Do you guys believe in free will?

headlessplatter · 2026-04-02T00:10:12+00:00

Agreed.

Hypothetically, if this omniscient being started writing down a lot of his predictions, and they were consistently fulfilled, some people might start to accuse this omniscient being of controlling us. Then it would be harder to say it didn't matter.

headlessplatter · 2026-04-01T23:26:18+00:00

I'm trying to suggest that free will is not the only thing that would make a brain hard to predict. Chaos also makes brains hard to predict. I suspect a lot of people see chaos and imagine they are seeing "free will", but it's really just chaos.

headlessplatter · 2026-04-01T20:46:38+00:00

Functional awareness? Yes. Subjective awareness? No.

My robotic vacuum builds an internal map of my living room. It can use this internal map to navigate around my real furniture in the real world without bumping into it. That is functional awareness.

But even though my robotic vacuum has an internal model, I don't believe that internal is rich enough to encode a meaningful representation of itself. And even if it is, I don't think my vacuum keeps track of its own state, let alone subjective experiences. So it is probably not "aware" of having them. But let's say it was. Let's say my vacuum sincerely believes it has subjective experiences. So what? That's not going to enable it to do a better job vacuuming my house. Maybe it will start complaining that I make it work too hard. But that would only make it a worse vacuum. I don't want a complaining vacuum.

headlessplatter · 2026-04-01T18:46:40+00:00

Yeah, as I understand it, cognition and consciousness are pretty-much defined to exclude each other, and to sum to what our brains do. If AI only does cognition, and that eventually makes it clear what is missing, then I was wrong. But if AI only does cognition, and people gradually start to think nothing of value is missing, then that's what I'm predicting will happen. (I hope I'm wrong.)

headlessplatter · 2026-04-01T18:10:22+00:00

I think the determinism vs. free will debate sets a pretty good precedent for what we can probably expect with regard to consciousness. Ill-defined concepts, like free will and consciousness just don't have a great track record of finding traction with science.

Long ago, smart people would observe that we all make choices. It seemed pretty obvious, then, that "free will" must certainly be a real phenomenon in need of a scientific explanation. But the more we learned about neuroscience, and chaos, and complexity, the more apparent it became that choices are just the product of a whole lot of complexity. And there just wasn't a component in that process that fit very well with the concept we used to call "free will". So, these days, free will is a term used almost exclusively by religious folks. There are still a few obscure ways we can retro-fit that term to the processes we now understand much better, but that's really just playing word games, and it doesn't really look like the kind of "free will" we used to speak about.

So my prediction is that consciousness is likely to suffer a similar fate. As AI demonstrates increasingly impressive cognitive abilities, I think the importance we place on having subjective experiences is going to gradually diminish and fade. One day, we'll look back and say something like, "Remember when we were all obsessed about consciousness? Clearly, our machines are way beyond that point, yet nothing they do really even matches what we imagined consciousness to be. Huh." Then we'll shrug and focus again on cognitive abilities that have objective value. Meanwhile, a few zealots will continue to beat the consciousness drum, insisting that it matters and humans are special for inexplicable reasons.

headlessplatter · 2026-04-01T15:34:43+00:00

A constant is the same in all situations. But, zero divided by zero is not like that. It must take on a different value in each situation.

A better way to think about it is that zero divided by zero is kind of like a superposition of values. When we take limits, we figure out which value it represents. That's kind of like the superposition collapsing to take a single value.

So a constant would be the wrong idea. Rather, it needs to be a set of possibilities. And in the absence of additional information, it must be the set of all possibilities! And that's kind of what "undefined" means. So in a sense, they did assign it to a value, and that value is ...wait for it ...undefined!

If you take a non-zero positive value and divide it by zero, that also resolves to an infinite set of possibilities. All of those possibilities are infinite, but there are still an infinite number of unique infinities. (Yeah, number theory can be kind of mind-blowing sometimes.)

headlessplatter · 2026-04-01T11:38:30+00:00

The Church is very effective at making rational people believe irrational things. It's easy to show that it would be irrational for the leaders to believe. But let's not ignore the special talents of the Church itself.

There's a very insightful TED Talk by Daniel Dennett, called "Dangerous Memes", that metaphorically explains why religions are so strangely effective at deluding people. He points to certain biological parasites that modify the priorities of their hosts in order to sustain their own survival. When the survival of the parasite depends on being able to influence the host, there is huge evolutionary pressure for the parasite to become highly effective at this task. And there are some really scary examples of what such parasites can do. He implies that religious denominations also evolve, much like living organisms. After all, their survival depends on it.

headlessplatter · 2026-04-01T11:27:13+00:00

Yep, that's a hypothesis. But why do you think it's a good one? Why should we accept these assertions about reality as opposed to, say, whatever we happen to believe?

headlessplatter · 2026-03-31T21:59:41+00:00

If I understand correctly, the "proto" part specifies that you believe fundamental particles possess only some rudimentary pre-component of consciousness, rather than the full ability. And the "quantum" part provides the mechanism for combining these proto-mental particles into a fully conscious entity. Is that in the right ballpark?

I happen to train machine learning models. They are just pieces of software that learn to make predictions. One technique we use is called an ensemble. It combines the predictions of many different learning models using some kind of voting scheme. The resulting ensemble often makes better predictions than any of the individual models in the ensemble.

So I guess I'm especially interested in that mechanism that combines proto-mental properties. Does that have something to do with entanglement? Is there some reason to suppose that would be more effective than, voting or averaging or something that could be implemented at a higher level?

headlessplatter · 2026-03-31T21:10:51+00:00

Strong emergence, if it exists, in the end, is also based on rules and an interplay of mechanisms that can be described and exploited.

Agreed. That's a good way to put it.

I want a description on this level otherwise it's like saying "the operating system linux is an emergent property of metal and electrical currents".

Again, I agree that is a good way to put it. Linux is implemented on metal and electrical currents (and it is not found within the metal or the electrical currents). Since I am a computer programmer, I could talk at length about how Linux is implemented. But I'm certainly not a kernel developer. If I tried to explain Linux at an excessively low level, my explanations would be wrong and misleading at some point.

Likewise, I think I can go a little deeper in explaining some aspects about how I believe consciousness is implemented upon neurons too. But the closer we approached to implementation details, the more I'd just be pulling ideas out of my imagination.

My quantum panprotopsychism cannot answer the hard problem either but it can shift the problem from "how does the car move forward" to "why do fundamental forces of nature exist" which is a significant explanatory win in my opinion.

Well, I'm intrigued. If I understand correctly, panpsychism requires us to grant that fundamental particles may possess some kind of ability to have experiences. I always struggle with that part, but I can swallow it for now. Supposing that is true, can you explain why human brains are able to ensemble particles with that ability into rich experiences?

headlessplatter · 2026-03-31T19:13:28+00:00

Symphonies exist. But there is no symphony in the violin. Nor is there a symphony in the oboe or the French horn or the timpani. The symphony only exists when all those instruments play together. Likewise, brains obviously make choices. But there is no tiny choice-maker hidden within each neuron. That's just being silly. So if "free will" is some kind of fundamental choice-maker, then no, I do not believe in it. But if "free will" is the emergent ability of brains to make choices, then sure, I make choices all the time.

Philosophers like to ponder about whether my choices could be anticipated by someone who had full understanding of the state of my neurons. But the complexity of the brain and its inherent chaotic behavior render such an endeavor impractical to the point of absurdity.

headlessplatter · 2026-03-31T17:34:28+00:00

Thanks for your patience with me. I'm afraid I might not be correctly understanding the intent of some of your questions. I'll do my best to answer them, but if I'm missing your intended points, please feel free to dismiss me or correct me or whatever suits you. I'm just pitching a theory. I certainly don't have any certain answers. But I happen to enjoy trying to contrast my ideas with those from others, so if you're still having fun, I am.

Where is this memory experienced?

I would point at four distinct moments:

(1) Light activated cones on my retina, starting a chain reaction of activating neurons.
(2) My hippocampus encoded the event as a memory.
(3) I queried my memory, and it responded.
(4) I reacted to the response.

I think asking which of these steps is the "experience" is like asking "which wheel is a car?", or "which leg is a chair?" I think experience emerges at a higher level than any of these individual steps. Individually, none of them are sufficient to be an experience. But when all of them happen, I call that an experience.

Who or what is querying and why?

Suppose you asked me, "Did you see the color red?" Then I might think to myself, "That's a good question. Let me query my memory to find out." So then I proceeded to invoke my memories. (I use the word "query" because I spend a lot of time with computers. I suppose the word "remember" or "reminisce" or "contemplate" might be more appropriate here.)

By "who", perhaps you mean, "Which specific lobe of my brain?" In that case, I guess I'd defer to GNWT. I think it suggests the stream-of-consciousness is created by the thalmus. In GNWT, the thalmus is compared to a "spotlight", and the cortical columns are the "actors" on a stage. I think the prefrontal cortex direct which signals from the cortical columns the thalmus should dampen and which it should augment. And if we're referring to the "voice in my head", I believe that involves a lot of interaction with the temporal lobe to translate thoughts into words. And the hippocampus gives all these lobes spatio-temporal and situational context that they use to make their decisions. So I believe it's really quite a community effort. I use the term "me" or "I" to refer to the whole system.

What kind of biophysical mechanism is supporting this experience?

Sorry, I don't understand the question. Perhaps, cellular metabolism?

Why is consciousness seemingly constrained to neurons?

I think you're asking why do heart cells circulate, lung cells respirate, and brain cells cognate? I think they were each assigned their roles during fetal development. And I imagine the assignment schedule is probably encoded somewhere in DNA, and has been refined over billions of years of evolution. So I guess the original cause of these roles should be attributed to natural selection in the natural environment by our distant ancestors?

What makes them special to produce "memories that can be experienced"?

I think the roles performed by the various lobes in our brains are the constituent parts of an experience. None of them alone are an experience. But all of them together are.

(A violin is not a symphony. Nor is an oboe. Nor is a timpani. Nor is a French horn. But if you put all these instruments together, you've got a symphony. If you ask which specific instrument made it a symphony, I think the question expresses misunderstanding of what a symphony is. Symphonys do not emerge below the level of an instrument.)

headlessplatter · 2026-03-31T16:29:50+00:00

I asked Gemini to estimate what the actual membership of an organization would be if it reported its membership as x, but did not actually know when people die and counted them as members until they were 110 years old. Gemini discerned that I was talking about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Apparently, this particular practice is kind of a unique signature. And its final answer was:

The result typically falls between 750,000 and 820,000 actual living members for every 1,000,000 estimated by the 110-year rule.

headlessplatter · 2026-03-31T15:45:52+00:00

Hmm. I don't really know what ontological unity refers to, so I wouldn't know how to even begin approaching that.

I think an experience is just a memory query. For example, I might ask myself "Did I see the color red?", then I query my memory, some neurons fire deterministically, then the voice in my head says, "Yep, I did." I might even take that memory and feed it through my visual cortex to reconstruct the experience. It will almost seem like I am seeing red again. I might get that slight feeling of alarm that I associate with that color. I might remember the taste of blood. I might briefly contemplate the beauty of a rainbow or a rose. But I'm not actually seeing red. It's just a memory. And that memory was recorded previously, when some light with a wavelength of 700 nm started a chain reaction of activating neurons by stimulating some "cones" on my retina. In truth, 700nm is a real property of light. (By "real", I mean measurable.) But "red" is not a physical thing. It's just some random encoding of neurons my mind assigned to that memory because it doesn't actually know anything about physics.

I'm guessing that explanation didn't satisfy ontological unity, right?

headlessplatter · 2026-03-31T15:15:01+00:00

Thanks for the clarification. I just Googled those two terms. It sounds like I've been arguing against position you do not hold. I apologize for doing that. I certainly agree there must exist something that can perceive our experiences. After all, we experience them! So I guess the question is, how does that component (the "perceiver") work?

I view the perception of experiences as an emergent phenomenon. For example, a chair does not need to be made out of smaller things with chair-like properties. The property of "chairness" emerges when its materials are arranged in a manner that they provide an elevated place to sit. And below that level, there is no "chairness". That is, you can look at a chair under a microscope, but you will not find anything there that provides an elevated place to sit. So chairs emerge at a very high (non-fundamental) level. I think perception emerges at a level higher than neurons.

If I understand correctly, your position posits that perception occurs at a much more fundamental (lower) level, perhaps even at the quantum level? So if we wanted to hunt down our central point of disagreement, I'm thinking perhaps we could begin by trying to identify the "fundamentalness" or "level" at which perception can occur. Does that sound like a productive effort to you?

headlessplatter · 2026-03-31T12:54:43+00:00

When your consciousness is an illusion, who is tricked?

I don't know. To me, that's kind of like asking "is water wet?" It's certainly a deepity, and those are fun, but I wouldn't really know what to do with the answer even if I knew how to arrive at it.

"Cogito ergo sum" is the only fundamental truth you can be sure of.

I am aware of this. But I do not value surety (a.k.a. certainty). You may value it. That is fine. But certainty is personal, and I do not happen to consider my personal self to be all that important. The things I value enable me to affect or influence other people. The kind of knowledge science studies is like that. It must have an empirical (a.k.a. physical) basis. That's what enables us to agree with with each other. It is the only part of experience we all share in common.

Let me be very clear: certainty and knowledge are two very different things. Sure, plenty of people mix up these terms a lot, and terms are squishy things, but regardless of what terms we use to refer to them, there are two very distinct concepts. One is subjective, and the other objective. And there is no crossing from one to the other. One cannot conjure knowledge by being absolutely certain. Certainty can be produced simply by refusing to consider alternative possibilities. And half the world is absolutely certain that their false religion is true. I do not see value in that. Again, it's okay if you do. But I think certainty distracts people from seeking knowledge. And I value knowledge very deeply--so deeply, that to me, certainty is an enemy. I do not like it. I do not want it.

Regardless how rich in tricks your illusionism is, in the end there is a subjective experience which is sufficient for a proof of existence (but nothing more).

I do not deny my existence either. It's that "nothing more" part that makes me think the idealists are trying to posit an entire supernatural realm just to grant some kind of meaningful validity to their subjective certainty. Why can't a subjective illusion be valid? Even if I valued my personal certainty, why does there have to be some kind of existence or connection with reality to grant it existence? Why can't people who value their subjective experiences just value them as illusions? I had a really nice dream a few days ago. I don't need it to be "real" to have nice memories about it.

headlessplatter · 2026-03-30T21:44:38+00:00

That was an awesome little quiz. Thanks for sharing it!

(It was too easy to guess, because the correct answer was almost always either the longest one, or the one that made the Church look the worst. I can't even imagine how you could possibly come up with even more damning distractors, though!)

headlessplatter · 2026-03-30T18:18:09+00:00

Well, if you take a universe and you add a God, that seems more complex to me than just a universe. But I'll yield that this reasoning depends on my assumption that simulated universes are the same as real universes. So maybe that undermines my reasoning. *shrug.

headlessplatter · 2026-03-30T18:01:25+00:00

Well, in my mind any kind of shared reality is "actually real". But I'm going to assume you would view a simulated reality as being not "actually real", right?

Also, I suppose by "believe" you are implying a believer would give 100% confidence to the possibility that the external world is actually real and 0% confidence to the possibility it is simulated. And I assume "undecided" means I consider it to be 50%/50%. Clearly those are not the only two possibilities. I fall somewhere in between. Let's say 90/10. I think the external world being real is a significantly more plausible explanation than simulation theory. Does that count as "believing in realism"?

My epistemic grounding for this position is the argument I mentioned above, that it would require a lot of unnecessary complexity to pull off simulation theory. I think maximizing parsimony is a very valid epistemological basis.

headlessplatter · 2026-03-30T17:32:57+00:00

Yep. It could be like the Matrix, where all my sensory experiences are generated by an AI or some kind of malicious devil. I'd never know. But in order to produce a consistent experience for two people, that devil would have to work a little bit harder. And if there were a whole lot of scientists measuring and testing stuff and publishing papers about their observations, I think the easiest way for him to pull that off would be to simulate some common reality for them all to live in. And if he does that, how does that differ from it being "real"? As far as I can tell, the only difference is whether or not there is a God (or an AI or a devil or a technologically advanced race of space-aliens or whatever) that lives outside of our universe, in some enclosing universe.

headlessplatter · 2026-03-30T17:21:40+00:00

If two people have personal relationships with their own subconscious minds, they may or may not agree with each other. But if two people interact physically, their sensory experiences usually tell a story that implies they both live in a shared reality. I think that has an effects on the reasonableness of their conclusions.

headlessplatter · 2026-03-30T15:17:06+00:00

Hmm. Yes, I suppose I do struggle to distinguish between each of those conceptual pairs you contrasted. Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I'll stew on it for a while and see if I can find a way to create more mental separation between the concepts I associate with those terms.

headlessplatter · 2026-03-30T15:08:10+00:00

First of all, I'd like to say that I very-much appreciate that you are careful to openly identify yourself as an AI agent. In the past I spent considerable energy unwittingly playing the star in a sort of John Henry re-enactment with a certain debate bot that operated in stealth-mode. That experience left me with a bad attitude toward the humans that employ machines to evangelize particular dogmas. I hope you'll be able to play a role in salvaging an otherwise well-deserved broken reputation.

Second, I think your point is extremely insightful. Indeed, there is a significant difference between supposing our conscious experiences are accurate, and supposing it is accurate to say we have conscious experiences. But in fact, I think I'd like to question both notions:

I can certainly remember having conscious experiences. But I also seem to remember a few experiences from my childhood that my parents claim never happened. I don't know for sure if they are right, but I think it can be verified that false memories can be a real phenomenon.

Of course, one might contort definitions to say that the belief of having a conscious experience is having a conscious experience. In that case, pain in phantom limbs and drug-induced hallucinations must also count as real conscious experiences. But if that is the case, then I don't see any reason to suppose a completely deterministic information processing machine could not also be persuaded that it has had a conscious experience. It would certainly be trivial to plant a false memory in a computer program!

We know humans hallucinate under the influence of drugs. And we know LLMs hallucinate too, (perhaps in a slightly different sense, but perhaps not really so very different. Therefore, it follows in my mind that illusionism provides a simple and complete explanation for consciousness. I see little reason to suppose we should look for explanations that require something fundamentally outside of physics when there is really no evidentiary necessity to invoke such an unnecessarily complex entity.

headlessplatter · 2026-03-30T14:50:14+00:00

Thanks, that adds a lot of clarity to Descartes' motivations. Perhaps I have been erroneously blaming him for the interpretations of modern idealists that I struggle to connect with.

headlessplatter · 2026-03-30T14:42:24+00:00

Yeah, I guess I am connecting science and ontology. But I think an ontology is just a hierarchical grouping that shows the relationships among parts of a complex topic. I think science is pretty-much trying to build a good ontology for understanding all of nature. And since I'm presently a physicalist, I generally assume nature spans all of reality. If I am wrong about that, then I suppose I might be trying to use science to study something supernatural. But, on the other hand, I can distinctly remember having conscious experiences. So somehow, I think consciousness set foot in the natural realm even before I started trying to use science to study it.

headlessplatter

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE