Only admitting that free will dosn't exist truly lets you begin to understand yourself and others. Imaginining it does only puts bad information into the system and blinds you to truths that can help you, paradoxicaly, change and grow.
I love the microtubules idea. Gives me wonder about where "I" am in my body, probably everywhere, if all of my cells are where consciousness comes from. Assuming the sense of identity comes from consciousness, which it might not.
I wonder what "Ork OR" would be like? As in the Warhammer 40k universe! EDIT: Here's my stab at the start of that. If quantum-random events do percolate up into the macroscopic events of my decision making, what's to keep me from defining those events as a part of me? Seriously, how is that any different from a random number generator in a Monte Carlo tree search? It has even been proposed that such stochastic algorithms could be used with Large Language Models in an agent framework to get us towards AGI. This strategy has even been used to enable AIs to come up with novel solution proofs to math olympiad questions. I suspect an Ork would rather like the chaotic notion of random events being defined as "me."
I feel like Ork OR would probably hinge on the randomness of the warp giving an ork a choice as to whether or not drub some gretchin.
What's the difference between a quantum event in your brain and one outside of it if they both affect your decision-making? Why should the location of such an event, if such terminology even truly applies, determine what is and isn't "you"? Nonetheless, if any part of you that isn't your conscious mind is determining your choices, I'd say it's not much of an argument to begin with.
A simply superb episode on a complex topic.
I choose to believe my expectations were surpassed yet again.
There is also third option in addition to compatibilism and incompatibilism, which is that while our consciousness may not be able to choose freely between options that are available for us, nature of our consciousness still may be cause of options which are available for us in the first place. Meaning that free will can be both compatible and incompatible with determinism and/or indeterminism, and depends on which one of perspectives we choose to look at the matter and definition of the free will.
@@JaniLassila your first sentence is the Biblical teaching. You can do what it is in your nature to do because your will derives from your nature. But your nature is constrained
Struggled with the concept as a child. When I decided that free will wasn't real, I started to take more control of my life. Instead of waiting for my brain to make the choice to improve my surroundings, I questioned want I actually wanted and thought about what it would take convince myself to do otherwise.
I absolutely loved this video and topic. Not that all your videos aren’t amazing, but this one perfectly blended multiple disciplines and theories so succinctly and can be understood by the layman. Thank you for putting this together and your speech was good going back to your first video and I can tell that you’ve worked hard at improving it.
Also, thank you (and your family as the entire family serves) for your service and sacrifices for us all - from an appreciative and grateful citizen.
Watching your range of topics and speech grow has been inspiring to see. Thank you for sharing your gifts and life journey with all of us 🙏.
Of course I watched it all. Excellent as always. These days Issac’s like: “Hold my beer while I re-record this episode and recover from surgery at the same time.”😎
"If I'm wrong, it's not my fault." I'm so glad I got to hear that from you. This is such a great channel.
This is such a great topic! Dark energy appears to make up the majority of the universe but we don’t know what it is so almost anything could potentially fill the gap.
I believe in determinism, we have agency to make choices but they are not free of outside influence so our will is not free. Any instance is a “freeze frame” holding time outside of consideration but in the real world time eventually forces all decisions by imposing its influence so no decision is free from outside influence.
Thanks Isaac. I love this topic. ❤
في المستقبل البعيد وبفضل التكنولوجيا المتقدمة سوف يتساوى الخيال مع الواقع ويمتلك الإنسان قوى الآلهة ليحول الكون والأكوان المتعددة إلى جنة خالدة ❤
On the one hand, people argue that a deterministic universe is not compatible with the concept of free will
On the other hand, if everything is the result of randomness (by definition, so,etching that is non-deterministic is random) then it’s also not compatible with the concept of free will, because if all your decisions are the result of a metaphysical dice roll, then _you_ are not the one in control
The problem with the debate of free will is that neither side is able to adequately define the term, many will confidently tell you what free will isn’t, but can rarely tell you what it _is_ in a manner that is logically consistent
Thank you, your work is so close to absolute, which is probably impossible to achieve. Awesome
A very, very trenchant show. Thank you for sharing it here.
This was a good one
I would like to thank you, Isaac and the whole SFIA team for making your Nebula content available on YT a year after its' release. I'm poor. This piece is making me think about going back to some content I had planned on making about AI, determinism and an individual pastor's overextension of Goidel's Incompleteness Theorem. I don't have the money for subscriptions. Or better Internet services or even much in the way of entertainment. I might revisit that script in the context of a larger work. I will snip the quote I need since you made my point relatively well.
Thank you for your work.
Thanks for listening
You should go on Alex O'Connors podcast
I started to play this then stopped and then double crossed myself and started again.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose freewill
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice
Rush
Freewill
Great Episode! Quite enjoyed your take on the matter
Personally, I think the crux of the argument is in the _clear_ definition of Free Will and Choosing - or the lack thereof. When that is clearly defined, the question vanishes.
Ah, you have delighted me this Sunday. I know that I had no hand in choosing this subject, but I’m grateful to the quantum realm and Isaac anyway.
Excellent thank you for making this one, I roughly knew the basics but I needed this explainer to help me go over it. Now I await part ii because I’m very curious what determines something is sufficiently aware enough to count as an observer for quantum.
An observer is just whatever is used to detect the quantum phenomenon. An observer can be a camera or eyes or an electron microscope, it doesn't matter so long as it accurately observes what happened.
So many things exist that should, but are not, taught to me in public schools.
Fun! I've loved these topics since I was a kid in some way but especially since playing the video game Prey (2017) a few years ago. It references Penrose and Hameroff's theory both directly and indirectly. 🖤💜🌌 ~
instant like for the topic!
I know you keep talking about the speech impediment getting better but I love it. I think of it more of a rare accent.
I dont even notice it most of the time
>ancient
>dormant
>civilizations
The Necron are getting an episode.
Dang it, i have no choice but to stick around for the rest of the episode. You win this time!
Free will is one of that topics that the ultimate argument is: there is point to discuss it only if it exist.
Free will seems like a silly idea of little value to me. Their is no point to anything exept the value we place on it. If free will dosn't exist, as it obviously doesn't, then their is always value in admitting the truth.
I tend to lean in the direction of probabilistic determinism combined with sensitivity to initial conditions leading to a situation in which things are predetermined while utterly unknowable.
I think of free will, similar to how light speed has its limitations.
For example, black hole event horizons could potentially break some laws of thermodynamics, but since observers on the inside can never interact with observers on the outside, everything is still okay.
As for free will, even if the motion of every single particle influencing a person's every action could be calculated, as long as the "calculator" and the "actor" do not interact, free will is preserved.
However, this introduces a few other theorems, like: if you could predict the behavior of something and influence its outcome, this becomes a form of time travel; or if nobody predicts the motion of something, then that action was performed with free will, even by a non-sentient object, like a rock; although, knowing the outcome and "choosing" not to interfere becomes a gray area...
I know this is a wild theory with plenty of paradoxes, but I still like it.
The Question is not do we have free will but is our will free?
It's like if someone asked you to not want what you want. Could you do that? No and it's a strange question when you think about it. You just want what you want and will what you will.
Philosophy more than Science
@@universome511 Christian teaching is that your will is free to do whatever it is in your nature to do, and your nature is what is limited. You can't fly, or know what's going on in the Andromeda galaxy right this minute, etc
@@cosmictreason2242 That's wrong
@@cosmictreason2242 your nature is your will and your will is your nature (Gene's) expressed in an environment
@@universome511 what part
@@cosmictreason2242 I think my second comment was removed by RUclips
It was my will alone that made me go grab a snack right after the traditional grab a snack and a drink remark😂
Thanks Issac, very interesting video have a great Week thanks again. PEACE AND LOVE TO EVERYONE ❤❤.
I honestly don’t get why people equate the belief in the lack of free will with having no ambition.
I‘m a pretty hard determinist, and I simply believe that I have no choice but to strive for success, or a ”good“ life. I cannot help but follow my moral compass and try to make the people around me happier.
Don’t know why that is so hard for people to grasp. Do they believe they‘re inherently lazy, unmotivated ”evil“ people, and that they constantly have to struggle against that fundamental fact by making free choices?
Believing in free will sounds exhausting tbh…
Once again....
Thank you....
Cya
👽 ❤
20:53
That chart looks a lot like the Pascal's Wager chart, and has the same problem: You can't just choose what to believe.
I use your podcasts to sleep prep with, now there's ads I cannot I am saddened by this fiscal effort and wish you well Isaac 😢
As a complete side note: can anyone point to the exit in that head-maze? How long before that lonely soul recognises that they've seen all the walls and there's no way out?
Free will is nonsense. Focus on what is real. Know that people are irrational automotons likely to do whatever has previously led to their genes being passed on. Use the power this knowledge gives to make life better for you an others. You cant really understand yourself till you understand this.
My two cents:
On the one hand for all practical purposes we do have free will. It feels like I have free will, and I intend to hold myself and other responsible for their actions.
On the other hand even if quantum mechanics really is random (and it really could be) if our brains are using quantum inputs to make decisions then we aren't really using free will to make decisions. As far as I'm concerned true free will as most people define the term doesn't exist and that is perfectly fine.
the penrose conjecture is that a gravitation causes a probablity wave collapse. So a graviton is the observer..
Microtubules can flouresce and that has been shown to be entangled at blood temperature recently.
Forward this video to a Deepak Chopra fan you love.
I don't think that's possible for me 😅
New upload! I can't wait to learn more about our univose and how it wokes.
I believe free will to be a spectrum based on a combination of our willpower and level of self awareness. For example in a lucid dream you're experiencing the ultimate version of free will, only limited by self imposed limitations (usually subconscious). Quitting an addiction would also count under this.
I think the study on free will forgot to account for the fact we live most of our lives on autopilot. We may or may not see different results given people who practice metacognition and self awareness.
But whether we have free will or not chaos theory will always have an effect on us
Fundamentally I think the idea of "willpower" you have is a confused consequence of the mistaken belief in a unified self.
The notion of willpower as a resource like a mana bar is patently absurd from an evolutionary standpoint. Whereas this problem disappears if you realize your thinking is the result of different competing processes. Research on split brain patients also provides some very useful observations on this subject.
You can also just directly check the fact you don't have free will. If you pay enough attention to your own thinking you'll find no component of it is particularly free: I think everyone here unfortunately missed the most important point: Which is that you can literally just directly observe your own thinking and see that you don't have free will.
The so called "illusion of free will" crumbles under careful examination, and it's relatively easy to check this yourself: m.ruclips.net/video/pCofmZlC72g/видео.html
A person quits an addiction because their desire to be free of something is greater than their desire to continue to experience it, plain and simple. It's entirely a matter of preference. This can also be seen in highly emotional people tending to work harder to achieve their goals than those who tend toward apathy. "Willpower" is a completely fictitious concept, and nobody is on a higher level of thought simply because they are willing to make certain sacrifices for the sake of gaining something they strongly desire.
IMO a better definition of free will is: the ability to act in a way that is consistent with your sense of self, or in other words, the ability to act like as if you were in your shoes. The way people usually talk about it like it's some magical thing coming from external influences (soul or whatever), or emergent from quantum randomness or some other nonsense like that, sounds like anything but free; if you're being compelled to do something random, or there is some spirit voodooing the meat, then how can you call that free? This way, it's orthogonal to determinism (unless you're such a predictable person that anything outside of your clockwork behavior would be physically impossible).
When you are presented with a choice and resolve that choice with a quantum random number generator, is the result of that choice deterministic? Did you chose to use a quant random number generator or had every event since the Big Bang forced you to do it? Is the choice to forfeit your power in a decision to truly random events empowering or does it truly make you a victim of chance? Is this a comment solely for the sake of the RUclips algorithm? Who knows
@@yeager1957 can only be answered with information from outside the simulation, ie God
Thanks for a great episode Isack. My quantum state asked me to leave a comment!😅
By chance I freely choose to believe that I choose freely to believe by chance.
This episode reminds me of why I suggested that you attempt to make a video on Christianity
The Bible itself says that both concepts are true:
Everyone has free will and Everything happens according to His will
Schrodinger's pet carrier got it wrong. It's not that the box may or may not contain a dead cat. It contains a cat that is both alive and dead.
Thanks for covering one of my favorite topics. However, what I was hoping for and what I would love to see is a more rigorous "full episode" treatment of explaining Orch OR (not necessarily in regards to free will, but the physics (biology?) of the mechanism itself.)
While Roger Penrose is one of my favorite living scientists, like many others, I was initially skeptical of his Orch OR concept (especially prior to Stuart Hameroff's contribution positing a plausible biological mechanism for a "quantum" process creating consciousness (i.e. microtubules.)) However, just a couple weeks ago (Summer 2024) I read a new paper claiming experimental evidence that even a "messy wet brain" can in fact maintain state of superposition (such as an entangled pair of electrons.) While no one is claiming any specific mechanisms yet, presumably everything in the brain is not doomed to immediate decoherence.
(Lol sorry as you can see I'm a little hazy on the details, that's exactly why I would love to learn more about this, and I think you would make an excellent teacher on this subject.)
Lol sorry (once again!) I obviously wrote that forgetting about the extra material at the end. In a way you responded to my request faster than a Delayed Choice Experiment! 😜
Still I would like to learn more. I'm less interested in the illusionary nature of free will than with finding out what physical/biological mechanism causes consciousness. I may be wrong but it seems that most scientists/engineers seem to think that once computational processing power reaches a certain threshold of complexity that it will somehow become conscious. But back to Penrose, he points out that most of the complex processes going on in the brain are unconscious (e.g. heartbeats, metabolism, digestion...even the psychological unconscious self (literally 😉.))
Finally, I'm a software engineer, and I am convinced that current computers are definitely NOT conscious. I don't care how many Turing tests a modern AI on a massive parallel server passes, I'm convinced that none of that is actual consciousness. (I forget who recently said "no matter how perfect your 4K video is you'll never get wet from watching a rainstorm.")
Thus if it is not is not, I would love to learn what does produce consciousness. Is Orch OR on the right path? If consciousness is quantum does that imply that it *can* be generated by a quantum computer? I cannot say without learning more...
Lol sorry I'm talking too much. Thanks to anyone who's read this far!
Randomness doesn't preclude fate. It only requires ignorance of the result. I can randomly select a series of numbers prior to a game, and play them in order. To the player, they are random, but to me, they are orderly and pre-determined. Programmers do this when creating a lookup table is more desirable than using PRNG. The players don't know the difference, but the programmers do.
So playing a lot of games results in increased decision making opportunities. Most play games to reduce stress, not increase it. Science is always in the learning stage while simultaneously having to act on it. We need more senses to understand the universe but rely on constructs of those five sense to attempt this for us. Still, we make discoveries to keep us busy chasing truth.
Everything was written in accordance to what choises we will make, id say
Agency/free will is the result of knowing and understanding the rules of cause and effect. If you can make an accurate prediction about what will happen and then and choose to take or not take an action based on those predictions, you have free will.
If you do not not consider or make predictions, you do not have free will.
Can't help but equate this content to videogames. Elder Scrolls games for example, from the Devs pov, the whole game is preset with every item, quest, and location. However as a player we experience a kind of 'playground effect' where we have free will choices based on how we feel. What I find interesting is the players choice doesnt "matter" to the game. Meaning you can literally stand there in the samenplace for thousands of hours with little to nothing happening, even though a whole adventure is playIng out in the background.
With that concept in mind our choice is both involved but also not generated by the game. The point of choices to be significant is we actually have to choose something, to me there is still this mysterious grey area: the motive into action effect.
Just thoughts from a fellow observer. Thank you for the great content, its quite interesting👍
@@mandogundam5779 close ✝️
Freedom within a bounded space is still free will of a sort, imo. Let's say for the sake of argument, the player is truly free and chooses to play Skyrim, plays the main quest to completion, as well as the civil war and some subset of the available side quests. The game being finite shouldn't violate the player's free will. The player made the choice to install it, experience some things and not others, and uninstall it maybe at some point. Even if the player actually played every possible permutation of the game down to using every possible output of the character creator, crafting every possible piece of gear with every possible name, completing every available quest in every conceivable sequence, etc. there was still the yes/no choice at the beginning to play at all.
The free will debate deals with whether or not we have any amount of choice at all, not whether we have every choice all the time; what some would call God. The existence of a bounded space with rules like a videogame doesn't eliminate all choice, I would think.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx yep only God has few will to do What he wants without external constraints. And even he is internally constrained. He can't deny himself, will to not exist, be evil, or renege on his promises
I feel strangely comforted by the deterministic universe forcing me to spend the time listening to Isaac instead of the donald.
Would the “theory of everything” potentially bridging the gap between the quantum and classical physics give us any insight into deterministic/free will issue?
Best part? If the universe is deterministic, then it is pre-ordained that we learn free will is a myth and us having an existential crisis about it is also a canonical event.
I'm choosing to get a snack and a drink 😊🎉
Alright I’m going to listen to this one twice.
ORCH-OR is one of my favorite things
To me free will is a debate over cause and effect. Did YOU cause something to happen, or did the exact arrangement of matter in your skull and the laws of physics cause it to happen? Did a flawed structural member in a building cause it to collapse, or did a defect in the machine that built that member cause the collapse? To me, the answer to both questions is ... yes. Both possible options are right. You can take the reductionist view and say free will doesn't exist, or the holistic view and say it does. Both views are valid.
John Stuart Mill on his on free will after half a pint of brandy was particularly ill.
could you please do videos about The Future of Food, The Future of Cuisine, and especially The Future of Medical Technology?
Orbital farms i think is one. Power satellite is another. Both address food, as does arcologies
We still need an episode about free fall cuisine; how freefall effects taste, how cooking works in microgravity, what foods are easier to produce, utensils, customs and even architecture
@@vincentcleaver1925i have been reliably informed that the only things that ever experienced free fall were the twin towers 🙄🙄🙄🙄🥱
As @@cosmictreason2242have already said, future of food and cuisine is a partial the of several earlier episodes. Even alien beer.
Medical technology is very vague and have been examined in even more episodes from cloning to biological resurrection and biological uplifting, life extension and future humans and so many many others.
Schrodinger Cat is broadly misunderstand. What quantum physic actually mean is that testing direction/etc. of particle we actually change they status, so future tests are pointless. It is why they need operate with statistical assumption to what they direction/etc. is, only testing it when model was already formed. To confirm or debunk it. It is why cat is both alive and dead. Until it isn't. It is not that butterfly actually cause storms. Same, in quantum entanglement we only know that atom A has opposite spin to atom B. What allow us to learn its status on infinite range. No actual communication is possible.
i praise you all all you in the no where here and between places spaces and days
Erwin said it’s *my* turn to decide the electron’s soon.
Great episode as aways.
Penroses ideas adds very little to the debate, even in principle. If instead of pre-determined by past events (near or in a long causal chain) your decisions are a product of a random fluc of a wave fuction or wharever, it sounds like less freedom, not more. Two-face are not freer than Batman.
One could say those quantum effects in the brain are somehow (?) caused by the person's wiil, but it just kicks the ball a little further: how do I choose to have that will? Is this caused by something or is it random? Even if I claim I have an immortal soul that makes free decisions or nudges quantum effects according to its inclinations... well, I didn't pick that specific soul either... and if I picked, based on what?
It's a fair point that a lot of modern science-based discussion of the topic is re-treads of old discussions, but not all, I would say that at the very least the spacetime blister concept is Penrose's and new to the conversation.
@@isaacarthurSFIA it's a Penrose's contribution and it's neat. Maybe even true mechanics of the process. But it still remains that either something comes from past events or from randomness... neither helps free will. BTW: wow! Thx for the answer!!!! I'm a super fan!
You honor, my client is not guilty by virtue of lack of free will, and the act he is accused of was mathematically only 50% committed until he was observed by the alleged victims. Therefore I assert that it is the victim who is at fault as they were not a victim at the time of the act until the victim observed it. We seek the court to decide both 50/50 guilty/not guilty and seal the decision so that no one may take observance and erroneously determine the outcome.
If free will doesn't exist, we should make something that simulates free will, indistinguishable from what it would actually be like.
Actual randomness does not equal perceived randomness due to inability to predict an outcome
Objective inability to predict an outcome does not equal our current inability to predict an outcome due to limited knowledge/senses/science
Neither randomness nor unpredictability equals the ability to have done otherwise on purpose
The only way Free Will (as I understand it) exists, is for there to be some conscious force which acts on the physical universe without, in turn, being acted upon by the physical universe.
That's it.
My hope is that our minds and consciousness are communicating with a higher dimension that allows us to work outside of causality and, potentially, survive our physical death.
But I doubt it.
I see no reason to doubt that free will would seem to exist even in a digitized simulation of a human mind. Unless we discover that human minds can do things not possible with highly parallelized computers, like factor a product of two very large prime numbers faster than otherwise would be possible.
One should bear in mind that Orch-OR works on a pretty low functional level of brain. The more detailed theoretical descriptions contain the picture of HF/VHF/UHF signal generation and recognition in microtubules so each Orch-OR "collapse" is one of many happening in each microtubule where either incoming signal pattern was recognized or outcome response was generated. This at least points at predetermined "memorized patterns" somehow responsible for recognition of "signal image" and response generation. So "pure free will" looks not quite well justified - any decision is based on some "known" patterns. Note, the non-computable and non-deterministic are not equal subjects, non-computable means only it cannot be predicted in terms of algorithmic computation while it can remain totally deterministic.
@IsaacArthur, as a widower, let me just say, knowing I am just an automaton is of no comfort to me. Suffering from life-long depression, I feel as if I am real. Knowing I am not really "real," in the sense that I have never in my life really done anything I could not avoid is the opposite of helpful, Psychologically. To function, we need the pretense. However, knowing those around us are also grounded in reality, unable to do other than what the vagaries of Physics allow, could help salve the wounds caused by psychological abuse. If we can reason they couldn't help it, due to pain, addiction, insanity, etc., it helps. But then, what of their love for us? That is also as unreal, as caused by circumstance.
The Meaning of Life comes from what we make of it. If we make nothing, then it has no meaning. Why is that depressing, rather than feeling freeing? I could go rob, murder, etc., knowing nothing matters, yet I choose not to, because those choices are not in me. That doesn't make me a saint. It just means my deterministic brain didn't go through whatever it would have needed to do for me to end up there (yet). My moral choices are just how my mind reacted to data sets, pushing me ever towards Ahimsa, Veganism, and ecological sustainability. Other people don't react to the data as I did. Why not? The confusion caused by innumerable wave-forms NOT collapsing into single thought patterns among people causes all violence among us. Absolute non-violence, to the degree we could do it, would benefit All Nature. But as it is all pre-determined, apparently, Nature does not care if it becomes a Utopia, a Dystopia, or whatever it is we have now. Nothing matters, because nothing matters. How do we create meaning from a meaningless Universe? Please, tell me, Isaac (or anyone else able to be kindly thoughtful).
@@injunsun you can't give your own life meaning unless you already possessed meaning to give to it. You can only get it from something external
Just a PSA, Nebula rejected Forgotten Weapons, but it has at least two creators who covered international politics while working with the DHS. It may be "creator-owned" but it clearly has biases and objectives beyond simply supporting quality work.
Friendly reminder that the cat and the detector are observers. None of that statistical stuff scales up - everything at the level of an atom-as-a-small-ball and bigger is entirely deterministic.
There is a narrative which leads to every possible point in Hemn space.