Kevin Mitchell on the Absurdity of Denying Free Will
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- Опубликовано: 29 июн 2024
- Kevin Mitchell, a distinguished graduate of Trinity College Dublin, is an Associate Professor in Genetics and Neuroscience. With a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, he has made significant contributions to understanding the genetic program shaping the brain's wiring.
Mitchell's research focuses on genes influencing neuronal connectivity and their implications for psychiatric and neurological diseases. His groundbreaking work extends to his 2023 book, "Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will," exploring, among many other important things, the role of free will in overcoming existential threats like climate change and nuclear weapons.
As a leading scholar in neurodevelopmental disorders, Mitchell's 2018 book, "Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are," solidifies his position in integrating behavioral genetics, developmental neurobiology, neuroscience, and psychology. Active on Twitter (@WiringtheBrain) and through his blog, he engages the public to promote understanding of genetics and neuroscience.
Kevin Mitchell's multifaceted contributions extend beyond academia, making him a thought leader on the complexities of the human mind.
Professor Mitchell's website: www.kjmitchell.com
Blog: www.wiringthebrain.com/
Time Stamp:
00:00 -- Introductory sequence
01:17 -- Why "Free Agents" is timely and unique
04:19 -- The connection of Free Agents to collective decisions
08:10 -- Mitchell's attempts to re-legitimize purpose
14:05 -- The physics and math of biology and democracy
19:10 -- Mitchell's thoughts about interpretation
21:14 -- BF Skinner and the decline of behaviorism
27:44 -- The fatalism and nihilism of denying free will
28:25 -- The pragmatism of living organisms
32:05 -- The human capacity to think across time horizons
35:20 -- Aharanov's two-state approach and free will
39:00 -- Constraints as causes and top-down causality
44:08 -- Earl Miller and cytoelectric coupling
45:50 -- The role of attraction and repulsion in Mitchell's work
53:40 -- Electromagnetism and the inverse square law
54:30 -- The mathematics of informational causation
56:25 -- Is the principal of least action relevant to Mitchell's work?
59:10 -- Least action and Karl Friston's free energy
62:02 -- What's next for Kevin Mitchell and the book?
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Time Stamp:
00:00 -- Introductory sequence
01:17 -- Why "Free Agents" is timely and unique
04:19 -- The connection of Free Agents to collective decisions
08:10 -- Mitchell's attempts to re-legitimize purpose
14:05 -- The physics and math of biology and democracy
19:10 -- Mitchell's thoughts about interpretation
21:14 -- BF Skinner and the decline of behaviorism
27:44 -- The fatalism and nihilism of denying free will
28:25 -- The pragmatism of living organisms
32:05 -- The human capacity to think across time horizons
35:20 -- Aharanov's two-state approach and free will
39:00 -- Constraints as causes and top-down causality
44:08 -- Earl Miller and cytoelectric coupling
45:50 -- The role of attraction and repulsion in Mitchell's work
53:40 -- Electromagnetism and the inverse square law
54:30 -- The mathematics of informational causation
56:25 -- Is the principal of least action relevant to Mitchell's work?
59:10 -- Least action and Karl Friston's free energy
62:02 -- What's next for Kevin Mitchell and the book?
Brilliant, thanks 👍🙏
Thanks for your feedback.
On the part about the mathematics of informational causation, you say that no energy is transferred, but information is.
All information is transferred by physical forces through the exchange of force carrying particles (big possible exception is gravity). For almost all phenomena we speak of in biology, this will primarily be electromagnetic forces so the exchange of photons. The change or exchange of entropy between systems is mediated by the exchange of particles. Even if the entropy changes between two systems without the exchange of particles, such as in the chase of entangled systems, this change of entropy still occurs due to environment interacting with one of the systems through a "measurement".
I think you may be interested in the field of Information theory.
There are many of means to carry and store information; however, this only proves that the information is independent of the medium that transmits or duplicates it. Electromagnetic waves transmits information without mass and minimal energy. Biological transfer of information could be entirely chemical (e.g. DNA) or as a pattern of neuronal depolarizations in our brains.
@@robertcarr6040 And I would posit that this view is indistinguishable from our understanding of energy: all the various was of storing information are all the various ways one can configure energy which is independent of it's medium, be it mass, the use of various fundamental forces or other physical configurations.
Chemical energy is still energy, stored in all the various bonds, and polarization and depolarization requires, stores and releases energy.
Are you sure you understood Maldacena correctly regarding the principle of least action? Action can be related proportionally to the integral of proper time (the time experienced by the object in question moving/accelerating). Minimizing the action minimizes this proper time. The line I'v heard is thag it is "the principle of maximal aging" i.e. the *-shortest-* time
Edit: see my response below for a correction and explanation
Good question. There appears to be a contradiction in Maldacena's reference to the principle of least action as "the principle of maximal life" because the principle of least action tells us that particles follow trajectories that *minimize* the action. In the context of special relativity, however, these trajectories also happen to be the ones for which the proper time (experienced by an observer following that trajectory) is maximized. Therefore, the minimization of action and the maximization of proper time are, in some sense, two sides of the same coin, and Maldacena apparently prefers to call it the principle of maximal life. It's a matter of interpretation, which many forget is the key to scientific progress.
I would argue that Maldacena's take is much more empirically meaningful, given that maximal life is something that intuitively makes sense to everyday human experience. It makes sense (to me) to think that something as fundamental as the will to live has its ultimate foundation in particle physics. After all, these are the building blocks from which our bodies are made. Thanks again for your input!
@@eismscience Excuse my first response, I was a bit quick on the trigger in the end, it's even more subtle than that:
Take two points A and B.
Alice travels in a straight path from A to B. Bob travels first from point A to point C, then changes direction to point B. They leave point A at the same time and arrive at point B at the same time.
If we measured the clocks on Alice and Bob, we'd find that Alice's clock has ticked a bit longer i.e. she has aged more than Bob has. This is because Bob had to accelerate during his trip, slowing down his clock w.r.t to a stationary observer.
In short, because Alice took the shortest (geodesic) path, she has aged faster because the proper time of her trip is longer.
The subtlety here is therefore that maximizing proper time means you age faster and don't live as long to a stationary observer! Calling it maximal life wouldn't be correct, if anything it's minimal life, or more usually maximal aging!
@@sebastianjovancic9814 Thanks again for your comment. Three points in response: 1) I am not the one who refers to the principle of least action as the principle of maximal life. It is Juan Maldacena, arguably the planet's most respected living theoretical physicists (according to Leonard Susskind). 2) You can, if you will, easily change your perspective and see that Maldacena is likely referring to the same thing you are. Particles moving in such a way that they "age the fastest" is the flip side of saying that particles move in such a way as to experience maximal life. It seems to me that what Maldacena is doing here is reminding people, and especially scientists, that words and interpretation matter in science. Perhaps this is how he discovered the Ads/CFT correspondence, or maybe almost certainly it is how.
As a final point, allow me to revert to my previous assertion that in matters of interpretation, we should naturally prefer that interpretation which maximizes our own experience of proper time, i.e, allows us to avoid extinction (or, in your words, allows us to age faster). Richard Feynman also talks about this and the role on interpretation in physics in his Messenger lectures. We have a video about this on the channel.
Let me know if you want to talk about this on camera. We can post the exchange to the comments here. Thanks again for the great questions.
@@eismscience where did you hear or read Maldacena call it the principle of maximal life? The only reference i find to this phrase on the internet is you claiming he said this? I agree that he's a fantastic physicist, my thesis was inspired by his work!
If I were to think about what would temporally be a "maximal life" it would be the one that has me aging as slowly as possible w.r.t. the external world. Astronaut Scott Kelly who was on the ISS for example aged slower than his twin brother and would, all else equal, live longer than his twin.
Another less human example is: if a pair of identical particles have a known decay time and we repeat the experiment above with Alice and Bob, we can tune the distances and accelerations so that when they arrive at point B, Alice's particle has decayed while Bob's particle has not decayed. The particle that did not take the path of least action, Bobs, has therefore maximized its life, while the particle that took the path of least action, Alices, has maximized its aging. I think this rather clearly demonstrates that calling the principle of least action a principle of maximal life is misleading, there's a reason why it has rather been called the principle of maximal aging!
@@sebastianjovancic9814 Maldacena talks about the principle of maximal life in numerous lectures. Here is one example, at minute 4:07: ruclips.net/video/KOC-fAe4xFk/видео.htmlsi=OysKyFlCMtUoUcBD&t=247.
I will come back to the rest of your comment as soon as I can. Thanks again.
People like to point out that measuring the brain suggests that actions are at play before you’re consciously aware of making a decision with your mind and doing something.
The problem is that assumes that the mind works exactly like that. There’s a reason why understanding consciousness is so elusive.
I will say that it is my firm belief that Freewill does exist despite all the people who are desperate for it to not be so.
You wrote: "People like to point out that measuring the brain suggests that actions are at play before you’re consciously aware of making a decision with your mind and doing something."
What people say here is incorrect. What science shows is that parts of the brain show making a decision a very short time before our self aware conscious mind has the qualia of experience of making that decision, but the part of the brain/mind making that decision is still us.
I try to delve into what free will is and how this works within the human mind in the following video.
Free Will and the Human Swarm Mind Post 1 : Musings From The John 00 : 2023-09-18
ruclips.net/video/nUsjnOu9qXQ/видео.htmlsi=R6gZAinIP7r0vKPO
@MusingsFromTheJohn00 Those tests are crazy to me anyway. Have u ever seen the time it takes the muscles to respond for a baseball ⚾️ hitter. A 100 mph fastball is coming and he decides to swing? It does not take seconds for that to happen.
You said it, buddy. Desperate is the word for it. And it's so uncomfortably obvious. And to think, they use their free will, the same free will we all tap as a matter of course to pursue any objective we want to go after, to make their little argument, and carry the day on the YT comments section in the endless online battle of ideas, so they can get whatever they get out of entertaining this palpably absurd idea that we don't have free will, and it doesn't exist and is all an illusion.
The human mind is capable of coming real close to really believing that 2+2=5. But it's impossible to actually go all the way with it, no matter badly you want to treat it as true. Our entire conscious existence's only purpose is to know that 2+2=4, and there's no way to fully override that sort of truly primal understanding and awareness, with fanciful logic and language. It's the same thing with this free will nonsense. You can pretend all you want, and grasp and clutch at various possibly plausible arguments. But all that does is to reveal how desperate these people really are. I guess nothing really is sacred, if even our own precious free will is going to be put through the pseudo-intellectual wringer in the pursuit of online dopamine hits....
Nothing about human behavior suggests that it is disconnected from biological processes. The whole idea is incoherent, or, if you prefer, absurd.
You are free to use your will to become an alcoholic or drug abuser and you are free to use your will to overcome your addictions. Thus, to me, free will means you are free to use your will to achieve what you desire.
Ok but how can you will your will ?
@@MrTylder Consciousness being a love potency naturally makes your will to function.
But why the majority of those that are alcoholics or drug abusers have some sort of trauma? Seems that their free will is influenced by their trauma.
@@razvan.c8739 I would say them using their free will influenced their trauma. What was that saying in the 80's? Oh yeah, " say no to drugs"
@@williamburts3114 "say no to drugs" easy to say if you have a good life. Unfortunetly, thats not the case for all of us.
agreed on the absurdity.
i think therefore i am not ?
I think therefore "I believe" I am a free agent.
Although I also recognise an enduring capacity to self-deceive.
To think requires making decisions. To make decisions requires free will. Without free will we cannot make decisions, cannot think, cannot be intelligent, cannot have morality, cannot have laws, etc. To say we do not have free will is indeed absurd.
Here is my take on what Free Will is:
Free Will Post 1 : Musings From The John 00 : 2023 08 27
ruclips.net/video/Qse8lRvDZ3w/видео.htmlsi=x-tqXJCpL--hppmW
Free Will and the Human Swarm Mind Post 1 : Musings From The John 00 : 2023-09-18
ruclips.net/video/nUsjnOu9qXQ/видео.htmlsi=R6gZAinIP7r0vKPO
Are you claiming to be deluded?
I think that, respectfully, there is a commonplace conflation between complexity and agency/free will that underlies people's beliefs in free will.
Suppose you place a ball on a completely symmetric hill. The probability of the ball taking any one path is completely random and evenly distributed. We don't say the ball has free will for "choosing" a particular path, we don't even say it "chooses". Now suppose you change the topology of the hill: you now start affecting the path the ball takes. Now imagine abstracting this over millions, perhaps billions of dimensions. Our minds, in connection with our environment, are simultaneously the ball and that vastly multidimensional topological hill, and as the ball rolls it changes the topology, and the topology affects the path the ball takes. We share this topology with others, we aren't unique, seperate agents, the paths we take are shaped by the world around us, both living and non living things. What makes me *me* is not just my own body and mind, it's me and the world around me. Really we are inseparable from our environment, but it's more pragmatic for us to see our selves as seperate, to consider the world a linear system of black boxes.
The topology is all our biases, our preferences, our wants and needs, shaped by nature and nurture. It's incredibly complex, but it's *ultimately* mechanistic. It gives you what we qualitatively *experience* as free will, but it really is a form of *effective* free will.
Mitchell and Sapolsky, two of the most prominent scientific authorities on the matter, don't settle the matter definitively in their RUclips debate, so we aren't likely to settle anything here. This is why this particular exchange with Mitchell, in my view, is particularly signficant. What's being proposed here, to break the tie between opposing camps, is to evaluate which of the two camps leads to a greater human flourishing via concrete solutions to the biggest open questions in the other sciences, such as how to avoid human extinction or how to reconcile indivualism and collectivism or how to resolve the paradoxes of voting theory. Whichever camp has more meaningful insights into these other problems, is the camp that should be the default winner. In this regard, I'm afraid Mitchell's camp is far ahead of Sapolsky's, and our research efforts at EISM are demonstrating as much.
Thanks again for your comments.
@sebastianjovancic9814 I believe we are, without question, 100% natural, 0% supernatural.
But, a great many people have worked really hard to define the actual real property of free will as something which is supernatural, something which does not exist, and then, because that supernatural definition does not exist they then decide free will does not exist... which is a stupid thing to do,
It is like saying how at some point many people defined the Earth as flat, then figuring out the Earth is not flat and deciding that means the Earth does not exist.
Here is my take on what Free Will is:
Free Will and the Human Swarm Mind Post 1 : Musings From The John 00 : 2023-09-18
ruclips.net/video/nUsjnOu9qXQ/видео.htmlsi=R6gZAinIP7r0vKPO
@@MusingsFromTheJohn00 the point of "free will can come from the world that is purely natural" isn't as easily granted as you're probably thinking. It's always funny to see how Mitchell agrees with Sapolsky on like 99% of the fundamental physics, chemistry and biology, and yet somehow would make the jump from there to "well, there's free will, because look at all this complex things a human's brain can do", while not seeing how that's not at all relevant to the problem being debated. If Robert maybe had pushed him back further and say "Your brain thinking is a process that's 100% natural", then Mitchell would probably even agree to that, and he would still don't understand how there's actually no free will.
@@jn278 it is not a matter of can, it is a matter of overwhelmingly factual evidence as much as your ability to think, your ability to decide, your ability to be conscious.
There is overwhelming objective factual observations of free will existing, just as the Earth is overwhelmingly factually observed as being virtually a sphere and not flat.
@@eismscience Well when we're discussing and debating if a statement is an objective truth (which is the case for the statement of "we do/don't have free will"), the potential consequences have no bearing on what's being debated, and yet appeals to consequences always pop up. And it seems to me that this kind of wishful thinking always show up on the side arguing FOR free will.
It's either intellectual laziness or intellectual dishonesty to say that "Since 2 experts in this field disagree with each other, I'm not gonna think for myself and just ignore your point!". Very funny to just completely dodge the point that you have no answer to, only then go on to propose that we "break the tie" by appealing to consequences like a philosophy undergrad (ba_dum_tss) (sorry).
The purpose of a living being is dictated by the history of the being including when the living being was not aware.
Mitchell's argument is quite rigorous and point to another conclusion. Have you read the book? Do you have a more specific objection?
@@eismscience There is no need for another objection, what i wrote is a trivial statement, nothing can exist without been influenced by other things even atoms, we have no control over that or anything actually. He tried to make a rigorous point because he is forcing the conclusion he wants to have, you can tell by the way he attacks people that thinks different like professor Sapolsky, there is no need to do that and specially without constesting his ideas, they just say he and people like him are wrong in contrast if you see an interview by Sapolsky he is very calm and clear explaining such a complicated topic, you can clearly understand and get his point and never attacks people that thinks different. Mitchell explain everything in various podcasts interviews, to get what he is trying to say there is no need to read the book, the question in this topic is not if we have free will, the question is how we became the person that do, thinks, sees, feels, etc etc That is the question we should spent our time on
When you say "that is the question we should spend our time on", do you think that is more important than asking how to avoid destroying ourselves as a species?
2:18 He stumbled in his very first utterance. He equates selves and persons. The self is a constructed illusion. No one ever tries to make bad decisions. We make decisions based on our complete context which includes education, morals, rationality, freedom to decide within societal norms and punishments and emotions. I like to feel that I am free to decide but I and everyone knows they have constraints. I feel to only thing I can do is continue to learn and not react before thought and reflection play a part. At the very least we can only make decisions within a very small range of movements.
People generally do not understand free will. Loss of free will only really means that the better we educate. And deal with our fellow humans. All people ever try to do is make the best decisions they can. Educate educate educate. People. Will make the best decisions they can. Do not put them in poverty and do not permit grifters to control us. Reject everything which is not the best good for the most people.
If the self doesn't exist, what's all this "we" nonsense?
-Particles ARE deterministic (It's why the standard model of particle physics works) and our brains are made of particles.
-Some say that free will must include the idea that we could have chosen otherwise… but those are just words because we didn’t.
-You can do what you want but you can’t choose what you want. (Paraphrasing Schopenhauer)
-To do other than what you want is to want something else more.
-Agency is the ability to choose and act but it doesn’t explain why we make any specific choice.
-90% of our actions are driven by unconscious motivations and that is not controlled and therefore not free.
-We are only aware of a tiny fraction of the information we absorb so we aren't making conscious choices about that.
-Neurologists have learned that we make decisions before we are consciously aware of them. If it isn’t a conscious choice it can’t be free.
-Any choice made that is not based on external factors and based on who we have become to make such a choice would be irrational.
-What will convince you to make a specific decision? You won’t know until it happens and then you become aware of it. It does the convincing TO you.
Everything isn't made up of particles.
Particles are deterministically chaotic. Without both the deterministic part and the chaotic part, nothing as we know it would exist.
It is within that combination, that balance of both that we get intelligence and free-will is an intrinsic aspect of intelligence. Without free-will there is no intelligence.
@@MusingsFromTheJohn00 : Chaos means unpredictable but it's still deterministic as in the 3-body problem. Your second paragraph is an unsubstantiated claim.
@@lrvogt1257 there is chaos, uncertainty, which cannot be determined. That is an uncertainty which is a super chaos within the area such chaos exists, which in turn is one of the very deterministic Laws of Nature. Without that chaos existence as we know it would literally not exist.
There is determinism which is super deterministic within the areas of its determinism since at least the beginning of the Observable Universe. That too is one of the very deterministic Laws of Nature. Without that chaos existence as we know it would literally not exist.
Without both the this order and this chaos, both existing at the same time within a balance, existence as we know it would not exist.
The very nature of intelligence requires that there is a choice that the intelligent system can make. In a super deterministic only existence, one within which no chaos existed, there would be no choices, and thus no intelligent system could exist. In a super uncertain only existence, one within which no order existed, there would also be no choices, and thus no intelligent system could exist.
Thus, an intelligent system is one which takes advantage of the choices presented to it because of that chaos and then taking advantage of the order makes a decision which is intelligent, not just random. It requires both order and chaos for this to happen.
Free will is the ability of an intelligent system to make intelligent decisions that is can make without an unreasonable degree of influence exerted upon the decision making from outside that intelligent system.
No intelligent system can exist without free will to make decisions.
No intelligent system can exist without it being aware of something over which it applies its intelligence and thus is conscious of that something it is applying its intelligent decision making upon.
Point being, there are a number of qualities that are part of a whole that cannot exist without each other. Intelligence, free will, awareness, consciousness and such all require each other to exist, thus they are facets of a whole larger existence, how you want to call that larger existence, perhaps calling it a mind.
Our brains are made of particles... So, ur whole point is that our brains are made of particles, so particles make our decisions for us?
Science & logic won't prove Griff the almighty & all seeing creator exists & they can't prove free will exists either.
Thanks for your comment and interest. You've written a sentence that, for me, encapsulates the problem. Saying that humans can't prove free will exists, to me, is like saying we can't prove love exists. That seems so patently absurd. In any case, this exchange is an attempt to move beyond these endless word games and move the discussion toward things that actually matter, such as long-term human survival.
@@eismscience
Yes it's a significant issue, I then couldn't figure out why there was conciousness without free will but it might be that the only thing that exists is my conciousness generated by a conciousness generator resulting in my conscious experience being entirely unrelated to anything that the conciousness generator makes me experience, thus there's no such thing as humans, planets or the universe, it's all fairly absurd anyway, I'd prefer it to all be fiction.
@@eismscience
So the essence of the problem boils down to - what can any conciousness of the type that I have be absolutely certain of, the only fact they have is the fact that their consciousness exists & does what it does, that's it. Whatever they experience though might be entirely fictional, they'll never be sure.
@@eismscience
It's all so absurd that I'm trying to figure out how to destroy the entire universe, if there's a way & I find it while I'm able that'll be the end of everything.
@@paulpaul9914 I can understand the frustration. If you eventually figure out a way to destroy everything, I hope you'll find a way to make a lot of money and spare the rest of us.