Free Will Debate Discussion

Post about it here.

Only SIDEY AND SHOOP post in official debate thread.

All discussion goes here.

LAKES POST deleted from official thread:

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Sidey is saying that we live in a determinsitc system called the universe (which, by the way, is an antilogy itself)
Assuming the universe is deterministic we can easily compare the universe to a computer and a human being to a device. These are not only perverted thoughts, but also let me think wether sidey ever met a bitch (and we know all girls bitch around every now and then) who changes her mood as furious as trollpro goes in runtag

And the wrong statement lies here "[...] as each event is caused by a prior one as determined by the laws of the universe."
An Example some of you may have heard of is that the position of an electron is unpredictable. What is astounding is that not only do we not know where the electron is (and its velocity) but the electron itself does not know where it is, it genuinely does not have an exact location or velocity and can behave as though it is in many places at once. This behaviour is truly random and would not repeat itself even if you set up the experiment exactly as before.

This coincidence means that there is no calculable future and thus a human being can't be fully triggered or used by any other instance or intelligence and thus does not not have free will. Ex negativo, we do have the physical possibilty to have a free will.

fine, I still mean what I said

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Assuming the universe is deterministic we can easily compare the universe to a computer and a human being to a device. These are not only perverted thoughts

lol, are you religious?

randomness/quantum mechanics only disprove that we could predict the future, or that a certain future is inevitable. mass ppl who are determinist believe that the future is already decided, but obviously it isnt if randomness exists.

i dont see how that proves you got free will tho. it just proves that the future isn't decided.

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1. Controlling the past state of the universe

2. Being able to change the laws of the universe

i dont see why this would indicate that we have free will either. you would be able to change the future, but that act itself would already be determined by previous events. IE you would play around with the laws of the universe the exact same way in an identical parallel universe given that randomness doesn't exist.

free will is theoretically impossible. BOOMBAmm

oh, and this made me lol ''...thus does not not have free will'' LaKEs

I'm confused on what your definition of free will is. It is simply the ability for one to control their "actions, or determine what reasons are acceptable motivation for actions." Of course if you break "one" down into small pieces, starting with involuntary muscles, bones, etc, you don't have control over these. Sidey brings the argument to stupidity by breaking it down past this, to cells, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, and whatnot. This is completely retarded. That is not free will, that is omnimandance (or "all command/control").

Free will is the ability of something to control its own emergent properties. Individual atomic energy levels is not an emergent property.



It is obvious that ultimately, if we took a picture of all the atomic information (the state of all matter), we could with 100% accuracy predict what is going to happen. More so, if we could take the atomic information of just the solar system, we could probably predict with 99.999%. If we could know exactly the atomic information of an individual, we could know what they are probably going to think in the next five seconds.

However, this isn't possible. A professor once told me that trying to view the state of such small systems is like trying to find the location of every basketball in a dark room, but your only method of sensory is by throwing a basketball. Your simply disturb what is by looking. The

And this has absolutely nothing to do with free will, as that isn't what free will means. That's omnimandance. Completely and utterly different.



What is with people and taking turd scientific stances in areas they simply don't apply? Homosexuality and evolution. Consumptionism and entropy. They don't fucking work.

CHIEFHERO[SKS] wrote:

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Assuming the universe is deterministic we can easily compare the universe to a computer and a human being to a device. These are not only perverted thoughts

lol, are you religious?

Why would you ask wether I'm religious?

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randomness/quantum mechanics only disprove that we could predict the future, or that a certain future is inevitable. mass ppl who are determinist believe that the future is already decided, but obviously it isnt if randomness exists.

i dont see how that proves you got free will tho. it just proves that the future isn't decided.
[...]oh, and this made me lol ''...thus does not not have free will'' LaKEs

The future not being decided means that there is no calculable future-event-list so we do have the physical possibilty to have a free will. I didn't say we have to have a free will then. I just knocked out the argument that we can't have a free will due to everything being determined.

Whenever there are debates/discussions Chakra seems to knock out everyone with his posts..

chakra said that anyone with infinite computing power and capacity could calculate any event that is going to happen in the future with 100% accuracy. he says that theoretically everyones life is predicted before it even has started. he is saying this has nothing to do with free will, because noone has infinte computing power and is then throwing examples of stuff that is unrelated to eachother. that doesn't win a conversation imo

I'm saying it has nothing to do with free will because it simply isn't. It's like trying to argue Person X is physically stronger than Person Y because Person X is better at Sheep Tag. Unrelated.

Keke I'm not allowed to post any more in the official debate so I'll join.

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And the wrong statement lies here "[...] as each event is caused by a prior one as determined by the laws of the universe."
An Example some of you may have heard of is that the position of an electron is unpredictable. What is astounding is that not only do we not know where the electron is (and its velocity) but the electron itself does not know where it is, it genuinely does not have an exact location or velocity and can behave as though it is in many places at once. This behaviour is truly random and would not repeat itself even if you set up the experiment exactly as before.

Lakes this is meaningless. Indetermism doesn't allow for free will. Whether it is determinism or chance steering us we still have no free will either way.

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Whenever there are debates/discussions Chakra seems to knock out everyone with his posts..

This must be sarcasm? Chakra is one of the worst debaters who 24/7 posts mumbo-jumbo. Try to google his word "omnimandance," ZERO HITS. He just made it up!

Lakes give me your best shot bro

Actually it is omnis (all) + mandare (command).

Like how that is the only thing he talks about my post. ^^ He doesn't even know what free will is. :/



Sidey, ask some random stranger IRL if they have free will. When they say yes, tell them how they don't because they can't control the past/break the laws of the universe. They'd look at you like you're ITIO.



Sidey's fundamental failure (beyond not knowing what free will even means) is that he divides our "mind" away from our basic cells. I explained this problem by describing "choice" as an emergent¹ action.

A cell, generally, has no direct control over its bilayer--instead it has separate molecules to allow things in and out. Even then, obviously the cell doesn't control these molecules themselves--it must use more molecules to transmit signals (either electric stimulus or binding proteins or w/e), which, again they don't control. The entire process of a cell (all cells), is an easy-to-understand complexity of physical responses.

However, we can say they have free will because that is what free will is. The ability to control. They don't need to control everything (absolute free will), just have some control (as a cell does over itself). This is why you can say someone has less free will than someone else.

¹Something that is "emergent" is simply something that only exists at a level of complexity or higher. For example, a phosphatidylcholine (the main molecule making up cell membranes) does not have the property of being a layer. However, if you gain a bunch of them, they will spontaneously² align into a lipid bilayer, having an emergent property of keeping external things out and internal things in.
²Kind of funny to point out that the literal definition of spontaneous is "of one's free will."


Put short, Sidey doesn't know what free will is to even begin with. He thinks neurons are external forces.

Either way everything Sidey said in the thread is crushed in this video :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMNZQVyabiM

It's slightly annoying that no one here has the SLIGHTEST grasp of this issue.

Shoop posts a video of Michio Kaku - widely known as a FRAUD who is willing to say anything to get media-attention. He doesn't even know what evolution is.

PZ Myers kills him here: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/02/why_do_physicists_think_they_a.php

Not to mention Shoop bringing up the uncertainty principle when I specifically state "the product of chance of which we are not responsible."

This is Mike Tyson versus Tay-Vano with handcuffs on.



Chakra why don't you break down the premises of my argument(s) and assumptions I've made in the debate?

The definition of free will I've worked with is quite clear but if you need precision:

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freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention

Lol Sidey, its not exacly Michio Kaku who came up with the Uncertaintity principle, and it is quite wideley accepted by now. And also why that geekshit you linked to really is arguing against are scientists talking out of the field. Like Sam Harris. Who you base everything you say on. And none of you obviously have a clue of how quantum physics work.

If you were smarter you would understand that the uncertaintity principle means that we can make decisions not determined by prior causes without any divine intervention. And that has nothing to do with "chance of which we are not responsible". Uncertaintity doesnt mean it has to be chance, uncertaintiy means we cannot determine it on forehand.

Its so sad you have to lie Sidey. I already crushed this in the debate topic.

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But even if all of our decisions were made by our subconscious and we did live in a deterministic universe it would still be our free will. Our subconscious is a part of our consciousness.

What Sidey is arguing is like saying, you cant see since you cant do that without your eyes. And yes it would be true, we wouldnt have any free will if it wasnt for our consciousness, but we do have a consciousness capable of making choices thus making us agents capable of these choices which is the defenition of free will.

I like how Sidey attacks one popular (non-academic) scientist by citing another popular scientist.
Edit: Let me reword what I said earlier.

Just for fun:

Shoop has absolutely NO IDEA what he's talking about.

What he says is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that is partially completely incoherent.

Making arguments against him is like talking to a dog, the geek will just keep barking.

Sidey is just desperate atm. Why dont you explain what is wrong in my points if I am just "babbling". Fucking idiot.

Why do you use images? Why are they hosted from image shack and take 15 seconds to load?

I like how Wiki interprets that quote (the first):
"Under the assumption of physicalism it has been argued that the laws of quantum mechanics provide a complete probabilistic account of the motion of particles, regardless of whether or not free will exists. Physicist Stephen Hawking describes such ideas in his 2010 book The Grand Design. According to Hawking, these findings from quantum mechanics suggest that humans are sorts of complicated biological machines; although our behavior is impossible to predict perfectly in practice, 'free will is just an illusion.' In other words, he thinks that only compatibilistic (deterministic) free will is possible based on the data."

And compatibilism?
"Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent. It may, however, be more accurate to say that compatibilists define 'free will' in a way that allows it to co-exist with determinism (in the same way that incompatibilists define "free will" such that it cannot)."


Though citing Wiki is never good. :/



However, with a little research, I found something interesting. That book, The Grand Design, was co-authored. I'm not an avid reader of boring books, but this guy seems to be.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/granddesign.html Ctrl+F "p 32 pg 1"

Chakra yo stop leeching and give me some debate if you wanna party.


Shoop knows so little about this topic that it's embarrassing. All he has going for him is that the topic is an abstract one and that his wording is difficult to understand to such a point that no one knows what he is talking about - thereby just assuming he knows what he's talking about.

Anyhow, lets move beyond this village-type-debate where free will is allowed by the uncertainty principle.

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What can we say about free will using this model? First, specific, individual decisions are random. The box on the left has a certain probability of being chosen, as does the box on the right, and these add up to unity (or maybe a little less; you may decide not to take a box at all, but let's assume it does), which means you have to choose one. We can't ever accurately predict which box you will choose, but you know what? Neither can you. That's right, if free will really does fall under the HUP then you can't even predict your own actions. They must intrinsically possess a level of randomness that cannot be overcome. It is an immutable law of the universe that is the Uncertainty Principle.

This is what I've said since the beginning in much fewer words.

Does anyone with any sort of understanding have anything to add?

Sidey you have already been completley destroyed in this debate. Go an lick your wounds instead.

Holy shit this was some of the worst debating ive ever seen. Give up both of you. All of you.