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If We Have Free Will, Then So Do Electrons
snahgle writes "Mathematicians John Conway (inventor of the Game of Life) and Simon Kochen of Princeton University have proven that if human experimenters demonstrate 'free will' in choosing what measurements to take on a particle, then the axioms of quantum mechanics require that the free will property be available to the particles measured, or to the universe as a whole. Conway is giving a series of lectures on the 'Free Will Theorem' and its ramifications over the next month at Princeton. A followup article strengthening the theory (PDF) was published last month in Notices of the AMS." Update: 03/19 14:20 GMT by KD : jamie points out that we discussed this theorem last year, before the paper had been published.
It looks to me like it's intended as a reductio ad absurdum of the concept of free will: i.e. assume free will exists, then show that ridiculous things follow. To me, it's obvious that free will doesn't exist. Our brains are made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe, obeying the same laws. These laws may be indeterministic, but since we have no control over quantum randomness, that randomness doesn't help us in any way.
Grr! Arg!
This speaks to the absurdity of standard interpretations of quantum mechanics, and nothing else. The only cure, which physicists strangely resist, is a return to the deBroglie interpetation that was greatly expanded by Bohm and Bell. More information from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It was the wishy-washy "primacy of consciousness" philosophy pushed by the likes of Bohr that got us to this dead end, and only a reality-based philosophy is going to lead to new insight. So long as we interpret the results incorrectly, we are destined to fall into the same trap.
Perhaps there is no such thing as choice. What if you make your choice based on circumstances beyond your control?
We make all our choices based on external stimuli, which are largely beyond our control. Of all the philosophical nonsense that's bandied about, the whole "fate vs free will" debate is the most exasperating. "Free will" is an artifact of the limits of our perception, and nothing more. Every "choice" we make is nothing more than a cascade of logic (in the electronics/programming sense) based on running recent perceptions through a network of previously conceived notions and instinctual prewiring. It's all completely deterministic. The only time it's labelled "free will" is when the decision system is too complex for anyone to predict the outcome. Dropping a hot potato isn't called "free will" because we understand the grossly simple neurological mechanism that causes it. Dropping a puppy off a cliff is seen as "free will" because there's no telling what twisted up crazy logic went into that decision. In both cases, though, it is a logical necessity that some deterministic mechanism precipitated both end results. Even the theist cop-out of "the ghost in the machine", i.e. the immaterial soul, doesn't really escape the problem. All things happen because of something else. Even the "ghost" argument requires that outside stimulus trigger an analysis based on pre-existing stored information.
So enough with the "free will" crap already. It's like arguing about how much longer the upper line in this optical illusion appears to be
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