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OfflineNiamhNyx
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free will vs. determinism
    #7623577 - 11/11/07 09:07 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Alright mush, you asked for it (although why you didn't just do it yourself is beyond me.) Here's your free will vs. determinism thread. I think that this is an appropriate place to move the off topic conversation out of "shamanism" and into a home of it's own.

So... free will. Do we have it? I was just arguing with Icey (over in my stunningly popular thread about shamanism) about the relevance of choice. Then Mush went ahead and said that his computer chess program makes 'choices' as well, which is a funny but valid point. That opens up the problem of defining 'choice.' Does a computer program make choices? Is a computer program a reasonable analogy for the human mind, and the contents thereof? On that token, has anyone read "The Chinese Room" by Searle?


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Offlinemushroomplume
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7623647 - 11/11/07 09:23 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I've been thinking about this subject quite a bit this week and my karma thread is pretty much related also.

I'm leaning towards determinism.

For free-will to absolutely exist, we would have to be born with a blank slate. All of our choices our conditioned to the extent that we could never make another choice in a given situation. If you provide a sunflower seed with water, soil, and sun, you get a sunflower. Same with our situations; the water, soil, and sun represent our current conditioning/circumstances and the flower that emerges is the outcome/choice we appear to make.


Edited by oliveplume (11/11/07 09:27 PM)


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Offlinemushroomplume
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: mushroomplume]
    #7623662 - 11/11/07 09:25 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I have a great quote for this topic:

"What happens in a mans life is already written .. a man must move through life as his destiny wills ... yet each man is free to live his life as he chooses .. ... though both are opposites both are true?"


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OfflineNiamhNyx
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: mushroomplume]
    #7623765 - 11/11/07 09:48 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Here's a little exerpt from a paper I wrote a year ago, for the sake of defining terms and making sure we're on the same page as far as what we're talking about:

Determinism states that all actions are caused by prior events and carries with it the implication that everything that happens is simply the logical culmination of all prior factors, and therefore must happen. Upon examining this theory, one must wonder if determinism and free will are compatible concepts. A Soft Determinist, such as Stace would argue that if free will is defined correctly we will see that they are indeed compatible. Soft determinism defines a free act as one that is determined by the desires, thoughts and emotions of an agent and that an unfree act is one for which the determining factors are exterior motivations that constitute coercion, compulsion or constraint. They believe an agent’s desires are determined by a causal chain of events but that they are still free because there was no explicit force or neurosis constraining the agent’s ability to choose otherwise.

The Hard Determinist posits a theory of incompatibilism. He accepts the “truth” of determinism and thus is of the opinion that free will must not be possible. If determinism is true than an agent is motivated only by prior conditions, and is not capable of acting in any manner other than they do. They are bound by their heredity and environmental conditions, and there are no “spontaneous inner changes of course.” (Skinner.)

The Libertarian agrees with the hard determinist on the matter of incompatibility but cannot discard the possibility of human freedom. She finds both the hard and the soft determinist positions insufficient and seeks to discover where a free act may be located. He accepts that many things are causally determined, but not that they must always be.


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InvisibleSoY
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: mushroomplume]
    #7623776 - 11/11/07 09:51 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Definitely have free will. Although, it might be that we have tendencies towards certain choices. I have been noticing a lot lately certain synchronizations that point towards the concept that we *plan* our lives before we incarnate. ALso, after much meditation on the notion of *time*, I have come to certain understandings of its nature that allow for a loose determinism to exist.


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

"The choiceless truth of who you are is revealed to be permanently here permeating everything. Not a thing and not separate from anything."--Gaganji
"Yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream."
"My karma ran over my dogma!"


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InvisibleSoY
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: SoY]
    #7623789 - 11/11/07 09:55 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I agree that all events are the logical culmination of prior events, but the unknown variable is free will. At any moment we can interject in any way we deem necessary and change the snowballing butterfly effect of expression that is reality.


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

"The choiceless truth of who you are is revealed to be permanently here permeating everything. Not a thing and not separate from anything."--Gaganji
"Yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream."
"My karma ran over my dogma!"


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InvisibleSoY
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: SoY]
    #7623808 - 11/11/07 10:00 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

It's like the domino effect. The universe is going along, doing it's thing like a bunch of dominoes continually falling on each other, but free will is our ability to add or remove dominoes at certain junctures along the way...


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

"The choiceless truth of who you are is revealed to be permanently here permeating everything. Not a thing and not separate from anything."--Gaganji
"Yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream."
"My karma ran over my dogma!"


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InvisibleSilversoul
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7623809 - 11/11/07 10:00 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I lean towards compatibilism, or soft determinism. That is, free will actually requires a certain degree of determinism. I am free to choose anything, but that choice is informed by what I perceive to be the best option for me, which is in turn influenced by my background. The way I see it, it is futile and meaningless to speculate about whether things could or could not have gone differently. We are stuck with what has transpired. An act is fee if it is not done under the compulsion of another person, regardless of whether it could have happened differently. Since the laws of the universe are not people, it is wrong to conclude that universal determinism means we are not free. We are free to act in the manner we choose, even if that choice is influenced by stuff that happened to us in the past.


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InvisibleSoY
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Silversoul]
    #7623815 - 11/11/07 10:02 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

:thumbup: :cool:


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

"The choiceless truth of who you are is revealed to be permanently here permeating everything. Not a thing and not separate from anything."--Gaganji
"Yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream."
"My karma ran over my dogma!"


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Invisibleredgreenvines
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7624515 - 11/12/07 04:25 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

NiamhNyx said:
... Soft determinism defines a free act as one that is determined by the desires, thoughts and emotions of an agent and that an unfree act is one for which the determining factors are exterior motivations that constitute coercion, compulsion or constraint. They believe an agent’s desires are determined by a causal chain of events but that they are still free because there was no explicit force or neurosis constraining the agent’s ability to choose otherwise.

The Hard Determinist posits a theory of incompatibilism. He accepts the “truth” of determinism and thus is of the opinion that free will must not be possible. If determinism is true than an agent is motivated only by prior conditions, and is not capable of acting in any manner other than they do. They are bound by their heredity and environmental conditions, and there are no “spontaneous inner changes of course.” (Skinner.)

The Libertarian agrees with the hard determinist on the matter of incompatibility but cannot discard the possibility of human freedom. She finds both the hard and the soft determinist positions insufficient and seeks to discover where a free act may be located. He accepts that many things are causally determined, but not that they must always be.




I would have to be libertarian.
thoughts and desires and emotions are associative replay (Skinner would be happy with me here).
however, we also have a prefrontal cortex with which we can examine our life stream at a meta level.
very complex and variable combinations are layered together in this meta thought arena.
the mind can see accross time spans and choices can be made outside of predictible contexts.
these choices are where we excercise our freedom.
here is where we steer ourselves into new courses.
occasionally we are here and make wise spontaneous decisions as well.
usually we operate as if in an automated dream program ignoring the complexity and forgoing sponteneity


--------------------
:confused: _ :brainfart:🧠  _ :finger:


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OfflineBoots
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: redgreenvines]
    #7624685 - 11/12/07 07:16 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I'd have to say a bit of both. Life puts us in certain situations, and then it is up to us of how to deal with that situation.


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Invisiblepsyka
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7624752 - 11/12/07 07:52 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

All things in life occur because certain conditions are present for them to occur. Without these conditions it does not occur. Because all conditions are intimately connected, there is essentially no thing that occurs independently on its own.

However, thats only one side of the truth. The other side is of course we have free will! I have changed my life completely a few times based on changes in my perception. But you see, the changes in perception is a condition with information as a requirement. The fact I found that specific piece of information was not purely random either. It required searching for it. It also required my concepts and ideas about it. All of these things were already present, which lead me to this piece of information, which changed my perception, which changed how I live my life.

So the answer, is somewhere between yes and no. Conventionally, yes we have free will. Ultimately, of course not! Nothing happens on its own, nothing has an inherent self, all things are emergent phenomena based on particular conditions.


--------------------
As the life of a candle,
my wick will burn out.
But, the fire of my mind
shall beam into infinite.



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OfflineBlueCoyote
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: psyka]
    #7625236 - 11/12/07 11:15 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

What if, in the depths of our brain, seemingly random quantum effects lead to the 'spontaneous' fireing of certain nerve-cells ? Couldn't that be considered as 'free' ?

I think the probabilistic model has removed much of the linear certainty of Newton and the predictable/deterministic model of his time.


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Though lovers be lost love shall not  And death shall have no dominion
......................................................
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Acceptance is the absolute key - at that moment you gain freedom and you gain power and you gain courage'


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InvisibleSilversoul
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: BlueCoyote]
    #7625343 - 11/12/07 11:38 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I would like to add that hard determinism seems incompatible with the effort we put into things. If the laws of the universe coerce us into doing all the things we do, then how come we have to put so much effort into them? It seems that if I'm coerced by the universe to do something, then there would be nothing holding me back from doing it. And yet, that clearly is not the case, as we've all experienced things which required great effort and willpower. All that effort and willpower is a result of choice. That choice may not be the beginning of the chain of events, but it is a free choice nonetheless.


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OfflineBard
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: BlueCoyote]
    #7625346 - 11/12/07 11:39 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Free will means, that we are free to do what we want. Animals and plants are just robots... Thats the difference.

Humans are robots too, but they are what we can describe with the words: "artificial intelligence". Programs with free will. Who can, for example modify their own code.


--------------------
So dreaming let's you know reality exists.



I don't belive. I fear.


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InvisibleSilversoul
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Bard]
    #7625361 - 11/12/07 11:42 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Bard said:
Free will means, that we are free to do what we want. Animals and plants are just robots... Thats the difference.



How do you know animals don't have free will? It seems that they make choices just like the rest of us.


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OfflineBard
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Silversoul]
    #7625418 - 11/12/07 12:00 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I don't know... Maybe they do have free will... But if they don't, then the difference is what I was saying... It doesn't matter whether certain individuals have free will or not, it's the meaning of the "free will" what I'm talking about...

I should have kept to computer programs in my argument...


--------------------
So dreaming let's you know reality exists.



I don't belive. I fear.


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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Silversoul]
    #7625457 - 11/12/07 12:10 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Silversoul said:
I would like to add that hard determinism seems incompatible with the effort we put into things. If the laws of the universe coerce us into doing all the things we do, then how come we have to put so much effort into them? It seems that if I'm coerced by the universe to do something, then there would be nothing holding me back from doing it.




Huh? Why WOULDN'T we have to put effort into them? I don't understand your argument. What does effort have to do with free will? It takes a lot of 'effort' for a plane to become airborne, but that doesn't make it free.

Quote:

And yet, that clearly is not the case, as we've all experienced things which required great effort and willpower. All that effort and willpower is a result of choice. That choice may not be the beginning of the chain of events, but it is a free choice nonetheless.




It takes a lot of processing power to run many modern video games - effort doesn't make anything more or less free.


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Offlinejackeheart
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7625614 - 11/12/07 12:51 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

A lot of great points. I like the description of Soft vs Hard Determinism. Great post NiamhNyx

This is another one of those issues that there is probably no black or white way of looking at it. I tend to think that what we call determinism is just our limitations of what we have free will over. we can control my body to an extent, but we can not move the sun...yet. Overall though I think (getting spiritual here) that the Universe can be likened to a machine, but that machine is very beautiful in its own growth. Reminds me of the Futurama Episode where Bender Meets god in space. (which coincidently was on last night on Adult Swim....F%#$K coincidences.)

Also, in response to what SoY wrote about about planning our lives before we live them, you should read the Seth Speaks series by Jane Roberts. Its all about that, and has a lot to do with Determinism vs Free will.


--------------------
What boundlessness the pit of consciousness travels toward an infinite being.
The cave is full of tumultuous obstacles, webs seemingly inescapable.
There lies the path of knowledge forming thick and thin quantum fluctuations of living operations.
And its inescapable quality of beauty is far beyond the reflection of its depths.
Further I fall diving head first downwards into a black hole, plunging with intension to ascension.


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OfflineNiamhNyx
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: redgreenvines]
    #7625620 - 11/12/07 12:53 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

redgreenvines said:

I would have to be libertarian.
thoughts and desires and emotions are associative replay (Skinner would be happy with me here).
however, we also have a prefrontal cortex with which we can examine our life stream at a meta level.
very complex and variable combinations are layered together in this meta thought arena.
the mind can see accross time spans and choices can be made outside of predictible contexts.
these choices are where we excercise our freedom.
here is where we steer ourselves into new courses.
occasionally we are here and make wise spontaneous decisions as well.
usually we operate as if in an automated dream program ignoring the complexity and forgoing sponteneity




I have to add, that the prefrontal cortex allows us to examine thoughts, desires and emotions and pull them out of patterns of associative replay, and this is largely a matter of will. One can choose to confront one's emotions and habits and change them. I see this as being a point at which free will comes into play. Although I suppose Stace would tear me apart on this one.


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Invisibleredgreenvines
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7625652 - 11/12/07 01:04 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I might tear you apart too.
I agree that this is what amounts to will,
but I don't think there is a separate "I" in the comparator process, imagine that,
free will,
but no separate self having it.
this process is the will,
or the essential self
i.e. it is the end of the line for either self or will:
conditioned by history, but raging along obliquely between variously layered states of mind while unpredictably savoring the taste of living moments


--------------------
:confused: _ :brainfart:🧠  _ :finger:


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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: redgreenvines]
    #7625657 - 11/12/07 01:06 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

redgreenvines said:
I would have to be libertarian.
thoughts and desires and emotions are associative replay (Skinner would be happy with me here).
however, we also have a prefrontal cortex with which we can examine our life stream at a meta level.
very complex and variable combinations are layered together in this meta thought arena.
the mind can see accross time spans and choices can be made outside of predictible contexts.
these choices are where we excercise our freedom.
here is where we steer ourselves into new courses.
occasionally we are here and make wise spontaneous decisions as well.
usually we operate as if in an automated dream program ignoring the complexity and forgoing sponteneity




The prefrontal cortex is just as deterministic as the rest of the brain.

It is interesting that the prefrontal cortex is 'wired up' to regions of the brain such as the amygdalae, hippocampus, temporal sulcus, insula, etc. The 'emotions' have a much bigger effect on human decision making than most people realize.


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Invisibleredgreenvines
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #7625919 - 11/12/07 02:12 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

you got the emotions (body feeling memories)
you got mental states (how layered and long lasting mental images are)-partly dependent upon emotional feedback
you got short term memory (what has been happennning over 5 minutes)- modulated by a series of thoughts and feelings making a trail of reaction contexts.
and you got all the potential of history (deeper memory)- conditioning that is not related to the stream of consciousness at this point.
all that gets mixed with sensory input;
the prefrontal can relate it all with the path you want to follow.
little adjustments at this point are the vitual helmsman,
that is the will.
emotions are like waves and wind,
stream of consciousness or short term memory are like the landscape (seascape)


--------------------
:confused: _ :brainfart:🧠  _ :finger:


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InvisibleSilversoul
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7626522 - 11/12/07 04:10 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

There's actually another option here: indeterminism, or "pessimistic incompatibilism." This is a position which rejects both determinism and free will, and sees everything as probability or chance. I don't quite agree with it, but if you're using quantum mechanics as your basis, it kind of makes sense.


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7626649 - 11/12/07 04:36 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I wouldn't call myself a determinist.

I believe in the action of the Tao.

I have argued this point with Veritas and our friends for hours last night.

You can believe in free will or determinism and they both end up the same IMO. It doesn't matter, as what happens is the only thing that ever could have happened and is of course what did happen. If something else could have happened it would have. This is the Tao in action. Veritas says I don't belong in this argument.:lol: That's because I've transcended it.:rofl2:


--------------------
"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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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Icelander]
    #7626694 - 11/12/07 04:49 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

It doesn't matter, as what happens is the only thing that ever could have happened and is of course what did happen. If something else could have happened it would have.




...that is determinism.


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #7626706 - 11/12/07 04:51 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Well that's only true for after it has happened. Before anything has happened you have the free will to choose your course. Once you have chosen however there was never really any choices at all. It's just the action of the Tao. Nothing was predetermined and yet there could only be one outcome. That is the mystery of Tao.


--------------------
"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


Edited by Icelander (11/12/07 04:53 PM)


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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Icelander]
    #7626716 - 11/12/07 04:54 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

If you are a 'Free Willy'ist, are you able to change your mind to become a Determinista?


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #7626726 - 11/12/07 04:57 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

We are all of it at once. I can fully agree with the idea of free will and determinism. They are both limited concepts within the finite and do not define the infinite.


--------------------
"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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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Icelander]
    #7626740 - 11/12/07 05:00 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Thems are finighting words. :box:


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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Icelander]
    #7626745 - 11/12/07 05:01 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

eh, still sounds like determinism to me.


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #7626749 - 11/12/07 05:02 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

My Nagual can wup your Tonal any time.


--------------------
"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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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Icelander]
    #7626781 - 11/12/07 05:08 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)



VS.



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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #7626795 - 11/12/07 05:10 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

:whoa:I see some fungus

Please use some tonalfontate lotion.


--------------------
"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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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Icelander]
    #7626806 - 11/12/07 05:13 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I want to be a pioneer and the first to grow cubes on a live human.


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: mushroomplume]
    #7627174 - 11/12/07 06:24 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

All of our choices our conditioned to the extent that we could never make another choice in a given situation.

Intuitively, this seems resonable, but the best currently-available evidence of Quantum Indeterminacy says this is not so.

From all appearances, the universe is NOT intuitive, and nothing is predetermined. The only thing that IS predetermined is the probability of an outcome. The outcome itself is never a certainty.


--------------------
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]
    #7627196 - 11/12/07 06:28 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

The prefrontal cortex is just as deterministic as the rest of the brain.

The prefrontal cortex relies on chemical mechanism that the evidence says are most definitely NOT deterministic.


--------------------
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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Offlinemushroomplume
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7627267 - 11/12/07 06:43 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

I have to add, that the prefrontal cortex allows us to examine thoughts, desires and emotions and pull them out of patterns of associative replay, and this is largely a matter of will. One can choose to confront one's emotions and habits and change them. I see this as being a point at which free will comes into play. Although I suppose Stace would tear me apart on this one.




True, I think it is an illusion though that our will is examining and deconstructing thoughts. This seems more like a genuine reaction to a situation. You walk in on your wife cheating with the neighbor. You can only react one way. Given the way you feel, what knowledge you have gained from prior experiences, the amount of control you have over your temper, etc, etc...

There is only one way to react, given that people are conditioned.

Decision making is similar to a scale, conditions, ideas, feelings, and whatnot become weighed out and inevitably lead in one direction. A person cannot feel completely neutral towards any given situation.



Edited by oliveplume (11/12/07 08:35 PM)


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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7627551 - 11/12/07 07:32 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Diploid said:
The prefrontal cortex is just as deterministic as the rest of the brain.

The prefrontal cortex relies on chemical mechanism that the evidence says are most definitely NOT deterministic.




Please elaborate. Isn't quantum indeterminacy consistent with physiological determinacy?


Edited by MushmanTheManic (11/12/07 07:43 PM)


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #7627832 - 11/12/07 08:33 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Isn't quantum indeterminacy consistent with physiological determinacy?

No. When a neuron is on the cusp of firing, whether or not it actually fires is impossible to determine, even in principle. All that can be known is the probability because the electrons involved in the chemistry that makes a neuron fire or not fire do not have positions. When they're observed, THEN they have a position. Before the observation, every point in space has a finite probability of being the point where they will ultimately be observed.

The probability that any given electron will be found close to the nucleus is very high. That probability decays very quickly in the space away from the nucleus, but it never reaches zero. An electron in your finger has a V-E-R-Y small (but not zero) probability of being observed in another galaxy when the observation is made, and a very high probability of being observed near the nucleus.

So, they're not particles, they're likelihoods. We use the word 'particle' because humans can't easily conceive what electrons really are. It's only because of the math that we can get a handle on them to some extent.

This is like looking at a block of 100 radioactive atoms with a half-life of one minute. All that can be known is that 50 of them will decay in one minute but which fifty cannot be known, not even in principle.

The best current knowledge says that there does not exist some internal preordained variable in 50 of those atoms that we just can't see. The best current knowledge says that the atoms are absolutely identical, yet 50 will decay and 50 will not.

All that can be said is that any given atom has a 50% chance of decaying. Nothing more.

This probabilistic nature of the universe seems to imply non-determinism. God does play dice, it seems.


--------------------
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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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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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."


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_______________________________________________________________
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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...
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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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Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 45,414
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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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Registered: 11/10/06
Posts: 1,394
Loc: Sydney Flag
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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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Posts: 1,394
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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
Cuban


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Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
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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
Posts: 95,368
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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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Offlinejackeheart
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Posts: 27
Loc: Nevada City, CA
Last seen: 14 years, 10 months
Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Icelander]
    #7633300 - 11/13/07 11:17 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Been fallowing this post and its an interesting debate.

As far as randomness goes...
There is a book called "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart, read it last year.
In this book she documents hundreds of experiments over the past 40 years where people were asked to alter the outcome of tests that were supposed to bring up random variables. The most basic example was to have 2 lights illuminate randomly, one or the other. Then have the subjects try to will with their minds to make one come up more then the other. There were many other examples of much more elaborate experiments, but they all had a overwhelming results of the people having some sort of control.

Take this for what you will, but I think this is just another example of QM working on a higher level, not just partials, or atoms. Shoot me for saying this, but I think what we call random, is just are inability to see the order.

Additionally, and sort of rhetorical, what are we implying to think everything is Deterministic? Or even the idea of free will for that matter?

PS, Diploid, I love your response to the attractive male experiment.


--------------------
What boundlessness the pit of consciousness travels toward an infinite being.
The cave is full of tumultuous obstacles, webs seemingly inescapable.
There lies the path of knowledge forming thick and thin quantum fluctuations of living operations.
And its inescapable quality of beauty is far beyond the reflection of its depths.
Further I fall diving head first downwards into a black hole, plunging with intension to ascension.


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Registered: 01/09/03
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: jackeheart]
    #7633433 - 11/13/07 11:57 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

There is a book called "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart, read it last year.
In this book she documents hundreds of experiments over the past 40 years where people were asked to alter the outcome of tests that were supposed to bring up random variables.


I think you're referring here to Princeton University's Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR).

Unfortunately, after decades of finding nothing, they started to loosen their experimental protocols and then started fudging their data to show results. None of this work was was done with sufficiently-rigid protocols to qualify as science; whenever they did proper science, the positive results vanished.

James Randi offered the lab $1 million if they could reproduce their results under proper observing conditions. They refused.

Other groups attempting to reproduce PEAR's results have been unsuccessful. For these reasons, they were never published in any peer-reviewed science journal. Princeton finally shut down the lab in 2006.

Quantum Mechanics is very strange. It is undeniable that this strangeness, for better or worse, is real. It is a part of nature. But although there is a beautiful strangeness in the world, there is no magic.

P.S., What, you don't think Michael Jackson is attractive??


--------------------
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.


Edited by Diploid (11/14/07 04:41 PM)


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Offlineundergrounder
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
    #7633610 - 11/14/07 01:45 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Did you study?




Yeah but i came back to procrastinate just a little more..

Exam is over now so yay!

I do object to the way QM seems to be cited as proof of just about every weird new age theory. The argument goes "QM proves that life is weird, therefore my weird theory of X is true".

I think my posting on this thread was juts an output of anxt about my philosophy exam. Or perhaps it was me trying to avoid my existential responsibilities.

I shall now fade back into philosophical obscurity until next semester's exams...


--------------------
: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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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 45,414
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: undergrounder]
    #7633654 - 11/14/07 02:01 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

The argument goes "QM proves that life is weird, therefore my weird theory of X is true".





Congratulations. You are now ready to write a best-seller. All you need now is for Deepak Chopra (I refuse to use the doctor prefix) to write your preface and you are good to go.


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


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