Thread: The Illusion of Free Will

Originally Posted by Looper

On that basis would you say that a sufficiently powerful Artificial Intelligence (or Artificial General Intelligence (able to learn from its experience) to be more precise) could be said to have free will, like humans do, if it is connected to an android body which is able to interact with the world in the same way that a biological human body interacts with the world?

I recommend the novel Machines Like Me for an entertaining story based on this idea. It is not Ian McEwan's finest novel but any Ian McEwan novel is a good read.

Or to flip it the other way, are we performing a calculation when we exercise our free will to make a decision?

Too many ifs and buts, based on a possible future technology that still divides opinion, and will remain unproven until much smarter people are allowed to test it.

All human free will is based on a calculation. Individual calculations, and their relative success, depend on the gravity of such processes, and the person making them!

Compare Putins decision to invade Ukraine, with any expat decision to relocate. The outcome of that first examples has serious ramifications, affecting millions of people globally.
The outcome of the second decision will still have an impact, but is unlikely to affect millions globally.

In both cases, the decision is based on knowledge, understanding and experience. The additional factor would have to be the desired outcome of that decision.

Perhap Putin should have been well advised to relocate?

I had a thought-bomb while running today...

I suspect that Free Will may have the same relationship with the inner workings of the mind that Newtonian mechanics has with the inner workings of the universe.

Newtonian mechanics provides a useful and practical description of the workings of the Universe at certain scales. It may not be literally true (given the insights of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics) but without the approximation of Newtonian mechanics the entire human project would never have got off the ground technologically.

The same is true for free will. It provides a practical and useful perspective on the workings of the human mind at certain levels. It may not be literally true that Free Will is anywhere to be found at the mechanical level of firing neurons and swirling neuro-transmitters. But without this intuitively seductive approximation human social projects such as moral and legal frameworks would not get airborne.

Originally Posted by Looper

I had a thought-bomb while running today...

Most people just stick to their play lists on Spotify.