It feels a bit odd blogging about myself, but here goes...

The author at the 6th FQXi Meeting

For most of the history of modern science the debate over free will has been largely left to the realm of philosophy. Indeed, the debate is as old as philosophy itself. But, increasingly, free will has gained in importance in certain areas of science. For example in quantum mechanical tests of Bell’s inequalities, it is assumed that the “choices” made regarding the settings on the measurement devices are “freely” made by whatever is operating those devices (FQXi member Nathan Argaman argues that this is merely freedom in the variables themselves, but this is a debatable point). This led mathematicians John Conway and Simon Kochen to develop a free will theorem that posits that if we have free will, then, subject to certain assumptions, so do elementary particles. Specifically they take free will in this context to be the fact that our choices do not depend on the past. Their theorem is often interpreted as showing that science is incompatible with determinism.

Nobel laureate physicist and FQXi member Gerard ‘t Hooft disagrees with this sentiment. In his view, the “choices” in a Bell test are ultimately determined from the entire history of the universe up until the point at which the choice is ultimately made. This is sometimes referred to as superdeterminism. FQXi member Anton Zeilinger strongly opposes this view as antithetical to the entire scientific enterprise as he sees it as undermining falsifiability.

What is notable about both these views is that neither is particularly favorable toward free will as a concept. While Conway and Kochen certainly argue against determinism, by concluding that elementary particles must have free will if we do, it seems as if they are, through the apparent absurdity of that conclusion, arguing against free will.

This debate is far from purely academic. The modern legal system in many countries assumes that human beings have some level of free will while modern science seems to be pushing back on this assumption. Understanding the actions of our fellow humans entails a better understanding of consciousness and, by extension, free will. The fact is, whether or not we actually have free will, we behave as if we do. But what are the characteristics of this behavior? What does it mean to have (or behave as if we have) free will and can we quantify it?

What is free will?

This is a question that I addressed at the recent FQXi conference in Tuscany. I began with a simple example. Suppose that I open my refrigerator in order to have a snack and am presented with the option of having either carrots or peppers. What would it mean from a behavioral standpoint for either choice to be seen as being “free”? In other words, what do we really mean when we say a choice is “free”?

For one thing, we need to have the confidence that whatever choice we make, that choice needs to have a high probability of actually occurring. That is, suppose that I choose to have a carrot. For that choice to really be free I need to have the confidence that at some point between making the choice and actually eating the carrot, it doesn’t spontaneously turn into a pepper or a potato or a chair.

What are we actually doing when we choose, say, between carrots and peppers from a refrigerator?

If the latter happened with any regularity, we would simply throw up our hands and stop making choices altogether because we could never be certain of the outcomes. Choices could just as easily be made by throwing darts at a wall. Outcomes would be completely random regardless of what we thought we chose. This is not free will. As philosopher Robert Nozik pointed out, “An action’s being non-determined is not sufficient for it to be free–it might just be a random act.”

This also suggests that we weigh our options against one another. Again, if we didn’t, we could accomplish the same thing by throwing darts at a wall. This, in turn, suggests that the options we didn’t choose generally don’t change once we’ve made our choice (and started to act on it) either. Again, if it routinely did, we would simply give up in frustration.

None of this necessarily means that our choices are about fitness. I may simply “be in the mood” for carrots rather than thinking that carrots are somehow a more optimal choice than peppers at the time. But the point is that I have the time and ability to think about them. That is, I have “read” them into my memory and then contemplated them. In order to do so, however, the number of all possible choices must be processed in a finite amount of time or we have to consciously eliminate some without really processing them.

In order to quantify all of this in some way, we nevertheless need to recognize the fact that, at the most fundamental level, the universe is random. Whether or not we actually have free will, it is clear that there is a deterministic element to our behavior concerning choices, namely that those choices have a high likelihood of occurrence once chosen. But that level of determination has to arise from something more fundamentally random. How is this possible? A simple example provides a hint.

One of the more popular games at casinos around the world—and one of the oldest games of chance known—is the game of craps. The game of craps is relatively simple. It simply involves rolling a pair of dice and betting on the outcome. But not every outcome of the roll of a pair of dice is equally probable. Anyone who has ever played a board game knows that a roll of 12 (“double boxcars”) or 2 (“snake eyes”) is much less common than other rolls. But why is that?

The roll of each individual die is assumed to be completely random. That is, each number from 1 to 6 is assumed to be equally likely to arise. In fact, to try to ensure this is the case in the long run, casinos paint the dots on their dice rather than use dice whose dots are little holes as is common in most dice. This is to ensure that the center of gravity is as close to the physical center of the die as possible which helps keep the die balanced.

So if each number on a single die is equally likely to occur over the long run, how is it that a roll of 12 or 2 is less common than, say, a roll of 7 (which happens to be the most common)? The answer is that there are more combinations that give a 7 than give a 2 or 12. In fact, there is only one way to roll a 2 or 12—both dice have to be 1 or both dice have to be 6 respectively. But there are six ways to get a 7. So the probability of getting a 7 is higher because there are more configurations that lead to a 7.

While a 7 is more likely than a 2 or a 12, it isn’t that much more likely in the grand scheme of things. Most people have rolled a 2 or a 12 while playing a board game at some point in their lives. We call the number rolled on the pair of dice (between 2 and 12) the macrostate and we call the number rolled on each die individually the microstate. But there are physical systems with macrostates that are overwhelmingly more likely than nearly every other macrostate such that the system almost always ends up in this state. Examples include two-state paramagnets and interacting Einstein solids (I discussed some of these in a recent FQXi essay). In other words, it would be like having a pair of dice that, despite the individual dice ending up on a random number each roll, the pair would always end up on the same overall roll. This isn’t a strange quantum behavior. It’s simply how combinations work when the number of combinations is very, very large.

The point of all this is to show that it is possible to get a nearly deterministic macrostate from a large collection of entirely random microstates. In fact, in statistical mechanics, this is known as the thermodynamic limit. There is nothing mysterious about it.

How does this help with modeling free will? Let’s go back to the refrigerator again. What am I actually choosing when I choose carrots over peppers? The fact is that the carrots and peppers are in different places in the refrigerator. As such, the act of getting a carrot out of the refrigerator is an entirely different process than the act of getting a pepper. So when we make a choice, we are choosing between two different processes. Each of these processes has a probability distribution such that one macrostate is overwhelmingly more likely than any other—the chance that the act of choosing a carrot leads to eating a pepper is vanishingly small. That is, the variances of the probability distribution for each process is very small. This seems in line with the what we might think of as a “free choice” since it ensures that our choice is very likely to occur.

If all of our choices have probability distributions, we can represent the ensemble of possible choices with what is called a mixed distribution. There are a number of interesting properties of such distributions including something known as the Mahalanobis distance which can be construed as measuring just how distinct a pair of choices is. The Mahalanobis distance between two different carrots is going to be smaller, for example, than the corresponding Mahalanobis distance between a carrot and a pepper since the carrots are more “alike”. One assumes that the freer the choice, the larger the Mahalanobis distances to all the other possible choices.

So one possible measure of “free choice” would be some function (which I call the zeta-function) of the minimum Mahalanobis distance between that choice and any other choice in the ensemble. Likewise it would be proportional to a time function that ensures that the full ensemble of choices can be read into our memory and processed in a finite amount of time. The zeta-function should also be inversely proportional to the variance of the choice (the smaller the variance, the greater the freedom as I just described).

The zeta-function is a measure of the freedom of an individual choice. It is safe to say that sometimes our choices are not free. Many actions in our life are instinctual. But it’s safe to say that if a certain number of our choices are free we might say we have free will. So a measure of free will itself, which I call the Z-function, would be some function of the collection of zeta-functions for all the choices we have.

There are a lot of details that can’t be captured by a blog post or a simple twenty minute talk (a paper is forthcoming). Certainly there are valid criticisms of such a model. But my aim was really to stimulate discussion and hopefully research into formal models of free will as it is becoming increasingly important in science, particularly in areas like quantum foundations and consciousness studies. So one can view this work as me throwing down the gauntlet and challenging the scientific community to start thinking about this in some depth. Hopefully I will have at least succeeded in that.

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This is probably not the most important thing to have taken away from this, but I did not know that little fact about casinos painting the dots on dice.

Within the MWI one can also address this issue by invoking the fact that our subjective state (everything that we're aware at some instant), doesn't fully specify the exact physical state of our brain. The number of distinct physical brain states is so astronomically large that your mindset and how you are feeling about everything isn't going to be consistent with only one physical brain state. This means that given your subjective state, the physical state of your MWI sector should be described as a very complex superposition involving a large number of brain states that are entangled with the environment.

It's then possible for you to find yourself in a physical state where you really have different choice. While one can attribute that to a lack of knowledge, the "you" as an entity that has a subjective feeling of who you are and what you are experiencing, may only exist as an entangled superposition. A problem within the computational theory of mind is the relevance of counterfactuals. Suppose that a computer running an AI program is generating consciousness. Then the fact that this AI is conscious at any given time is due to the algorithm being run.

But at some moment in time, the physical state of the computer is just transitioning from one particular state to another state. If consciousness is related to the actual physical state of the computer, then replacing the computer by a dumb device that doesn't compute anything, which simply cycles through physical states that the computer would move through given some particular set of inputs, should also be conscious.

This absurd conclusion is hard to avoid, somehow getting counterfactual actions as a response to counterfactual inputs must be relevant, but there is no room to do that within classical physics. But a realistic MWI picture as described above does get around this problem.

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When oh when will physics stop the utter nonsense about free will: THE PHYSICISTS MODEL OF THE WORLD DOES NOT PERMIT GENUINE FREE WILL. Genuine free will is about a living thing having “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate” [1].

Apparently, physicists think it is OK to massage the true nature of their model of the world, and redefine determinism as “free will”. Now they have added the laughable concept of “probability distributions”, as if a “probability distribution” ever caused a single actual outcome.

Either the physics model of the world is correct, in which case no free will exists OR free will exists, in which case the physics model of the world is incorrect. Clearly, the physics model of the world IS incorrect: the physicists view of the world is very badly mistaken.

1. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/free_will (Oxford dictionary).

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The world is burning; environmental catastrophe is looming. But all physics can say is that the laws of nature caused it, or “probability distributions” caused it. According to physics, matter itself (e.g. matter in the form of human beings and other living things) has no power over outcomes: only laws of nature and “probability distributions” have power over outcomes. Is it any wonder that many people have no respect for science?

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So the title is about measuring free will, which would be very interesting, and then the talk denies any way to measure free will.

Is this helpful?

We all act as if we have free will and we therefore we all do have free will. We all act as if we are conscious and so we are therefore conscious as well. This is just how the universe is.

Then people argue that free will and consciousness are illusions and not therefore "real" as if there is any difference between reality and illusions. Most of what we think we sense is actually an illusion and so what? That is just how the universe is and the whole point is survival and so if we survive, reality is what is real.

Clearly evidence shows that free will is subconscious and some therefore argue that free will is not purposeful since it is not part of conscious reasoning. However, our subconscious feeling and emotions are what make us who we are and are hardly random. Morality is not random and has taken thousands of years and morality is decidedly not random or it would have been established thousands of years ago.

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"In other words, what do we really mean when we say a choice is “free”?"

It means that the entity that made the choice is an essential "actor" in the causal chain: In other words, no other entity, could either produce or even reliably predict, the choice the entity would make, before the entity made it.

Free will exists precisely because even the universe, in its entirety, is not vast enough to predict some things, in any other manner, than by simply enabling them to happen in real-time; in that sense, the occurrence of the event and its prediction are one-and-the-same thing. It is the vast information content of the initial conditions, not the negligible content and properties of the physical laws, that is ultimately responsible for the existence of free-will.

"we nevertheless need to recognize the fact that, at the most fundamental level, the universe is random." No it is not. At the most fundamental level, the universe consists of entities that encode exactly one bit of information, as Shannon, not physicists, define the term. A single isolated bit cannot exist without noise being present. But the fact that each such bit is a combination of both signal, and noise, and not JUST random noise, is what ultimately makes all repeatable (hence predictable) behaviors possible.

Rob McEachern

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Ian Durham,

Your way of measuring “free will” is based on an unconvincing model of free will.

Your model doesn’t say why you should be considered to be different to the fridge or the carrot: what, if anything, distinguishes you from the fridge or the carrot?

Your model has no way of distinguishing free will from random numeric outcomes and deterministic numeric outcomes and combinations thereof. You say: “We are all responsible through our actions (or lack thereof)”, but your model of random and deterministic numeric outcomes fails to explain how this could make a person responsible for his actions, i.e. responsible for causing the numeric outcomes.

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It seems there is layer upon layer of obstacles, things beyond sufficient personal control as not to affect free will and 'built in'. Environment, upbringing, circumstances, other people, other organisms, societal rules, family values,learned behaviour, habits, reflexes, personality, health/illness, mental health, disability, biochemistry,nerve function. Some overlap of items on the list and some acting together as a combined influence. I'm no longer as confident in the idea of free will as I used to be. I have developed a functional neurological balance and movement disorder. Body and mind are no longer 'on the same page', working together as one. Besides that try as I might I don't make the progress I would like and it doesn't seem to me lack of persistence or will.

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Georgina,

What you do about the ants is up to you. The issue is whether you have genuine free will or not. The options are:

1) The world is such that people make a genuine difference to the world i.e. the world is such that people genuinely played a part in causing climate change; OR

2) The world is such that people don’t make a genuine difference to the world i.e. the world is such that nothing but the laws of nature and randomness is causing everything including people’s thoughts and actions and climate change.

Despite what they might say, all the physicists at the recent FQXi conference believe in option 2: the physicists’ mathematical model of the way the world works (together with associated explanatory bits) means that people can’t possibly make a genuine difference to the world.

This is a bit embarrassing for physics. Physicists don’t want the general public to know the truth about what they think about climate change. They are trying to find some magic topology that will twist and turn their theories into something compatible with people making a genuine difference to the world, but it can’t be done, seemingly because their core beliefs are that matter is a passive puppet, not an active actor.

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Well, Lorraine, if you insist on seeing it that way, I doubt anything I say will change your mind. I wonder, however, given your intense criticism of the way you seem to think physicists think, why you spend so much time hanging out on a site ostensibly dedicated to physics.

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Free will means that living things/ matter has “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate” [1].

To model free will (using a set of variables and associated numbers to represent outcomes) requires that:

1) At least one number will look random (from the point of view of an observer) in the sense that the number was not determined by the laws of nature (represented by the equations of physics); and 2) Matter itself caused the number assignment to the variable.

In essence, Ian Durham’s analysis [2] does not disagree with the above. But he then goes on to model a “free will” which he admits is indistinguishable from non-free will [3].

Free will is a revolutionary idea for physics. The idea is that matter itself causes the assignment of numbers to variables, in addition to law of nature relationships determining the numbers. I.e.: 1) Matter is a separate thing to (what is represented by) equations and numbers; and 2) Matter causes outcomes, but cause itself is not representable as equations and numbers.

But Ian Durham seemingly does not separate matter from fields i.e. platonically existing sets of numbers, equations, statistics, probabilities and random fluctuations. So his analysis of the nature of the world doesn’t have the necessary requirements to make free will possible.

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Hi Ian, I've been thinking about choice of carrot or pepper. Behaving in a habitual way takes less mental effort than trying something new and the outcome of the habitual choice is more certain. Done it before, turned out well, likely to do it again. I'm thinking of a person who only uses carrots for cooking and only uses peppers for scooping cold savory dip. This person's habit and intention when going to the fridge decide what is chosen. Free will would be in the very slim chance of doing something completely different-the opposite choice for the intended purpose. The probability distribution for different choices seems a tricky thing, with so many influences. E.g. food price, culture, appetite. My own choice of pepper or carrot for scooping dip depends on the colour of the pepper. Yellow or red trumps carrot. Carrot trumps green pepper.

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I am aware that Max Tegmark is the director of the organization that runs this site, and I am aware that his hard work is directly responsible for the fact that I and others have this forum.

Which is more the pity because, like Trump, he and others are criminally misleading gullible people by suggesting that intelligence and consciousness "emerges" from circuit boards. It's gullible physicists and philosophers that "might want to reconsider [their] approach" to the nature of the world.

And by the way, I did actually study computer science, maths and physics at university, a long time ago.

(This is a repeat of: "Lorraine Ford replied on Aug. 25, 2019 @ 00:38 GMT", which someone has deleted)

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I am aware that Max Tegmark is the director of the organization that runs this site, and I am aware that his hard work is directly responsible for the fact that I and others have this forum.

Which is more the pity because, like Trump, he and others are criminally misleading gullible people by suggesting that intelligence and consciousness "emerges" from circuit boards. It's gullible physicists and philosophers that "might want to reconsider [their] approach" to the nature of the world.

And by the way, I did actually study computer science, maths and physics at university, a long time ago.

(This is a repeat of: "Lorraine Ford replied on Aug. 25, 2019 @ 00:38 GMT", which seemingly Georgina has censored)

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Censorship warning: if you say something she doesn't like, Georgina will censor you, by deleting your post.

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(Content of post deleted for repetition, by Zeeya, 26 August 2019.)

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(Content of post deleted for repetition, by Zeeya, 26 August 2019.)

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Hi all,

I've had complaints about the posts on this thread both for their content and also for being censored. Lorraine, your post from August 25th has now been reinstated, so please stop reposting it. Just to clarify, other posters can't delete your posts, but they can flag them for review -- at which point they will temporarily disappear. In this case, I can understand why whoever flagged the post was concerned.

Could everyone please be respectful of other posters' views and also (especially) of people who are not taking part in this discussion?

I will delete/edit posts if they are rude to other people or potentially libellous. I would suggest, for instance, re-thinking whether people want to claim in a public forum that anyone's actions are "criminal". I would suggest re-thinking the wording in that case, and retracting any potentially libellous wording before I have to come in and remove that wording. I would prefer not to have to come in an censor portions of posts, so please edit these yourselves.

It's absolutely fine to strongly criticise people's work (even if they are one of FQXi's scientific directors), if it is relevant to the topic of the thread. But please steer clear of language that may cause legal issues.

Physics says that climate change was not caused by people. I say it again: The world is burning, environmental catastrophe is looming, but physics says that people could not have contributed to climate change. Because:

1. Physicists have absolutely no conception of a valid model of free will, and physicists have no model of a world in which free will could exist.

2. All physics’ models can say is that deterministic laws of nature or “probability distributions” or randomness is the sole cause of human behaviours. I.e. physics’ models say that people themselves are not responsible for their behaviours. Some physics models say that people ARE the embodiment of deterministic and random forces, for which they bear no responsibility.

3. Therefore, physicists and their models of the world clearly say that people could not have contributed to climate change.

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Ian,

I think its clear enough that you are tackling an operational rather than foundational question. And I have long appreciated your observance of proper scientific method.

Just a quick thought. Whether at the foundational, or fundamental application level, there always seems to be an expectation of underlying perfection in all theorizing. Yet daily in the mundane macroworld there exists a practical limit on information transfer and/or loss which is peculiarly arbitrary by locale. Despite the advertised expectation of great savings by going digital, the cost of transcription from hardcopy to digital archive of records (like building permit applications, etc.) has resulted in an immeasurable loss of historical data.

Which beggs the question; does the universe actually have an arbitrary, operational practical limit on information transfer? And how could that be quantified? best jrc

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How long will physicists continue to waste their time, and other people’s money, by looking for an equations-and-numbers solution to the problem issues of life, consciousness and free will? They’ve ended up believing in magic and miracles e.g. consciousness and free will is believed to have miraculously “emerged” from something that is representable by equations and numbers.

This magical thinking has reached a low point with physicists suggesting that consciousness, intelligence and even free will can miraculously “emerge” from circuit boards.

You need IF/THEN algorithms to represent the consciousness, intelligence and free will of living things, and even some of the quantum behaviours of particles. You need algorithms to represent the behaviour of physicists and mathematicians when they perform their mathematical calculations: mathematics is not a Platonic entity: mathematics relies on the performance of algorithmic steps.

There exists a natural and necessary algorithmic aspect to the world.

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Hello Rob,

You make a good argument at the foundational level, apart from the (let me call it) interface with 'free will' in the context of Ian's exercise. But here I have to side with Ian on the matter of a presumed perfect universe because in a perfect universe your argument would hold, but we can only approach the foundational level from the less than perfect macro experimental level in which the human propensity to dismiss what we deem as non-essential in setting parameters is what operationally passes as free will. I quite agree with the premise that information is limited to one bit, and experimentally we might set a parameter that the subject 'bit' is an experimentally refined threshold limit quantity of energy (within strict qualification of experiment protocols). So that is where our own personal peculiarities freely exercised, is the arbiter. And we still can only choose one paradigm over the other as to whether the universe always operates infallibly in all ways.

Sorry to not log in, pardon this extraneous thread. And Hello, Steve, I just don't go into that realm, I get confused easily enough where I'm at! goodwill to all, jrc

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Thanks Robert,

Those are excellent points, and I can agree with both your posts. I don't want to go too far afield of Ian's general theme but think that it is appropriate to point out the absurdity of Bell's assumption of identical particle pairs. Its one thing to propose that all particles of any distinct specie at inception, have a common mathematical identity. But that doesn't mean that they are either perfectly stable or that the identity isn't itself a physical condition of compromise between rest energy and space. Part of that identity might be a priori known and be unerringly (perfectly) reproducible, and that's what counts a la Shannon and experiment both. And experiment is measurement. jrc

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Clearly, one of the basic problems for physics is that equations and numbers can’t handle situations: you need algorithms to handle situations.

I.e. the idea that any set of equations and numbers is complete and sufficient to represent and explain the world is basically flawed.

Physics needs to explain where (what we represent as) algorithms came from: clearly (what we represent as) algorithms is fundamental to the world.

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And algorithms were embedded in mathematics before they were known as algorithms. The algebraic result is the generalization that obtains from analysis of variations of algorithmic application to a variety of similar observations and experiments. Just as Newton compiled volumes of differential equations on a catalogue of different values of parameters to arrive at an algebraic result that can be applied as a "physical law", so did Maxwell, and his results were further condensed with topology to produce the set of equations in current use. Those algebraic results which look like "numbers and equations" are considered physical laws because they can be applied to all cases of that type of phenomenon and the algorithms will permutate from the extrapolation of values of the variables. The Algebraic equations (or inequalities) embody not just the algorithms you do know, but all those you have not yet identified. That is not generally emphasized in baccalaureate studies and is conspicuously absent in most popular accounts of recent scientific discovery , but should become readily apparent to any serious effort to learn conventions, and understand what scientific method involves and how the bewildering cornucopia of today's modern physics could possible have come about. The only 'driver' missing in an algebraic expression of physical law, is the specified values of parametric variables which you must obtain from measurement to apply in calculation. F = ma, is not the same thing as A = bc, just the same operational form. F = ma is dynamic.

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Lorraine,

It is your own conclusion that the logical implication of all physics is that the physics view is that there is an underlying universal randomness to nature. Some would agree and run with it. But at present, the best analysis at Cern says that we still can't say one way or another. And most physicists accept that conclusion. The game goes on.

So the only argument for how you propose things be done, is for you to produce algorithms of your own and explain how they work. For anyone else to do the math to prove your contention would require they stop doing what they are doing and focus their attention on you to try to figure out what you are talking about, and then do the math for you. What do you think the probability is of that happening? :-) jrc

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Ian,

Not too surprisingly on this forum, people will drag you into the weeds of their own pet paradigm and away from your behavioral approach to exercise of free will, and the qualifications thereof.

I've encountered Robert McEachern on a number of topics, and have gradually gained some appreciation for his championing Shannon, though I haven't yet made a reading of Shannon. I do however see how there would be a good fit with your self appointed task of filtering the muddy waters of nth order behavior in the macro-realm of 'free will'. Because Shannon's definition of information being only that which can be made unerringly reproducible, is essentially what we base observation on even within quantum uncertainty constraints. And It at least would provide a benchmark to survey the uncertain field of human behavior to protract measures.

All this is a bit off my beaten track. I grew up with free will being an self-evident inalienable right that my parents' generation fought a world-wide war to preserve, and imbued with the sense of dual responsibility freedom put on me and how my behavior could impact its preservation. So that's how I personally measure it. best wishes jrc

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Hi Ian,

I read well several works about this freewill and the Random. I Don't agree personally about the fact that freewill,random are the essence at this foundamental universal level. In fact we must rank all this,the free will ,random and the superdeterminism.The different steps,levels where appear the determinism or random must be ranked but not generalised . Like I see it like the consciousness ,the free will is an emergent property due to evolution and brains and in function of environments and so interactions like locomotion,nutrition,reproduction,....The choice is function of so many parameters that it becomes relevant to rank it too. The superdeterminism for me is the main chief orchestra,random is just a sphere of comportments.I liked in this sphere of freewill and random your analyse with the zeta function,could you explain me why this function of Riemann with primes,the zéros ,is it to rank the free will? because the distribution of primes is harmonical and dterministic. Have you inserted in these maths,functions of random and free will ? but how do you consider genetic,evolution,education,psychology,environments,interact
ions,...to explain this freewill like foundamental?

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The physics’ view, as espoused by Ian Durham and the other physicists at the recent FQXi conference, is that the world is a closed system in which “free will”/ “agency” is a system-generated pseudo-input to the system. In this view of the world, absolutely everything is system generated, including people, pseudo-free will and climate change.

But genuine free will is where people make a genuine, i.e. non-system-generated, input to the world.

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OOPS, I posted a comment to Georgina about memory but somehow put it on the Downward Causation page. And darned if I can remember what I was doing. An odd thing, it is a real time example on topic. How often does that sort of thing happen? averaging over averages. jrc

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Ian and Lorraine,

if I may plaicate things a bit...

I don't think many would argue that physics today doesn't carry the legacy of of its evolutionary progress. Absolute determinism was the paradigm of the Newtonian age, and dynamics were observed as a 'time added' measurement. All measurement was treated on an arbitrary background of instantaneous observation. And its undoubtedly true that we continue to operate with a residual of that sense of observation both in formal physics but also in our daily lives. We reduce the complexity to the moment.

But the revolution a century ago both with Relativity and Quantum Mechanics discarded that static view of predetermined absolutism. In quantum mechanics we only observe the result of something happening (however arbitrary the measurement scheme), we wouldn't observe anything if something weren't happening. In Relativity no measurement can be made instantaneously.

That has fundamentally changed the physics landscape. And it goes without much elaboration that in the process of learning we have to start somewhere and that entails beginning with a truncated concept. So we invariably evolve some misconceptions as we progress and must continually revisit our beginnings and reassess our prejudices. Its more a learning tree than simple curve. I can't count the foolish things I've said or thought. Life goes on. OObla-di OObla-da, and I do seriously think we can only begin to understand what is in another's mind. good-day, I should mow the lawn. :-) jrc

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Georgi,

I got the correct topic this time, its late but I thought it proper to acknowledge your post(s). We're on the same page there. I had thought about that 7 limit when reading your dialogue with Ian (and then the Downward Causation topic was an Ian Blog too, so you can see the sequence where I dropped the element of returning to this page). To address the idea of Free Will from a scientific rather than philosophical perspective must rely heavily on Clinical Psychology. And even then there is a lot of hair-splitting. Personally, and as a matter of scientific method appropriate to the parameters Ian lays out as the limits of his exercise (theory is too soon a word), I see no point in carrying conjecture beyond psychological bounds. When it comes to splitting hairs, Occam's Razor works best. Free Will is a concept of sentient consciousness, not one of simple self awareness. If we didn't have the capacity to think about what we are thinking about... we wouldn't conceive of such a thing as free will. Its a matter of volition, Proactive intent with an expectation of result. And if it were something that evolves from The Pesky Particle recurring since the early days of science fiction then its not Free Will but determinism to a practical absolute extent. How could it be Both?

'course, I'm an old dog. And its late. jrc

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"Personally, and as a matter of scientific method appropriate to the parameters Ian lays out as the limits of his exercise (theory is too soon a word), I see no point in carrying conjecture beyond psychological bounds."J.R.Cox. I understand that there have to be limits to what will be done. There is a question though outside of psychology. Is action that is the result of human error, leading to the opposite outcome from the choice or desired outcome, as much free will as a the correct action to actualize the choice or desire? If just considering behaviour, then they are not differentiated. Yet human error that causes a plane to crash accidentally would not be generally considered an expression of free will. (Human error e.g. due to: fatigue, drug use, absentmindedness by internal or external sources of distraction, or ill health.)

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Georgi,

I get your point, I'll just quote my Intro Psych prof introducing himself to the class (beaucoup moon ago) he said, "I know you all have interesting stories that you can relate in emotional terms, but that is not what psychology is about. Psychology is the study of mental processes and how those processes give rise to behavior. And how by observing those behaviors systematically we can identify each process apart from others."

All those items you suggested are subject to studies in various branches of psychology and are brought together in Clinical Psychology; observation, experiment, testing and correlation of data. That's why its called 'clinical'.

For example when it comes to signal processing and output in tandem with observing systems, did you know that the common poop problem pigeon has monochromatic vision with the exception that it can also detect orange separately? Caged birds often are taken on search and rescue flights because their attention towards a tiny spot of orange life jacket will direct the observation of human observers with binoculars whom would have missed it. Non-invasive tests constructed to simply identify responses to stimuli discovered the orange anomaly of pigeon vision.

Much of psychology has to do with clarifying and qualifying what can be used as information. Much in Behavior Science and Psychiatry has to do with recognition and choice. Its a vast cross disciplinary field. Mass marketers exploit it to the exclusion of principle and sanity, in a very real sense, they already not only measure free will, they subvert it. :-) jrc

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Georgi,

Very good points, I emphatically associate free will with intent. And of course there are valid arguments in math and numerous other fields which are pertinent to measurement and qualification, which Ian himself has explored. To clarify, when I stated that we needn't carry conjecture beyond psychological bounds I meant in terms of Ian's stated focus of measurement in terms of behavior.

Yeah, he is a Quant (among other things) and this is a physics forum, but I don't think it would be reasonable to incorporate a conjecture of something like... free will being a leakage from a parallel universe because a multiverse might be somebody's favorite speculation. That sort of thing.

As a personal matter of free will, I've got some serious rust remediation to finish up on my li'l ol' truck and I've been taking a break for the last couple weeks. I'll be kicking myself if I don't crawl back under it before the weather changes, and around here that will be soon. Can't afford to loose it, its a '91 but I've got it doing 26mpg. I typically use less than 10 gallons of gas per month. Where I live I've watched environmental impacts accelerate for half a century. People are hooked on consumerism. Its scary. best jrc

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According to physics, the only causal factors in the world are laws of nature and randomness. According to physics, dogs, birds, trees and people do not make their own laws: i.e. according to physics, dogs, birds, trees and people do not have free will to cause their own outcomes.

According to physics, every outcome for every particle, atom and molecule is caused by nothing but laws of nature and randomness:

Every particle, atom and molecule outcome in people is caused by nothing but laws of nature and randomness, and every particle, atom and molecule outcome in the weather is caused by nothing but laws of nature and randomness.

According to physics, dogs barking, birds singing, trees flowering, people’s actions, and the weather are all caused by nothing but laws of nature and randomness.

According to physics, people’s actions can have no more effect on the weather than dogs barking, birds singing, or trees flowering.

According to physics, people’s actions can have no more effect on climate change than dogs barking, birds singing, or trees flowering.

According to physics, climate change cannot be caused by dogs barking, birds singing, trees flowering, or people’s actions: according to physics, climate change can only be caused by nothing but laws of nature and randomness.

Isn’t it time that physics fessed up?

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I notice that Steve, Ian, Georgina and others talk about “free will”, but don’t seem to have a clear idea of what they are talking about.

Without daring to make at least an initial verbal definition of what you are talking about, a type of model of free will to work from, you can’t begin to analyse whether it is a valid model or not. And then you go endlessly round and round in circles like Georgina talking about carrots and peppers etc. You need to work from a definition of free will and see where that leads you: the words “free will” are not enough if nobody is even capable of concisely defining in words what they personally mean by the words “free will”.

I’m saying that a living thing has free will if it has: “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate”[1]. I’m saying that “necessity” is the deterministic laws of nature. So if outcomes are thought of as being representable by a set of variables and associated numbers, a free will outcome will: 1) have at least one number that was not determined by the deterministic laws of nature; and 2) the living thing caused that “anomalous” number outcome.

1. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/free_will (Oxford dictionary).

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Oh great!

According to Steve Dufourny and Steve Agnew, evil dictators don't have free will: only finer and more upright types of people can have free will.

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One of these things is not like the others. That's all.

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how Grimm,

(if c and h are constants, then time is constant too) is a false equivalence. An arbitrary mathematic artifact.

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Sydney,

You say:

“reality is really strange to imagine. But I suppose that you can imagine that a field structure that can be described with the help of mathematics, can create “feelings and thoughts and knowledge” too. Some comments before I hinted that consciousness is related to the vectorized flat Higgs field (scalar field) and feelings to the electric field (topological field) ...” [1]

So can you try to clarify this? Are you claiming:

1) Emergence: feelings and thoughts and knowledge somehow emerge from the field (or the mathematics of the field); or

2) Creativity: the field (or the mathematics of the field) is an entity that “can create “feelings and thoughts and knowledge” too”; or

3) Steady State: feelings and thoughts and knowledge always existed in a proto form as part of the field (or the mathematics of the field); or

4) something else?

……

1. Sydney Ernest Grimm replied on Sep. 13, 2019 @ 03:10 GMT, https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3319

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You would think that quantum mechanics would be proof of free will.

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Hi Ian Durham,

Maybe still for the rankings and the links with this quantum conputing and qubits,freewill,determinism, we can consider these spherical volumes and spheres,and the oscillations,volumes,surfaces,motions,rotations,encodings,so
rtings,superimposings,synchronisations,the densities,....the geometrical algebras helping and even the Ricci flow more of course the education too,the genetic,the Environments,the psychology,this and that,the consciousness,the determinism,the sociology,the polities,the philosophy,the biology,the biochemistry,the Atomic physics,the economy,particles physics,the cell biology,this and that,the ecology too and its interactions and the evolution,

regards

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Just listened to Measuring Free Wii. Ian is as always, very interesting, but I would approach the question of free will from a different direction.

Ian notes that if we make a choice, of carrots, for example. Carrots will not change to something else in the period of time between choosing carrots, and getting one.

I would just ask; choosing between a carrot and a pepper, is my choice really free? Or, was there some summations of how the last carrot tasted, what I've read about carrots, and how the carrots look today, that result in my choice of carrots being not freely chosen, but completely determined.

As I listened to Ian's "dulcet tones", I didn't hear this aspect of choice discussed.

Carl Gurtman

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I will give you one example

There is a sheep who is moving in a circular way and whose neck is bounded by a thread to a rod at the centre of circle the sheep can move freely but is bounded

This is his free will but still he is bounded by destiny!

I think there is hundred percent domination of destiny in sub concious state of mind and consciousness contains partly destiny and partly free will while superconcious contains full free will and is spontaneous!!

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Dear Ian Durham , Let s take the Newcomb Paradox and this experiment of beleifs. And the problem is mainly philosophical for me and of course that divides the sciences Community about the choices, the predictions and the human comportments and so this free will. The theory of decisions so become very complex when we consider the determinism and the consciousness more all the other parameters correlated with the decisions and perceptions of our reality and so the conclusions taken. The freedom and thios determinism cannot be dissociated from this consciousness for me and the choices are correlated and like I said evolve. This paradox of Newcomb so becomes indeed intriguing but can we consider the game only and the predictions and strategies when we consider an universal consciousness and a pure correlated determinism? all is there. Without a consciousness, the predictions are different and so the dominances and the strategy loose its meaning when we are aware of a pure universal altruism without Vanity. This paradox looses its real meaning because the life is not a game simply even if I like Von Neuman, maybe after all the only one relevance is the point of equilibriuem like in the disuasion , so the strategy has no meaning because it ios not necessary to play. So the decisions are not relevant but it is just my opinion of course. All this to tell that the competion and this darwinism does not exist when the consciousness is a reality, the same for the games even if the business men don t agree, we don t play, we live and evolve and our consciousness also. Is it a paradox so when we consider this evolutive deterministic consciousness and pure altruism ? no .

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