News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:In the future, lab mice will live in computer chips, not ... by wizzwizz4 on Friday July 03, 2020 @09:10AM (#23723655)
Many philosophers are confused. Free will is a solved problem (we have free will regardless of the metaphysical premise, unless you're using a weird definition of free will, and even I can prove it for any given metaphysical premise), yet they're still working on it.

If somebody links "free will" to "determinism", they're very confused about what free will is.

There are a lot of philosophers doing genuinely useful work, but so much of the field is pre-occupied with trivial (and non-trivial) variations of the "if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?" koan.

Re:In the future, lab mice will live in computer chips, not ... by lachlan-sneff on Friday July 03, 2020 @11:50AM (#23725008)
I must be quite confused then, but how is free will not linked to determinism?
Re:In the future, lab mice will live in computer chips, not ... by wizzwizz4 on Friday July 03, 2020 @03:08PM (#23726584)
There's a proper proof, which is too long to fit in this margin (i.e. I'm too lazy to find a link), but I can do a much shorter one:

1. Non-determinism is equivalent to determinism plus extra, random input.

2. The addition of random noise does not bestow free will upon something that didn't have it without the random noise.

3. 1 and 2 imply no non-determinstic systems can possess free will if deterministic systems cannot possess free will.

4. 3 implies free will is independent of determinism.