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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.
The universe really IS out to get me!
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
So what you're saying is that everything I've screwed up on has really been my fault?
It's John Calvin.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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.
Of course, you couldn't help but say that.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Whether the universe is deterministic or not does not really have a great deal to say to the free will debate.
The usual argument runs something like this: If the universe is deterministic, then we cannot have free will, because our actions are determined.
The trouble is with this view is that it equates free will with indeterminacy.
By this argument, to have free will there must be some fundamentally unpredictable element that contributes to your will in order to make it free. (If it were predictable then it would not be free, goes the argument.) But saying that something is fundamentally unpredictable is the same as saying that it has no deterministic cause. If that is the case, then the 'free' part of your will must be something that you - your mind - doesn't determine. But if so, then can it really be called your will?
On the other hand, in a purely deterministic universe, some kind of free will could be possible. Donald MacKay came up with a logical argument that demonstrates that there is no prediciton of an agent's future behaviour that could be given to that agent that the agent would be logically compelled to believe.
There's a reasonable explanation by Dennis l Feucht that Google has just thrown up for me.
The way Conway and Kochen have defined "free will" is, loosely, any behavior that isn't determined by the past. So, no, there's no reason for a particle to be intelligent to "have free will". Plain old wavefunction collapse in the Copenhagen interpretation is a particle exhibiting free will.
Honestly, the actual result isn't particularly interesting, if you believe that human thought and behavior can theoretically be explained by traditional physical processes.
The interesting thing about the theorem is that the proof skips all that, and with a very simple setup, demonstrates that if humans can do something (pick which measurement to make) independently of the past, then elementary particles can too, without making any assumptions on what exactly makes humans act the way they do.
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
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
My computer knows when it's on, when it's sleeping, and when it's about to turn off. Does it have free will too?