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MonteChristo0321 OP t1_jbkyr9d wrote

Reply to comment by WrongdoerOk6812 in I just published an article in The Journal of Mind and Behavior arguing that free will is real. Here is the PhilPapers link with free PDF. Tell me what you think. by MonteChristo0321

Two interesting concerns. I think I have answers for them.

AI can get pretty accurate, but never completely accurate in its predictions of what you'll do. And many of your actions that are amenable to prediction by AI are also somewhat predictable by other humans. Like I can predict pretty well that you'll have something for dinner this evening. I might be 99% percent sure of it. But I can't really know that you won't skip dinner. You could. So you have the ability to 'do otherwise' even in the case that you do end up eating dinner like I predict. I think the predictions made by AI will be like this.

Some group actions are more predictable than individual actions. But you are not a group. So your free will isn't diminished by this. Also, a group can be made unpredictable by individual action.

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cagriuluc t1_jblfktq wrote

Imprecision in predictions is basically unavoidable in any domain. Weather prediction is a good example.

Take a much more chaotic system than weather, the human mind, and you have more imprecision. Not to mention the hardness of getting informed about the state of human mind which is required for accurate predictions.

With a good enough prediction model and good enough means to be informed about the state of my mind, you can know whether I will skip dinner.

Everything points to the conclusion that we cannot guess because we don't know enough and it's chaotic.

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matlockpowerslacks t1_jbm2iki wrote

I like the analogy.

For all we know, our current state of brain analysis is a blind person sitting in a house, trying to figure out if it will rain tomorrow.

The task seems impossible, though an astute individual could possibly make some accurate prediction based on information that seems invisible to most. However impressive this skill, it would be nothing compared to modern meteorology and its vast array of thermometers, barometers, radars, satellites and dozens of other measuring tools. A few hundred years ago it would have been sorcery.

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WrongdoerOk6812 t1_jblcief wrote

Those are also very good answers! Especially the one concerning the AI, which, as I understand it, attributes it more as a case of probability. I think we need quantum physics to further unfold this, which exceeds my knowledge way too far to say anything meaningful about 😊

I also agree with the argument that I'm not a group. But I don't think I entirely agree with the last sentence. I agree that an individual action can make the group less predictable, but not entirely, and also, this doesn't eliminate the possibility that the individual action was made with free will or that it wasn't determined by the workings of the group as a whole.

The way I see it can be compared to the working of the vast quantity of cells that taken as a group make us who we are... these cells individually are encoded with DNA, which determines how they work. Adding them all together creates a huge and complex entangled group of predetermined actions in which the meaning of the predictability mostly gets lost. Also, the other way around, our actions or external factors we experience can have an influence on the behavior of cells, either individual or groups.

So then the question might become if our collection of cells, or part of them, does the same for us as what DNA does for the cells or if we become an entirely new being that's seperated from the elements of which it's made. In the case of the latter, this also raises the question; with what, where, or how can the separation declared?

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