Re:Free will is back, and maybe we can measure it
by trhway on Thursday October 22, 2015 @01:51PM
(#10433682)
>>that determinism has nothing to do with free will
>The theory goes that, on an atomic level, interactions between particles is a deterministic process - it's wholly and completely predictable because the outcome is determined by a knowable set of rules. Given the fact that our brains are just[1] a huge set of particles and chemical processes it should then follow that a perfect computer model of someone's brain would make the exact same decisions as that person.
yes. Absolutely true. In theory. The coin head/tail outcome can be modeled and predicted even more easily than brain. Thus the coin is an example of determinism. In theory. On practice though it is the thing that comes among firsts to mind when we talk about in-determinism.
Giving the amount of computations necessary to perfectly model even a coin, less a brain, and the minimum energy cost of a unit of computation, it may be so that such perfect computer is just not possible inside our Universe (it may happen that Universe is the smallest computer that can run such simulation and that exactly that it is doing right now :)
>The theory goes that, on an atomic level, interactions between particles is a deterministic process - it's wholly and completely predictable because the outcome is determined by a knowable set of rules. Given the fact that our brains are just[1] a huge set of particles and chemical processes it should then follow that a perfect computer model of someone's brain would make the exact same decisions as that person.
yes. Absolutely true. In theory. The coin head/tail outcome can be modeled and predicted even more easily than brain. Thus the coin is an example of determinism. In theory. On practice though it is the thing that comes among firsts to mind when we talk about in-determinism.
Giving the amount of computations necessary to perfectly model even a coin, less a brain, and the minimum energy cost of a unit of computation, it may be so that such perfect computer is just not possible inside our Universe (it may happen that Universe is the smallest computer that can run such simulation and that exactly that it is doing right now :)