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From: Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Making your mind up
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2024 10:56:54 +0200
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On 27/04/2024 09:20, Martin Harran wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Apr 2024 12:42:17 +0100, Ernest Major
> <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>> On 26/04/2024 08:27, Martin Harran wrote:
>>> On Wed, 24 Apr 2024 08:45:37 -0700, Mark Isaak
>>> <specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 4/22/24 2:12 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>> rOn Thu, 18 Apr 2024 18:36:48 -0700, Mark Isaak
>>>>> <specimenNOSPAM@curioustaxon.omy.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 4/7/24 8:01 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>> On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 10:22:18 +0000, j.nobel.daggett@gmail.com (LDagget)
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 16:29:20 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On 2024-04-05 11:05 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> There was quite an interesting discussion a few weeks ago on Free Will
>>>>>>>>>>> vs Determinism but it died a death, at least in part due to the
>>>>>>>>>>> departure of some contributors to the Land Beyond GG. I'd like to take
>>>>>>>>>>> up some of the issues again if anyone is interested.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> One point made by Hemidactylus that didn't get developed any further
>>>>>>>>>>> was the way that we sometimes give a lot of time and effort into
>>>>>>>>>>> making a decision - he gave the example of buying a car. It's also
>>>>>>>>>>> common for someone to want to "sleep it on it" before making a
>>>>>>>>>>> decision where the decision is important but it is not clear what
>>>>>>>>>>> decision is best. If a decision is essentially predetermined then what
>>>>>>>>>>> is the point of that time and effort or sleeping on it?
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Do you not see that this argument depends on the belief that there was
>>>>>>>>>> an *option* to make the decision earlier under different conditions
>>>>>>>>>> (lack of 'thinking it over' and/or 'sleeping on it'). IOW that free will
>>>>>>>>>> exists. You are 'begging the question'.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> It's actually the complete opposite, I am starting with the assumption
>>>>>>>>> that there is no free will and asking what then is the point in
>>>>>>>>> deliberating over the various options. You seem to be taking things a
>>>>>>>>> bit further and saying that if determinism exists then there aren't
>>>>>>>>> any options to begin with but that is just a variation in emphasis, it
>>>>>>>>> doesn't address the question of why we spend so much time pondering
>>>>>>>>> those options when they don't even exist.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> You missed his point.
>>>>>>>> Consider writing an algorithm controlling a robot walking down a path.
>>>>>>>> The robot comes to a fork in the road. Does it take the left fork or
>>>>>>>> the right fork?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The robot has no free will. It can, however, process data.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The algorithm can have layered complexity. Scan left, scan right,
>>>>>>>> process data. Simple-minded algorithm scans 1 sec each way, sums up
>>>>>>>> some score of positive and negatives and picks the best. If it's a
>>>>>>>> tie, it might kick the random number generator into gear.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Alternatively, it can get into a loop where it keeps scanning left
>>>>>>>> and right until one "choice" passes a threshold for "better" that
>>>>>>>> is not just a greater than sign, maybe 10% better or such. From
>>>>>>>> the outside, this is "pause to think". With a little imagination,
>>>>>>>> one can add much more complexity and sophistication into how the
>>>>>>>> robot chooses. It can be dynamically adjusting the thresholds. It
>>>>>>>> can use it's wifi connection to seek external data. It can find that
>>>>>>>> its wifi signal is poor at the fork in the road so back up to where
>>>>>>>> it was better.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Map "go home and sleep on it" to some of that or to variants.
>>>>>>>> Map it into Don's words. The robot could not "choose" left or
>>>>>>>> right until its algorithm met the decision threshold, i.e. it
>>>>>>>> didn't have a legitimate option yet. (hopefully he'll correct
>>>>>>>> me if I have abused his intent too far)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> To an outside observer lacking full knowledge of the algorithm,
>>>>>>>> it looked like it had a choice but inexplicably hesitated.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It is *you* who have missed the point. What you have described above
>>>>>>> is an algorithm to process data and arrive at a decision; what I was
>>>>>>> asking about is why we delay once all the information that is
>>>>>>> available or likely to be available *has been processed*. Once all the
>>>>>>> information has been input in your algorithm there is no reason for
>>>>>>> the processor to continue analysing unless you add in some sort of
>>>>>>> rather pointless "just hang about for a while" function; no matter how
>>>>>>> many times your algorithm runs with a given set of inputs, it will
>>>>>>> reach the same decision.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The answer to that is simple: Once all information is in, it has *not*
>>>>>> all been processed. The decider may have thought about price, quality,
>>>>>> ease of cleaning, subjective appreciation of pattern (for both self and
>>>>>> one or two others), and availability, but there are undoubtedly
>>>>>> tradeoffs midst all that data that cannot be expressed in six-variable
>>>>>> differential equation, much less in something that you could decide by
>>>>>> reasoning. Furthermore, there are innumerable other factors that the
>>>>>> decider probably did not consider on the first pass (how does it look in
>>>>>> various other lightings? What, if anything, would it imply about our
>>>>>> social status? Is it going to remind me of Aunt Agatha's horrible
>>>>>> kitchen?) All of that processing takes time,
>>>>>
>>>>> Which goes back to the question I have already asked here about the
>>>>> underlying principle of Cost versus Benefit in Natural Selection; if
>>>>> the benefits from a trait or characteristic outweigh its cost, then
>>>>> that trait Is likely to be selected for; if the cost outweighs the
>>>>> benefits, then it will likely be selected against; if cost and benefit
>>>>> more or less balance out, then it is really down to chance whether or
>>>>> not the trait well survive.
>>>>>
>>>>> What you have said above highlights that there is significant cost
>>>>> involved in this pondering in terms of brain resources. Can you
>>>>> identify any benefits that would outweigh the cost of such pondering
>>>>> when the final decision is predetermined?
>>>>
>>>> I think you can identify such benefits yourself. For example, suppose a
>>>> tribe is faced with a decision of moving elsewhere or staying in a
>>>> marginal environment. Pondering the pros and cons can be life-saving.
>>>
>>> It can only be life-saving if they have control over the decision
>>> (free will). If the decision is made for them (determinism), then the
>>> pondering makes no difference.
>>
>> Determinism isn't the same as the decision being made for them.
>> Determinism is the decision being inevitable, given both the conditions
>> and the agent. Change the conditions or the agent, and the decision may
>> be different.
> 
> I don't see how that matters, according to determinism, those changes
> in conditions and/or agent have in turn been determined by previous
> events. That is where you get into an endless regression leading us to
> the conclusion that I just quoted to Mark that "… as soon as the Big
> Bang took place 13 billion years ago, the entire history of the
> universe was already settled."

Right but "everything is predetermined because causes lead to effects 
and you can trace back the process to the initial conditions of the 
Universe" is very different from "everything is predetermined because 
effects will happen regardless of a cause".

The first allows one to use causal language, the other one is plain 
false (because it uses causal language and says things with it that are 
incorrect). There is a third take on determinism that repudiates causal 
language entirely, saying "events follow each other according to a 
certain pattern but we can't call them 'cause' and 'effect' because that 
language relies on the counterfactual of 'what if that cause hadn't 
happened' but no such counterfactual exists".

Asking "why do we ponder when the decision is predetermined" is the 
second; it's suggesting that the decision being predetermined means it 
has no relationship (be it causal in the first interpretation of merely 
correlative in the third) to the pondering. But that is very obviously 
not the world we live in: whether predetermined or not, future events 
are correlated with past events.

>>>
>>>> As
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