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.

Close, you could take the lead and give a more detailed theory. But I'm going for a more holistic entanglement branching (we don't have collapse in MWI - that so copenhagenie )

John Platko wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

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.

Have you read List's paper?

On your recommendation? Don't make me laugh. If you're treating this like a seminar you're leading, you can leave the fuck off with that.

I will now briefly connect the dots that overview the General Unified Theory of Free Will of Knowledge (GUTFWK) which provides a mode of explanation (a metaphysical mode) for how free will experienced at the agential level is consistent with the known, and sort of known, low-ish level physical state behavior of all (the universe).

But first a quick review of the Special Agential Theory of Free Will of Knowledge (SATFWK), which I presented much earlier in the thread here. (along with reference to my experimental verification) The summary is:

A constructor has free will if it has the ability to create knowledge and use that knowledge to choose physical transformations consistent with what physical transformations are possible and what physical transformations are impossible, which define the purpose of the constructor.

This is consistent with other modes of explanation concerning the same phenomenon, the earliest being attributed to William James. An excellent historical exploration of the evolution of his idea can be found here.

And now I present FAPP: the General Unified Theory of Free Will of Knowledge (GUTFWK)

1) In the beginning was ΨUNIVERSE, and the Universe(t) was with ΨUNIVERSE, and ΨUNIVERSE was all Knowledge (a certain class of information). The Limit -> Zero entropy (the same) was in the beginning the Informtion. All things were made by ΨUNIVERSE; and without ΨUNIVERSE was not any thing that was made. In ΨUNIVERSE was life Knowledge; and that Knowledge was the light of women and men. And the light shineth in darkness (lack of Information) and evolved the quantum wave function, i.e. ΨUNIVERSE.

2) As it was written in the Knowledge of ΨUNIVERSE, |ΨUNIVERSE> = ∑αi |ΨWorldi >, where each Worldi is what people have traditionally called the universe because of their darkness. From the Limit->0 entropy ΨUNIVERSE begot a set of World(i+n), and from each of those ΨUNIVERSE begot new sets of Worlds. Each new set of Worlds being begot with each change of Information (Δ I). And it was good - some of the time.

3) Eventually there was sufficient begetting of Worlds to create sufficient information for Knowledge with free will and life to be created. And many, many Worlds later, humans were created. Perhaps a picture will help clarify the obscure technical details:



(ummmm. physics drawings are meant to convey a lot of information with a picture - they usually don't have all the details included - Could someone get the word to Luboš Motl. Anyway, these branches don't occur just at the moment you pick vanilla over shitsucker they occur at every information change. So any given Agential level decision occurs over a trajectory of Worlds, it's not at all that you would measure which way you're head is heading some time before you end up where you're going. But it is interesting how that information could entangle with the experiment and your free will.

4) For every Δ I (information change) ΨUNIVERSE branches a world (there are some complications I'm leaving out) as it was written in the Knowledge in ΨUNIVERSE. ( ΨUNIVERSE is omniscient). And when that happens, as odd as it sounds, you branch into multiple worlds too - well sort of. It all depends on what you mean by "you" or "me". Because of our darkness, English doesn't have the words we need to sort this all out so I'll make some.

A) self (little s) is what you think of as you.

Most people experience life as there is only one World and to them the Wold seems to be the Universe.
B) me_self (ms) is the you that you experience as your life, seemingly like there is only one World.

But now, thanks to physics, we know there are plenty of other yous, in this World and in other Worlds, (although all of the yous in the world you are in are exactly the same, i.e. you all share common history until you branch into different worlds. And when you branch, some of the other yous will branch with you. Now if we wanted to be technically precise we would need terms for all of these other versions of us (the ones identical and in the same World and the ones that branched into other Worlds) but for this explanation I'll just:
C) call all other versions of me_self other_selfn (osn).

6) In reality, the life I experience as Me_self is the trajectory I traverse through an unimaginably large forest of Worlds. The World me_self is in branches into all possibilities determined by the wave function as information is created or destroyed. (a point where Entropy increases) And when this branch happens Me_self ends up in one of the worlds and the osn end up in the rest of them.

7) So which branch does me_self end up in? Well that depends on probabilities - but it's not just a game of chance - . My ability (which of course includes the ability of all the other copies of me in my World) to entangle with the potential trajectory for me that best corresponds to my will influences where I end up. This entanglement gives me an opportunity to link me_self to a future World that I will find myself in. SATFWK is the agential level mode of explanation that helps me do that. But it's not like it's just a brain thing it's whole me_self thing (my whole physical being) - but if I was being more technically detailed I would say, my whole information being.

You may be wondering about the osn mes that ended up in other Worlds - well, they're not me anymore, I shed them like a snake sheds skin.

But I should add, this entanglement free will stuff is hard work and I could easily find me-self tossed into a World my I need a new term.

d) Self (big S) is not what a person thinks of as themselves, but what they really are, i.e. Think of it as the integral of all their Knowledge.

e) Me_Self is the real me - not what I think of as me.

picking up from where I left off:

But I should add, this entanglement free will stuff is hard work and I could easily find me-self tossed into a World that is not the World me_Self desires. And that is a lossed free will opportunity.

An Example:

An example might help tie this all together. I'll use something more complicated that picking ice cream flavors.

An example of an act of free will is a golfer facing a shot. At the agential level he (add an appropriate s if you want) creates new knowledge for the situation at hand, SATFWK stage 1, then chooses (club, shot, body stuff, etc). But to make his free will reality, to end up in the best match World for that, he proceeds to entangle himself with that World by engaging his imagination. He visualizes the shot, he sees it in his mind, but this is not just a mental thing , he feels what it's like to make that shot, it's like he's actually doing it with his me_self. He's trying to make me_self = me_Self. Another way to put it is that he's "preparing the experiment". And that's entangling his information with the information in possible future Worlds. And if all goes well, when the worlds branch (many times mind you - the golf shot involves more than the balls trajectory - many World trajectories are in play too) if he did it well his free will will have landed him in the best possible future match for his me_Self. But there are interference patterns that could come into play.

Any questions?

John Platko wrote:Any questions?

How could you imagine anybody wants to read all that? How about an abstract?

Blackadder wrote:The internet allows anyone to advance hypotheses to a mass audience, no matter how idiotic or far-fetched. This makes stupid ideas easily available to those too lazy or ignorant to do the hard work on the important next two steps in rational thinking, namely evidence and theory. So they fail to examine sufficient evidence sufficiently rigorously and therefore fail to produce a rigorous theory.

Unfortunately, the lazy and ignorant are more numerous than the diligent and qualified. So daft hypotheses are passed around the Internet as if they are of comparable status to well tested theory. The internet (being a largely visual medium), allows both to be superficially presented in similar fashion. This results in a stupidity superloop - a self reinforcing spiral of fuckwittery that draws in ever more stupid people, like a gravitational black hole of ignorance.

Cito di Pense wrote:

John Platko wrote:Any questions?

How could you imagine anybody wants to read all that? How about an abstract?

Hmm. abstracts for internet comments I'll have to chew on that.

No abstract but this helped to inspire me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZacggH9wB7Y&t=511s

Blackadder wrote:The internet allows anyone to advance hypotheses to a mass audience, no matter how idiotic or far-fetched. This makes stupid ideas easily available to those too lazy or ignorant to do the hard work on the important next two steps in rational thinking, namely evidence and theory. So they fail to examine sufficient evidence sufficiently rigorously and therefore fail to produce a rigorous theory.

Unfortunately, the lazy and ignorant are more numerous than the diligent and qualified. So daft hypotheses are passed around the Internet as if they are of comparable status to well tested theory. The internet (being a largely visual medium), allows both to be superficially presented in similar fashion. This results in a stupidity superloop - a self reinforcing spiral of fuckwittery that draws in ever more stupid people, like a gravitational black hole of ignorance.

Well that's an interesting hypothesis that Blackadder attempted to advanced to an audience with mass on the internet, but I'm not sure that moving that hypotheses forward to you and a small group of others counts as "mass audience".

Hmmm. How much mass is in a mass audience?

But here's the thing: as we already learned in this thread from the truly brilliant David Deutsch:

The most important kind of abstract constructor is knowledge. Knowledge is information which, once it is physically instantiated in a suitable environment, tends to cause itself to remain so: it survives criticism, testing, random noise, and error correction. (Here I am adopting Popper’s (1972) conception of knowledge, in which there need be no knowing subject.)

So my hypothesis is that anyone already in possession of Knowledge has, by the very nature of Knowledge, the ability to keep it in the presence of random internet hypothesis noise. And the nonsense information passed off as Knowledge won't have what it takes to survive criticism, testing, random noise sources (e.g. rant comments) and error correction from other Knowledge.

I myself find the internet to be a more positive place where I can tap into the free brain cycles of other people (sort of like Einstein@Home) and have my ideas robustly checked and added to. It's amazing how such a system can hone and add to your Knowledge. And while my own research can confirm that "the lazy and ignorant are more numerous than the diligent and qualified", and any reader of this thread can find evidence of that it doesn't take many diligent and qualified people to error correct the Knowledge of those wanting it corrected. GrahamH did a rather nice job of correcting a misunderstanding I had about List's paper. And Archibald spent a lot of effort getting me up to speed on the ins and outs of the philosophy of free will.

Worrying about the internet increasing the disordered information in people's head is like sitting around and worrying about entropy increasing in the universe. But if increase ignorance due to black holes is your thing I suggest:

John Platko wrote:No abstract but this helped to inspire me:

Use your own words, John. You should be able to do it in a sentence or two for each post that purports to present your theory.

John Platko wrote: But here's the thing: as we already learned in this thread from the truly brilliant David Deutsch:

On your say-so?. My ass. Use your own words, John. You can do it.

John Platko wrote:I myself find the internet to be a more positive place where I can tap into the free brain cycles of other people...

Tap into this:

John Platko wrote:But if increase ignorance due to black holes is your thing I suggest:

Use your own words, John. You can do it.

Having trouble coming up with a summary? Perhaps you've confused yourself beyond all hope of summarizing your thoughts. At least you're not one of those folks who needs to go around in a tinfoil hat to protect the integrity of what he takes to be his own free will.

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.

Nah not quite ... you forgot to include deterministic knowledge constructors.

John Platko wrote:Another way to put it is that he's "preparing the experiment". And that's entangling his information with the information in possible future Worlds. And if all goes well, when the worlds branch (many times mind you - the golf shot involves more than the balls trajectory - many World trajectories are in play too) if he did it well his free will will have landed him in the best possible future match for his me_Self. But there are interference patterns that could come into play.

So this is what happens when you try to put the situation into your own words. I see why you mainly stick to posting videos and extensive quotes from philosophical manuscripts. You don't really understand them, and that's why you stick to wibbling about how it can be possible, instead of what happens as a result.

Nothing bad ever happens, directed by Free Will. You might say that Stephen Paddock was 'preparing a golf shot', in some sense, in your metaphor. I mean, it was the last golf shot he ever made, but that's not relevant to Free Will, which operates while you're alive, or so I take you to be saying. He even prepared for the interference patterns that could come into play, and according to his own aims, he made the shot. He exercised his Free Will right up to and including his last act. Isn't it just obvious? Maybe he thought he foresaw painting himself into some kind of corner, and sure enough, it came to pass.

You don't have to have a model for it, but if you think you do, why don't you analyze the above problem? Alternatively, why don't you just admit you're bullshitting? Again.

John Platko wrote:Any questions?

Aren't you plagiarising The Secret?
Just ask the Multiverse to become the world that you want...
Woo woo!

Cito di Pense wrote: You might say that Stephen Paddock was 'preparing a golf shot', in some sense, in your metaphor. I mean, it was the last golf shot he ever made, but that's not relevant to Free Will, which operates while you're alive, or so I take you to be saying. He even prepared for the interference patterns that could come into play, and according to his own aims, he made the shot. He exercised his Free Will right up to and including his last act. Isn't it just obvious? Maybe he thought he foresaw painting himself into some kind of corner, and sure enough, it came to pass.

Maybe his victims just did a poor job of imagining getting home alive. JP paints a nightmare picture of all humanity pulling reality in every direction to suit everyone's individual imagining of what's best for them. it's a cosmic bunfight. If I'm world jumping because of the entangled imaginings of everyone across the many worlds of the entire Multiverse it hardly seems I can have much free will at all. Add to that the question of why I imagine what I do and we are back at square one.

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 nicely summs up the woo-ness of it!

John Platko wrote:...

Thousands of atoms entangled with a single photon

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.”  

...

That is the kind of extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, and independent verification.

Atom lasers have been known for years (1997, to be exact - see ref. 2), but the beam is not made coherent by interaction with a single photon.

... Why are we talking about atom lasers and entanglement under "fee will"?

John Platko wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

John Platko wrote:Any questions?

How could you imagine anybody wants to read all that? How about an abstract?

Hmm. abstracts for internet comments I'll have to chew on that.

No abstract but this helped to inspire me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZacggH9wB7Y&t=511s

Blackadder wrote:The internet allows anyone to advance hypotheses to a mass audience, no matter how idiotic or far-fetched. This makes stupid ideas easily available to those too lazy or ignorant to do the hard work on the important next two steps in rational thinking, namely evidence and theory. So they fail to examine sufficient evidence sufficiently rigorously and therefore fail to produce a rigorous theory.

Unfortunately, the lazy and ignorant are more numerous than the diligent and qualified. So daft hypotheses are passed around the Internet as if they are of comparable status to well tested theory. The internet (being a largely visual medium), allows both to be superficially presented in similar fashion. This results in a stupidity superloop - a self reinforcing spiral of fuckwittery that draws in ever more stupid people, like a gravitational black hole of ignorance.

Well that's an interesting hypothesis that Blackadder attempted to advanced to an audience with mass on the internet, but I'm not sure that moving that hypotheses forward to you and a small group of others counts as "mass audience".

Hmmm. How much mass is in a mass audience?

But here's the thing: as we already learned in this thread from the truly brilliant David Deutsch:

...

I appears that your choice of words is more related to confirmation bias than science, John. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, so don't assume that MWI is correct just because Deutsch supported it as well as Everett. There remains a great deal of skepticism of it in the physics community.

... BTW, another highly dubious connection that you claim is that between free will and MWI cosmology.

scott1328 wrote:
Why do you think independent of cause is interesting. It is incoherent and boring. It is like arguing that: for the most effective killing curse, the emphasis should be on the fourth syllable in Avada Kedavra And you could find evidence from the films, but you actually haven't made any statement about reality.

And for the record, as far as I can tell Zoon's and my view on "free will" are essentially the same.

When you ask why? Do you mean:

A post hoc explanation? Cito would love this. But it is just like why I find chemistry interesting ... I just do.
What are the causes in terms changes of electron densities around atoms and the resultant movement of those atoms that cause me to express interest? I don't really have an answer I just understand this is a result.
What is the purpose of me expressing interest. I am not sure I have one ... a post hoc answer might be to inform?

Now you will have to explain curse killing is somehow relevant to free will in the sense of independent of cause you will have to join the dots.

But I agree free will in being independent of cause or truly indeterminant for that matter is incoherent. But that is what most people appear to believe.

Interesting

romansh wrote:

scott1328 wrote:
Why do you think independent of cause is interesting. It is incoherent and boring. It is like arguing that: for the most effective killing curse, the emphasis should be on the fourth syllable in Avada Kedavra And you could find evidence from the films, but you actually haven't made any statement about reality.

And for the record, as far as I can tell Zoon's and my view on "free will" are essentially the same.

When you ask why? Do you mean:

A post hoc explanation? Cito would love this. But it is just like why I find chemistry interesting ... I just do.
What are the causes in terms changes of electron densities around atoms and the resultant movement of those atoms that cause me to express interest? I don't really have an answer I just understand this is a result.
What is the purpose of me expressing interest. I am not sure I have one ... a post hoc answer might be to inform?

Now you will have to explain curse killing is somehow relevant to free will in the sense of independent of cause you will have to join the dots.

But I agree free will in being independent of cause or truly indeterminant for that matter is incoherent. But that is what most people appear to believe.

Interesting

Just stop, romansh. All you're saying is that you subscribe to naturalism. And you keep saying it over and over again, as if you're not quite sure you believe it, yet. But you're on record. If anything changes your position, I'm sure you'll let us know. I'm not denigrating naturalism in any way except to say that your version of it is off the cuff.

What you're addressing yourself to in this post is not why people are asking you about causes. You wouldn't say anything is independent of cause, as if you needed to cite a cause you're presently unable to cite. For you, it's just causes all the way down. You're even entertaining the notion that your interest might serve a purpose, because your purpose is either something you came up with privately or it's imposed. Your language gives you away.

But it is just like why I find chemistry interesting ... I just do.

Did it help you to say that? Interest in philosophical puzzles informs no one about anything. It helps articulate positions they already hold. The way to change your opinion is with data that conflicts with your opinion.

DavidMcC wrote:

John Platko wrote:
The experience of doing otherwise is going to be how the special sauce chooses the MWI branch that the self that freely chooses it ends up on - and that self choice may be at the expense of the hapless doppelganger versions that didn't have enough free will to make the choice.

I see no valid reason to bring the nonsense of MWI in to a discussion on free will.

Not only that ... MWI is an anathema to any belief in free will.

Cito di Pense wrote:
Just stop, romansh. All you're saying is that you subscribe to naturalism. And you keep saying it over and over again, as if you're not quite sure you believe it, yet. But you're on record. If anything changes your position, I'm sure you'll let us know.

What you're addressing yourself to in this post is not why people are asking you about causes. You wouldn't say anything is independent of cause, as if you needed to cite a cause you're presently unable to cite. For you, it's just causes all the way down. You're even entertaining the notion that your interest might serve a purpose. Your language gives you away.

I am not sure it is causes all the way down Cito. But they are far enough down to be irrelevant to the concept of will.

While your observation of my post would be accurate regarding purpose ... but is that not a trap that both you and I fall into?

Modelling this world in terms of cause seems to make sense.

And is iterating the subscription to naturalism a problem?