Sam Harris versus Free Will

[Simple Minded]

Well said Parodite.

Beware the prophet/proselytizer who self identifies as a member of group X and then claims to speak for his group as a typical specimen.

[Parodite]

Well said Parodite.

Beware the prophet/proselytizer who self identifies as a member of group X and then claims to speak for his group as a typical specimen.

And if the proselytizer was voted into office by a huge majority of the clan...run!!

[Simple Minded]

Well said Parodite.

Beware the prophet/proselytizer who self identifies as a member of group X and then claims to speak for his group as a typical specimen.

And if the proselytizer was voted into office by a huge majority of the clan...run!!

Yep. Timeless wisdom. The first thing the keeper of the truth of our clan needs to do is to police the ranks and weed out the non-True Believers. If the faithful wander off the plantation/reservation, how can we impose our views on the others?

The reciprocal problem is if the leader is not viewed "pure enough" by his fanatical followers. You'll never get to Heaven by following a heretic.

[Parodite]

In line with SHs view on free will, a must read:

Yuval Noah Harari: the myth of freedom

The same criticisms that apply to SHs reasoning apply here. He makes the same errors. In short the game that is played here:

1. First make a caricature of free will as some sort of omnipotent and omniscient dictator in control of everything. Nobody however (with perhaps the exception of people in some psychotic delusional mechalomanioc state of mind believing they are Napoleon or God himself) will entertain such a grotesque definition of free will. Usually people have a much more modest understanding of it, acknowledging there are all kinds of constraints to what you can do, think, feel etc but that despite of all that do experience and report the ability to choose between a/b/c/ or d and then make a conscious choice for one of them.

2. Then "debunk" that caricature, that nobody really subscribes to, claiming that science has already proven free will to be an illusion. This truly is a devious claim and falsehood and the easiest to debunk. As far as science goes, there is nothing that proves or disproves free will to be possible. Simply because from the scientific 3rd person view point we still have no idea how consciousness fits in the physical picture.

How and why conscious 1st person experience emerges from a physical brain is a total and fundamental mystery as of yet, so by default causally correlating observed physical process in a brain with any conscious activity, conscious free will included, is deeply problematic.

But it is worse: aside the fundamental "hard problem" of correlating physical reality with anything conscious-experiential, the claim that there can't be freedom of any sort in the physical world to begin with given the deterministic and indeterministic nature of everything.. is deeply flawed even for purely scientific reasons. (more on that later)

3.Then, last but not least, point to your 1st person conscious experience and ask: "Are you really in control of anything you feel, what you want, even what you will think the next moment? No... of course not."

But again, that is not where an how most people report and understand free will to operate in their lives. Free will is understood and usually reported as the precondition of having options to choose from and acting on those options. Being tied to a chair and blind folded does not leave you a lot of action available.

Freedom is a meaningful and practical concept: more options availabe where you can act on, means more freedom. Not a freedom "to be in control of everything (which would belong to the mentioned God-like caricature): just more degrees of freedom.

The question of how conscious choice decisions come about exactly, how "free" or "unfree" they are, is (so far) irrelevant for the reasons mentioned in (2).

[Simple Minded]

True enough P.

It's like the old routine about how no one person can be free until everyone is free from "want, need, desire, etc."

With the follow up that since no one is free from hunger, no one is free.

Some however do seem to be free from the burden of thinking.....

[Parodite]

A dead beat horse by now, but some more frivolous friction when Scam Harris talks about free will with his mother during the lock-down when time is plenty and the mind wanders.

***************************

MN: Hi Sam you wrote a wonderful book about free will. You concluded you don't have it, remind me why is that?

SH: Yes. You want the long or the short version?

MN: Try the short one first.

SH: All science strongly suggests we don't have it and my personal experience tells me the same. That gives two corroborating witnesses that support my case. Free will is really an illusion.

MN: But if you go by the science of it, one also has to conclude consciousness does not exist, right?

SH: Uh, yes that's right. Consciousness, any primitive or advanced form in the world of sentient organisms has never been proven to exist. Science is blind to it as it has no direct access. You won't find it in any scientific observation or equation. But that's because science looks at the world from a 3rd person perspective, whereas consciousness is a private 1st person experience.

To go from matter to mind is still and has always been a serious hard problem. I see it as a mere practical limitation though; it is the problem of the eye looking into the world hoping to find its own act of looking into that world. The observer won't ever find itself in the observed.

MN: But nevertheless you believe your conscious experience is real?

SH: I do, because I can't deny the fact of it. I am conscious.

MN: So when science has no empirical evidence for something to exist, it is still possible that it does exist nevertheless?

SH: Technically yes. Science doesn't know of any consciousness, but as I pointed out there is a second witness that does have direct knowledge of it. The same witness who concluded free will is an illusion.

MN: Would you consider free will - if it is something real - be part of the conscious processing part in the overall causal loops?

SH: Sure enough. Free will is typically something that people who believe they "have" it.. apply in a conscious state when actions and decisions are made.

MN: But if free will is an integrated part of consciousness and science has no clue about consciousness to begin with, why even bother listening to that scientific witness? It would be like listening to a color blind witness making statements about the experience of true color vision. Or a born-deaf witness stating that Bach's music sucks or is the greatest composer of all time. They should surely be dismissed as credible witnesses, no?

SH: Science can give corroborating evidence via correlating data that are circumstantial but no direct proof, true. But the scientific research and data strongly suggest free will is illusory. Which is what the main witness also claims who has direct knowledge and experience: me. There is no "I" that controls my thoughts, all decisions I make and actions I take happen by themselves and before "I" have a chance to real chance to say "stop!" or "go!".

Anybody who has observed all this from within and is honest agrees. Free will, just like the "I", is more like an after thought carried away like smoke with the wind. Deep down we know this and there is a price when the self identifies with that smoke as "I". Instead of being empowered by a self with its own free will, you become as powerless as the smoke you erroneously identified with. This contradiction in turn creates fear and violence. When the emperor has no cloths he still might want to kill and even more so.

MN: Look, any color blind witness making claims about the experience of color vision... or a life long deaf person making claims about a famous composer and how amazing or terrible his music is... needs to be dismissed. Period. You never ask a dead person about the living either.

What remains is you apparently decided for yourself you have no free will. And I can't know you are right, as I can't even scientifically prove you are conscious to begin with Sam. Other people report they do have free will and again, I can't know either. But I am y'all Mother so it doesn't matter. Some people feel better when they let go an obsession with control, as with control-freaks during the day day often love to be powerless slaves during the night and surrender to a whip. Some others are true traumatized victims of this or that and will be given back the reigns over their life, learning free will again making their own decisions. I only care about your well being.

For more on free will talk to your Father again. Control/no-control is more his issue. In fact it is his only issue.

[Parodite]

Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
- Genesis 32:28


After months of being tossed around like a leaf in the wind, "witnessing events" taking place inside of himself and around in the world with no sense of agency, nobody in the driver seat and for reasons he gave up trying to understand... SH decided to see his Father once again. The conversation he had with MN lingered on in the back of his mind and felt like an enduring band-aid on his tortured soul. Which made him also reluctant to knock on PGs door as it usually meant trouble talking to the old guy.

In the battle with reality MN never let him down. Her nourishing and accepting nature kept him connected and confident enough to keep moving in the hell-scape of life. His Father however usually left him more confused and alone than before. So instinctively and without having much of a say in anything, SH noticed he started to brush up his defenses. The walls he built around his mind were thoroughly inspected, his thinking oiled with enough sleep, arguments stuffed with fact and science checked carefully and then put back in the ammo-boxes that occupied meters of shelves in the libraries of his mind.

He noticed however that with these fears also came that not unpleasant adrenaline rush, a warrior ready to face his enemy. He imagined himself a soldier in the American civil war. He wasn't sure whether he was a fighter for the Union or the Confederation. He guessed he would have loved the Union because it rings harmony, unity, wholeness, peace. Which is what he has been looking for his entire life through understanding, but lately he started to have positive feelings for Confederacy. Almost to his own horror! Maybe, he thought, the only defense against dictatorship is that stubborn insistence that there is an individual who resists being swallowed by the Big Whale. A fight that can never be won without believing you are an individual, a functional unit with agency and a free will to fight for what you need.

Free will, it occurred to him, is maybe just needed during the decision of going to war. Any war, from sweet to bitter, from senseless to heroic. That ineffable moment a choice is made when an entire army is synced into concerted action. Free will, it seemed to SH, arises when the conscious and unconscious operate in unison. Not a mere concept but a functional operation active when there is a demand for it.

He imagined the cells of his body as an army of soldiers. His nervous system being central command. The Self-Ego the Field Commander. His ego not some virtual construct created by a delusional brain, but a real thing built and positioned by an Army of Cells with a Mob-Intelligence not sufficiently understood. A necessity when war, any battle is on. His bowels in the mean time coordinating and linking logical strategy with emotion, fueling all the ranks and providing them with all they need.

For once SH decided he does have a legitimate Ego. In full armor he mounted his black War Horse ready to face-off with PG. He would go as a Confederate just for once, he promised himself. The odds for that would be very small however. The taste of free will + war are too good not to desire again. It is not entirely up to you what free will makes you go after. (tm)

[Typhoon]

Given that we have no understanding of how consciousness originates and operates, I suggest that philosophers and other pundits who go on about whether or not free will exists are suffering from premature speculation.

[noddy]

their is a level of complexity that renders the argument moot anyway I believe.

philosophically, if i throw a handful of dust into the air on a windy day, we are in a a reducible, quantifiable situation.

on a practical level, predicting the exact path of any dust particle is impossible, even with imaginary levels of computing power.

a handful of dust is nothing against a human brains of 100 billion neurons, each of which can have multiple states, all interacting with the chaotic consequences of billions upon billions of other entities, human, animal and physical, all going back to the start of time (tm).

at what level is theoretically reducible actually even relevant ?

[Simple Minded]

their is a level of complexity that renders the argument moot anyway I believe.

philosophically, if i throw a handful of dust into the air on a windy day, we are in a a reducible, quantifiable situation.

on a practical level, predicting the exact path of any dust particle is impossible, even with imaginary levels of computing power.

a handful of dust is nothing against a human brains of 100 billion neurons, each of which can have multiple states, all interacting with the chaotic consequences of billions upon billions of other entities, human, animal and physical, all going back to the start of time (tm).

at what level is theoretically reducible actually even relevant ?

that's exactly what I expected you to type in response to Parodite's post.......

[noddy]

their is a level of complexity that renders the argument moot anyway I believe.

philosophically, if i throw a handful of dust into the air on a windy day, we are in a a reducible, quantifiable situation.

on a practical level, predicting the exact path of any dust particle is impossible, even with imaginary levels of computing power.

a handful of dust is nothing against a human brains of 100 billion neurons, each of which can have multiple states, all interacting with the chaotic consequences of billions upon billions of other entities, human, animal and physical, all going back to the start of time (tm).

at what level is theoretically reducible actually even relevant ?

that's exactly what I expected you to type in response to Parodite's post.......

great big button on my head got pushed, i gotta do what i gotta do.

[Typhoon]

their is a level of complexity that renders the argument moot anyway I believe.

philosophically, if i throw a handful of dust into the air on a windy day, we are in a a reducible, quantifiable situation.

on a practical level, predicting the exact path of any dust particle is impossible, even with imaginary levels of computing power.

a handful of dust is nothing against a human brains of 100 billion neurons, each of which can have multiple states, all interacting with the chaotic consequences of billions upon billions of other entities, human, animal and physical, all going back to the start of time (tm).

at what level is theoretically reducible actually even relevant ?

Emergent phenomena: weak vs strong emergence

[Simple Minded]

their is a level of complexity that renders the argument moot anyway I believe.

philosophically, if i throw a handful of dust into the air on a windy day, we are in a a reducible, quantifiable situation.

on a practical level, predicting the exact path of any dust particle is impossible, even with imaginary levels of computing power.

a handful of dust is nothing against a human brains of 100 billion neurons, each of which can have multiple states, all interacting with the chaotic consequences of billions upon billions of other entities, human, animal and physical, all going back to the start of time (tm).

at what level is theoretically reducible actually even relevant ?

that's exactly what I expected you to type in response to Parodite's post.......

great big button on my head got pushed, i gotta do what i gotta do.

Not what I intended. I thought it was an E-Stop button.....

[Doc]

"Sam Harris versus Free Will"

So who won already? Sam Harris, or Free Will?

[Parodite]

"Sam Harris versus Free Will"

So who won already? Sam Harris, or Free Will?

An eternal tie it seems.

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

"Sam Harris versus Free Will"

So who won already? Sam Harris, or Free Will?

An eternal tie it seems.

I'm watching a series of YouTube videos that suggest the real issue is a frame problem. Free will makes sense in a context where consciousness is separate from materiality, and inhabits a reality not proscribed by a rigid science methodology defined by politics and a historical struggle over ontology. "Truth' is the new Transubstantiation controversy and free will, using Haidt's analogy, is whether the Rider is in a position to not be trampled by the Elephant - or better yet, to not even care....'>......

[noddy]

their is a level of complexity that renders the argument moot anyway I believe.

philosophically, if i throw a handful of dust into the air on a windy day, we are in a a reducible, quantifiable situation.

on a practical level, predicting the exact path of any dust particle is impossible, even with imaginary levels of computing power.

a handful of dust is nothing against a human brains of 100 billion neurons, each of which can have multiple states, all interacting with the chaotic consequences of billions upon billions of other entities, human, animal and physical, all going back to the start of time (tm).

at what level is theoretically reducible actually even relevant ?

Emergent phenomena: weak vs strong emergence

I was refreshing my fourier brain for a project at work and found this rather elegant demonstration of the escalating complexity of simple things.

r6sGWTCMz2k

not super relevant but i thought it was a neater example than the photomosaic, less blind watchmaker.

"Sam Harris versus Free Will"

So who won already? Sam Harris, or Free Will?

An eternal tie it seems.

I'm watching a series of YouTube videos that suggest the real issue is a frame problem. Free will makes sense in a context where consciousness is separate from materiality, and inhabits a reality not proscribed by a rigid science methodology defined by politics and a historical struggle over ontology. "Truth' is the new Transubstantiation controversy and free will, using Haidt's analogy, is whether the Rider is in a position to not be trampled by the Elephant - or better yet, to not even care....'>......

i suspect its always that.

how can we be special if we are chemistry !?! - on the specialness levels its even worse than us just being a hairless ape !

maybe the humanocentric god is as absurd as the geocentric solar system.

[noddy]

QdS9pgZGtQ8

[Doc]

"Sam Harris versus Free Will"

So who won already? Sam Harris, or Free Will?

An eternal tie it seems.

I don't know. I just can't decide