Try it. Try predicting what someone you know well will get from the menu. You will be right only a portion of the time (unless your friends are super predictable; but I bet you can’t predict what they’ll say on their favofite topics).
We technically have no “free will” by that definition, but why should anyone care?
Predicting human behavior is extremely difficult, because any one of a million ideas could be floating in our heads while we make a given decision. Those ideas are often important; we have them for reasons.
So we have self-determination, which is more important than “free will” by this definition.
The care and effort with which we make decisions has an important impact on our futures. That’s the type of free will worth wanting.
Now, there are also limitations to that. Biases and cognitive limitations keep us from making good decisions.
So our self-determination is limited.
These seem much more worth thinking about and understanding than some abstract in-the-limit determinism. Why would anyone ever care if a god could predict their actions, when no such god exists, and humans can only make bad guesses?
I specifically mentioned wife instead of a generic friends specifically due to this reason, I have been with her 7.5 years now and we have grown together, and I have a good understanding of what she likes and how those likes are changing or are constant. Why do you need god for this? If we sufficiently understand how the brain and body works we should be able to predict. Anyways the post isn’t about if we can do this now or in the future, its about how humans are just doing computation and nothing more, and how similar is that to a powerful AI doing computation, so that we can have a more unified view on what’s conscious and what has agency.
Try it. Try predicting what someone you know well will get from the menu. You will be right only a portion of the time (unless your friends are super predictable; but I bet you can’t predict what they’ll say on their favofite topics).
We technically have no “free will” by that definition, but why should anyone care?
Predicting human behavior is extremely difficult, because any one of a million ideas could be floating in our heads while we make a given decision. Those ideas are often important; we have them for reasons.
So we have self-determination, which is more important than “free will” by this definition.
The care and effort with which we make decisions has an important impact on our futures. That’s the type of free will worth wanting.
Now, there are also limitations to that. Biases and cognitive limitations keep us from making good decisions.
So our self-determination is limited.
These seem much more worth thinking about and understanding than some abstract in-the-limit determinism. Why would anyone ever care if a god could predict their actions, when no such god exists, and humans can only make bad guesses?
I specifically mentioned wife instead of a generic friends specifically due to this reason, I have been with her 7.5 years now and we have grown together, and I have a good understanding of what she likes and how those likes are changing or are constant.
Why do you need god for this? If we sufficiently understand how the brain and body works we should be able to predict.
Anyways the post isn’t about if we can do this now or in the future, its about how humans are just doing computation and nothing more, and how similar is that to a powerful AI doing computation, so that we can have a more unified view on what’s conscious and what has agency.