Free will - David Deutsch
Lets all cherish our free will!
Appearances are deceptive. Yet we have a great deal of knowledge about the vast and unfamiliar reality that causes them, and of the elegant, universal laws that govern that reality. This knowledge consists of explanations: assertions about what is out there beyond the appearances, and how it behaves. For most of the history of our species, we had almost no success in creating such knowledge where does it come from? The real source of our theories is conjecture, and the real source of our knowledge is conjecture alternating with criticism. We create theories by rearranging, combining, altering and adding to existing ideas with the intention of improving upon them. The role of experiment and observation is to choose between existing theories, not to be the source of new ones. We interpret experiences through explanatory theories, but true explanations are not obvious. Fallibalism entails not looking to authorities but instead acknowledging that we may always be mistaken, and trying to correct errors. We do so by seeking good explanations (Explanations that are hard to vary in the sense that changing the details would ruin the explanation). This, not experimental testing, was the decisive factor in the scientific revolution, and also in the unique, rapid, sustained progresss in other fields that have participated in the Enlightement. That was a rebellion against authority which, unlike most such rebellions, tried not to seek authoritative justifications for theories, but instead set up a tradition of criticism. Some of the resulting ideas have enormous reach: they explain more than what they were originally designed to. The reach of an explanations is an intrinsic attribute of it, not an assumption that we make about it as empiricism and inductivism claim.
[url=http://curi.us/think/]Creating knowledge[/url]
7 Comments • Newest first
[quote=franc33333]What if I pose the idea of religion? The logic behind multiverse's free will and god's predetermination would just contradict each other.[/quote]
This issue is solved by criticism. We take a look at the opposing arguments against the idea of God and we analyse their contingency within the parameters in question. One of my favorite theories or arguments is the inspection on what the idea of God tries to solve.
The reason that this approach is better is that *all* ideas are actually approached this way. Every thought and every behavior happens in the context of solving problems. To illustrate this, I'll explain a few examples using this problem/solution concept.
All life is problem solving.
At birth, our problems are few. We are hungry and cold. These situations are problematic because we don't want to be in these situations. And how do we solve these problems? We cry to alert our parents -- it's inborn. And it's our parents' responsibility to help us solve our problems by presenting us with milk or formula and wrapping us with blankets. And as soon as our problems are solved, we stop crying.
In adulthood, our problems are many. We want shelter, food, transportation, electronics, entertainment, and many other things. And how do we solve these problems? We get jobs to earn money to trade for these things and we do research to find the things that fit our preferences.
Some people are lonely, so they want companionship. And they solve that problem by establishing romantic relationships. Some people also want lifelong commitment, and some of them solve that problem by getting married.
Some people want to attract people sexually, so they solve that problem by going to the gym to get in shape and dressing up sexy.
Some people want to know about how the world works, so they solve that problem by reading books and/or going to school to learn physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, history, and so on.
Now this brings us to the God idea. Some people want to know *why* some things are the way they are. Their problems are that they have important unanswered questions. And their solution to these problems is to accept a religion and its answers to those important questions. But before we jump to the conclusion that the God idea solves these problems, let's identify the problems.
What problems are people trying to solve with the God idea?
One big reason people accept religion is to accept its moral values. And some people don't even believe in their religion but they teach it to their kids anyway because they believe that morality can only be taught through religion. So their problem is that they don't understand morality outside the context of a religion's behavior-punishment moral system. And consequently they don't know how to teach morality outside the context of a religion's behavior-punishment moral system. So their solution is to accept a religion and its moral system of behavior and punishment. The right solution is to consider the moral traditions that already exist in our society and to judge for ourselves which are good/beneficial and which are bad/hurtful.
Another reason people like religion is to feel like their life has meaning. So their problem is that they feel like their life has no meaning. And their solution is to adopt a religion that tells them the meaning of their lives. They effectively dwarf themselves by accepting that "God is the greatest." The right solution starts with the idea that we are all individuals, and thus we all have different interests, and so we should all create meaning in our own lives.
Another reason people like religion is because their friends and neighbors expect them to, they can socialize at Churches, and they want to fit in and be good at their social role as a normal member of society. So their problem is that they want to fit in with society and be liked by other members of society. And their solution is to do just that, to "get with the program."
Then there are reasons people have that they aren't even aware of. Their lives are full of suffering and they feel stuck. That's their problem. Actually its many problems that they don't know how to solve. And they don't even try. Instead of trying to solve their problems they bury their problems hoping that they will go away on their own. Sometimes they do this by denying that those things are even problematic. They say things like, "well everyone suffers like this so it's just a part of life" or "its not even a problem because other people have it much worse than I do."
Another way they bury their problems is by shifting responsibility to other people and to things. The most common way to shift responsibility is to adopt a religion that tells them that they are not responsible for their lives. It helps them feel better about not "being able" to change their situations. It helps them feel better that someone else (God) is responsible for their problems -- he is responsible for giving them the problems and he is responsible for solving them -- and people are responsible for asking him to give them the patience to withstand the problems and asking him to solve their problems. This helps them feel better because in their eyes they are not at fault. So they confuse this relatively positive emotion with reality -- they feel spiritual. The right solution is to take responsibility for everything in your life -- to change one's situation and stop shifting responsibility to other people and nonexistent things like an all-knowing super power.
I think this last reason is the most common problem people have. It's something that most people deal with, not just theists. Most people live irresponsible lives by denying that they have problems and by shifting responsibility of the problems that they do admit having. It helps them feel better because that way they don't feel guilty. Some people shift responsibility to their parents, "It's my dad's fault that I don't know how to fix a car or do handy-work because he never taught me." Some people shift responsibility to their brains, "Please excuse my ADD." Some shift responsibility to their hormones, "It's not my fault because I had PMS."
The world relentlessly throws problems at us, but none of those problems are insoluble. Philosophical thinking is the only reliable way that solves problems. Your life is full of suffering because you have lots of problems that you haven't solved yet. And you cannot solve your problems if you expect God to solve them for you. Nor can you solve your problems if you think that God gave you your problems.
There is no destiny! We have free will!
[quote=WiziLiCe]You misunderstood the meaning of my previous post.
Classical physics is strictly deterministic. Pierre-Simon Laplace described the situation accurately in 1814 when he said that a being with perfect knowledge of the positions and velocities of all particles at any one time could completely predict the future (and past) of the entire universe. The advent of quantum uncertainty showed that Laplace's idea, while correct for classical physics, didn't apply to our universe. But Deutsch shows how completely at odds with reality Laplace's idea actually is.
One must think of many worlds not as a small add-on to classical physics, but as completely reversing the conception. Everything that can happen does happen. In the many worlds multiverse of Deutsch, every event branches out into different results. Consider a galaxy.
A galaxy forms because of gravitational attraction. But if things had been just a little different at the galaxy's inception, every detail of that galaxy, including its composition, its placement in relation to other galaxies, and its shape, would have been different, as well. In Deutsch's view, were one to view the multiverse all at once, a single galaxy would transform into a uniform spread of stars, dust, and debris smeared across enormous distance. Everything that can happen does in some portion of the multiverse.
The key thing about a galaxy is that it doesn't "kick back". There's nothing about the galaxy's makeup that will cause it to resist any multiversal change in its placement, composition, etc. It just doesn't care, and as a result ends up all over the place.
Contrast that, though, with a living thing. A living thing does care. It does "kick back." A living thing is knowledge, and as Deutsch says in The Beginning of Infinity, "Knowledge is information which, when it is embodied in a suitable environment, tends to cause itself to remain so." When looked at in the multiverse, life does something that no non-living entity can do. It molds and shapes the multiverse. It makes great portions of the multiverse look alike. As Deutsch says in The Fabric of Reality, "such places stand out as the location of processes - life, and thought - that have generated the largest distinctive structures in the multiverse." Knowledge is like a crystal that stretches across the multiverse, differentiating itself from all other structures in the universe.
So what of free will? We see now that free will is not just the ability to make different things happen. Everything has that ability in the multiverse. Consider a single uranium atom. It might decay this second, or next second, or not for billions of years. It might fire an alpha particle north, south, up, down, or in any other direction. It is fundamentally unpredictable. So is every other microscopic process. Variability isn't hard to achieve in the multiverse, it's natural and automatic.
What is hard to achieve is consistency. And this, Deutsch argues, is the heart of free will. Here's his argument, which he presents in a chart in Chapter 13 of FoR:
After careful thought I chose to do X; I could have chosen otherwise; it was the right decision; I am good at making such decisions. What do each of these statements mean when looked at through the multiversal lens?
After careful thought I chose to do X: in the multiverse view, this means that some proportion of all the versions of me, including the one speaking, chose to do X.
I could have chose otherwise: in the multiverse view, some other versions of me did choose otherwise.
It was the right decision, I am good at making such decisions: in the multiverse view, the vast majority of all the versions of me made this decision - I have molded the multiverse by my decision-making.
From a deterministic world in which we really have no choices, Deutsch has given us a uniform cloud called the multiverse. It's up to us to mold and shape that cloud into the form we want. The multiverse is ours for the making.
One must be careful, of course, to not accept an idea simply because it is attractive. Beware the ideas you want to be true. I'm still not fully sold on the quantum multiverse. As Deutsch says again and again, our ideas are always fallible. Many worlds may well be wrong. What Deutsch and the other writers have done for me, however, is convince me that a working hypothesis, no matter how crazy its consequences might seem, is better than no hypothesis at all. If many worlds is wrong, I think someone needs to show why its wrong, rather than just dismissing it as a silly extravagance.
As quantum technology brings these strange effects more and more into the world of the macroscopic, we will have an answer. Already there are proposed experiments that will be possible in the near future. These experiments will make one prediction for many worlds, another for rival ideas. Soon we won't have to speculate, we will know. I for one (or maybe for many?) can't wait to find out.[/quote]
Yeah, I'm not going to read through that to piece together what you want to tell me at 3:15am.
[quote=Ness]Yes OP, we understand that each individual universe in a multiverse has a predefined series of events, and that free will doesn't exist.
That pretty much sums up the walls of text you have laid out that most people won't ever read.[/quote]
You misunderstood the meaning of my previous post.
Classical physics is strictly deterministic. Pierre-Simon Laplace described the situation accurately in 1814 when he said that a being with perfect knowledge of the positions and velocities of all particles at any one time could completely predict the future (and past) of the entire universe. The advent of quantum uncertainty showed that Laplace's idea, while correct for classical physics, didn't apply to our universe. But Deutsch shows how completely at odds with reality Laplace's idea actually is.
One must think of many worlds not as a small add-on to classical physics, but as completely reversing the conception. Everything that can happen does happen. In the many worlds multiverse of Deutsch, every event branches out into different results. Consider a galaxy.
A galaxy forms because of gravitational attraction. But if things had been just a little different at the galaxy's inception, every detail of that galaxy, including its composition, its placement in relation to other galaxies, and its shape, would have been different, as well. In Deutsch's view, were one to view the multiverse all at once, a single galaxy would transform into a uniform spread of stars, dust, and debris smeared across enormous distance. Everything that can happen does in some portion of the multiverse.
The key thing about a galaxy is that it doesn't "kick back". There's nothing about the galaxy's makeup that will cause it to resist any multiversal change in its placement, composition, etc. It just doesn't care, and as a result ends up all over the place.
Contrast that, though, with a living thing. A living thing does care. It does "kick back." A living thing is knowledge, and as Deutsch says in The Beginning of Infinity, "Knowledge is information which, when it is embodied in a suitable environment, tends to cause itself to remain so." When looked at in the multiverse, life does something that no non-living entity can do. It molds and shapes the multiverse. It makes great portions of the multiverse look alike. As Deutsch says in The Fabric of Reality, "such places stand out as the location of processes - life, and thought - that have generated the largest distinctive structures in the multiverse." Knowledge is like a crystal that stretches across the multiverse, differentiating itself from all other structures in the universe.
So what of free will? We see now that free will is not just the ability to make different things happen. Everything has that ability in the multiverse. Consider a single uranium atom. It might decay this second, or next second, or not for billions of years. It might fire an alpha particle north, south, up, down, or in any other direction. It is fundamentally unpredictable. So is every other microscopic process. Variability isn't hard to achieve in the multiverse, it's natural and automatic.
What is hard to achieve is consistency. And this, Deutsch argues, is the heart of free will. Here's his argument, which he presents in a chart in Chapter 13 of FoR:
After careful thought I chose to do X; I could have chosen otherwise; it was the right decision; I am good at making such decisions. What do each of these statements mean when looked at through the multiversal lens?
After careful thought I chose to do X: in the multiverse view, this means that some proportion of all the versions of me, including the one speaking, chose to do X.
I could have chose otherwise: in the multiverse view, some other versions of me did choose otherwise.
It was the right decision, I am good at making such decisions: in the multiverse view, the vast majority of all the versions of me made this decision - I have molded the multiverse by my decision-making.
From a deterministic world in which we really have no choices, Deutsch has given us a uniform cloud called the multiverse. It's up to us to mold and shape that cloud into the form we want. The multiverse is ours for the making.
One must be careful, of course, to not accept an idea simply because it is attractive. Beware the ideas you want to be true. I'm still not fully sold on the quantum multiverse. As Deutsch says again and again, our ideas are always fallible. Many worlds may well be wrong. What Deutsch and the other writers have done for me, however, is convince me that a working hypothesis, no matter how crazy its consequences might seem, is better than no hypothesis at all. If many worlds is wrong, I think someone needs to show why its wrong, rather than just dismissing it as a silly extravagance.
As quantum technology brings these strange effects more and more into the world of the macroscopic, we will have an answer. Already there are proposed experiments that will be possible in the near future. These experiments will make one prediction for many worlds, another for rival ideas. Soon we won't have to speculate, we will know. I for one (or maybe for many?) can't wait to find out.
Yes OP, we understand that each individual universe in a multiverse has a predefined series of events, and that free will doesn't exist.
That pretty much sums up the walls of text you have laid out that most people won't ever read.
Booooooooooring
[quote=simaini]everything in this world happens because of cause and effect. you can't have something happening without a cause.
if everything happens because of a specific cause, then how can people have free will? you're not the one making the decisions, your body is[/quote]
To agree with this I would first need to agree that the body and the self are separate (which I don't). But lets ignore that for the sake of discussion.
Considering the problem of free will in a classical universe. It [b]can't[/b] exist, because classically everything is predetermined. On some level everything is atoms and forces, and once you have the initial conditions of atoms and forces nothing can change. There's no room for free will in such a universe. This is not only because the future must be determined precisely by the past, but also because there is no sense in which we have a choice about anything. All our choices are the result of atoms and forces, and no amount of special pleading about our consciousness can change the fact that we ourselves are atoms and forces. In a classical universe, what happens is what must happen.
Adding randomness, whether quantum randomness or some other kind, helps this situation not at all. We would never define our free will based on randomness, but rather on deliberate choices that we make. If all our choices are really just rolls of some non-classical (and therefore truly random) die, then free will is just as much an illusion as it was classically. Who cares if the result of the die roll is random? It's still not in any sense a free choice we're making. It's just an unpredictable one.
But, as Deutsch points out, the multiverse is of a wholly different character. Consider a basic multiverse, with nothing in it that we might call alive. Indeed, in this universe, everything that can happen will happen. A splits into A and B, which then split into A, B, C, and D, and so on, a forever-branching tree with no differentiation whatever.
Now insert a living thing into this multiverse. Life is knowledge, and as Deutsch said "Knowledge is information which, when it is embodied in a suitable environment, tends to cause itself to remain so." What can this possibly mean in a multiverse? It means that we no longer have an evenly branching tree! Knowledge causes itself to remain embodied. Once you have knowledge, for instance a living thing, that living thing makes choices. How? Living things that aren't people do it through variation and selection. Once you have plants in the multiverse, you're going to have more than the expected number of universes in the multiverse in which plants survive and thrive. Variation and selection ensures that plants develop good survival strategies (because those are the ones that survive).
As a result, multiverses that otherwise would have gone their separate ways become more similar than they otherwise would have been. It's not random that plants survive. It's due to their choices, via variation and selection.
We know that people can create knowledge, too. Unlike plants and non-human animals, people create knowledge via conjecture and criticism. Our choices are much more like what we think of as choices, since they happen within an individual. We can let our theories die in our place.
So consider an individual human faced with a choice (whether or not to jump off a cliff, for instance). It is true that every possibility will happen in some universe, including that in some universe the human chooses to jump. But (and here is the point) in a much larger number of universes the human chooses not to jump. These universes, in which the human chooses to stay at the top of the cliff, will resemble each other more than could be expected. And it was the human's choice, the human's free will, that did it.
So now we see the true power of free will in the multiverse. By exercising free will, by making good choices, we make large sections of the multiverse resemble each other more than they would have. It's almost so simple that you miss the beauty of it. With no embodied knowledge, the universes in the multiverse are non-descript playings out of possibilities, with the maximum possible spread between universes. With embodied knowledge, however, first in the form of living things and finally in the form of people, great swaths of the multiverse tend to look like each other. The knowledge-creators in those universes make the difference. By exercising their choices, they alter the very structure of the multiverse. Free will changes the world!
everything in this world happens because of cause and effect. you can't have something happening without a cause.
if everything happens because of a specific cause, then how can people have free will? you're not the one making the decisions, your body is