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GsTSaien t1_jbl115l wrote

I do not think free will and predictability are contradictory. Free will posts that we can make choices and that they are not just pre-determined. Those choices are going to be strongly influenced by our experiences and preferences, but they are still our choices.

Free will allows to make choices even if the majority of them will be predictable.

I think free will simply has to exist because decision making happens in a complex system, brains, which runs on electficity and is affected by quantum states and mechanics. I believe this mechanical fact is what separates us from a purely mechanical system. Even on a very simple level, I believe that quantum mechanics are how we get true randomness into the universe, and even if we spend our wholo lives making the most predictable choices, we made them out of free will because the particle proterties involved in reality and our brains can not physically have been pre-determined.

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testearsmint t1_jblhgyx wrote

There's very interesting work in this regard. Roger Penrose put forward a theory and, after criticism, a defense of his theory that our minds are a sort of quantum computer. I haven't looked too far into it personally, but as much as we can and should always maintain initial skepticism, there may be some validity there since the guy is a complete genius and literally won a Noble Prize as recently as two years ago.

Again, it's kind of an appeal to authority fallacy so it doesn't mean he's immediately right. I just like to think of it in the same sense of when I consider people like Aristotle, etc. of like, "Well, that person's pretty fucking smart, maybe there was something there".

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GsTSaien t1_jbljbuv wrote

Quantum mechanics point toward determinism not being possible. Not just that, but local realism is false; which means that either reality can travel faster than light,(locality is false) or that particles definitely do not have set values before observation (realism is false)

I personally suspect both to be false, but I am a geek and not an expert so don't take that as more than a hunch. But even if only realism turns out to be false, that is enough to dismantle determinism and, in my eyes, a strong case in favor of free will.

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testearsmint t1_jblm8ry wrote

It's all very interesting. I wonder, too if quantum physics is God's way of preventing determinism/predictability and enshrining free will. This is of course under theistic models, though. I'm an agnostic currently.

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GsTSaien t1_jblnw7r wrote

I think any theistic model immediately crumbles upon any sort of scrutiny. Sure, a deity itself can not be disproven; but we can explain why religions exists, we can track their origins, their evolutionary value, and on an individual level all major theistic belief systems are full of contradiction. Couple that with a complete lack of evidence that any theistic interpretation of the world could be righr, and that is enough for me to completely disregard any theistic perspective from consideration.

I can't know if there are any reasons quantum mechanics are as they are any more than the reason a photon spins left or right. It just does!

I do not believe we are in a simulation, but I also like the thought experiment of how a simulated universe would need to work, and I like the idea that, in a simulated universe, superposition (light behaving as a wave when the precision of a particle is not needed) is a computational trick to save resources. Like a videogame engine showing you an approximate idea of what a tree looks like from far away, but showing you a fully detailed model of a tree if you get closer and start inspecting it.

This ties everything up in a neat little package that makes sense, that is why it is tempting to believe in it. But making intuitive sense to a human is not required for an aspect of reality to be true, so likely not in a simulation.

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testearsmint t1_jbls6ri wrote

Simulations have a lot to be considered about them, and there's a fair bit of uncertainty there too (the idea of simulated realities simulating realities simulating realities and the probability of us being in one versus the question of whether simulating an entire universe (or even a galaxy) would require an entire universe/galaxy anyway and thus one wonders what difference it would make/could it even continue ad infinitum).

Regarding God, it's more of an idea before even getting to/outside of any big religion in particular. Is the universe/multiverse causeless or is there a being that created it that's causeless? That's where the question lies, and where I don't really know what to believe in either direction.

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GsTSaien t1_jbluusm wrote

Regarding god, if there were a being that created the universe, I would expect something to suggest that, which is not the case. Furthermore, even if we entertained the idea of a creator it would not be one that stuck around. It is abundantly clesr that the universe has ran itself since its inception, whether that inception was some concious entity's design is interesting, but ultimately unlikely and makes no difference to reality.

The idea of a creator being needed is a human construct, it follows our instinct, nothing else in reality suggests the need for a creator.

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testearsmint t1_jbm50nu wrote

I think there are some interesting arguments here and there (fine-tuning's one example). It's interesting to consider because it may have some combination of certain metaphysical implications (mind-body dualism, idealism, afterlife, reincarnation), but it is true that it could be possible that these metaphysics may also exist in a creatorless universe. After all, we've yet to solve such issues as bridging the gap between general relativity and quantum physics, consciousness, etc.

Organized religion, kind of a separate matter, is definitely pretty common for humans, though. Whether for social community or authoritarian inclinations of opportunists.

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GsTSaien t1_jbm89po wrote

I don't really find much value in anything metaphysical or spiritual. Growing up surrounded by it as well as religion it has become incredibly apparent that it is all made up. I understand the desire to imagine there is something more to us than matter being funny, but everything we know suggests we are only matter.

I think we have free will and intelligence as an emergent quality of the biochemical processes that we are formed by, conciousness may indeed be more than the sum of its parts. Perhaps conciousness is the result of the quantum superposition of what happens in our brain, but I do not think it is reasonable to entertain the concept of some unmaterial soul, some entity that exists beyond the body and brain. All of our best evidence tells us the only logical conclusion is that there is no afterlife, or karma, or reincarnation. It really is not logical to believe in anything else when we can be pretty certain we already know nothing happens.

People still believe in other things, of course, or they at least entertain some ideas related to spiritualism. That is ok, belief is natural. I personally feel like truth is more important, and I am simply not convinced by "no one can truly know". Just because something can not be proven false does not mean it is possible. I know there is no afterlife and consider that a fact, because that is the only possible option.

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testearsmint t1_jbmbfty wrote

That's all fair. I just think of metaphysics as physics potentially not yet realized, and quantum physics has at least put forward the idea of the possibility of extra possibilities beyond things we can currently conceive.

Regarding things that may not be currently falsifiable, I think it depends on the idea. Sometimes the ideas are useless to consider, sometimes we may in time know the truth of them, and some of them are just left in a state of "remains to be seen". In that sense, a lot of that kind of stuff is in the grouping of things I don't necessarily believe in, but are interesting to consider, may be verified in the future, and aren't necessarily worth tossing out straight from the get-go.

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WrongdoerOk6812 t1_jbljrhz wrote

My brain is way too small to get a firm grasp of quantum physics and its mechanisms to form a meaningful opinion with it.

But based on the principles (I think) I understand from it, I also believe it could give us the ultimate answer to this question.

Let's just hope the answer doesn't turn out to be "42", leaving us with the need to find out what the actual question was 🙃

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WaveCore t1_jbm1sbs wrote

I think the first thing to accept is that we're 3-dimensionally bound beings, and we're still trying to figure out how to grasp the 4th dimension.

Best way to explain why 4D is tricky to grasp, is by going down a level in the comparison: pretend we're 2D beings trying to understand 3D.

If we're 2D beings, then that means we can perceive height and width, but not depth. That means you would be unable to see a sphere, but you would be able to see each 2D circle of it, if you were to slice the sphere into tiny cross sections.

Picture a sphere resting on a piece of paper. The flat circle it imprints on the paper would just be a dot. As you lower the sphere through the paper, the circle it leaves on the paper keeps getting bigger until you reach the middle of the sphere. At which point it will go back to being smaller again as you continue to lower it, eventually ending up back at the dot.

So while you can never actually see the entire sphere all at once for yourself, you would theoretically be able to infer the true nature of the sphere by stacking all these circles on top of each other. However the problem here is that you wouldn't even understand the concept of stacking the circles. The only thing you can perceive for yourself, is the 2D circle increasing and decreasing. It's difficult to try to imagine the sphere, when you've never seen a 3D object.

And it's even worse if a 1D being tries to grasp the sphere. They would only see a dot that grows into a line, which then shrinks back into the dot. To infer that you're looking at a sphere, you would have to take note of the fact that the line expands at a higher rate initially, only to eventually slow down in its growth until it stops. And actually, you don't have enough information available to you to actually conclude that it's a sphere. It could be a cylinder or cone lying on its side with the circle facing you, you'll never know.

So yeah, sorry if this seemed off-topic, but I just think the first thing to wrap your head around when trying to understand quantum physics is that our natural senses are limited. Things aren't supposed to make sense or feel intuitive, when you're punching a dimension above you.

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WrongdoerOk6812 t1_jbm4ium wrote

I already had a pretty good grasp of a 4th spatial dimension, not the mathematics behind it, but how to imagine it or how we might perceive certain actions from our 3D point of view. Gave me a lot of new ideas about the universe, especially black holes. However, it didn't help me in trying to grasp quantum physics, but I imagine this could possibly use even more extra dimensions.

Anyway, I understand the point you wanted to make. And now we're really starting to lose track of the topic 😅

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WaveCore t1_jbm6eo2 wrote

I would probably start from the classic Schrodinger's Cat example. Let me introduce time into the scenario, say the cat has a 50% chance of dying in the box after 10 seconds have passed. Per your common sense, you would think that after 10 seconds, there will have been an outcome, the cat is either alive or dead.

But here's the weird part, there actually won't be an outcome after 10 seconds, unless you actually open the box to observe an outcome. 20 seconds can have passed, and the cat is actually still either alive or dead. And it will continue to be in this limbo until it's actually observed. It's weird right? You would think that simply observing is a passive action on your part that shouldn't affect or influence any outcomes.

So one theory to explain this is that reality branches into two different timelines, one where the cat dies and one where it doesn't. And this may very well relate to the concept of the 4th dimension.

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Uncivilized_Elk t1_jbnf6sd wrote

Schrodinger's thought experiment makes the point that a cat being simultaneously dead/alive is stupid and therefore there's aspects of physics involved that are not being understood.

Pop culture media constantly misrepresents this and frames it as if Schrodinger literally thought the cat is in a limbo state when the dude was saying such a thing is ridiculous.

It's one of my biggest pet peeves because Schrodinger basically was going "if we use your logic, look at this stupid cat in a box shit that we would get," and yet now people think Schrodinger held the very view that he was calling out as dumb.

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WrongdoerOk6812 t1_jbmfiqy wrote

That last part helped me get an idea about the connection between these 2 concepts. And to bring this back to the original topic of free will brings a lot of extra questions to think about. Like if we are our own observers constantly deciding freely in which timeline we continue to exist, and if this would count for both the sum of our parts and consciousness, or only for te latter. And so on... 🤕

This gave me a lot to think about for a while 😅

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WaveCore t1_jbmnoq7 wrote

Read about the Young/Double Slit experiment. The whole reason why the Schrodingers Cat thought experiment and quantum mechanics came up in the first place was because they were able to cheat the observing condition, in other words they managed to "observe" something without that something knowing it was observed. It also demonstrates the concept of superposition, or having all the possibilities exist at the same time and even interfering and interacting with each other.

Really makes you think about what it exactly means for something to be observed and for all those possibilities to resolve themselves to one outcome. Or if we're the ones that simply branch off to another timeline that represents one of the outcomes.

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GsTSaien t1_jbll2f4 wrote

To explain, quantum mechanics refer to the behaviors of particles, which work differently than large scale physics predicts. The most important aspect to this discussion is particles behaving differently when measured vs not measured. Light for example is a wave when not measured, and a particle when measured. The photons, before being measured, act as a wave becaue their values are not defined before measurement (or observation). This is the source of true randomness in the universe. Theoretically, you could predict the behaviors of anything in large scale physics by having the starting conditions. Quantum mechanics do not allow you to predict the future even with the starting conditions.

Since our brains are essentially quantum computers, it can not be claimed that our choices are pre-determined. This does not prove free will beyond a reasonable doubt, (randomness being involved in our decision does not entirely disprove the notion that our decision is just a mechanical process) but it is a very strong argument for free will because it at least contradicts the notion that everything that we choose is pre-determined by the starting conditions in a system.

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WrongdoerOk6812 t1_jblxzsb wrote

That first part sums up what I've understood about it. Also, I think that despite it not allowing future predictions, you could predict or calculate a certain amount of probability of getting a specific future result and that the result is also subjective to the method of observing it. Which I think can give reasons to suspect determinism

The second part is also a nice clarification of how or why it could suggest free will as far as I understand it. Then again, I've also seen explanations of how it can suggest determinism. And I'm not sure I completely understand any of them. At least I know that at this moment, nobody really knows all the answers yet, still leaving it in a state of superposition until we find a way to measure it.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your clarification! Think I learned something 🙂

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