Shane—really good demonstration of how wrong a question is really is.
The answer to that, at least from what little I can glean from Eliezer’s insightful writings, is supposed to be, “Free will? That is the wrong question.”
Well...yeah. It is a wrong question. I’d go so far as to call it the original wrong question. To borrow from Eliezer’s language, if you know everything there is to know about physics and the brain, but you can still imagine asking ‘but do I have free will?’, you’re onto a loser. ‘Do I have free will’ is not only wrong, it’s wrong-headed and pretty much unanswerable for any useful purpose.
Neither is it a straw man—almost everyone I know would beat themselves up when confronted with the fallacious ‘me vs. determinism’ problem.
I’m sure Eliezer’s continued writings on will and control in a timeless universe will open new boxes for me, and I look forward to that, but I seem to be one of the happy few that really doesn’t see an issue when it comes to this. Brain gets input, brain does physics, brain gives output. Deterministic? Certainly. Is it ‘me’ making the decisions? Yeah, sure, why not?
Shane—really good demonstration of how wrong a question is really is.
The answer to that, at least from what little I can glean from Eliezer’s insightful writings, is supposed to be, “Free will? That is the wrong question.”
Well...yeah. It is a wrong question. I’d go so far as to call it the original wrong question. To borrow from Eliezer’s language, if you know everything there is to know about physics and the brain, but you can still imagine asking ‘but do I have free will?’, you’re onto a loser. ‘Do I have free will’ is not only wrong, it’s wrong-headed and pretty much unanswerable for any useful purpose.
Neither is it a straw man—almost everyone I know would beat themselves up when confronted with the fallacious ‘me vs. determinism’ problem.
I’m sure Eliezer’s continued writings on will and control in a timeless universe will open new boxes for me, and I look forward to that, but I seem to be one of the happy few that really doesn’t see an issue when it comes to this. Brain gets input, brain does physics, brain gives output. Deterministic? Certainly. Is it ‘me’ making the decisions? Yeah, sure, why not?