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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7627988 - 11/12/07 09:14 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

When a neuron is on the cusp of firing, whether or not it actually fires is impossible to determine, even in principle.




I know that is not right, because neuroscientists have been measuring the membrane potential of neurons since the 1940's.

That is like saying, because we can never know the exact position of an electron, we cannot know if electricity is running through a circuit or not.


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OfflineNoviseer
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7628073 - 11/12/07 09:35 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Food for thought - "The Mind's Past" by Gazzaniga, a psychology processor who writes books about cognitive neuroscience in layman's terms.

I'm just going to throw some excerpts out there because I'm too tired to comment on any of this stuff right now!  Good night :smile:  But check out the quotes below. 


"Reconstruction of events starts with perception and goes all the way up to human reasoning.  The mind is the last to know things.  After the brain computes an event, the illusory "we" (that is, the mind) becomes aware of it.  The brain, particularly the left hemisphere, is built to interpret data the brain has already processed.  Yes, there is a special device in the left brain, which I call the interpreter, that carries out one more activity upon completion of zillions of automatic brain processes.  The interpreter, the last device in the information chain in our brain, reconstructs the brain events...It creates the impression that our brain works according to "our" instructions, not the other way around...

With our brains chock full of marvelous devices, you would think that they do their duties automatically, before we are truly aware of the acts.  This is precisely what happens.  Not only do automatic mechanisms exist, but the primate brain also prepares cells for decisive action long before we are even thinking about making a decision.  These automatic processes sometimes get tricked and create illusions--blatant demonstrations of these automatic devices that operate so efficiently that no one can do anything to stop them; as a consequence we have to conclude that they are a big part of us...

Surely we are not aware of how much of anything gets done in the realm of our so-called "conscious" lives.  As we use one word and suddenly a related word comes into our consciousness with a greater probability than another, do we really think we have such processes under conscious control?

There seems always to be a private narrative taking place inside each of us.  It consists partly of the effort to fashion a coherent whole from the thousands of systems we have inherited to cope with challenges...What system ties the vast output of our thousands upon thousands of automatic systems into our subjectivity to render a personal story for each of us?

A special system carries out this interpretive synthesis.  Located only in the brain's left hemisphere, the interpreter seeks explanations for internal and external events.  It is tied to our general capacity to see how contiguous events relate to one another.  The interpreter, a built-in specialization in its own right, operates on the activities of other adaptations built into our brain.  These adaptations are most likely cortically based, but they work largely outside of conscious awareness, as do most of our mental activities. 

The left hemisphere interpreter was revealed during a simultaneous concept test in which split-brain patients were presented with two pictures.  One picture was shown exclusively to the left hemisphere and the other exclusively to the right.  The patient was asked to choose from an array of pictures ones that were lateralized to the left and right sides of the brain.  In one example, a picture of a chicken claw was flashed to the left hemisphere and a picture of a snow scene to the right hemisphere.  Of the array of pictures placed in front of the subject, the obviously correct association was a chicken for the chicken claw and a shovel for the snow scene.  One of the patients responded by choosing the shovel with his left hand and the chicken with his right.  When asked why he chose these items, his left hemisphere replied, "Oh, that's simple.  The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed."  In this case the left brain, observing the left hand's response, interpreted that response in a context consistent with its sphere of knowledge--one that does not include information about the snow scene.

What is amazing here is that the left hemisphere is perfectly capable of saying something like, "Look, I have no idea why I picked the shovel--I had my brain split, don't you remember?  You probably presented something to the half of my brain that can't talk; this happens to me all the time.  You know I can't tell you why I picked the shovel.  Quit asking me this stupid question."  But it doesn't say that.  The left brain weaves its story in order to convince itself and you that it is in full control

...Hans Kornhuber and Luder Deecke of Germany...made recordings from ther scalp and determined that a certain brain wave hbegins to fire up to eight hundred milliseconds before a self-paced movement is made.  Usin ganother method of recording, Libet determined that brain potentials are firing three hundred fifty milliseconds before you have the conscious intention to act.  So before you are aware that you're thinking about moving your arm, you brain is at work preparing to make that movement!

...

The very same split-brain research that exposed shocking differences between the two hemispheres also revealed that the left hemisphere contains the interpreter, whose job is to interpret our behavior and our responses, whether cognitive or emotional, to environmental challenges.  The interpreter constantly establishes a running narrative of our actions, emotions, thoughts, and dreams.  It is the glue that unifies our story and creates our sense of being a whole, rational agent.  It brings to our bag of individual instincts the illusion that we are something other than what we are.  It builds our theories about our own life, and these narrative sof our past behavior pervade our awareness. 

Finally things become clear.  The insertion of an interpreter into an otherwise functioning brain delivers all kinds of by-products.  A device that asks how infinite numbers of things relate to each other and gleans productive answers to that question can't help but igve birth to the concept of self.  Surely one of the questions the device would ask is "Who is solving these problems?"  Call that "me," and away the problem goes!  The device that has rules for solving a problem of how one thing relates to another must be reinforced for such an action, just as an ant's solving where the daily meal is reinforces its food-seeking devices.

Our brains are automatic because physical tissue carries out what we do.  How could it be any other way?  The brain does it before our conceptual self knows about it.  But the conceptual self grows and grows and reaches proportions where the biological fact makes an impact on our consciousness but doesn't paralyze us.  The interpretation of things past liberates us from the sense of being tied to the demands of the environment and produces the wonderful sensation that our self is in charge of our destiny."


--------------------
_______________________________________________________________
namaste said:
no flamz in da ODD, if you got nothing to contribute then keep yo lips zipped
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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #7628182 - 11/12/07 10:06 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I know that is not right, because neuroscientists have been measuring the membrane potential of neurons since the 1940's.

Stuart Hameroff, a leading researcher in the field of consciousness, has speculated that thought and consciousness may be a result of the folding of proteins in the brain that are mediated by quantum effects involving the the Van der Waals force. If this is true, then thought and consciousness are necessarily driven by indeterminacy.

That is like saying, because we can never know the exact position of an electron, we cannot know if electricity is running through a circuit or not.

On a macro scale, we can know there's a current because of the aggregation of probabilities. It's like someone telling me they won the lottery and I say congratulations. They tell me they won twice in a row and I'm skeptical. They tell me they won 1,000 times in a row and I know that, although technically possible, it can't be true.

When you get down to atomic scales, anthropocentric ideas stop working. I'm not making this up. It's what the currently-available experimental evidence says happens. There are things in the universe that are really random. There are no deterministic mechanisms at the bottom of reality.

Subatomic 'particles' are not even remotely similar to billiard balls bouncing off each other deterministically.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.


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Offlineundergrounder
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7628212 - 11/12/07 10:15 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Diploid said:
I know that is not right, because neuroscientists have been measuring the membrane potential of neurons since the 1940's.

Stuart Hameroff, a leading researcher in the field of consciousness, has speculated that thought and consciousness may be a result of the folding of proteins in the brain that are mediated by quantum effects involving the the Van der Waals force. If this is true, then thought and consciousness are necessarily driven by indeterminacy.

That is like saying, because we can never know the exact position of an electron, we cannot know if electricity is running through a circuit or not.

On a macro scale, we can know there's a current because of the aggregation of probabilities. It's like someone telling me they won the lottery and I say congratulations. They tell me they won twice in a row and I'm skeptical. They tell me they won 1,000 times in a row and I know that, although technically possible, it can't be true.

When you get down to atomic scales, anthropocentric ideas stop working. I'm not making this up. It's what the currently-available experimental evidence says happens. There are things in the universe that are really random. There are no deterministic mechanisms at the bottom of reality.

Subatomic 'particles' are not even remotely similar to billiard balls bouncing off each other deterministically.




Might not the randomness of subatomic particles simply be the effects of causes that we have not yet discovered?

Free will vs Determinism is my favourite topic (Go Determinism!) but i have an unrelated Philosophy exam to study for tomorrow. I'll be back.


--------------------
:igor: RIP :igor:

Bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher in other words sucka there is no other...
:pinkshroom: :supershroom: :mushroom2: :shroomer: :mushroom2: :supershroom: :pinkshroom:


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: undergrounder]
    #7628234 - 11/12/07 10:21 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Might not the randomness of subatomic particles simply be the effects of causes that we have not yet discovered?

Could be.

But if that were the case, then so many other things in physics would also have to be so completely wrong that there is high confidence that the story we have at the moment is very likely correct.

Of the millions and millions of experiments done in the last hundred years since Quantum Mechanics was discovered, not a single one has contradicted a prediction of the theory. It's because of QM that Intel can make CPUs. Without it, we could never have invented the transistor. That's why there is confidence in it: how could it be wrong, yet still work so well?

It's like speculating that maybe gravity doesn't exist and things fall because of magnetism. Could be, but it's very unlikely because if that were true, millions of other things that we think we know would also have to be wrong.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7628260 - 11/12/07 10:28 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

BTW, what usually comes up at this point in these types of discussions is something a small minority of physicist call "Hidden Variables", so lemme preempt that now.

The basic premise of Hidden Variables is that QM is incomplete and there is some deeper underlying theory that makes the indeterminant nature of QM actually deterministic.

To date, almost every Hidden Variables theory has contradicted experimental observations, and no experimental observation has ever contradicted QM.

So much for Hidden Variables. :smirk:


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.


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Offlineundergrounder
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7628322 - 11/12/07 10:47 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

OK OK .. fuck i need to study. This i my last post... really.

First off no doubt i'd agree with that HV theory even though i've never heard of it and its applicability would be a problem if what you're saying is true.

OK. Of the millions and millions of experiments done in the last hundred years BEFORE Quantum Mechanics was discovered, not a single one has contradicted a prediction of the theory and that theory has been DETERMINISM. Every effect has a cause. And just like i can never measure every single factor that caused a leaf to fall from a tree in a particular position, i can be confident that its position is the perfect sum of the causes plaing upon it (wind direction, speed, gravity etc.).

So given that weight of evidence, that in physics all things are determined, do you think it's more likely that:

1) QM is correct except for some observations at the subatomic level for which we cannot explain their causes.

2) QM is correct except for some observations at the subatomic level for which there are no causes, things are random.

Both of these propositions allow for the correct functioning of QM, the difference is whether you're going against thousands of years of scientific thought and heralding the invention of randomness or you're admitting that we still don't know everything about QM and we haven't figured out the minute causes.

Keeping in mind that the subatomic level is so incredible hard to observe, given all the 'strange' things that happen there, given that QM is still a relatively new field, given that so much of it is open to debate and given that we're constantly picking up and dropping new theories about it, i think the easy option to take is "Ok, it's a just random... everyone can go home now we found the answer: It's just random. Night everyone, good job."


--------------------
:igor: RIP :igor:

Bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher in other words sucka there is no other...
:pinkshroom: :supershroom: :mushroom2: :shroomer: :mushroom2: :supershroom: :pinkshroom:


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: undergrounder]
    #7628399 - 11/12/07 11:05 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

OK. Of the millions and millions of experiments done in the last hundred years BEFORE Quantum Mechanics was discovered, not a single one has contradicted a prediction of the theory and that theory has been DETERMINISM.

Not so.

One of the biggest problems with deterministic Newtonian Mechanics (the predecessor of QM) was the discrepancy in the observed precession of the perihelion of the orbit of the planet Mercury and the predictions of Newtonian Mechanics. The discrepancy pointed to a clear problem with Newtonian Mechanics.

It wasn't until Relativity Theory that the discrepancy was resolved. Relativity Theory's predictions for the orbit of Mercury have been verified to extreme accuracy and it holds perfectly to beyond the accuracy of our best instrument's ability to measure.

There were many other contradictions of experimental observation and Newtonian Mechanics, but this is one of the major ones.

And before Newton there was Aristotle and Ptolemy whose theories said that the celestial bodies were all stuck on 55 giant interconnected concentric spheres that account for the retrograde motion of the planets. This too had HUGE contradictions with observations.

QM has been the first and only scientific theory in history that has held up for 100 years without a single, NOT ONE SINGLE, contradiction of its predictions with observation.

QM is currently the single most successful theory in the history of science.

And just like i can never measure every single factor that caused a leaf to fall from a tree in a particular position, i can be confident that its position is the perfect sum of the causes plaing upon it

This is anthropocentric. The world at atomic scales doesn't work this way. You're trying to apply billard-ball thinking to atoms. This is incorrect and contradicts every experimental result to-date.

It's not intuitive. It doesn't make human-sense. But the evidence says that's how it is anyway. You have to break free from the anthropocentric way of thinking. It doesn't apply to atoms.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.


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Offlineundergrounder
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7628433 - 11/12/07 11:15 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Diploid said:
OK. Of the millions and millions of experiments done in the last hundred years BEFORE Quantum Mechanics was discovered, not a single one has contradicted a prediction of the theory and that theory has been DETERMINISM.

Not so.

One of the biggest problems with deterministic Newtonian Mechanics (the predecessor of QM) was the discrepancy in the observed precession of the perihelion of the orbit of the planet Mercury and the predictions of Newtonian Mechanics. The discrepancy pointed to a clear problem with Newtonian Mechanics.

It wasn't until Relativity Theory that the discrepancy was resolved. Relativity Theory's predictions for the orbit of Mercury have been verified to extreme accuracy and it holds perfectly to beyond the accuracy of our best instrument's ability to measure.

There were many other contradictions of experimental observation and Newtonian Mechanics, but this is one of the major ones.




I'm not talking about Newtonian physics or Relativity, i'm talking about determinism.

No other widely accepted scientific theory of thousands of years has disproved determinism. Not even relativity theory disproved determinism.


--------------------
:igor: RIP :igor:

Bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher in other words sucka there is no other...
:pinkshroom: :supershroom: :mushroom2: :shroomer: :mushroom2: :supershroom: :pinkshroom:


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: undergrounder]
    #7628455 - 11/12/07 11:20 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Newtonian Mechanics is exactly what determinism is. If the universe is deterministic, then the universe is a giant billiard table and Newtonian Mechanics should be able to predict everything, but it doesn't.

No other widely accepted scientific theory of thousands of years has disproved determinism. Not even relativity theory disproved determinism.

It can't be disproven. Nothing in science is proven or disproven. There is only mounting evidence that at some point becomes so overwhelming that it is accepted as true, even though there is tacit understanding that there is an infinitesimal possibility of it being wrong.

Science holds that it is possible that the earth is flat; very, very unlikely, but possible. But there is so much evidence countering that, that no scientist wastes his time considering it.

At the moment, QM doesn't have the same standing as the Round Earth Theory, but it's getting close! :tongue:


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.


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Offlineundergrounder
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7628541 - 11/12/07 11:55 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Newtonian mechanics is deterministic, but determinism accounts for so much more than just newtonian physics. Attacking newtonian physics isn't attacking determinism.

If you're looking at weight of evidence, there is overwhelmingly more evidence to support determinism. Just like with QM, SR posited questions that determinism wasn't true, but those have since been challenged and it is widely accepted that SR supports determinism.

If you're measuring where a leaf will fall on the ground, you can only make a prediction based on the average. You know it is 90% likely to fall somewhere, but you cannot possible measure every impact the wind has.

If you're measuring the decay rate of a radium atom, you cannot tell precisely when it will decay, but you know it must fall within an average. But it's not because there is some intrinsic randomness in the subatomic world, it's because you cannot possibly measure every impact at play. You're talking about a world where even the act of observation has an impact.

I really have to study. A defense of determinism in light of physics is made here


--------------------
:igor: RIP :igor:

Bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher in other words sucka there is no other...
:pinkshroom: :supershroom: :mushroom2: :shroomer: :mushroom2: :supershroom: :pinkshroom:


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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7628575 - 11/13/07 12:15 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Diploid said:
I know that is not right, because neuroscientists have been measuring the membrane potential of neurons since the 1940's.

Stuart Hameroff, a leading researcher in the field of consciousness, has speculated that thought and consciousness may be a result of the folding of proteins in the brain that are mediated by quantum effects involving the the Van der Waals force. If this is true, then thought and consciousness are necessarily driven by indeterminacy.




If thought was random, I doubt organisms would have much success navigating their way around the world. The brain computes information on a macroscale. It is essentially a biological parallel processing computer. Quantum mechanics may have some effect within the nucleus of cells, but as far as I can tell, the brain operates far above the angstrom-scale.


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: undergrounder]
    #7628592 - 11/13/07 12:28 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

If you're measuring where a leaf will fall on the ground, you can only make a prediction based on the average. You know it is 90% likely to fall somewhere, but you cannot possible measure every impact the wind has.

But this is the point you're missing.

Sure you can't measure every possible impact the wind has. BUT, the best results from QM say that even if you could, you would STILL not be able to predict where the leaf will fall, not even in principle.

Atoms are not billiard balls. They are NOTHING like what human experience is familiar with. If you want to keep insisting that they are, well alright then, but you'd be in conflict with 100 years of experimental evidence.  :shrug:

If you're measuring the decay rate of a radium atom, you cannot tell precisely when it will decay, but you know it must fall within an average. But it's not because there is some intrinsic randomness in the subatomic world, it's because you cannot possibly measure every impact at play.

This is EXACTLY what 100 years of experimental evidence says is not true. All atoms of the same type are ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL. Some of those radium atoms will decay and others won't in one half-time, but nothing distinguishes them from each other until the decay occurs. Nothing affects one and not another, yet somehow one decays while another doesn't. It makes no sense, as so many things in QM make no sense.

You're talking about a world where even the act of observation has an impact.

NOW you're getting it! According to QM, the observer cannot be separated from the observed. This is the single most important and bizarre result of QM. Read this post I made in the Science forum recently that describes a simple but Earth-shaking experiment that demonstrates this weird truth. In summary, it demonstrates how electrons behave differently depending on whether or not someone is looking at them. Trippy, unintuitive, weird, bizarre, and many other adjectives, but that's what the experimental evidence shows. The universe is a strange place.

If there is a Creator, he's put us in an impenetrable and unobservable aquarium in which we can't observe anything without affecting it. To observe without affecting, we'd have to be outside the aquarium and since the universe is by definition all there is, it is meaningless to speak of observing without affecting the observed.

Go study now! :wink:


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.


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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7628621 - 11/13/07 12:44 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

All your science is well and good, but here is my experiment:

Let's say you are a heterosexual male with no bi or gay curiosity. Using free will, decide right now that men are more sexually attractive to you than women.

(Others not fitting my precondition, feel free to adapt to your own proclivity.)


--------------------


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #7628679 - 11/13/07 01:05 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

You're conflating macro effects with micro effects and applying anthropocentric ideas to things that are not in any way like ordinary human experience.

When you try to find an electron, all you can know is the likelihood for every point in space that it will be ultimately observed there.

When you look at a chair, all the electrons' probabilities sum to a near-certainty (but mathematically not total certainty) that it will be observed by your desk. This is why you always observe it there.

But if you could keep looking for 10^google^google years, one day, the chair won't be there because the supremely unlikely finally happened and the chair was observed on Alpha Centauri Prime. Then on the next observation, probability will almost-certainly have you observing it by your desk again.

It takes a very long time to see this happen to macro things, but electrons are observed doing this all the time. It's the foundation of computational chemistry with which all the latest superdrugs are created. If this theory were wrong, then these drugs could not be developed.

This is no different than playing a lottery. It is almost impossible (but not totally impossible) to win the Florida lottery 10,000 times in a row. But it IS possible.

So while I may not be able to get a chubby by looking at a pic of Michael Jackson today, if I keep looking, eventually the unlikely arrangement of atoms in my neurons will finally give me that chubby.

It'll probably take longer than 10^google^google years though. :what:


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.


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Offlineundergrounder
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7628703 - 11/13/07 01:19 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Diploid said:
If you're measuring where a leaf will fall on the ground, you can only make a prediction based on the average. You know it is 90% likely to fall somewhere, but you cannot possible measure every impact the wind has.

But this is the point you're missing.

Sure you can't measure every possible impact the wind has. BUT, the best results from QM say that even if you could, you would STILL not be able to predict where the leaf will fall, not even in principle.

Atoms are not billiard balls. They are NOTHING like what human experience is familiar with. If you want to keep insisting that they are, well alright then, but you'd be in conflict with 100 years of experimental evidence.  :shrug:

If you're measuring the decay rate of a radium atom, you cannot tell precisely when it will decay, but you know it must fall within an average. But it's not because there is some intrinsic randomness in the subatomic world, it's because you cannot possibly measure every impact at play.

This is EXACTLY what 100 years of experimental evidence says is not true. All atoms of the same type are ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL. Some of those radium atoms will decay and others won't in one half-time, but nothing distinguishes them from each other until the decay occurs. Nothing affects one and not another.

You're talking about a world where even the act of observation has an impact.

NOW you're getting it! According to QM, the observer cannot be separated from the observed. This is the single most important and bizarre result of QM. Read this post I made in the Science forum recently that describes a simple but Earth-shaking experiment that demonstrates this weird truth. In summary, it demonstrates how electrons behave differently depending on whether or not someone is looking at them. Trippy, unintuitive, weird, bizarre, and many other adjectives, but that's what the experimental evidence shows. The universe is a strange place.

If there is a Creator, he's put us in an impenetrable and unobservable aquarium in which we can't observe anything without affecting it. To observe without affecting, we'd have to be outside the aquarium and since the universe is by definition all there is, it is meaningless to speak of observing without affecting the observed.

Go study now! :wink:




You're missing the point. I'm not arguing against any of the mysterious findings of QM. You're saying that QM's peculiarities are because 'randomness' exists. I'm saying you don't know why they exist, you can only theorise - and that is no argument against determinism.


--------------------
:igor: RIP :igor:

Bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher in other words sucka there is no other...
:pinkshroom: :supershroom: :mushroom2: :shroomer: :mushroom2: :supershroom: :pinkshroom:


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: undergrounder]
    #7628720 - 11/13/07 01:28 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I'm saying you don't know why they exist, you can only theorise - and that is no argument against determinism.

Well, I can't argue with that, but I can point out that all of the Hidden Variables theories (read: the universe is deterministic but we just don't know how yet) that can be currently tested have conflicted with observations.

When you compare that track record with QM's, it's hard to consider Hidden Variables as anything but wishful thinking, and the great majority of physicists agree with this view.

You're getting stuck at the same place Einstein got stuck. Despite his brilliance, he couldn't get past the intellectual leap required to accept that there are no hidden variables and the universe really is probabilistic. It was at this intellectual hurdle that he stopped making meaningful contributions. He kept trying to find the hidden variables as the rest of the scientific world left him behind.

GO STUDY! Ima go find my bong. :bigweed:


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.


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Offlineundergrounder
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7628855 - 11/13/07 03:33 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Sure, i refer you though to Bohm's QM. Here you have a theory that has all the empirical advantages of QM, but it is purely deterministic. If you go off empirical track record alone, then you have no reason to distinguish Bohm and standard QM. I know there are problems with Bohm, but there are problems with both theories.

I agree that at a micro-level, its possible that events that appear random can form an average that appears determined at a macro level. That's not an impossible conclusion for me.

I have a problem though with randomness. To me, calling something random is akin to saying we don't know why it does what it does. You don't 'prove' randomness, you just accept it once you can't prove otherwise.

And since randomness only occurs at the quantum level, with all the problems of observation at that level, then the possibility that we really don't know what's going on is high. And if that's the case, and since in all other things we see determinism, then the idea of an undiscovered cause is also high.

There's no intellectual 'leap' from going from determinism to probabilitism, its more like an intellectual 'fuck it let's just forget about it and smoke a bowl'. It may be a good thing that we're not looking for these undetermined factors for the sakes of advancement but it's also possible that we just don't have the ability to get to the truth right now and in the future we may discover these things.


--------------------
:igor: RIP :igor:

Bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher in other words sucka there is no other...
:pinkshroom: :supershroom: :mushroom2: :shroomer: :mushroom2: :supershroom: :pinkshroom:


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: undergrounder]
    #7628904 - 11/13/07 04:54 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

There are a bunch of serious problems with Bohm's QM, not the least of which is that particles in the Bohmian interpretation cannot be observed. This renders questionable whether his ideas even constitute a scientific theory at all. Without observables, you have philosophy, not science.

Also, Bohm is a more-complicated way of arriving at similar results as the Copenhagen Interpretation. This alone doesn't invalidate it, but all things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. See Occam's Razor. :smirk:

Bohm's intent was to show that Hidden Variables were a possible explanation, but he understood that his interpretation wasn't viable. No current Hidden Variables theory, including Bohm's, is considered viable by mainstream physics.

Did you study?? :nono:


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.


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InvisibleIcelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
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Registered: 03/15/05
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Noviseer]
    #7629515 - 11/13/07 09:30 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Noviseer said:
Food for thought - "The Mind's Past" by Gazzaniga, a psychology processor who writes books about cognitive neuroscience in layman's terms.

I'm just going to throw some excerpts out there because I'm too tired to comment on any of this stuff right now!  Good night :smile:  But check out the quotes below. 


"Reconstruction of events starts with perception and goes all the way up to human reasoning.  The mind is the last to know things.  After the brain computes an event, the illusory "we" (that is, the mind) becomes aware of it.  The brain, particularly the left hemisphere, is built to interpret data the brain has already processed.  Yes, there is a special device in the left brain, which I call the interpreter, that carries out one more activity upon completion of zillions of automatic brain processes.  The interpreter, the last device in the information chain in our brain, reconstructs the brain events...It creates the impression that our brain works according to "our" instructions, not the other way around...

With our brains chock full of marvelous devices, you would think that they do their duties automatically, before we are truly aware of the acts.  This is precisely what happens.  Not only do automatic mechanisms exist, but the primate brain also prepares cells for decisive action long before we are even thinking about making a decision.  These automatic processes sometimes get tricked and create illusions--blatant demonstrations of these automatic devices that operate so efficiently that no one can do anything to stop them; as a consequence we have to conclude that they are a big part of us...

Surely we are not aware of how much of anything gets done in the realm of our so-called "conscious" lives.  As we use one word and suddenly a related word comes into our consciousness with a greater probability than another, do we really think we have such processes under conscious control?

There seems always to be a private narrative taking place inside each of us.  It consists partly of the effort to fashion a coherent whole from the thousands of systems we have inherited to cope with challenges...What system ties the vast output of our thousands upon thousands of automatic systems into our subjectivity to render a personal story for each of us?

A special system carries out this interpretive synthesis.  Located only in the brain's left hemisphere, the interpreter seeks explanations for internal and external events.  It is tied to our general capacity to see how contiguous events relate to one another.  The interpreter, a built-in specialization in its own right, operates on the activities of other adaptations built into our brain.  These adaptations are most likely cortically based, but they work largely outside of conscious awareness, as do most of our mental activities. 

The left hemisphere interpreter was revealed during a simultaneous concept test in which split-brain patients were presented with two pictures.  One picture was shown exclusively to the left hemisphere and the other exclusively to the right.  The patient was asked to choose from an array of pictures ones that were lateralized to the left and right sides of the brain.  In one example, a picture of a chicken claw was flashed to the left hemisphere and a picture of a snow scene to the right hemisphere.  Of the array of pictures placed in front of the subject, the obviously correct association was a chicken for the chicken claw and a shovel for the snow scene.  One of the patients responded by choosing the shovel with his left hand and the chicken with his right.  When asked why he chose these items, his left hemisphere replied, "Oh, that's simple.  The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed."  In this case the left brain, observing the left hand's response, interpreted that response in a context consistent with its sphere of knowledge--one that does not include information about the snow scene.

What is amazing here is that the left hemisphere is perfectly capable of saying something like, "Look, I have no idea why I picked the shovel--I had my brain split, don't you remember?  You probably presented something to the half of my brain that can't talk; this happens to me all the time.  You know I can't tell you why I picked the shovel.  Quit asking me this stupid question."  But it doesn't say that.  The left brain weaves its story in order to convince itself and you that it is in full control

...Hans Kornhuber and Luder Deecke of Germany...made recordings from ther scalp and determined that a certain brain wave hbegins to fire up to eight hundred milliseconds before a self-paced movement is made.  Usin ganother method of recording, Libet determined that brain potentials are firing three hundred fifty milliseconds before you have the conscious intention to act.  So before you are aware that you're thinking about moving your arm, you brain is at work preparing to make that movement!

...

The very same split-brain research that exposed shocking differences between the two hemispheres also revealed that the left hemisphere contains the interpreter, whose job is to interpret our behavior and our responses, whether cognitive or emotional, to environmental challenges.  The interpreter constantly establishes a running narrative of our actions, emotions, thoughts, and dreams.  It is the glue that unifies our story and creates our sense of being a whole, rational agent.  It brings to our bag of individual instincts the illusion that we are something other than what we are.  It builds our theories about our own life, and these narrative sof our past behavior pervade our awareness. 

Finally things become clear.  The insertion of an interpreter into an otherwise functioning brain delivers all kinds of by-products.  A device that asks how infinite numbers of things relate to each other and gleans productive answers to that question can't help but igve birth to the concept of self.  Surely one of the questions the device would ask is "Who is solving these problems?"  Call that "me," and away the problem goes!  The device that has rules for solving a problem of how one thing relates to another must be reinforced for such an action, just as an ant's solving where the daily meal is reinforces its food-seeking devices.

Our brains are automatic because physical tissue carries out what we do.  How could it be any other way?  The brain does it before our conceptual self knows about it.  But the conceptual self grows and grows and reaches proportions where the biological fact makes an impact on our consciousness but doesn't paralyze us.  The interpretation of things past liberates us from the sense of being tied to the demands of the environment and produces the wonderful sensation that our self is in charge of our destiny."




"What the thinker thinks, the prover proves"


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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