Comment by vacuity | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vacuity | Hacker News Reader

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> For me, the lack of free will follows from my study of physics, which seems to allow no room for free will.

We don't understand enough about thinking/consciousness to reduce them entirely to physics (the literal brain).

> The answer to this is that, upon more careful introspection, it seems I don't even really feel like I have free will either.

Why did you write the above reply then? I posit that I have free will because I perceive my typing this as occurring due to my free will. Maybe everything is (effectively) deterministic, but at the very least I exist in a reality where I can think and act in ways that demonstrate free will. That's more fundamental than any scientific finding, which is necessarily an approximate view of reality. Think of a computer that can somehow emulate computers such that apps in the emulated computers have no way to discover a distinction (timing and side effects are emulated too, I guess). What difference does it make to those apps that they're running in an emulated computer or the base?

> We don't understand enough about thinking/consciousness to reduce them entirely to physics (the literal brain).

We don't understand enough to know whether (or how) they reduce entirely to physics. But if the materialist position is correct, then matter (including energy particles) and the laws of physics all there is. So thinking and consciousness have to reduce entirely to physics, because there's nothing else for them to reduce to. We may not know how, but we know they do - if the materialist position is correct.

> > The answer to this is that, upon more careful introspection, it seems I don't even really feel like I have free will either.

> Why did you write the above reply then?

Because he had to, of course! (/s, or not, depending on your philosophical position...)

Looks like a good summary and a balanced take (except without additional context it could’ve been a she).

I find materialism weird because it seems like a given that all we do is motivated by our minds, including physical models—but then we are tempted to make a leap and claim that metaphors from those models (particles flying, strings vibrating, fields permeating, wave functions collapsing) are objective facts about environment rather than metaphors that try to predict how our environment would behave (in order to satisfy our minds’ curiosity and increasingly achieve some goal relevant to our minds), and that our environment and our mind itself completely reduces to those metaphors. I blame it on lack of philosophical sophistication.

That is not to claim it’s one way or another—just that we should at least be aware that it is a leap without positive proof.

> except without additional context it could’ve been a she.

True. And sometimes I even say "he/she" or "they". But 1) the vast majority of people on HN are male (I'd guess 90%, but I have no hard data), 2) the default "she" for doesn't fit on a male-dominated site, especially when referring to a real individual, 3) "he/she" sounds more inclusive, but it still misses nonbinary people, and 4) "they" just sounds off to me when referring to an individual.

I could have, instead of saying "he", gone up-thread and used the name of the poster, but... sometimes I'm lazy.

I try to use people's names directly but sometimes I forget and sometimes it just reads weirdly. On HN I'd use "parent", "grandparent", etc. anyways because it's a fun little quirk here. I don't like using "they" to refer to an individual either.

> Why did you write the above reply then?

After reading his comment, I had the thought and an urge to type up a response to attempt to clarify that I indeed understand the idea that thoughts not under my control and my lack of free will are somewhat independent aspects (it is certainly possible to imagine both having free will at some subconscious level and also seeming to have no direct control over one's thoughts that appear in consciousness), and add that my primary reason for doubting free will is physics based.

No serious counter-thoughts or other considerations appeared, i.e. it didn't seem dangerous or harmful to reply. So I ended up succumbing to my urge type up a reply and in fact did so.

TL;DR: I couldn't help myself.

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