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0 pointschr16y ago0 comments

The difference is most likely the organization and the complexity of a network. Neural network doesn't have free will because it is too simple and can't even pass turing test.

> I think that if the universe is deterministic and computable then that implies no free will, since humans are part of the universe and therefore also deterministic and computable.

I agree that universe being deterministic and computable means that humans are deterministic and computable.

But what is the evidence for "deterministic and computable" implying "no free will"?

I think that computational irreducibility allows the exact opposite interpretation. Humans are deterministic and computable but the process of computation is equivalent to humans living, no matter what is used to perform the computation (moving atoms in the original universe, a computer program, or even many people with pen and paper).

So even if you can compute what the human will do, you can't predict, because the act of computing is the same as human doing. This provides the "will" part of the free will.

And if you do not stop the algorithm, and change the state to get a different outcome, then it is also free.

As a side-note, this interpretation is surprisingly consistent with the original formulation of the question of free will in religious setting, where some being outside the universe knows everything about the universe, can arbitrarily manipulate the state of the universe, but can't predict what the creatures in the universe are going to do and claims that they are free to chose.

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NOGDP6y ago

> The difference is most likely the organization and the complexity of a network. Neural network doesn't have free will because it is too simple and can't even pass turing test.

I don't see what the Turing test has to do with free will, but it has been beaten multiple times already.

> But what is the evidence for "deterministic and computable" implying "no free will"?

Deterministic and computable universe would mean the entire existence of a human would be deterministically determined by the point in space and time he was born. If you re-ran the simulation from before the person was born to their death, the universe would progress through the exact same states.

> So even if you can compute what the human will do, you can't predict, because the act of computing is the same as human doing.

That's like saying if you ran a random program without knowing it's source code you could not predict what it would do until you actually ran it. I don't see what that has to do with free will. In a simulation free will would be the ability to change your choices between runs of the exact same universe.

chr1OP6y ago

>>> What's the difference between the human thinking, feeling, making a choice and a trained neural network making a 'choice'? I would not say a neural network has free will.

>> The difference is most likely the organization and the complexity of a network. Neural network doesn't have free will because it is too simple and can't even pass turing test.

> I don't see what the Turing test has to do with free will, but it has been beaten multiple times already.

my point was that neural network doesn't have free will, because it is too simple and cannot be regarded as a person, Turing test is one objective way to check if a program is capable of thinking. The wikipedia page on Turing test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test is not aware of any of the times when it was beaten.

> If you re-ran the simulation from before the person was born to their death, the universe would progress through the exact same states.

sure, it would be like a time machine.

> In a simulation free will would be the ability to change your choices between runs of the exact same universe.

that would not be a free will, that would be an absence of will, because if nothing changes why would person's reaction change?

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