On the one hand I hate Elon Musk. On the other hand I also hate advertisement.

So… win / win?

Yeah I’m just arguing for fun :) But I do think questions like this might become relevant in the foreseeable future with AGI. Kurzgesagt has an interesting video on free will in case I haven’t linked that already.

that’s how compatibilists have re-defined free will, it’s not what people generally think of when they think of free will

I’d still argue this is a kind of category error made by philosophers. The concept of free will existed within human minds before philosophers mused about it. It’s a very useful concept for minds regardless of the true nature of our physical universe.

Concepts can exist without being “real” as in a phenomenon in the physical universe outside of minds. Concepts can exist only in minds, many do. You could argue money isn’t real except in our collective consciousness. But what does that mean?

Or you could for example say that humans don’t exist because all you see is quantum physics. Waves in water don’t exist because only molecules or even just subatomic particles exist. Just as quantum physics can’t tell you anything about the concept of “wet pants” from wading through the ocean, it can’t tell you anything about free will.

I don’t know if our universe is deterministic or not, from what I understand waveform collapse casts some doubt about this. But even if you had human minds on deterministic computer hardware, I’d say the conclusion doesn’t follow.

Just because I’d always make the same choice under the same conditions, doesn’t mean I didn’t make a choice.

I do agree that “free will” in a deterministic universe isn’t as cool as I’d like to be. I guess that is what I mean with “pure mind”. There is an unease there or an embarrassment of thinking of yourself as just a flesh brain. But how WOULD a pure mind with true free will decide given the same circumstances? Non-deterministic with some random influence? Wouldn’t that be the an illusion as well?

What else is free will but a conscious decision based on thinking and inputs, however that works?

Maybe the better question is to what degree do we have free will in a certain environment. Just as consciousness might have degrees.

I’d be curious what you would call “the phenomenon previously known as free will”? And what conclusions would you draw if free will doesn’t exist, what would be the impact on ethics, law and sociology? Does it all topple like a jenga tower? Does none of it mean anything?

Well imagine we could copy or approximate a human mind and run it on a typical computer, free from an quantum effects. From the outside you would say “no this is not a mind, this is a computer!” (I threw it on the ground). You could restart a human mind simulation (which would be deeply unethical of course) and it would return the same results, but it would still not be predictable outside of such a simulation.

But from the inside your mind you would of course say you have free will because that is how you defined it. The word has meaning because we created the meaning. In a universe with only such PC based human minds, you wouldn’t argue that you don’t have free will because we’re just software running silicon chips. Otherwise you’d have to invent a new word for what you meant with free will, like internally derived mental agency or something. But that is just rhetoric.

A classical computer based human mind would in fact be more free since it could investigate, analyze and edit it’s own mind, overcoming things that it perceives as weaknesses or faults. Like my evolutionary programming might have made me biased to conserve energy and time and not think too hard on certain new information, dismissing it instead. Maybe instead you’d want to be more open minded. That still would be repeatable and deterministic but arguably more free than a normal human mind.

So I think arguing that free will is based on determinism, repeatability or predictability is sort of an appeal to a “pure mind”. Not sure if that is a good way to put it, but like appealing to higher standard like we’re supposed to be a supernatural soul or something. We’re not, but we still came up with that word all on our own.

Hmm well arguably I ought to rethink my opinion now that lemmy is working well enough.

Look at how many niche communities tried to move from reddit to lemmy and failed. Basically all of them. Even just a little pushback of reddit did a lot (not letting communities be abandoned or closed). Then lemmy is becoming increasingly fragmented (e.g. US imperialists and socialist instances). Then you have people deleting years worth of contribution and valuable content on reddit, answers to questions etc. Or what happens when ~20% of the current lemmy instances fold because of server cost or lost interest? And ultimately how much of a dent on a civilization level is the fediverse going to make?

All that are example of how network effects create a “toll” if you try to leave them.

The EU recently mandated that messenger apps need to create a compatibility layer and afaik even that looks like it’s going to fail to work as thought.

Because of network effects the understanding of a monopoly has to grow with changing technology.

The fundamental problem is that it wouldn’t even be desireable to split up many of the new social media and internet technologies because that would reduce the quality for everyone, increase costs to support as a business and increase environmental damage from duplicating server storage and power consumption.

What we need is to turn them into public utilities that have significant democratic input by their own workforce (the experts and enthusiasts) and the users (the billions of people who actually create the value for the thing).

My argument would go something like this: If you are the computer, then it is free will. If you could predict the computer, you could argue, but you can’t. You can’t even do this theoretically since you’d need more mass than the universe and can’t initialize your predictive model. So you can only say “that decision was made inside that brain”. That is at least one sensible definition of free will.

It’s like looking at a motor that breaks down and then saying that it’s not really the motor that breaks because the motor had no choice in it’s parts breaking. That’s just rhetoric.

The error I believe is that we don’t want to accept that sentience can arise from mechanical universe and it’s a matter of degree and that this can create meaning. People want to set the bar higher because they want the idea of some type of “pure mind”. But since we’re already discussing the meaning of all these things, arguing that what you are reading is just quantum physics is rhetoric.

Either what you are saying is supposed to be meaningful, or you concede that your words are meaningless. Then I anyone else wins the argument by default ;)

Basically the definition of free will can only be made by someone who claims that meaning exists, emerging from the material world. Therefor within that emergent layer of mind and meaning, a definition of free will other than basic physics is at least acceptable.

“I have all these materialist things and still not happy”

Russia is invading Ukraine right now because Putin is big mad about losing control of soviet colonial holdings.

Loosing Ukraine? Well… as long as you’re not implying or hinting at that the US or NATO took Ukraine away from Russia.

And I really hope you’re not suggesting any of the conspiracy theories that the US had anything to do with the euromaidan protests or the that it was a coup or regime change! People who spread ahistorical lies like that are tankies!

It’s nice you are against Sovjiet imperialism, but in this battle between good and evil we need to be unified and unquestioning in our loyalty for freedom to prevail. To be other is to be tanky.

Already there have been ten thousand civilian deaths deaths since the invasion. Has any conflict in recent history been more bloody?

Always remember, doubt is the enemy of victory. History can be rewritten, but glory is forever!

Fascism is also on the rise because of improved technology for thought control / propaganda / public relations / advertising. Social media lets the worst of humanity band together and pool their energy.

But wealth inequality, both worse effective quality of life for the poor and increased economic power by the wealthy is I believe a main driver. Technology is just the tool. The ultra wealthy and their lackeys today have more power than ever and are more isolated and inundated with ideology that is basically insane.

I wonder if there are studies that show correlations between quality of life and fascism in different nations.

My dad fought the Nazi’s they lost

“Oh I’m sorry. How did they die?”

“Die? No, we lost them. And now we cannot find them”

“Oh there they are! Right there!”

The emperor has new body paint

Personally I preferred punk in the “deliberately ugly” way

You mean we should just cut emissions and not try to remove CO2? Or am I missing something in the article?

I don’t think we can do enough off that list to make enough difference. And we’re already hitting positive feedback cycles so we need some way to remove CO2. I doubt either of those things will happen, but theoretically we need both now.

If you distribute the emissions on all the consumers, the concert goers then it’s probably negligible. And their fault. So we should attack people who go to music concerts. But really we should attack celebrity culture. Much less funny meme though

This meme has been brought to you by FOX news and the fossil fuel lobby.

I really prefer the Israeli and the USA disinformation campaigns /s

Fucking neoliberals… decades of neoliberal economic policy, imperialism and media conglomeration allowed this fertile ground in the first place.

The typological fallacy fallacy.

You’re right, if it was an intelligence service they’d want the service to continue while they have a backdoor.

Is it? Maybe. I managed to install the apps I need from f-droid and use firefox but it felt more difficult than on PC - where you just need to install an adblocker in your browser.

Wow this is awesome. “land-based wind energy kites” are awesome too but this is very predictable. Although at what time of the day this would generate power would cycle with the moon so could be quite inconvenient too. But it would need a smaller battery to buffer since it’s regular.

Hillarious! Just for a few seconds I wondered if this was real!