Does Your iPhone Have Free Will? A new 'Turing Test' for free will

[bananas]

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/1e223b77e60

Does Your iPhone Have Free Will?

A new ‘Turing Test’ for free will can determine whether somebody, or something, thinks it has free will. And your iPhone may well pass

<snip>

The problem of free will is one of the great unsolved puzzles in science, not to mention philosophy, theology, jurisprudence and so on. The basic question is whether we are able to make decisions for ourselves or whether the outcomes are predetermined and the notion of choice is merely an illusion.

<snip>

Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of Seth Lloyd, one of the world’s leading quantum mechanics and theorists, who is based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Lloyd argues that quantum mechanics does not provide any mechanism that helps us understand free will. By contrast, he shows that the theory of computation is far more useful.

<snip>

The questions are these:

Q1: Am I a decider?

Q2: Do I make my decisions using recursive reasoning (ie using a process that can be simulated on a digital computer)?

Q3: Can I model and simulate — at least partially — my own behaviour and that of other deciders?

Q4: Can I predict my own decisions beforehand?

Provided you—or your iPhone—answer honestly, the answers give a straightforward indication about free will.

“If you answered Yes to questions 1 to 3, and you answer Yes to question 4, then you are lying. If you answer Yes to questions 1,2,3, and No to question 4, then you are likely to believe that you have free will,” says Lloyd.

<snip>

The paper is at http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.3225 : A Turing Test For Free Will by Seth Lloyd

[bemildred]

1. How about Yes, No, Yes, No?

What does that make me?

I do not believe for a minute we reason like computers.

That's an interesting piece. I think free will is a useful fiction. In the end, we are compelled, but it is useful to pretend we have free will for those moments in life where one must do something and make a choice. We are masters of hazarding a guess at what to do on little or no information.

[LAGC]

2. Yep.

Just the fact that we aren't aware of all the causal factors that go into each choice we end up making, makes us think we are masters of our own destiny.

"Free will" is our greatest illusion.

[bemildred]

3. I read about a study somewhere in which they "proved" that decisions were made,

as in the rest of you knew about it and was reacting to it, some milliseconds before your conscious "mind" knows. In any case it seems clear that there are times when we are most definitely not the boss.

[LAGC]

4. Yeah, neuroscientists have done a lot of research in this area.

It's pretty clear our subconscious dictates what our conscious mind eventually ends up doing.

And our subconscious is dictated by our biochemistry and whatever stimuli we happen to come across.

We're basically just passengers along for the roller-coaster ride.

Life is still pretty cool though, because we don't know where we'll end up until we get there.

[bemildred]

7. Well, I feel like I do have some control, but I have to be deceptive to do it.

I can't just exert my will, like in the movies, that's bulllshit. If the little ape inside is upset or wants something bad I'm fucked, I can't do much of anything except keep him strapped down, until I get him settled down again.

Sometimes you need every shred of working memory you have, and we don't have much.

Our "leaders" rely on that to keep us off balance and out of politics. That is how FUD works.

[Thor_MN]

5. The Tea Baggers I know would say" De cider's in da fridge." and then rant about THAT man.