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It means that when a computer does something wrong, we yell at the person who programmed it, and when a machine does something wrong, we yell at the person operating it, but when a person does something wrong, we yell at that person in particular. This is how it works in every facet of human interaction, and for the obvious reason that doing otherwise doesn't work.
More specifically, it means that I am conscious, that I can direct my conscious experience through choices with apparent total freedom. I can think about what I want to think about. I can not want to think about things for a set of reasons, and want to think about them for another set of reasons, and make a decision about what to do. It means I can decide whether to get up in the morning or sleep in, decide what to eat, what to drink, what to do, who to talk to, what words to say. It means I can compose this post to you by choosing each word, based on the message I wish to convey. These conscious experiences of free will are notably distinct from non-conscious impulses, itches, sensations, etc, and can with effort directly override the later. One can choose to suppress the response to and experience of severe pain, for example, through the direct application of one's will.
They observably are for all inert matter. They ought to be for human minds, if Materialism is true. They do not appear to be, if our internal experience is to be believed, which is why this has been a hotly-debated topic for decades even when very nearly everyone involved in the debate very much wants the same answer. The problem is that the evidence we actually have flatly contradicts that answer.
Well, the Christians could be right, and humans could be an immortal soul housed within a material body, not subject to the deterministic rules of the temporary physical universe. Alternatively, we could be living in a simulation, our understanding of causality and material reality could be based not on baseline reality, but on the simulation's own arbitrary-though-internally-consistent code, while our free will could come from a separate module that runs on different principles. So that's two scenarios where free will could ever even be a thing.
But the point remains that you simply repeating yourself: free will can't exist because it breaks Materialism. This does not change the fact that all the direct evidence indicates that free will does in fact appear to exist. All your arguments to the contrary are inferential, not direct. If I want to prove that a machine is deterministic, I show you how the gears work. If I want to prove that a computer is deterministic, I show you how the circuits work. The human mind from the inside does not appear to be gears and circuits at all. It's possible that appearances are deceiving, but "possible" and "proven" should be distinct concepts.
How so? Is there any answer that doesn't amount to "because Materialism demands it be so"?
These are all things you were already going to do exactly that way based on the billions of years that came before YOU. What makes you make those choices? Your mind, which is a result of genetics and the impact of the material world on that genetically distinct mind. You've never had a moment of free will, nor have I, and we never will. If you believe in chemical reactions or electricity or gravity...free will can't exist.
P.S. is your religiosity argument really based on simulation theory?
Okay. Please demonstrate that this is true by making a testable, falsifiable prediction about the behavior of another human, with enough specificity to clearly distinguish between the two models.
Alternatively, I can believe in chemical reactions, electricity, and gravity, and note that our understandings of these a) do not appear to be complete, b) do not seem likely to be made complete in the future, and c) do not have anything useful to say about human behavior. If human brains actually worked like clockwork and could be manipulated like clockwork, I would agree that they seem to be clockwork. But they don't, so I don't. Instead, when the theory and the actionable observations of reality appear to contradict each other, I go with the actionable observations. Why should I do otherwise? What does "assume that determinism is true, despite it appearing in every testable way that it's false" add to my thinking? Does it help me make better circuit boards or chip designs?
Not particularly. Both Christianity and Simulation theory posit that observable reality is not baseline reality. I think the apparent existence of entropy and the apparent existence of free will are two solid indications that observable reality is not, in fact, baseline reality, and that the nature of baseline reality is probably not accessible to us under present conditions.
Yes it does. If natural laws don't work and time isn't real and consequences don't follow actions... then yeah...you can't make computer chips.
If they aren't real at all, that would follow.
If they aren't universal constants in areas having nothing to do with computer chips, it doesn't follow.
Materialism's core claim is that all matter works according to the same principles, and so you can't claim exceptions in one area. Yudkowski's Universal Fire is as good a formulation of this claim as any.
This is the basic argument you are making, yes?
I feeeeellll....like it is a trick if I say yes, but yeah pretty much.
It's not a trick, it's just the straightforward truth about how reasoning works.
Here's the intro and the ending of that essay:
Rather than make the back-and-forth additionally tedious, I'm going to assume you'd likewise endorse the bolded part of the conclusion above. The problem is that the bolded part, the actual conclusion, is straightforwardly, obviously false as he's written it.
You will probably disagree with that statement, so let me try to reformulate it into a perfectly-equivalent statement that will highlight the problem:
"Impossible things can't happen, so if an impossible thing happens, you can be sure another impossible thing won't happen."
This is a logically-incoherent statement.
Yudkowski appears to be correct that reality is laced together a lot more tightly than many humans might like to believe. What he's missing is that this fact cuts both ways. If you observe something "impossible", then there is an error somewhere; either your observation is wrong, or your understanding of what is possible is wrong; it could be either, and you don't know which. What it can't be, is that something impossible actually happened but the rules of possibility as you understand them are still valid.
You cannot, in fact, step through a portal to another world where matches don't work. If you could step through such a portal, there is no valid reason to believe that the matches not working means you don't work. The whole point of the chain of logic about phosphorus chemistry is that the physical laws are supposed to be perfectly seamless from phosphorus down to subatomic physics and up through your internal chemical makeup. Portals to another world have already proved that the chain isn't seamless, and in fact there's a gap the size of the grand canyon. Once you have one confirmed breakdown, there is no valid reason to suppose that the rest of your model is reliable enough to make confident predictions about the region of the break.
The correct statement is, "If you stepped into a world where matches failed to strike, who the fuck knows? Maybe you instantly die because phosphorus chemistry doesn't work there. Maybe it's magic. Maybe you're in a simulation and match-striking has been hard-locked by a recent patch. Maybe someone is playing an elaborate prank on you, and swapped your matches for fakes."
Do you disagree?
To add some levity, https://youtube.com/watch?v=OCCYvPlsp7o
Amusing I'm sure, but do you have a more substantive answer?
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