FREE WILL

looking back and thinking "oh i don't recall being aware" means "oh i don't recall being aware of being aware" which is irrelevant.

I don't agree -- "I don't recall being aware" means "I didn't record any of 'my' decisions/actions during this time".

Awareness of awareness is not a necessary component: consider times when you're very actively engaged (eg in a complex sport like skiing, or perhaps the meditation NV's talking about). You aren't necessarily aware of being aware -- your full attention is on the activity -- but you do record it all for later consideration.

It's the access to those memories that makes us feel like we were in charge during those times, I'd say. It's the memories that make the whole co-continuing consciousness janitor's-broom thing hang, basically.

Not having access to the memories is what makes us feel like someone else was in control at that time. You're right that the Libet experiments are dodgy, but if they were proved it would fit: even if we're only given the memory of a decision after the fact, that's still sufficient to make it seem like "our" decision.

I don't agree -- "I don't recall being aware" means "I didn't record any of 'my' decisions/actions during this time".

That is a plausible reading (although I would still warn against the error of taking reflexive consciousness to be the only kind worth considering) but I don't think it helps...

It's the access to those memories that makes us feel like we were in charge during those times

Surely how I felt at the time is more important than how I remember it might have felt, after the fact? Memory is unreliable. Are you really taking "I didn't record any of 'my' decisions/actions during this time" to imply "I didn't (consciously) make any decisions/actions during this time"? Would the same apply to perceptions - I didn't record any of my perceptions, so I didn't have any?

"Buridan's ass is an illustration of a paradox in philosophy in the conception of free will. It refers to a hypothetical situation wherein an ass that is equally hungry and thirsty is placed precisely midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water. Since the paradox assumes the ass will always go to whichever is closer, it will die of both hunger and thirst since it cannot make any rational decision to choose one over the other"

I beg to differ. Buridan's ass illustrates a paradox in rationality, not free will. An ass with free will may make its decision about which item it will seek first based on any methodology that occurs to it; it is not confined to rationality as the sole possible method.

btw, the paradox is easiliy solved by permitting action in cases of indifference based on the need to act, not upon weighting. We've all played the game where someone holds both hands behind their back, but only one hand contains the desired item, and the other player is asked to choose a hand. This game could be played between two computers using extremely simple rules and those rules would not make the actions of the computers paradoxical.

i'm pretty sure i've ended up not getting pizza and almost starving to death on more than a few occasions because deciding parties could not agree on toppings.

Surely how I felt at the time is more important than how I remember it might have felt, after the fact? Memory is unreliable.

Is it more important, though? If I don't remember how I felt while driving on autopilot -- or apparently remember incorrectly -- it doesn't change that I feel no ownership of those actions. There's also the work here on split personalities/psychic breaks/accountability for actions during temporary insanity etc. Not remembering the decisions or feelings of consciousness at the time is paramount importance to all of those.

Are you really taking "I didn't record any of 'my' decisions/actions during this time" to imply "I didn't (consciously) *make* any decisions/actions during this time"?

Would the same apply to perceptions - I didn't record any of my perceptions, so I didn't have any?

Yes, I think so. If I didn't record any of the perceptions at all (and hence have no memory of them) I would naturally assume that *I* didn't have any -- as if I had been under anaesthetic.

It would take some outside evidence -- video of me walking about perhaps -- to convince me that perceptions were being had, and then my next question would be who was having them? Was it me and I can't remember, or was it someone else?

Sanpaku otm

i'm pretty sure i've ended up not getting pizza and almost starving to death on more than a few occasions because deciding parties could not agree on toppings.

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, December 12, 2012 12:34 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The canonical solution is to just order cheese so everyone can eat in a timely fashion

cheese is the lowliest of nash equilibriums

free will #amandapalmer

I dont see why we should say such stuff as "we don't know what consciousness is" - is it not merely apprehension, sensory information held in the brain's memory, interacting within itself to form logical ideas about the things?

Not merely no

I seem to remember thinking it didnt matter but I forget why!

guys im fine

Can't remember anything I was compelled to write on this thread.

http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nick/aaronson-oracle/index.html

mine hovered btw about 57% and 60%. Better than random but not super impressive

i got it to 50-51%

i think the trick is this: your brain naturally underestimates the probability of strings of the same character under pure randomness (they did experiments to prove this), so a naive attempt at randomness tends to closely resemble the sequence FDFDFDFDFDFDFDFDFDFDFDFDFDFD and he can predict most of your flips. if you throw in what feels like an unnatural number of same-character-strings FFFFFDDDFFFFDFDFFFF you can throw it off the scent

fdfdfdfdfd or
dfdfdfdfdf

will be highly predictable

i tried the ffffffdddddfffdddd but what's vital are the short dfdfff instances otherwise it starts to make accurate predictions

nah i got blasted back up to 60% and can't make my way back down

that's what happened to me try those short sequences of fdfd

it's p good tho isn't it

ah sorry wasn't saying nah to you but to myself, got xp'd

yeah it's addictive

The algorithm is based on recording sequences of five or so key-presses, then predicting that the most often recurrent patterns you produce will reappear. Since pressing f or d is a pointless activity, the average brain will soon tire of producing novel sequences and begin to repeat itself out of boredom with the task. I would predict that the faster you press the keys, the more likely this unconscious boredom effect will assert itself. The more one consciously decides each keypress based on a good understanding of genuine randomness, together with a strong motivation to outwit the oracle by weeding out repetitive sequences, the less effective the oracle will be.

put your theory to the test and show us your results champ

my results square with aimless's theory. going fast and just typing "randomly", the machine was almost 70% accurate. moving slowly and forcing myself to break patterns, i could keep it well under 60%. a good trick is to rotate your keyboard periodically.

A good strategy for lowering the number is to look away from the keyboard and just bash in the general area of D and F.

I can't get it to give me any results, possibly it needs cookies, which I habitually block.

60% is not good btw

A good strategy for lowering the number is to look away from the keyboard and just bash in the general area of D and F.

― jmm, Friday, June 3, 2016 4:39 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i like this

might try this later once everyone at the office is liquored up

did this for a couple mins and hovered around 45-49%, some wills are freer than others

by the time i got bored it had climbed to 51%, look out everyone i'm literally Joker

getting under 50% is impressive but paradoxically means your sequence may be less random??

teach me how to introduce a little anarchy

xp

getting under 50% is impressive but paradoxically means your sequence may be less random??

my sequence is art and this algorithm is a philistine

i had this about 35% for a while last night - played a lot of long sequences of mostly the same key and broke it up for a little bit when the program started guessing right

dude you needed to screenshoot that

i had no idea what a good score was last night tbh. or how many presses you guys have made altogether. i got bored of it fairly quickly, probably only played < 5 mins

Reviving this thread so maybe we can all choose to use it to discuss free will and return to properly slagging off Richard Dawkins in the Richard Dawkins - Anti-Christ or Great Thinker thread.

one's concept/definition of "free will" seems contingent on so many near-ineffable assumptions about the universe and stuff.. seems like it would be hard not to just be talking past each other

oh that was a dumb post, sorry

hey folks what's y'alls favourite freiwillige selbstkontrolle record

Every debate on free will always fucks off because 1) People begin to use moral arguments in an ontological debate (but without free will, how can society...) and 2) People for some reason think completely free will or complete determinism are the only two possibilities.

otm

3) people who aren't interested in the discussion pile in to tell everybody how not interesting it is

like they're somehow compelled to do so

https://twitter.com/ilikemints/status/840645034978480130

^^^the secret vector of all human compulsions

Pretty sure the quote is from Kathleen McAuliffe's This Is Your Brain on Parasites.

The science on flu viri affecting animal behavior is rather weak, but there's tons on toxoplasmosis. Becoming attracted to cat piss in rodents, but in humans, higher testosterone, more risk taking and road accidents, etc.

It would be crazy to argue that our individual wills exist godlike, floating serenely above all mere physical influence, controlling but never controlled. It is obvious that our will is predicated upon myriads of contributing factors, including the vagaries of vertebrate evolution and whether it is raining at the moment, and it can never be disentangled from them. But even if our will is heavily constrained, nevertheless if one can choose between two nearly indistinguishable actions and effectively act upon that choice, then one's will is not predetermined or predestined and the effects of that choice will propagate into the future.