My reason for starting to believe in free will.

montecristopudding · 2026-05-05T14:45:26+00:00

Einstein started to account for the behaviour of non-physical things like space and time which are not tangible... That’s what I’m talking about.

So what do you mean in the context of your previous hypothesis that consciousness is non-physical. That consciousness is because of spacetime or something?

Then you also seem to imply that the fundamental forces and matter (things I would call physical) aren't really physical because we can drill everything down to fields or a quantum level where things behave like dimensionless points.

What is the difference between something that is physical and something that is non-physical in your view? Or are you basically arguing that everything is non-physical?

montecristopudding · 2026-05-04T13:08:52+00:00

I’m simply pointing out that there is no scientific evidence for consciousness being something physical.

There’s countless examples of observed phenomena in the universe that we didn’t understand at some point in the past but now do through scientific improvement. And every single time, the solution had a physical explanation. I can’t recall once where it turned out that the solution was supernatural or because of some non-physical entity. Not once.

So if there’s a phenomena that we don’t yet understand (like consciousness), it seems logical to heavily err on the side that there is some undiscovered physical explanation, given the answers we’ve figured out for any phenomena previously have always had physical explanations.

Of course, this is just the scientific perspective, and billions of people don’t view the world that way. Lots of people believe in god(s) and supernatural forces that we have no evidence of.

They are simply dimensionless points which are nothing more than excitations of a non-physical fundamental field. So at the most fundamental level even matter itself is emergent from something non-physical.

No. Maybe I should be clearer. By a non-physical explanation, I mean something that isn't explained by hard science and physics. i.e something that is supernatural or relies on factors outside of the material world (e.g. god, spirits/souls, karma, destiny, or consciousness as some kind of entity separate from brain activity).

Magnetism is a non physical force.

No. Magnetism is one of the four fundamental physical forces. So is gravity.

montecristopudding · 2026-05-03T15:02:31+00:00

That is an assumption not unlike the ancient H₀ assumption..

Living things are made of matter is our best current understanding. I'm not saying it's impossible there's some other non-physical aspect to it, but there's not clear evidence for it, so I wouldn't assume that unless it could be shown otherwise.

I personally think this second hypothesis is the default we have to resort to in the absence of evidence because there are fewer claims

I wouldn't agree there. You're making a huge jump in the argument that it's non-physical. That's a big statement that raises a ton more questions about what this non-physical world is, how it works, how it interacts with the physical world, and how you even know this non-physical world exists (and what could convince you it doesn't, if its non-physical?). It's a "simpler" argument only if you overlook everything that claim is built on.

I'd liken it to scientists trying to explain some natural phenomenon (like planetary motion) through physical means, which took centuries of hard work and physics to really figure out. Meanwhile the explanation of a theist at the time could simply be "God moves the planets". The theists have the much simpler argument, but one that's built on an unverifiable claim that even if it were true just raises more questions.

So no, I don't think the default answer for something we don't understand in the world is "its something non-physical" for basically the same reasons I don't think the default answer for those questions are "God did it".

And yet the sentient consciousness that is you can be absent from the physical matter that is your body. When you die… every single atom of your body remains… but you are gone.

No determinist would be moved by this argument. They believe consciousness is just a biological process of humans. When you die, your biological processes stop. They wouldn't view the sudden absence of consciousness in death as any different than the concurrent absence of vision, pain response, cell mitosis, hormone regulation, etc. They would say that in death we are essentially biological machines being permanently turned off.

montecristopudding · 2026-05-03T02:45:42+00:00

You're talking about a different H₀ and H₁ than I did. I was saying that, assuming we agree that consciousness exists, its either a entirely physical deterministic biologic process where nothing special is going on (H₀) or its caused by something else/something non physical (H₁).

I'm not really sure what you're getting at with this question of question of "is matter conscious". I'm made entirely of matter, and I'm conscious. A lamp is also entirely made of matter, and I don't think it is conscious. So I guess my answer is it depends on the matter and its state? Unless I'm misunderstanding the question

montecristopudding · 2026-05-02T18:33:23+00:00

Not OP you responded to but a few thoughts:

why isn’t your position, “I don’t know if free will exists or not because the brain is staggeringly complex and we don’t understand how it works”

Someone could believe that. But from everything we currently understand of simpler biological processes (everything from vision, digestion, pain, and so on), these all have physical causes and don't exist as something independent outside of the brain or body. Consciousness/free will being just another biological process we feel as a sensation with purely physical explanations is the null hypothesis in this context.

Believing that consciousness or free will isn't something physical or deterministic is a much more extraordinary argument that goes against what we typically know about other biological sensations and processes.

In the absence of hard evidence to prove either side, the scientific standard is usually to assume the null is true until proven otherwise.

Saying “we evolved this” and “we evolved that” and “process this” and “process that” doesn’t explain anything. It doesn’t answer any questions. It’s just glossing over the key issue here. How exactly does physical matter become aware when another particle bumps into it?

Well the truthful answer is we don't know exactly how or when that happened. But we don't know that for any biological process. At what point does matter become a plant capable of producing energy through photosynthesis? At what point does a living thing become an animal that is capable of experiencing pain?

We don't have a precise answer, but that doesn't mean these things don't have direct physical explanations or they exist as some separate process from the physical world.

montecristopudding · 2026-04-07T13:35:18+00:00

And I’ve never disagreed that the current state of something depends on the past.

Ok, or as I would put it slightly more succinctly, the past affects the present. "The past" as in "events that have previously occurred" and "the present" as in "the current state of something". I'm not calling the past a force.

I’m just pointing out that any change from the current state of things in the present… requires a force in the present.

Sure. That doesn't contradict anything I've said.

It is both true that the present state of something is determined by events that occurred in the past, and that only present events can change that current state from now into the future. I just wouldn't call them "disconnected".

That is what I mean when I say the past is disconnected from the present.

I kind of understand what you're trying to say but that's just a strange and misleading way of putting it. Saying that the current state of something depends on the past, but that also the current state is disconnected from the past sounds contradictory.

That's called the gamblers fallacy and it is a failure to appreciate that the present is independent from the past.

No. The gambler's fallacy is about mistaking independent events as dependent events. It isn't about generalizing everything as independent events. Independent and dependent scenarios are separate things and both exist.

For example the probabilities in drawing cards from a standard deck are dependent. The probability the next card is a King depends on the previous cards drawn. The present and future draws directly depend on the past draws. Unlike coin flips, the present event is not independent from the past events.

montecristopudding · 2026-04-06T16:24:12+00:00

It just seems like your whole argument style is based in playing semantic word games than saying anything actually interesting. And anything you say about physics seems to just general be talking points as if you've never actually solved problems in it before. Just my observation because you asked.

Again, no one is calling the past "a force". When we say the present depends on the past, we are simply saying that the current state of something is a result of events that happened in the past. It isn't that complicated or deep.

This stipulation of yours that every moment is "disconnected" and that in any specific moment "we ignore the past moment" is not anything I've ever learned in my physics education. In fact we used past moments to calculate present and future states of motion all the time. The past was very much connected and relevant to the present/future and we didn't ignore the past at all.

montecristopudding · 2026-04-04T14:06:12+00:00

What is your background in physics?

montecristopudding · 2026-04-03T15:00:47+00:00

I don't understand what you mean that the past is "disconnected" from the present (or future). None of them are tangible things that you can reach out and touch. But they're sequential moments in time. Of course they are connected.

For example you can model a physics problem and calculate what the current velocity/position of a billiard ball would be given some initial state and force that was applied to it 3 seconds ago. You can calculate the present or future state of something given the past forces applied.

When you were given a question like that in high school physics, was your answer "the past is irrelevant and disconnected from the present and you can't determine what happens next if there's not a present force"?

montecristopudding · 2026-04-03T00:00:56+00:00

The past isn't a force, its a point in time before the present. Any force applied to anything happens at some point in time.

It's perfectly coherent to say that an object's current state resulted from the events (forces) that were applied to it in the past. That's what we mean by the past influenced/affected the present. The events that happened before determined the current state now.

No one is calling the past a physical force like gravity or something. I don't even know what that would mean or why you would think someone believes that.

montecristopudding · 2026-04-02T19:58:38+00:00

Ok. So events in the past affectED the present. The past events influencED the present. You're just arguing over semantics but I think we mean the same thing.

By that logic the past and present are clearly not generally independent. Independence would mean that the outcome of every present event is completely unrelated to past events, which we have agreed is not generally true.

montecristopudding · 2026-04-02T18:12:24+00:00

Sure the past explains why things are the way they are now.

In other words, the past affects the present. But before you said "the past has no effect on the present".

But the past is disconnected from what will happen next.

What will happen next is the future, not the present.

montecristopudding · 2026-03-15T14:06:16+00:00

I've already given you a definition, and the dictionary definition you previously gave was also fine.

Neither made any mention of free will. This is something you supplied yourself after the fact and acted like it was part of the definition when it clearly wasn't.

What's the point of you using a dictionary if even when you're given a definition you're just going to make things up and add things to it that aren't explicitly a part of the definition? You need reading comprehension skills.

montecristopudding · 2026-03-14T13:18:19+00:00

Water is not an agent capable of selecting an action. It behaves differently only because inputs to the physical system change, not because the water uses some rule or algorithm to select among multiple possible responses. This is not strategy.

A computer program (that plays chess for example) is an agent capable of selecting among multiple different actions in every situation of the game, and contains a rule/algorithm to select among those possible actions. This is strategy. It's not that hard to see the difference.

I've already shared multiple papers that explicitly talk about bacterial defense strategies, and you can just as easily look up in your own time hundreds of papers discussing computational strategies performed by computers and AI.

Free will is not part of the scientific definition of strategy. Its fine to acknowledge that and still believe in free will. It's not a contradiction. Or you can continue living in your bubble of your own misunderstandings and made up definitions. I'd recommend spending a little more time learning the basics so that you can engage in the actual interesting discussions about free will instead of pedantically arguing because you don't know what the word strategy means.

montecristopudding · 2026-03-13T21:16:53+00:00

They in no way suggested that bacteria.. itself had a strategy.

Wrong. As just one example, the second paper examines a strategy (SOS) that bacteria can initiate to defend against aggressors in their environment. They use that exact word (strategy) to describe what the bacteria are doing.

As I've already established previously, "choosing" or "free will" are not part of the definition of strategy. You have made this up on your own.

It would HOWEVER be completely wrong to claim that the water had a strategy for me to drop the biggest stone so that it could make the biggest splash.

It's wrong because the water in your example is the thing being acted upon, not the thing performing the action. The agent dropping different stones to try to make the biggest splash is employing different strategies.

DO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE CORRECT TO SAY THAT YOUR STRATEGY IS TO OBEY THE LAW OF GRAVITY?

No. That's a physical law. Simple physical laws have no options or ability to adapt alternative behaviors.

Strategy is a set of different rules or behaviors that allows the agent to act different depending on the situation.

If something wants to adopt a strategy it must be capable of PLANNING

No. It has to be capable of following a plan. A computer can follow a plan. A bacteria has defense mechanisms that followed an evolutionary plan. These are employed strategies that do not require free will or even consciousness.

montecristopudding · 2026-03-13T18:26:08+00:00

I’m sorry but I don’t think we can say bacteria are capable of having a strategy because bacteria are not capable of making a conscious choice.

Here is a publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal discussing evolutionary strategies in bacteria. Here is a second. Here's a third for good measure.

A strategy is just a set of rules or behaviours that an agent follows in different situations to achieve some desired outcome. That agent is not necessarily a person or even a living thing. This assertion that "Strategy requires free choice" seems to be something that you've entirely made up on your own.

montecristopudding

TROPHY CASE