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Comment by intralizee | Hacker News Reader

The reality is you don't have a will, just variables & events creating the person you are in the current moment.

Given that you would say that everything in our life is determined at birth? We just don't have enough knowledge to fast forward the simulation?

"Given that you would say that everything in our life is determined at birth? We just don't have enough knowledge to fast forward the simulation?" Yes

The opposite of free will is not necessarily pre-determination. It's probably the case that events proceed randomly at atomic levels and this randomness snowballs into more macro events (e.g. neurons discharging).

Still pre-determination if you have a system that is deterministic but influenced from an outside force and the outside force executing the alterations is not in the system being influenced.

It seems to me that the system you describe lacks free will and is pre-determined by a causal action.

The universe isn't deterministic as far as we know, so that's probably not right. But if you change it to something that is compatible with the predictions that can be made using quantum mechanics then that's most likely the truth.

Quantum mechanics may possibly be a case of observing determinism but we assume randomness by our current technology. Everything else observable has been fitting the deterministic modal. If a random variable were to be added to a person's mind as metaphorically similar to quantum mechanics, it would result in factoring into the future events of the person and similar to all the other variables & events a person experiences.

Well that's an extreme too far. Your life is not predetermined at birth. But our options from moment to moment might be limited by our biology. Some of them are weighted by the circumstances of our births. Every day something that we might have absolutely no control of personally might change the course of our lives for the better or worst.

You are you after all. But you are also still just a human being, subject to their quirks, foibles and limitations too.

> We just don't have enough knowledge to fast forward the simulation?

Well we could simulate a trillion possible outcomes because we're talking a simulation that involves a trillion variables. Which one would definitely occur we could only be sure in hindsight.

Maybe just like how computers can't truly generate a random number, we can make it appear virtually random. Maybe freewill is somewhat similar in that regard, that there's quite a bit of freedom in a lot of choices, but overall it's not absolutely free will that we're operating on.

"Your life is not predetermined at birth" Yes it is pre-determined at birth.

you forgot an increasing pool of state that cannot ever be captured in a reproducible way.

Such a state doesn't make a person have will over themselves.

it helps form what the person understands as his/her own 'free will'.

the Free Will (TM) state machine uses this constantly updated training data to bias its decisions throughout its shelf life. so there are rules (like you stated) but there is also a huge set of data that alters the rule's parameters, to such extent that some times, new rules are created and old ones get discarded.

How does it help when free will does not exist?

you are right. being merely a system to weigh chaos, it only helps the 'notion' free will.

free will in itself will never be provable.

That's sort of like saying you don't have a hand, just a palm and some fingers.

Is this proven? I thought it was still one of the great debates in philosophy?

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