Re:Do physicists really believe in true randomness?
by coldtea on Friday April 04, 2014 @12:06AM
(#7529225)
>I'm not sure random will is equivalent to free will.
It's not per se, but it's kind of an analogue -- in that both are escapes from determinism.
Something random can be seen as an event that has no causual expanation (and thus cannot be predicted by studying the previous state of the system). But there still must be an agent, bringing the random outcome into the universe. In the same manner, free will too can be thought of as a event that has no causual explanation.
In this case, the difficult question is how a "free will" based decision relates to the person making it (if it's a product of his memories then it's deterministic, and thus not free).
One way to solve this might be to think of the persons' decision making process as a "random number generator". So, the output is deterministic (the same for the same state of memories, like with a programmatic RNG), but with a unique seed for this person (the state of memories itself), and a unique RNG algorithm (the wiring of his brain).
In this case, unlike calculating a dice result given dimensions, weight, power of throw, wind conditions, etc, nothing can produce the same output as the free will person without going through the whole process (a total simulation).
Something random can be seen as an event that has no causual expanation (and thus cannot be predicted by studying the previous state of the system). But there still must be an agent, bringing the random outcome into the universe. In the same manner, free will too can be thought of as a event that has no causual explanation.
In this case, the difficult question is how a "free will" based decision relates to the person making it (if it's a product of his memories then it's deterministic, and thus not free).
One way to solve this might be to think of the persons' decision making process as a "random number generator". So, the output is deterministic (the same for the same state of memories, like with a programmatic RNG), but with a unique seed for this person (the state of memories itself), and a unique RNG algorithm (the wiring of his brain).
In this case, unlike calculating a dice result given dimensions, weight, power of throw, wind conditions, etc, nothing can produce the same output as the free will person without going through the whole process (a total simulation).