DavidMcC wrote:IMO, flies have no biological free will at all, because their behavuiour is entirely determined by instinctive responses to sensory input - they don't think, at least not in the manner that humans can. Whether they have any other kind of free will is not cleat, as these other kinds are so far ill-defined.
I think one might need be a fly on the wall in one of those experiments to confirm your claims.
Have you untangled your quantum entanglement misunderstandings. The physics universe paradigm branched:
It's turtle's all the way down, entanglement all the way up.
I think that you are the one who doesn't understand quantum entanglement. I tried to exaplin it to you, yesyterday, but you ignored it, then just posted the above self-congratulatory nonsense.
DavidMcC wrote:IMO, flies have no biological free will at all, because their behavuiour is entirely determined by instinctive responses to sensory input - they don't think, at least not in the manner that humans can. Whether they have any other kind of free will is not cleat, as these other kinds are so far ill-defined.
I think one might need be a fly on the wall in one of those experiments to confirm your claims.
Have you untangled your quantum entanglement misunderstandings. The physics universe paradigm branched:
It's turtle's all the way down, entanglement all the way up.
I think that you are the one who doesn't understand quantum entanglement. I tried to exaplin it to you, yesyterday, but you ignored it, then just posted the above self-congratulatory nonsense.
Yes, John, I know you posted that. But it's rubbish anyway/. You have to realise that not everything that gets published is correct. MWI is still nonsense, even after it got the support of a very small group of people. The overwhelming majority of physicists say that it's rubbish
I think one might need be a fly on the wall in one of those experiments to confirm your claims.
Have you untangled your quantum entanglement misunderstandings. The physics universe paradigm branched:
It's turtle's all the way down, entanglement all the way up.
I think that you are the one who doesn't understand quantum entanglement. I tried to exaplin it to you, yesyterday, but you ignored it, then just posted the above self-congratulatory nonsense.
Yes, John, I know you posted that. But it's rubbish anyway/.
Why? Because you say so???
You have to realise that not everything that gets published is correct.
I realize that but I'm not talking about everything that gets published. I'm talking about articles on large scale entanglement from credible sources. What are your credible sources saying that says:
Entanglement??!! Are you kidding? Only indiv=idual fundamental particles that are created in the same space-time event can get entangled. Therefore, your suggestion is very naive, and absurd.
How about this guy giving an example of how macroscopic objects can be entangled?
MWI is still nonsense, even after it got the support of a very small group of people.
18% of physicists who are experts in QM isn't exactly a small group of the experts. Especially when no interpretation of the science gets more that 42% as being their favorite interpretation.
Do you really find Sean Carroll to be not credible enough to take seriously?
The overwhelming majority of physicists say that it's rubbish
The overwhelming majority, i.e. 100% don't have an explanation that is less rubbish. When physicists come up with the answer that is clearly correct you don't have people like Sean Carroll and David Deutsch (%58 of physicists expert in the area) saying there is a better answer.
Is MWI proven to be true - of course not, is it rubbish - of course not. Do credible people think it's the best interpretation we have - of course they do. As Sean Carroll puts it, it's simple believing what the math is telling us. But I think for many, personal intuitions and biases get in the way of that.
DavidMcC wrote:John, how is the Gell-Mann interview video relevant to free will? It is only relevant to interpretation of QM.
It's relevant to the interpretation of multiple histories. And multiple histories suggest branching points, i.e. the actual possibility to do this rather than that. And that is what the concept of free will is all about. Is this not obvious?
It depends whether the "branching point" is just in the probability calculation concerning the "possibility to do this rather than that", and not an actual branching point in the actual history (which implies multiple ACTUAL histories, and multiple ACTUAL universes). Apparently, Everett thought the latter, even though you (and I) consider it to be the former. Apparently, he was so derided by his peers after he published it, that he withdrew from physics.
I just read in Vlatko's book:
"Boltzmann, like other great thinkers of our time, suffered a more complicated end that is usual. The pressure of the prevailing scientific establishment clearly was a factor in driving him to suicide."
I don't know the full story there but I'm thinking "deriding" isn't the way to refute a physics theory.
John Platko wrote: How about this guy giving an example of how macroscopic objects can be entangled?
Why don't you post the video where he (or somebody else) actually shows how to trap lots of entangled particles in pairs of boxes? We know about Bose-Einstein condensation, but those aren't the droids you're looking for. It would be big news in the phyics community if somebody succeeded. John, you're bullshitting us again posting links that purport to say something is possible. Of course lots of stuff that hasn't been shown to be impossible is speculated to be possible, but that doesn't even mean shit to a tree, and so somebody has again found the sweet spot to appeal to woo artists who are entertained by entertaining videos like Susskind's.
John Platko wrote: Do you really find Sean Carroll to be not credible enough to take seriously?
How do Sean Carroll's entertaining commentaries achieve (in the laboratory!) entanglement of large numbers of particles in boxes out of which (as Susskind glibly put it) "something interesting could be made"?
John Platko wrote: Is MWI proven to be true - of course not, is it rubbish - of course not. Do credible people think it's the best interpretation we have - of course they do.
Do these opinions achieve anything in the laboratory? Also, of course not. Stick with the entertaining speculation, John. I don't know what point you think you're proving except that the stuff you want to believe in hasn't been proven impossible. But that's always been the sweet spot for the woo merchants, hasn't it?
John Platko wrote:I don't know the full story there but I'm thinking "deriding" isn't the way to refute a physics theory.
Who needs to deride the theory? Maybe David does, but I don't. What I deride is something else entirely.
John Platko wrote:The overwhelming majority, i.e. 100% don't have an explanation that is less rubbish.
There isn't any value in an 'explanation', John, if it is not explaining something in the laboratory you think you'd like to see. Just ask yourself what the fuck has been explained. You're bullshitting us again. You're bullshitting us with characteristic regularity. The woo you enjoy believing in has not been proven impossible, and that leaves you exactly where you were when you first showed up at this forum trolling people you know are eager to prove you wrong. That's fine, and nobody's going to say you're fucked for anything more than the sleazy arguments you present. You'd be just great as an Expanding Earther, but for one problem - you know better than to address yourself to anything for which conclusive evidence is available.
John Platko wrote:I will shortly (I'm thinking tomorrow as today I'm a bit busy) wrap them all up in a nice stew -special sauce n all.
Your throngs of fans are waiting on the edges of their seats. No, John: Word salad about fruit flies and claims of connecting the dots to the MWI for QM or collecting piles of interesting pairs of entangled particles in pairs of boxes doesn't cut it with me.
Last edited by Cito di Pense on Oct 12, 2017 9:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
Хлопнут без некролога. -- Серге́й Па́влович Королёв
Translation by Elbert Hubbard: Do not take life too seriously. You're not going to get out of it alive.
John Platko wrote: How about this guy giving an example of how macroscopic objects can be entangled?
You do know that isn't "an example", don't you? It's a hand wave to a general principle that might be possible.
In principle you could make a pen out of antimatter, but I'm not giving you an example by typing that.
So, with all this hand waving at the weirdness of QM are you going to join any dots back to free will? How does entanglement of anything get you free will?
John Platko wrote: How about this guy giving an example of how macroscopic objects can be entangled?
Why don't you post the video where he (or somebody else) actually shows how to trap lots of entangled particles in pairs of boxes?
I thought a one minute video with an obvious expert would be the best way to show that it's bullshit to claim that entanglement only applies to individual pairs of particles. And if Sean Carroll wasn't convincing enough, and David Deutsch wasn't convincing enough, I thought a bit of Leonard Susskind would (he certainly should) make the penny drop.
We know about Bose-Einstein condensation, but those aren't the droids you're looking for. It would be big news in the phyics community if somebody succeeded.
Maybe you'll like this video better :
"We" - I have no idea what entangled set of we you are talking about. I prefer to respond to comments - not "wes".
But please tell "we" that macro state entanglement was big news. "We" know that because I posted links to the news.
John, you're bullshitting us again posting links that purport to say something is possible.
I'm posting reputable links describing the work of reputable physicists and philosophers. (with some occasional obvious humorous links from time to time) But Sean Carroll, David Deutsch, Christian List, and the like are serious, credible people and it will take more than a snarky comment from you to discredit their work. (and don't look now but most people understand that and are too)
Of course lots of stuff that hasn't been shown to be impossible is speculated to be possible, but that doesn't even mean shit to a tree, and so somebody has again found the sweet spot to appeal to woo artists who are entertained by entertaining videos like Susskind's.
So Sussking is a woo artist too? Even I'm embarrassed for you.
Pro tip: If you going to take pot shots at the likes of: David Deutsch, Sean Carroll, Christian List, Leonard Susskind, Andrew Friedman then your powder may be found to be all wet when you aim at more deserving targets - in which case you're only recourse will be to throw sticks and stones - which from you have no information content for me because I find 0 in that.
By what magic do you claim to know the motivations, money or otherwise, of these people? Play the ball not the player - if you think you're a match for their ideas then let's hear why their ideas are wrong.
John Platko wrote: Do you really find Sean Carroll to be not credible enough to take seriously?
How do Sean Carroll's entertaining commentaries achieve (in the laboratory!) entanglement of large numbers of particles in boxes out of which (as Susskind glibly put it) "something interesting could be made"?
"entertaining", "gliby" - maybe they're trying to educate - give people insight into their thinking. Susskind has put in major effort to do that. Why assume anything less than they are sincerely trying to teach people what they know as best they can?
John Platko wrote: Is MWI proven to be true - of course not, is it rubbish - of course not. Do credible people think it's the best interpretation we have - of course they do.
Do these opinions achieve anything in the laboratory? Also, of course not.
Does pondering opinions achieve anything in the laboratory?
Stick with the entertaining speculation, John. I don't know what point you think you're proving except that the stuff you want to believe in hasn't been proven impossible. But that's always been the sweet spot for the woo merchants, hasn't it?
It's not about what I want to believe it's about what experts in the field find credible to believe and are working hard to learn more about. And metaphysical explanations (and you are in the philosophy section of the forum) cut their teeth on consistent systems of thought that exclude what is known to be impossible. It is useful, in and out of the laboratory to know the difference between what is possible and what is impossible and what is only imagined to be so.
John Platko wrote:I don't know the full story there but I'm thinking "deriding" isn't the way to refute a physics theory.
Who needs to deride the theory? Maybe David does, but I don't. What I deride is something else entirely.
John Platko wrote:The overwhelming majority, i.e. 100% don't have an explanation that is less rubbish.
There isn't any value in an 'explanation', John, if it is not explaining something in the laboratory you think you'd like to see. Just ask yourself what the fuck has been explained. You're bullshitting us again. You're bullshitting us with characteristic regularity. The woo you enjoy believing in has not been proven impossible, and that leaves you exactly where you were when you first showed up at this forum trolling people you know are eager to prove you wrong. That's fine, and nobody's going to say you're fucked for anything more than the sleazy arguments you present. You'd be just great as an Expanding Earther, but for one problem - you know better than to address yourself to anything for which conclusive evidence is available.
I've address myself to plenty of things where conclusive evidence is available, just not exclusively.
Of course there's value in explanations that are understandable. People who say: "this is how it is" without being able to explain why and then they continue by trying to convince you that you can't understand it because evolution evolved you in a way that doesn't permit you to understand it are the ones bull shitting. It's the classic trick of all "priestly" clubs trying to control people's thoughts. And sadly this is what many of the earlier generation of QM scientists put out - fortunately 85 or so years later many scientists are not willing to settle for such nonsense.
John Platko wrote:I will shortly (I'm thinking tomorrow as today I'm a bit busy) wrap them all up in a nice stew -special sauce n all.
Your throngs of fans are waiting on the edges of their seats. No, John: Word salad about fruit flies and claims of connecting the dots to the MWI for QM or collecting piles of interesting pairs of entangled particles in pairs of boxes doesn't cut it with me.
Well, I thought I made it pretty clear that the fruit fly paper didn't exactly fly with me either, never-the-less I learned things from it.
John Platko wrote: How about this guy giving an example of how macroscopic objects can be entangled?
You do know that isn't "an example", don't you? It's a hand wave to a general principle that might be possible.
In principle you could make a pen out of antimatter, but I'm not giving you an example by typing that.
So, with all this hand waving at the weirdness of QM are you going to join any dots back to free will? How does entanglement of anything get you free will?
Well, GrahamH, if you're not going to believe what Leonard Susskind and Sean Carroll tells you about physics. Or what I posted here.
Physicists from MIT and the University of Belgrade have developed a new technique that can successfully entangle 3,000 atoms using only a single photon.
...
“You can make the argument that a single photon cannot possibly change the state of 3,000 atoms, but this one photon does — it builds up correlations that you didn’t have before,” says Vladan Vuletic, the Lester Wolfe Professor in MIT’s Department of Physics, and the paper’s senior author. “We have basically opened up a new class of entangled states we can make, but there are many more new classes to be explored.”
I don't expect you to believe my MWI entangled metaphysics of free will.
John Platko wrote: I don't expect you to believe my MWI entangled metaphysics of free will.
All the physicists in the world are of no relevance to free will unless you can make the connection. If you want to build your case on an assumption that whole brains are entangled objects or something that's OK. We can take whatever premises you like for now so you can Make the connection. You are wasting your time trying to persuade about QM by posting videos and quotes, unless you have one that specifically makes the case for free will from QM. But still, it's your calling to say something about free will so it's better if you join the dots yourself.
John Platko wrote:It's not about what I want to believe it's about what experts in the field find credible to believe and are working hard to learn more about. And metaphysical explanations (and you are in the philosophy section of the forum) cut their teeth on consistent systems of thought that exclude what is known to be impossible. It is useful, in and out of the laboratory to know the difference between what is possible and what is impossible and what is only imagined to be so.
Still, it has never been clear why you think ANY of this work is relevant to the (philosophical) problem of free will, other than that you're heard a couple of physicists jokingly or speculatively say some... stuff. My take is that you are free associating with what you think you heard. Again.
John Platko wrote:So Sussking is a woo artist too? Even I'm embarrassed for you.
Did I say I think Susskind is a woo artist? If you can't point to where I said it, I think you should probably just belay that nonsense. The woo artists are the lay people who are gobbling up sound bites looking for a few bars of verbal jazz they can feel supports their woo. When I think you've make an argument that's relevant to the topic of this thread, I'll let you know.
John Platko wrote:If you going to take pot shots at the likes of: David Deutsch, Sean Carroll, Christian List, Leonard Susskind, Andrew Friedman then your powder may be found to be all wet when you aim at more deserving targets....
Did I say I had a problem with their motivations? If you can't point to such a statement, I suggest you just stuff your nonsense back into the intellectual cloaca it just splashed out of. The worst thing I can say about what Susskind has to say was that it's glib. I don't know why most of that stuff gets posted on youtube. Do you have any information about the channel you found it on? Or is it unvetted, like almost everything else that gets posted on youtube.
Хлопнут без некролога. -- Серге́й Па́влович Королёв
Translation by Elbert Hubbard: Do not take life too seriously. You're not going to get out of it alive.
John Platko wrote: I don't expect you to believe my MWI entangled metaphysics of free will.
All the physicists in the world are of no relevance to free will unless you can make the connection. If you want to build your case on an assumption that whole brains are entangled objects or something that's OK.
I'm not prepared to go that far out.
We can take whatever premises you like for now so you can Make the connection. You are wasting your time trying to persuade about QM by posting videos and quotes, unless you have one that specifically makes the case for free will from QM.
The QM MWI, branching histories are just foundation material. It's like you need to understand a bit about calculus before you really understand classical physics.
But still, it's your calling to say something about free will so it's better if you join the dots yourself.
John Platko wrote: The QM MWI, branching histories are just foundation material. It's like you need to understand a bit about calculus before you really understand classical physics.
But we don't need to "really understand the physics". People don't need calculus to get the basic ideas of Newtonian physics.
This isn't a physics form and you aren't going to be doing any serious maths and "really understanding" QM. If someone thought that time travel would support free will the could make that case without any recourse to science. Join the dots first THEN set about justifying the dots if you can. Set out the valid logic first then set about justifying the premises. Otherwise you will be wasting your time defending premises that don't support your conclusion.
John Platko wrote:It's not about what I want to believe it's about what experts in the field find credible to believe and are working hard to learn more about. And metaphysical explanations (and you are in the philosophy section of the forum) cut their teeth on consistent systems of thought that exclude what is known to be impossible. It is useful, in and out of the laboratory to know the difference between what is possible and what is impossible and what is only imagined to be so.
Still, it has never been clear why you think ANY of this work is relevant to the (philosophical) problem of free will, other than that you're heard a couple of physicists jokingly or speculatively say some... stuff. My take is that you are free associating with what you think you heard. Again.
ANY?
It should be obvious why List's paper was about Free Will, the Title was a clue:
Free will, determinism, and the possibility of doing otherwise
And List's paper introduced the philosophy of branching histories and showed how coarse grained agential states are multiply realizable. And he gave some nice definitions of determinism and indeterminism.
Sometimes we wish to refer not to an entire world history, but only to a truncated part of that history, up to a given point in time t. To do so, we introduce the notation ht to denote the restriction of the history h to the set of all points in time up to t.29 With these concepts in place, we can give formal definitions of determinism and indeterminism. Determinism is the thesis that:
Determinism: For any two histories h, h’ in Ω and any point in time t in T, if ht = h’t, then h = h’.
That is, any two histories that coincide up to time t are identical in their entirety; so the world history up to any point in time t fully determines its continuation. Indeterminism is the negation of this thesis.
Indeterminism: There exist some histories h, h’ in Ω and some point in time t in T such that ht = h’t but h ≠ h’. That is, there can be two or more distinct world histories that coincide up to some point in time t but subsequently branch out in different directions.
In addition List provide nice formalism for agential states, multiple realizable agential states, and history branch points.
However, as GrahamH likes to point out, List developed his theory using deterministic histories not indeterministic histories. And, there was a feeling of: how does all this branching history stuff connect to reality and real physics?
So I introduced Sean Carroll's MWI descriptions to:
1) Introduce histories that coincided up to a point and then branch - which List defines an indeterministic histories. 2) Show that this isn't just about guys sitting around smoking and imagining shit. 3) GIve some idea of how the branching could work (this is metaphysics, could is on the table as long as the system of thought is consistent and nothing can be shown to be impossible (the more possible, the better the argument) about the system of thought)
The fly paper title also gave clue as to why I brought it up:
Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates
The best part of the fly paper is how it tied William James 2 stage free will to flies and therefore biology.
And the retrocausality was a probably hopeless attempt to encourage romansh to stop taking physics as gospel. Physics is just another way of explaining stuff.
So it's not free association, it's an orderly path towards understanding more about free will.
John Platko wrote:So Sussking is a woo artist too? Even I'm embarrassed for you.
Did I say I think Susskind is a woo artist? If you can't point to where I said it, I think you should probably just belay that nonsense. The woo artists are the lay people who are gobbling up sound bites looking for a few bars of verbal jazz they can feel supports their woo. When I think you've make an argument that's relevant to the topic of this thread, I'll let you know.
Ditto.
I'll let the readers of your many comments about the many world class scientists whose work I presented in this thread and others judge if you were disparaging them or not.
John Platko wrote:If you going to take pot shots at the likes of: David Deutsch, Sean Carroll, Christian List, Leonard Susskind, Andrew Friedman then your powder may be found to be all wet when you aim at more deserving targets....
Did I say I had a problem with their motivations? If you can't point to such a statement, I suggest you just stuff your nonsense back into the intellectual cloaca it just splashed out of. The worst thing I can say about what Susskind has to say was that it's glib. I don't know why most of that stuff gets posted on youtube. Do you have any information about the channel you found it on? Or is it unvetted, like almost everything else that gets posted on youtube.
John Platko wrote: But I see your point, physicists seem to have a bit of carnival barker in them.
Some of them, anyway. The ones you like listening to -- they know what you want to hear, and that's why we hear from you only about them (see last lines of this post for more). This is big business for them, entertaining with woo. They get funding for that because of all the woo-heads out there who want to hear all about that shit.
So yes, I would say you globally disparaged every scientist whose work I posted.
As for the Susskind video, it looks to me like it was part of one of his Stanford Class for over the hill people. He does a lot of those- but I'm not sure. He is very serious in all the videos I watched.
John Platko wrote: The QM MWI, branching histories are just foundation material. It's like you need to understand a bit about calculus before you really understand classical physics.
But we don't need to "really understand the physics". People don't need calculus to get the basic ideas of Newtonian physics.
This isn't a physics form and you aren't going to be doing any serious maths and "really understanding" QM. If someone thought that time travel would support free will the could make that case without any recourse to science. Join the dots first THEN set about justifying the dots if you can. Set out the valid logic first then set about justifying the premises. Otherwise you will be wasting your time defending premises that don't support your conclusion.
It depends on what you mean by basic. An integral is very useful for understanding the relationship between acceleration and velocity and distance.
It's rather simple, I need the dots in place before I join them.
And we already have the special theory of free will already well covered. I started with that, experimental example, theory, I've that two stage process.
The conclusion, therefore, is that multiple worlds automatically occur in quantum mechanics. They are an inevitable part of the formalism. The only remaining question is: what are you going to do about it? There are three popular strategies on the market: anger, denial, and acceptance.
The “anger” strategy says “I hate the idea of multiple worlds with such a white-hot passion that I will change the rules of quantum mechanics in order to avoid them.” And people do this! In the four options listed here, both dynamical-collapse theories and hidden-variable theories are straightforward alterations of the conventional picture of quantum mechanics. In dynamical collapse, we change the evolution equation, by adding some explicitly stochastic probability of collapse. In hidden variables, we keep the Schrödinger equation intact, but add new variables — hidden ones, which we know must be explicitly non-local. Of course there is currently zero empirical evidence for these rather ad hoc modifications of the formalism, but hey, you never know.
The “denial” strategy says “The idea of multiple worlds is so profoundly upsetting to me that I will deny the existence of reality in order to escape having to think about it.” Advocates of this approach don’t actually put it that way, but I’m being polemical rather than conciliatory in this particular post. And I don’t think it’s an unfair characterization. This is the quantum Bayesianism approach, or more generally “psi-epistemic” approaches. The idea is to simply deny that the quantum state represents anything about reality; it is merely a way of keeping track of the probability of future measurement outcomes. Is the particle spin-up, or spin-down, or both? Neither! There is no particle, there is no spoon, nor is there the state of the particle’s spin; there is only the probability of seeing the spin in different conditions once one performs a measurement. I advocate listening to David Albert’s take at our WSF panel.
The final strategy is acceptance. That is the Everettian approach. The formalism of quantum mechanics, in this view, consists of quantum states as described above and nothing more, which evolve according to the usual Schrödinger equation and nothing more. The formalism predicts that there are many worlds, so we choose to accept that. This means that the part of reality we experience is an indescribably thin slice of the entire picture, but so be it. Our job as scientists is to formulate the best possible description of the world as it is, not to force the world to bend to our pre-conceptions.
John Platko wrote: And List's paper introduced the philosophy of branching histories and showed how coarse grained agential states are multiply realizable. And he gave some nice definitions of determinism and indeterminism.
He gave you some word salad to chew on, and you're regurgitating it for the nth time. You have a talent for that.
Хлопнут без некролога. -- Серге́й Па́влович Королёв
Translation by Elbert Hubbard: Do not take life too seriously. You're not going to get out of it alive.
It should be obvious why List's paper was about Free Will, ... That is, any two histories that coincide up to time t are identical in their entirety; so the world history up to any point in time t fully determines its continuation. Indeterminism is the negation of this thesis.
But List discarded the fine grained difference that allowed deterministic physical histories to end up in different agential states and then tried to claim it was some property of agents, without ever specifying that property or justifying it. In short he called coarse-grained states "identical" over a small interval when they were clearly not identical over a larger interval and his selection of intervals was arbitrary. That's a form of cherry picking. We expect that sort of thing from Client Change deniers but what is it doing here?
John Platko wrote:And, there was a feeling of: how does all this branching history stuff connect to reality and real physics?
There was that too, but mostly there was a felling of how does all this get us to free will?
John Platko wrote:I'll let the readers of your many comments about the many world class scientists whose work I presented in this thread and others judge if you were disparaging them or not.
I read them as criticism of your attempts to present physics / physicists as supporting your vague notions of free will rather than a criticism of actual physics or physicists. Join the dots!
I have a new understanding of free will: agential propensity to multiply-realise historical branching through coarse grained quantum neuronal states via MWI wave collapse function in microtubular vibrational neocortical heuristic algorithmic processing pathways of consciousness.
OFFICIAL MEMBER: QUANTUM CONSTRUCTOR CONSCIOUSNESS QUALIA KOALA COLLECTIVE.
LucidFlight wrote:I have a new understanding of free will: agential propensity to multiply-realise historical branching through coarse grained quantum neuronal states via MWI wave collapse function in microtubular vibrational neocortical heuristic algorithmic processing pathways of consciousness.
That could just be the most lucid post on the whole topic.
John Platko wrote: And List's paper introduced the philosophy of branching histories and showed how coarse grained agential states are multiply realizable. And he gave some nice definitions of determinism and indeterminism.
He gave you some word salad to chew on, and you're regurgitating it for the nth time. You have a talent for that.
It should be obvious why List's paper was about Free Will, ... That is, any two histories that coincide up to time t are identical in their entirety; so the world history up to any point in time t fully determines its continuation. Indeterminism is the negation of this thesis.
But List discarded the fine grained difference that allowed deterministic physical histories to end up in different agential states and then tried to claim it was some property of agents, without ever specifying that property or justifying it. In short he called coarse-grained states "identical" over a small interval when they were clearly not identical over a larger interval and his selection of intervals was arbitrary. That's a form of cherry picking. We expect that sort of thing from Client Change deniers but what is it doing here?
I hope you're not accusing me of cherry picking. I'm not using List's overall conclusions or overall point of view in my free will theory, just his well defined definitions and a bit of the terminology - much of which he didn't invent but it's nicely bundled in that paper. I was going to use his definition of Indeterminism but I'm going to try to simplify as much as possible and maybe only use it if needed - it seems to be just adding to the confusion.
John Platko wrote:And, there was a feeling of: how does all this branching history stuff connect to reality and real physics?
There was that too, but mostly there was a felling of how does all this get us to free will?
Sure, but there's this chicken and egg problem, if your head explodes when you hear MWI then it will be hard to follow my argument.
And is worth clicking on if you want to learn how a proper rant is done.
John Platko wrote:I'll let the readers of your many comments about the many world class scientists whose work I presented in this thread and others judge if you were disparaging them or not.
I read them as criticism of your attempts to present physics / physicists as supporting your vague notions of free will rather than a criticism of actual physics or physicists. Join the dots!
I think you misread the criticism I was referirng to. This isn't just about me:
Some of them, anyway. The ones you like listening to -- they know what you want to hear, and that's why we hear from you only about them (see last lines of this post for more). This is big business for them, entertaining with woo. They get funding for that because of all the woo-heads out there who want to hear all about that shit.
by I think one might need be a fly on the wall in one of those experiments to confirm your claims.
Why? Because you say so???
:
Even I'm embarrassed for you.
in that. 
that two stage process.
is worth clicking on if you want to learn how a proper rant is done.