http://www.math.princeton.edu/facultypapers/Conway/

Thanks for the link though.

Anyone know much more on this? -- Does this relate to the theory that everything was predefined at the big bang - e.g. a big random number was generated and everything since then has simply been cause and effect? Or is it on another tack?

Kochen spent a significant part of his life on the topic (see the first result here : http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=author:simon-k... , 784 citations :-)

To quote the last version of the demonstration (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0807/0807.3286v1.pdf)

"More precisely, if the experimenter can freely choose the directions in which to orient his apparatus in a certain measurement, then the particle’s response (to be pedantic – the universe’s response near the particle) is not determined by the entire previous history of the universe."

It is generally accepted that quantum events are "truly random", so the random number generation is ongoing. The standard proof of this is Bell's theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_Theorem ), but I feel a deeper understanding of the theorem shows rather that it constrains what hidden variables could exist and that the conventional understanding is impossible, not that hidden variables in all senses are completely impossible. (Still, the hidden variables people were "hoping" for are impossible; if there are hidden variables they will be undeniably "quantum".)

That was my conclusion too: I've been meaning to write about it, but time constraints keep getting in the way.

The thing I like about the Free Will theorem is that it highlights the importance of the experimenter's choice, as opposed to in Bell's theorem, where demonstrations mostly take this as given. There's room for 'hidden variables' of a certain type in the decision making process of the experimenter and the state and process of the measurement apparatus. Having blind faith that important state is located there is perhaps unwise, and certainly it is hard to demonstrate, but assuming that the experimenters are entirely un-entangled and uninfluenced causally, that there's no interesting modified state in the experimenters or measurement apparatus at all, would, to my mind, also be a mistake.

If we take the cause and effect theory which clearly conforms to the evolutionary theory then logicaly we are able to so rewind the cause and effect to a point where there was nothing. Hence, if there is no choice but only predetermined causes, what predetermined something from nothing?

I.e. a movie on a film reel consists of frames that are created once and when you watch it looks like a coherent story --- but when you paint over some frames at the beginning, it has no effect on any other frame.

Whereas when you manipulate the state in a computer game --- say, give Super Mario that mushroom --- you change everything that comes later.

And for that straw man theory of causality: You can just exchange it for a theory that postulates a cause for everything _but_ the Big Bang.

(By the way, I do not believe in causality. At least not the kind of mono-causality exhibited in human storystelling, esp. stock market commentators on TV. Strangely I still manage to believe in determinism.)

The article does not make clear how "free choice" is different from "random chance" -- at least not to me.

  When the floor was opened for questions, one member of the 
  audience questioned Dr Conway's use of the term "Free 
  Will". She asked whether Dr Conway was "confusing 
  randomness and free will".

  In a passionate reply, Dr Conway said that what he
  had shown, with mathematical precision, that if a  
  given property was exhibited by an experimenter than 
  that same property was exhibited by particles. He had 
  been careful when constructing his theorem to use the same 
  term "free will" in the antecedent and consequent of his
  theorem. He said he did not really care what people chose
  to call it. Some people choose to call it "free will" only
  when there is some judgment involved. He said he felt that
  "free will" was freer if it was unhampered by judgment - 
  that it was almost a whim. "If you don't like the term Free 
  Will, call it Free Whim - this is the Free Whim Theorem".

Aside from most discussions of "free will" arising from semantic confusion, I think pretty clearly points toward this being a bit of a joke...

And there is no semantic confusion about "Free Will". The naming of the theorem is stated in those terms, but the work itself is independent of the precise meaning. That's why this is such an interesting result. The care taken to make it independent of the semantics attached to that term is, again, entirely to be expected, and makes the result compelling.

The existence of free will in a strong sense, has, as far as I can tell, no logically valid implications in practical terms, though it does do something profound to our psychologies: it certainly injects fatalism.

And that would all be predetermined too.

Someone came up with this before me: you should believe in free will because if it exists you're right and if not you couldn't have done otherwise anyway. It's like Pascal's Wager, except not stupid and wrong.

They are trying to prove stuff about free will, but have no expertise on the question of what free will is.

If you disagree, please post a comment saying why. I'd like to hear it.

But surely we can only dismiss this if their argument has a flaw. And the burden of disproof is on us, not them.

The burden is on them to say what is a problem in the field they want to address, to know something about the history of the problem, other candidate solutions to it, and how their solution differs, and then say what the answer is. They simply haven't done that.