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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3668 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

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So @FCfromSSC, you've stated that you consider a lack of aliens, a lack of AGI, and a lack of Read/Write Consciousness upload ability to be proof that humans are divine and that God exists. If we find alien life, create AGI, and can scan a human brain and make a copy, would that be proof for you that God doesn't exist? Would any of those events change you mind?

He explicitly stated that if we could Read/Write minds then he’d change his mind.

Demonstrate mind reading and mind control, and I'll agree that Determinism appears to be correct. In the meantime, I'll continue to point out that confident assertions are not evidence.

I don't see that specific statement in there. Interesting discussion though. I think a more accurate phrasing would be:

If Free Will truly does not exist, it should be possible, if we were able to gather sufficiently detailed information about an individual's brain, to predict with 100% accuracy everything that person would think, say, and do, and this could be done for any individual you might choose.

The ability to read and write minds does not necessarily prove determinism or disprove free will. It does seem likely though that, if we were ever able to do such a thing, the details of how that process worked would give us considerable insight on those subjects. We can say now that it's still possible that free will doesn't really exist, but we don't have sufficient technology to gather detailed enough information about anyone's brain to fully predict their behavior. If we were able to reliably read and write minds, it would be very tough to say we just didn't have sufficient information. At that point, either we would be able to predict behavior and prove the determinists right, or we would still not be able to fully predict behavior and that would prove that free will actually does exist and the determinists are wrong.

I feel obligated to also note that pure determinism leads to some rather dark conclusions. If it were possible to scientifically prove that a person would 100% only do negative and harmful things for the rest of their life and it was not possible to change that, what else would there be to do except eliminate that person?

If it were possible to scientifically prove that a person would 100% only do negative and harmful things for the rest of their life and it was not possible to change that, what else would there be to do except eliminate that person?

Well we know that this isn't a possibility, right? The Heisenberg uncertainty principle prevents us from modelling anything with that degree of accuracy even in theory. Even if it were possible to take a fully-scanned human and simulate their future actions, it's not possible to fully scan that human in the first place.

If we did understand people that well though, I think the correct approach would be to offer the current person a choice between an ineffectual future, where they retain their current values but without the ability to harm others; and a different one, where their personality is modified just enough to not be deemed evil. This wouldn't even necessarily need physical modification--I doubt many scanned humans would remain fully resilient to an infinite variety of simulated therapies.

That isn't how Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle operates except in thought experiments and sci-fi episodes. The actual principle deals with the dual nature of phenomena like a photon, acting as a wave until you can pin down the location, then you lose the wave information and gain the location information. It also only operates on the most microscopic scale imaginable, your keys are always going to be where you left them.

Any object, even as small as neuron is not going to be impacted by this principle; containing 100 trillion atoms and some multiple of that I can't calculate without getting into moles for various elements in actual singular particles, it is a statistical impossibility for any quantum strangeness to impact even one brain cell. Not to mention that there are around 170 billion cells in the brain (neurons/Glial cells).

So 18 (carbon)* 100 trillion* 170 billion =3.06e+26 or 306,000,000,000,000,000,000,912,784 particles in the brain.

Even if it could impact your thought process (which it mathematically can't), then your actions would be random, not "free will", worse than deterministic I should think.

The actual principle deals with the dual nature of phenomena like a photon, acting as a wave until you can pin down the location, then you lose the wave information and gain the location information

I think this is misleading. You can't know a particle's position and momentum with certainty, period. This applies to all particles, not just photons and other particles commonly understood as wave-like, since fundamentally all particles are wavelike. We can't actually perfectly predict the behavior of a single particle, let alone an entire brain.

Any object, even as small as neuron is not going to be impacted by this principle; containing 100 trillion atoms and some multiple of that I can't calculate without getting into moles for various elements in actual singular particles, it is a statistical impossibility for any quantum strangeness to impact even one brain cell. Not to mention that there are around 170 billion cells in the brain (neurons/Glial cells).

We're talking about perfectly simulating the human brain. Anything less than perfection will lead to errors. If only a single atom in the entire brain were off in your scan by a planck length, your simulations would be inaccurate, especially over long timescales, due to the butterfly effect. But in this case every single atom in the brain will be off by more than that.

Even if it could impact your thought process (which it mathematically can't), then your actions would be random, not "free will", worse than deterministic I should think.

It's debatable whether quantum physics is actually contradictory with determinism, but aside from that, I don't see why randomness is any worse than determinism. Either way our actions are ultimately governed by external forces.

That isn't how Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle operates except in thought experiments and sci-fi episodes.

Well, this is a thought experiment after all.

"We're talking about perfectly simulating the human brain. Anything less than perfection will lead to errors. If only a single atom in the entire brain were off in your scan by a planck length, your simulations would be inaccurate, especially over long timescales, due to the butterfly effect. But in this case every single atom in the brain will be off by more than that."

That isn't how a system like a cell works, otherwise things would just disintegrate and the "simulation" that is our current intelligence wouldn't work at all, the integrity and utility and actions a cell are entirely unchanged by not knowing the exact location of each electron in their carbon atoms, we don't know them now, our brains and cells don't know or care, and we won't know them when the brain is scanned.

The carbon atoms function no differently regardless of where the electron is in the probability field. Once you add up the 100 trillion particles in a cell...well suffice it to say, even if you did have a few atoms or particles misbehaving they would have no physical impact on the neuron at all well below that number of total particles, and we aren't even above cellular level yet! There are so many steps and levels that make it impossible for the Uncertainty Principle to play any part in human cognition.

That isn't how a system like a cell works, otherwise things would just disintegrate and the "simulation" that is our current intelligence wouldn't work at all

So long as the variations are within reasonable constraints, intelligence will still work. As an analogy, a car can take many branching routes of a road leading in many different directions, but so long as it stays on the road it will continue to function.

the integrity and utility and actions a cell are entirely unchanged by not knowing the exact location of each electron in their carbon atoms, we don't know them now, our brains and cells don't know or care, and we won't know them when the brain is scanned.

We don't need to know the exact locations of atoms obviously--reality will continue to function with or without our knowledge--but a faithful simulation absolutely does.

The carbon atoms function no differently regardless of where the electron is in the probability field.

I doubt this is true, but it's unimportant regardless. The important thing is that the atom's position is unknown, and we know that atom positions can affect things.

Once you add up the 100 trillion particles in a cell...well suffice it to say, even if you did have a few atoms or particles misbehaving they would have no physical impact on the neuron at all well below that number of total particles, and we aren't even above cellular level yet!

It's not "a few atoms" misbehaving, it's literally every single atom. Many atoms in cells are free-floating, and small differences between where you think they are and where they actually are will cause enormous divergence between the simulation and reality.

For example, cancer is generally caused by mistakes made when copying dna, or damaged dna faithfully copied. Radiation famously causes cancer because it literally impacts dna and damages it. This is an interaction at a tiny scale, one which the uncertainty principle renders us powerless to predict.

If your simulation can't predict brain cancer, how do you expect it to predict regular choices? IMO it's self-evident that individual atoms impact brain function. If you want to push this point I'll look for studies to prove it.

IMO it's self-evident that individual atoms impact brain function. If you want to push this point I'll look for studies to prove it.

I can't help but note that this view must be down to the human mind not being able to properly conceptualize 100 trillion and what that means for gross probability for the item made up by those 100 trillion atoms (I typed particles in my last post by mistake) I certainly can't picture it, but it unfathomably unlikely for 100 trillion of anything to do something other than average out almost exactly. I doubt very much that such a study exists for this niche interest, but I applaud your interest.

Even DNA strand is made up of 100s of billions of atoms and considering that out of our 40 trillion or so human cells cancer caused by radiation is rare, we are exposed to radiation 24/7 365, only extremely high doses have a real chance of surely causing cancer due to the sheer number of particles you're bombarded with. You can also be killed with a bat to the head, that is also made of a lot of particles and will surely change your mind.

Regardless, radiation or bats fucking up your brain do not free will make.

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