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Free Will has Nothing to do with Quantum Mechanics
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Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli.
I wrote about this guy last year: https://clantilyscad.com/2012/05/25/science-is-not-about-certainty/
He’s back with an Edge Conversation about Free Will and Physics.
Via Rovelli on a new Edge.org article:
Any attempt to link this discussion to moral, ethical or legal issues, as is often been done, is pure nonsense… There is no contradiction between saying that a stone flew into the sky because a force pushed it, or because a volcano exploded. In the same manner, there is no contradiction in saying we do not commit murder because something is encoded in the decision-making structure of our brain or because we are bound by a moral belief.
Free will has nothing to do with quantum mechanics. We are deeply unpredictable beings, like most macroscopic systems. There is no incompatibility between free will and microscopic determinism. The significance of free will is that behavior is not determined by external constraints, not by the psychological description of our neural states to which we access. The idea that free will may have to do with the ability to make different choices on equal internal states is an absurdity, as the ideal experiment I have described above shows. The issue has no bearing on questions of a moral or legal nature. Our idea of being free is correct, but it is just a way to say that we are ignorant on why we make choices.”
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I haven’t studied philosophy formally at all, but I like what this guy has to say about it so far. I’ll tab Rovelli on my list of favorite scientists who also know how to write.
From what I understand from my superficial philosophical dialogue-watching, I agree with Sam Harris that free will is an “incoherent concept.”
But free will is a mindfuck of a thing to get your head around. Even without any discussion of quantum mechanics.
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Ze Frank Contemplates Consciousness
If you were socially aware on the Internet in 2006, and frequented Fark or Reddit, then you, at the very least, have heard of Ze Frank. Yanno, the guy who did a webshow, The Show, every weekday for an entire year. He talked about Bush a lot, made the Whip Somebody’s Ass song famous, and created a form of community-following that didn’t really exist before the Internet.
ZeFrank fell off the face of the planet for the last couple years, doing projects like Star.me which weren’t bad ideas, but not good enough to reclaim former glory. (Watching Internet celebrities try to make a comeback and fail fills me with existential dread.)
So when he announced that he was coming back with A Show, similar to The Show, I was super excited. Alas, his attitude was old and tired. Nearly 20 videos later, I’m still not fully engaged.
But finally, he came out with one that got my attention. Here Ze uses his nueroscience degree from Brown University* and talks some intellectual mind-fuckery about the nature of being and consciousness.
The red book on the shelf behind him is “Free Will” by Sam Harris. ❤ ❤ ❤ <3!
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*Brown is doing a lot of cool stuff in the areas of brain research and nuerotechnology. Here’s a video of a paralyzed woman moving a robotic hand with her thoughts.
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