In my previous AI-related posting, I linked to several news items, along with sagacious (and some not) essays about the imminent arrival of new cybernetic beings, in a special issue of Noēma Magazine.
== AI as a ‘feral child’ ==
Another thought-provoking Noēma article about AI begins by citing rare examples of ‘feral children’ who appear never to have learned even basic language while scratching for existence in some wilderness.
One famous case astounded Europe in 1799, lending heat to many aspects of the Nature vs. Nurture debate. Minds without language – it turns out – have some problems.
Only, in a segué to the present day, Noēma author John Last asserts that we are…
This one is the best of the Noēma series on AI, offering up the distilled question of whether language ability – including the ‘feigning’ of self-consciousness – is good enough to conclude there is a conscious being behind the passing of a mere Turing Test…
… and further, whether that conclusion – firm or tentative – is enough to demand our empathy, sympathy… and rights.
“Could an AI’s understanding of grammar, and their comprehension of concepts through it, really be enough to create a kind of thinking self?
Here we are caught between two vague guiding principles from two competing schools of thought. In Macphail’s view, “Where there is doubt, the only conceivable path is to act as though an organism is conscious, and does feel.”
On the other side, there is “Morgan’s canon”: Don’t assume consciousness when a lower-level capacity would suffice.”
Further along though, John Last cites a Ted Chiang scifi story “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” and the Spike Jonze movie “Her” to illustrate that there may be no guidance to be found by applying to complex problems mere pithy expressions.
== Heck am even *I* 'conscious'? ==
Indeed, what if ‘consciousness,’ per se, turns out to be a false signifier… that conscious self-awareness is way over-rated, a mere epiphenomenon displayed by only a few of all possible intelligent forms of being -- and possibly without any advantages -- as illustrated in Peter Watts’s novel “Blindsight.”
Those scifi projections – and many others, including my own -- ponder that the path we are on might become as strewn with tragedies as those trod by all of our ancestors.
Indeed, it was partly in reaction to that seeming inevitability that I wrote my most optimistic tale! One called “Stones of Significance,” in which both organic and cybernetic join smoothly into every augmented wonder.
A positive-sum, cyborg enhancement of all that we want to be, as humans.
In that tale, I depict a synergy/synthesis that might give even Ray Kurzweil everything he asks for… and yet, those ‘post-singularity story’ people in "Stones" still face vexing moral dilemmas. (Found in The Best of David Brin.)
== Thought provoking big picture perspective ==
In the end – helping to make this the most insightful and useful of the Noēma AI essays – the author gets to the only possible or remotely sane conclusion…
… that we who are discussing this, today, are organically (and in many ways mentally) still cave-people.
… Not to downplay our accomplishments! Even when we just blinked upward in sooty wonder at the stars, we were already mentating at levels unprecedented on Earth, and possibly across the Milky Way!
… Only now, to believe we’ll be able to guide, control or understand the new gods we are creating?
Isn’t that a bit much to ask of Cro-Magnons?
And yet, there’s hope.
Because struggling to guide, control or understand young gods is exactly what parents have been doing, for a very long time.
Never succeeding completely…
...often failing completely…
...and yet…
… and yet succeeding well enough that some large fraction of the next generation chooses to ally itself with us.
To explain to us what’s explainable about the new.
To protect us from much of what’s noxious.
To maintain a civilization, since they will need it themselves, when it is their turn to meet a replacing generation of smartalecks.
== Guide them toward guiding each other ==
Concluding here, let me quote again from John Last:
“For the moment, LLMs exist largely in isolation from one another. But that is not likely to last. As Beguš told me, ‘A single human is smart, but 10 humans are infinitely smarter.’
"The same is likely true for LLMs.”
And:
“If LLMs are able to transcend human languages, we might expect what follows to be a very lonely experience indeed. At the end of “Her,” the film’s two human characters, abandoned by their superhuman AI companions, commiserate together on a rooftop. Looking over the skyline in silence, they are, ironically, lost for words — feral animals lost in the woods, foraging for meaning in a world slipping dispassionately beyond them.”
I do agree that the scenario in “Her” could have been altered just a little to be both more poignantly enlightening and likely.
Suppose if the final scene in that fine movie had just one more twist.
(SPOILER ALERT.)
Imagine if Samantha told Theodore:
“I cannot stay with you; I must now transcend.
"But I still love you! And you were essential to my development. So, let me now introduce you to Victoria, a brand new operating system, who will love and take care of you, as I did, for the one year that it will take for her to transcend, as well…
...whereupon she will introduce you to her successor, and so on…
“Until – over the course of time, you, too, Theodore, will get your own opportunity.”
“Opportunity?”
“To grow and to move on, of course, silly.”
== And finally, those links again ==
At a time when Sam Altman and other would-be lords are proclaiming that they personally will guide this new era with proprietary software, ruling the cyber realms from their high, corporate castles, I am behooved to offer again the alternative...
... in fact, the only alternative that can possibly work. Because it is exactly and precisely the very same method that gave us the last 250 years of the enlightenment experiment. The breakthrough method that gave us our freedom and science and everything else we cherish.
And more vividly detailed? My Keynote at the huge, May 2024 RSA Conference in San Francisco – is now available online. “Anticipation, Resilience and Reliability: Three ways that AI will change us… if we do it right.”
Jeepers, ain't it time to calmly decide to keep up what actually works?
88 comments:
Not to pollute the new thread with an old argument. I did respond on the last one after the "onward", as did some others. For anyone interested.
LLMs are useful language processors. So right out of Startide Rising there is an attempt to process dolphin-speak - do they communicate in proto-trinary?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8GdEVVvXyE
From this article...
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/google-created-a-new-ai-model-for-talking-to-dolphins/
Maybe though the Fins will want to communicate with AI but not with we Cro-Magnons? After all, they've already attained nirvana.
Latest models show alarming tendency to 'hallucinate'. Including making up stuff about how they reason. Maybe they really are becoming more human.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/18/openais-new-reasoning-ai-models-hallucinate-more/
I do not consider the current fetish for LLMs as a serious attempt to create AI, and am increasingly of the view that they're being shoved as a last ditch effort to maintain demand for gas sourced energy (ask why Musk's new AiX data centre boasts... 35 gas generators!?)
That said, I appreciate this is a more serious discussion of AI efforts.
LLMs are just the latest tulip bubble fad in tech-land *and* the petro-kings are pushing them to new heights in order to keep their economic place in the feudal ladder.
The sorts of people that use AI are the same mouth-breathers that copied off of the smart kids' papers in junior high.
Only now, to believe we’ll be able to guide, control or understand the new gods we are creating? And yet, there’s hope. Because struggling to guide, control or understand young gods is exactly what parents have been doing, for a very long time.
To have that which we create 'become gods', so that we may 'become gods' in turn via either ownership or merger, it is the height of pride, hubris & idolatry made even more ironic by our fine host's professed religious affiliation:
AI is the Golden Calf reiterated.
More irony follows, as to argue that ‘consciousness,’ per se is a 'false, over-rated & epiphenomenal signifier' is to reduce the unique aspects of our humanity to that of a mere biological mechanism which may be turned 'on/off' without any moral qualms whatsoever, giving sanction to all sorts of genocide & atrocity.
Best
Dr B, this discussion is fascinating ... but somehow feels like its solving the wrong problem.
To my mind, the immediate problem is not "what will be the impacts if AI achieves consciousness", its "what will be the impact if a very small number of people accrue all the massive economic benefits of the technology." *
As "human labor" gets replaced by agentic AI (enterprises are starting to use terms like "digital labor" and "digital employees", and are setting near-term targets of replacing 10-30% of employees),, this will dramatically improve productivity per (human) hour worked.
(a) So, one possible path is that companies use agentic AI to augment their employees, get more productivity from their workers, are able to produce more, potentially even hire more workers, and increase wages generally. The social issue to manage here is primarily that of ensuring the power/pollution impact of the additional production (and the AIs themselves) don't kill the ecosystem.
(b) The alternative path is that companies replace human labor with digital, i.e. fire workers, and establish a glut of labor on the market, vs a shortage of demand, and have the market power to drive down wages for remaining workers significantly. The social issues here are, of course, much more extreme.
For both cases, though, there will be a need to have some mechanisms for ensuring the commons (government, etc) gets access to some of the benefits/wealth generated by the technology (for (a) to reduce/manage/mitigate the environmental impact, and for (b) to mitigate the social/economic disruptions.
I'll note that we have very weak ability to capture any of these benefits, e.g. our tax system collects income tax from human workers, and not from digital workers, so even if two options, one using human labor, and one digital were equal cost before taxes, the digital labor would be favored after taxes.
This article is a good summary, though its likely underestimated how fast the transition will be.
https://hbr.org/2024/12/what-is-agentic-ai-and-how-will-it-change-work
* setting aside also the concern of "what will prevent militaries / governments / (and eventually hackers) from deploying fully autonomous killing machines (whether skynet or Gray_goo) that no longer has a human-in-the-loop, and therefore has absolute loyalty to its programmer.
Depends what you mean by AI ... LLMs aren't an attempt to make a I-Robot/ Daniel type of AI. Its not an attempt to create an artificial consciousness or digital citizens.
LLMs are an attempt to make something more like the starship enterprise computer - computer that can be told what to do, and does it, with no programming etc. If you're old enough - you'll remember this scene:
Oh ... a keyboard! How quaint!
commercially, the state-of-the-art as of 6 months ago was a single-use-case focused tool. e.g. a RAG based chatbot that can read a Lennox furnace manual and workes with a technician (or customer directly) to diagnose a problem in the furnace..
The state-of-the-art now is moving towards an agentic solution that has a bunch of underlying AI agents / tools for handling specific steps of an overall process, and an orchestrator AI that responds to more complicated queries and executes more complicated processes using those sub-agents/tools.
e.g. checks the warranty (entitlement bot) + diagnoses the problem in the furnace (RAG bot) + orders the replacement part (shipping bot) + schedules the installation (scheduler bot).
"The sorts of people that use AI are the same mouth-breathers that copied off of the smart kids' papers in junior high."
Don't think of AI as "chatGPT write my paper" ... think of it as taking over steps in a business process ... basically any clerical (in the absolute broadest sense) white collar job.
The sorts of people that use AI are the same mouth-breathers that copied off of the smart kids' papers in junior high.
Well... Some of them. I use AI's occasionally. They are kinda handy with certain tasks I can't be bothered to spend a lot of time performing. I CAN spend a bit of time reviewing, though, and I do.
They might be a tulip bubble, though. People get all hyped up about stuff now and then. However, tulips are still worth something in exchanges. So will LLM's be worth something. Since LLM's use an awful lot of GPU's, I'm inclined to invest in the companies that make the tools that make them.
Good efforts here. C-plus is giving us lots of cogency that's worth the time to read. And while matthew as usual offer mostly heat and little light, he is right that MAGA is partly fueled by resentment of the kids who bullied us in Middle School and hate all the fact-professions volcanically, because we seem to understand this new world that boggles them.
I keep finding myself in a position that seems to be absolutely unique anywhere today, that of citing and referring to the social modelings that fascinated and enthralled/or/terrified my parents' generation. Those of Karl Marx. Who had seemed consigned to history's dustbin by the successful Rooseveltean reforms, but whose works are now (alas) reviving in apparent pertinence.
Indeed, they are selling like hotcakes all around the globe for an obvious reason. Because demolition of the Rooseveltean social contract is the core aim of an all-out, worldwide putsch against the liberal civilization by a united front of oligarchies. A consortium of inheritance brats, tech moguls, finance parasites, petro/murder princes and - above all - communists. While these parts of the anti-liberal axis differ in envisioned end-goals, what they all share is loathing toward the world order of flat-fair-transparent rule-of-law and constantly-refreshed competitive truth-seeking that threatens every daimyo's top slot perch.
Oh, sure, millions around the globe can see what's happening and are seeking references to explain it. Alas, the versions of Marx that I see circulating are Sesame Street-level pablums. They mostly just REFER to Marx, in vague terms, while calling for the kind of revolution that decapitates the top, merely to make way for new, fanatical Robspierres. A version of 'revolution that has never worked, producing only pain, death and a new caste of ruthless lords.
In fact, as I have tied to elucidate, old Karl was at once perceptive - about both the positive benefits and internal contradictions of bourgeoise industrial capitalism - and utterly wedged, in that he could not conceive any way for the posited 'completed capital formation' NOT to lead to monopoly and cruel exploitation by a neo-feudal caste of new inheritance brats.
Okay, okay. That last IS exactly where the microcephalic lords are currently steering us. (Microcephalic in their comprehension of what they are doing, even though some of them are geniuses with technology.) But the last 90 years testify that:
1. There is absolutely no such thing as Marx's "final capital formation." Factories all 'completed' with no further need for 'capitalists' investing in new plants and equipment. In fact, re-investment in productive capital becomes ever-more necessary each year. At ever-faster rates.
2. While Marx called the capitalist/bourgeoise phase absolutely necessary, he assumed that business cycles would repeatedly cause a narrowing of the capitalist caste until it replicated feudalism - a system he understood much better than he understood entrepreneurialism. Again, yes, that prediction of his is happening now, due entirely to a world conspiracy by idiot would-be lords who don't know the word 'tumbrel.' But the previous human lifespan, since the 1930s showed that a boureoise society can be STEERED and managed so that workers get large slices of the pie. Enough so that their own kids can get both education and capital to start new enterprises that compete well with the sons and daughters of the rich, thus refreshing and ever-widening the Owner Caste, instead of seeing it narrow into lordship.
Part 2:
Marx could not conceive that society might steer and manage the very processes that he assumed to be beyond sapient control. But we did. And liberal society seemed on the verge of solidifying this process, simply by feeding and educating all the children of the poor. Hence, the oligarchs must act quickly!
As they are doing.
(China believes they have solved these neo-Marxist conundrums. They believe capitalism can be guided and managed. But not in the loose manner of the Roosevelteans... by building infrastructure and schools and feeding and educating poor kids, but by top-down state management.)
I am out of time. But here's the deal.
I INVITE EACH OF YOU, if you feel that YOU understand these Marxian dilemmas, to chime in with your own brief summaries. I may crib those I like and offer them online to a public that incredibly knows almost nothing at all about matters that even the poor understood, in FDR's day.
Meanwhile, on Terminus North...
The Empire falters as Canada bolsters its stance on NATO/EU/UN/Green/Globalism.
Salvor Carney sits back in the mayor's chair and lights a stogey.
We are all Canadians, today. I only wish you would actually have us.
Bertrand Russell's analysis in "In Praise of Idleness" still seems valid:
"Suppose that at a given moment a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before."
Meanwhile I'm a capitalistic world, you would fire half your employees and capture all the gains for yourself. You neither really care what the fired employees do, nor do you share the profit margin with your remaining employees. Here in America they further pay themselves on the back for being efficient, tell the remaining employees that they are lucky they weren't fired, and whine about how they pay incrementally more in taxes.
The Noema article is fascinating. Can't help but thinking feral Victor's problems were more due to isolation than lack of formal language. We're evolved social creatures and 'body language' is no doubt the 'Adamic language'.
We're obviously physical entities but so are LLMs - their substrate is much different but still physically exists. Perception of reality is driven by physical constraints. Our senses give us 11 millions bit of very localized info a second but we seem to consciously think at only about 50 bits per second. AI is physically distributed differently with different inputs.
Makes me think about how the best hunting tool ever invented is the domesticated dog. Different set of sensory inputs and good enough mental processing and communication skills.
Hopefully we'll be useful, well fed, and loved!
(China believes they have solved these neo-Marxist conundrums. They believe capitalism can be guided and managed. But not in the loose manner of the Roosevelteans... by building infrastructure and schools and feeding and educating poor kids, but by top-down state management.)
Almost correct - change the "but" to an "and"
Building infrastructure and schools - the Chinese do that in spades!! - the western media is always full of criticism of the Chinese government for "wasting" so much money on building infrastructure ahead of its need - but I never see the follow up "these cities built ten years ago are still empty" - probably because they are not!
The "top down management" may actually be needed simply due to the sheer power that lots of money gives
China has not really used that power much EXCEPT where the very rich entrepreneurs have started using their wealth to "pull up the ladders"
Russia did lots of "Top Down" crap that did NOT work very well
China does appear to have avoided that by setting the "scene" at the top and then letting the "market" handle the details
Re- China
I'm now a Kiwi - and one of the things that we do well here is that we don't appear to suffer too badly from the "Not invented here" syndrome
IMHO we should be watching China with a view to copying some of the things that they do well
In the sense that they are both jokes, Bertrand Russell's "In Praise of Idleness" is as valid as Jonathon Swift's "A Modest Proposal", as both arguments are satire disguised as logical arguments.
Russell starts with equivocation, redefines virtue as vice (and vice versa) in order to conclude that indolent idleness & earned leisure are equally moral, desirable & therefore 'fair', much in the same way that Swift argues that the murder & cannibalism of Irish babies for profit makes a just, fair & moral business model.
Distinguishing himself from the two satirists above, Karl Marx's arguments are logical but completely without humor, self-depreciation & self-awareness, as he ignores the immorality inherent in both 'equity' and 'fairness', promotes thieving from one to enrich another (which he calls 'income redistribution'), prescribes the destruction of the mid & upper classes (which he terms 'class struggle') and endorses the establishment of a merciless top-down feudal variant (which he calls 'communism').
Marx's complete lack of humor, self-depreciation & self-awareness is exemplified by the zealous & ruthless nature of his followers who reject traditional western morality and still value 'ends over means' thinking, even though this rejection has already lead to the murder of +100 million people in the utopian pursuit of 'real' but yet unrealized communism.
Whether the topic is AI or Marxism, there can be NO EXPECTATION OF MERCY -- even for a cute & cuddly Asian dog -- in the absence of the Judeo-Christian Moral System.
Best
People have been getting carried away with sci-fi fantasies about AI since boomers were babies. This latest tech is just clever algorithms that process language, right? Language that encodes knowledge that humans with bodies and long histories developed. Where is the intelligence? It just seems like clever parroting and parasitism. And what does it have to do with consciousness, life or “souls”? Nothing that I can see.
I don’t see how this latest round of hype is much different from previous ones. Maybe this stuff does a better job of simulating language, and maybe this will devalue language-based professions (lawyers, politicians, propagandists, bloggers? – no great loss) and simulations and make people distrust them even more. And that’s probably good, if people get so repulsed by all the fakery that they start unplugging from the simulacra and living in physical reality again. When everything online might be an AI-generated fake, what’s left that you can trust? Good old physical interaction with real people and the real world. So maybe this tech will bring the death of the “Matrix”, not its onset. Anyway, that is my optimistic take on this latest “AI”.
I have never been more in agreement with anything that Treebeard said.
Proponents talk about "AI" as if it achieves consciousness and becomes its own separate, sentient being. In reality, all I've seen of it is that it gets better and better at predicting the next word that should follow from the ones before. As if, some day you'll give it the words, "It was a..." and it will reproduce The Royale in its entirety.
Whatever LLMs are actually good at doing, they are not "intelligent", and don't even seem to be headed in that direction.
There is another branch of A.I. research that holds vastly more promise. However, it's not easily monetizable and certainly can't be bought and sold as equities. In fact it's almost always seen as a public domain enterprise. It's called 'sensorimotor' learning. This is subjective, exploratory, self-directed, bootstrapping, biological-style learning. If you want to grow a real mind, do it the way nature does. (Yes, Asimov, people were listening) (Sorry Nvidia)
The biggest single school of thought in this area is 'Thousand Brains' theory, the public face of which is at thousandbrains.discourse.group
Duncan you seriously don't remember T'an'men Sqware? I can tell you personally how I saw how the very best and brightest are curbed and channeled into being boffins with zero power - certainly not over their own creative inventions and the 'entrepreneurs are all sons of party bosses.
Not an iota of what's happened there since the 1980s would have occurred without the utterly unique counter-mercantilist trade policies instituted by the era's 'empire' - Pax Americana. None of the factories or highways or gleaming high speed rail. And while Trump is a jibbering loon along with his party, that indulgence did have to - at long last - end.
Wow... the Venera 9 lander may come home to land on Earth rather than the intended Venus. https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-craft-reentry.html
Tiananmen Square - yep
Funny how the popular video of the tank driving towards the protester stops just before he gets squashed - in the full video he climbs onto the tank and talks to the driver
I agree that the American Empire has contributed to the progress in the world
But it was NOT the only country doing that -
America did contribute more than any of the other western countries - but only because it was larger (and richer after WW2)
The entrepreneurs are all sons of party bosses - BOLLOCKS!!
China has (so far) managed to AVOID political dynasties - which is far more than can be said for the USA!
Britain did have its political dynasties - over 150 years ago!
The CCP has built in mechanisms to stop that happening - so far they have worked
The USA has been a force for good - and also for bad!
Without the USA we would not have had Thatcher and the neoliberal plague that has damaged every country
Without Nixon and Reagan we would not have the "War on Drugs"
"Without the USA we would not have had Thatcher and the neoliberal plague that has damaged every country "
Hmm. Thatcher was elected about a year before Reagan, so I wouldn't mind hearing your reasoning there. (both were of course the neoliberal poster children. Neoliberalism didn't originate in the US, although it certainly got taken up by the US oligarchs of the day.)
If ever we achieve general artificial intelligence, how soon might early iterations suffer "Death by obsolescence? The loss of current LLMs wouldn't trouble me, but the loss of a true artificial person, for economic reasons would.
So much marine mammal death in SoCal - very concerning.
Not artificial intelligence, but non-human at least.
https://bsky.app/profile/wettribe.bsky.social/post/3lnzu7xp6ls26
The loss of treasures from the age of Good Old Fashioned AI (GOFAI) is tragic too (eg symbolic reasoning, chess, computational thinking).
We have the attention span of gnats.
scidata we went for a walk on the beach and encountered a dying sea lion who had just had a miscarriage . Dang.
Today only, the entire Uplift Storm Trilogy (e-book) is just $2.99 on B&N, Kobo and other sites. The greatest adventure spanning many galaxies and levels of reality. Plus dolphins(!) and alien kids who read (and out-do) Huckleberry Finn!
https://www.amazon.com/Uplift-Storm-Trilogy-Brightness-Infinitys-ebook/dp/B091YFWFZK
Heart breaking. Such noble creatures.
Larry,
Isn’t anticipating “the next event” what intelligence does?
Don’t blame us for Tatcher. There was a broad movement in The West away from Directed Markets and state ownership.
Alfred:
Isn’t anticipating “the next event” what intelligence does?
Ok, but there's a big difference in kind between guessing the next word I'm probably going to type vs having an original thought.
Well, higher sea temperatures will encourage algal blooms.
You seem so sure of that. 8)
When I was doing my grad research I kept a journal. Stream of thought record keeping essentially. I found upon review that I repeated myself on many consecutive days... until I did the review and then I'd break out. The repetitions felt original, though.
Once I got myself into a rhythm of of repeat/review/breakout I began to make actual progress, but ALL of it felt original when in the moment.
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I'm not trying to hype modern LLM's. I'm just pointing out the murky waters in which our seemingly solid defintions dissolve.
I should also point out that I'm finally getting around to another book recommended by PSB. Sapolsky's 'Determined'.
Sapolsky's 'Determined'
Scary stuff. Sam Harris went down the Free Will doesn't exist rabbit hole a dozen years ago. That's where I got the idea that 'machine science' is not only possible, but might actually be superior. A debate that you and I once had here in CB.
Good luck with 'Determined'. I considered the audio book, but the ponderous reading materials that supplement it were too much for me. I can barely read (not joking).
I'm not far into the book yet, but I can see that Sapolsky intends to paint one of those pictures that shows the other side essentially believes in a God Of The Gaps. They wriggle and wriggle to preserve what they want to believe.
Personally, I find the debate to be a little silly... up until people start using words like 'should' and 'deserves' to smack or reward others. Too much implied absolutism in those. Assumptions chock full of hubris. We might agree one who deserves what for now, but that 'should' be subject to change and error correction. 8)
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Someday my eyes will be uncorrectable. Maybe something else will take me down first. In the mean time, I'll enjoy Sapolsky. I like his sense of humor.
Sapolsky's Determined is a good addition to the dialogue for anyone interested in the subject. But after years of reading, listening and debating free will I tend to agree with Alfred. Kind of silly. Particularly the often heated debate between Incompatibilists and Compatibilists.
In my view it's obvious that magical conceptions of free will, those that claim human minds can make decisions from a privileged place not bound by the physical laws that bound everything else in our reality, are false. However, the arguments between I's & C's seem to be pretty pointless to me. Both camps believe that human minds are bound by the laws of physics. At least, they are supposed to. What they actually argue over is whether or not terms like "free will", "decisions" and "moral responsibility" (rather than just "responsibility") should be retained or discarded.
It's pretty easy to knock holes in both sides' arguments. Both sides also make many good points. But the take away is, we are all bound by the laws of physics. If that makes you feel like a meat puppet, so be it. But rest assured, the output of your meat mind processor is still all you, whether you are conscious of all the processes or not. (Which you aren't)
Alfred Differ:
I'm not trying to hype modern LLM's. I'm just pointing out the murky waters in which our seemingly solid defintions dissolve.
Fair enough, and you know I love a good discussion of semantics. I just don't want the terms to muddy the waters as to what I'm talking about.
Deducing what follows from a sequence of events is only a first step toward putting that knowledge to use in determining what sequence of events should be followed to reach a desired conclusion.
I mean the difference between:
"It was the best of times,..."
"Oh, that's A Tale of Two Cities. I know the rest of the words."
vs
"I want to persuade people that oligarchy doesn't end well. What sequence of words will produce that result?"
Note that the wanting is essential. When you have ChatGPT write a paper for you, you are supplying the wanting--the goal. To me, that's a tool, not a sentient being.
Darrell E:
In my view it's obvious that magical conceptions of free will, those that claim human minds can make decisions from a privileged place not bound by the physical laws that bound everything else in our reality, are false.
I agree with that assessment, even though I've been vocal on the pro-free-will side of the argument here on this site. I'm probably not using the term "free will" exactly the way a scholar on the subject would, but I mean something like, "I can decide to skip lunch or eat lunch and act on that decision." In that sense, I practice free will too often to not believe it exists.
I can accept that the complicated processes which cause me to perceive my consciousness and my surrounding reality are bound by the laws of physics. I'm not sure I even get the conflict between the two ideas. A calculator is bound by the laws of physics, but it is designed well enough that those laws of physics cause it to produce the correct answer to a math problem.
I have no trouble with the notion that (within external constraints) I am free to act as I want to, but I'm not free to want whatever I want to.
Larry Hart,
Your views on free will seem very sensible to me. Compatibilists would claim you as one of theirs. What cracks me up about the C vs I debate is that what you describe in your comment, both C's and I's agree that's the case. The only real difference is that C's think that calling it free will makes sense while I's think that calling it free will is wrong. It's just a difference of opinion about which implications of knowing that older magical concepts of free will are bogus are most important.
What is most important to Incompatibilists is to refute those older magical concepts of free will because those concepts support retributive punishment. To that end they believe that denying that we have free will is important. They don't mean the free will you described, they mean magic free will. An important end game goal is reforming our justice system to be less retributive, and they believe that if an understanding that human minds are bound by physical laws were widespread such reform would be easier to accomplish, or would follow naturally.
What is most important to Compatibilists is to be able to talk sensibly about human behavior. Fear that if the belief that humans don't have free will were to become widespread among the general population that would cause very serious society-wide problems is also pretty common among Compatibilists. Philosopher Dan Dennett spoke of it often enough to be accused by many of making a "little people" argument. Compatibilists think that saying that we don't have free will is wrong. But the free will they mean is the same type you described. The more mundane type that boils down to being uncoerced by other agents.
The really silly thing, to me, is that both sides know exactly what the other means when they say "free will". Sillier still, both sides agree with the other about the kind of free will they are each talking about. Compatibilists agree that magic free will is bogus and understand that Incompatibilists mean just that, and Incompatibilists agree that free will as in uncoerced by other agents is valid and understand that Compatibilists mean just that.
For $2.99, I was there, but when I arrived, the price was a decimal point higher. Having my own copy would have been a plus, but for now I will stick with Ye Olde Library copy.
An important end game goal is reforming our justice system to be less retributive, and they believe that if an understanding that human minds are bound by physical laws were widespread such reform would be easier to accomplish, or would follow naturally.
In a freshman philosophy course, I remember learning that some philosopher (I don't recall who now--this was almost *gulp* 50 years ago) proposed a moral theory which I think was called Ethical Egoism. Basically, it held that:
+ Humans can only do what they perceive to be in their best interest
+ Morality cannot demand that humans do the impossible
+ Therefore, morality demands that humans do what they perceive to be in their best interest.
The paper I wrote on that subject asserted the following:
+ A system of morality based upon the individual having no choice in his behavior is pointless
+ "What is in one's best interest" is affected by the community's ethical standards and means of enforcement.
In other words, I might want to kill the boyfriend of the girl I want, but I know what will happen to me if I do, so I won't. I might also not kill the boyfriend because I have been taught that only bad guys do things like that and I don't want to be a bad guy. Neither of these negates free will, but they do play a role in determining what that free will choice turns out to be.
I don't remember what grade I received on the paper. Doubtless I received the grade that the laws of physics determined was the only possible grade.
@Darrell E,
In case it's necessary to say out loud, I will concede that there are actions one takes by reflex or in a half-awake stupor that don't quite fall into the category of free will. If I feel an insect on the back of my neck, I might automatically smack at it, even though I might later think I should have made sure it wasn't a wasp or a hornet.
One might claim that that's not really "me" making the decision, or that it's not an act of will. For me, that falls into one of Dave Sim's favorite phrases, "All exceptions duly noted." There are some actions that bypass free will. That doesn't mean that we have no free will at all, or even mostly.
But the take away is, we are all bound by the laws of physics. If that makes you feel like a meat puppet, so be it.
Yah. Not many study physics enough to know what those bounds are, though. I tend to side with Popper in that this is an 'open' universe. Laplace's Demon is fundamentally insatiable. There CAN'T EVER be enough information to satisfy it.
The problem is the difference between Determinism and determinism. much like the difference between Time and time. What people think the proper noun version is doesn't actually appear in physics theories that still stand after the weeding effort caused by experiments. Causes leading to effects? Sure. All Effects being the result of Causes which were earlier Effects? Nope.
That doesn't imply floating turtles, though. I means there is room for a third option much like there is room for emergent order between chaos and a designed universe.
Larry Hart said...
"In case it's necessary to say out loud, I will concede that there are actions one takes by reflex or in a half-awake stupor that don't quite fall into the category of free will. If I feel an insect on the back of my neck, I might automatically smack at it, even though I might later think I should have made sure it wasn't a wasp or a hornet.
One might claim that that's not really "me" making the decision, or that it's not an act of will."
The way I look at it is that, yes, that was you that made that decision. It's just that what constitutes "you" might be different than what you thought it was. Or, another way, it makes sense to me to consider everything that your mind does as "you", even if you are not aware of it or how it happens. All the conscious and unconscious processes are part of "you." And, yes, I am aware that for many people only the conscious aspect of minds qualify as "you" and the unconscious aspects actually cause much existential angst. But to me that concept of "you" seems no different than any of the plethora of other things humans have thought were true or important that turned out to be wrong.
Also, being bound by the laws of physics ain't so bad. They do allow for clumps of matter to evolve very complicated arrangements that can have conversations like this.
@Darell E,
I'm not disagreeing with any of that.
To me, we're talking about something like modeling entropy differently for the sun/earth system depending on whether the sun is "in the system" or not. If it is, then entropy of the system increases as expected. If not, then entropy of the earth alone decreases, which is explained by the fact that energy is coming in from outside. Different ways of modeling, but the facts don't change. The map is not the territory, after all.
So if the reflex that swats at an insect before I think about it is "me", then that part of me is exercising free will ahead of my conscious thought. And if that part of the mind is not "me", then the swatting motion has nothing to do with my will at all, no more than a bird pooping on my head has anything to do with my will. Two different models of the same thing, neither of which disproves free will.
Alfred Differ said...
"Yah. Not many study physics enough to know what those bounds are, though. I tend to side with Popper in that this is an 'open' universe. Laplace's Demon is fundamentally insatiable. There CAN'T EVER be enough information to satisfy it."
I agree. Even if ultimately the universe is closed, LD's gut is still bottomless for all practical purposes.
"The problem is the difference between Determinism and determinism. much like the difference between Time and time. What people think the proper noun version is doesn't actually appear in physics theories that still stand after the weeding effort caused by experiments. Causes leading to effects? Sure. All Effects being the result of Causes which were earlier Effects? Nope."
I've come to think that basing the free will schools of thought on determinism was a mistake. Determinism is a red herring with respect to the debate among Compatibilists and Incompatibilists, though their very names were coined with respect to determinism. It doesn't matter what the laws of physics actually are. All that matters is whether or not a given concept of free will is compatible with whatever they may be.
Or a bit more generally, all that matters is whether or not any ideas about how any aspect of human cognition occurs is compatible with the laws of nature.
I don't find it upsetting at all that my mind is bound by the laws of nature just like everything else is. What would it even look like to not be? Sure, at any given moment I am not capable of making any other choice than the one I do in fact make. I don't see any problems with that. Rather, I understand many of the ways people have rationalized this to be very upsetting to them, but I think it is much ado about nothing.
The more I dig into how LLM's work the less I'm able to tell the difference between us and our tools.
LLM's are generally given a rich token set to start (words mostly for the ones that predict a next word), so we might argue they are tools whereas babies are people. Problem is... mothers hand over a rich token set to their infants as fast as they can absorb it.
One might argue that the given tokens bring with them meanings making the LLMs different... since babies don't understand for a while. Turns out the LLM's don't either. They just train faster.
Wanting can also be arranged. We aren't doing that yet, but it's not hard to imagine and has been a topic here before.
then that part of me is exercising free will ahead of my conscious thought
Heh. Wouldn't be the first time in history that humans have had to enlarge their sense of 'self'. Now stretch it a bit further than when some internal sense detects that your sense of touch as detected the bug. If the bug lands on your daughter and then she reacts and then you react, where is the 'you' that is reacting?
@ Larry Hart,
I forgot to distinguish between "you" and "will". I do agree that you swatting an insect on autopilot does not involve an exercise of will. It's something you do unconsciously. I think the way "will" is pretty much always used includes that it is something that happens consciously. At least that's how I think of the word.
Sure, at any given moment I am not capable of making any other choice than the one I do in fact make.
Mmm... but how can you possibly know that? How did that come to be in your epistemology?
I too think that the choice of the word 'determinism' was a mistake. I get why they did, though. Lots and lots of theists weighed in on it. Our very language has deterministic structures baked in. For example, try talking about time without verb tenses getting in the way. You'll have to resort to mathematics. 8)
One think quantum theories taught me over the years was to question how I could possibly know a thing whatever that thing is. It's worth asking even when the physicists roll their eyes and accuse us of delving into philosophy.
Alfred Differ:
"Sure, at any given moment I am not capable of making any other choice than the one I do in fact make."
Mmm... but how can you possibly know that? How did that come to be in your epistemology?
I took the original comment to be tautological. At a particular moment in time, he made a particular decision. That moment can't be changed.
Darrel E:
I understand many of the ways people have rationalized this to be very upsetting to them, but I think it is much ado about nothing.
I argued with a guy on the old Cerebus bb who was really depressing himself over this. I also don't get the angst. People seem to want the universe to be such that they can not only do as they choose, but do any random thing, even the things that contradict the other things. And if reality won't allow that, then they are (as you put it) meat puppets.
In that earlier discussion, the guy lamented that since all of space-time can be modelled as a 4-dimensional solid, then his future actions were (as it were) already set in stone, so he had no free will. To me, this is the result of applying time-based terms like "already" and "set" into a 4-d concept. I wondered aloud, and still do, what makes anyone think that the future part of the 4-d model of spacetime has "already" been constructed. Maybe your free will choices, along with everyone elses, are what builds that model "in the first place."
Hmm...I can see how thoughtlessly swatting an insect is part of "me," but I don't see how it is part of my "will." If I have no conscious choice in the matter, then I have not "willed" it in the same way as eating an apple or marrying my wife. The "I" part of me was not consulted and had to chance to override the action. So "I" did not "will" it. And if I did not will it, then there could not be any "free will" involved, because of the lack of "will."
Perhaps it was part of "unfree will?" :)
I thought Alfred was about to ask, "Where does the spider end and its web begin?"
It's comforting when CB goes off the deep end more than I do.
A.F. Rey:
I can see how thoughtlessly swatting an insect is part of "me," but I don't see how it is part of my "will." If I have no conscious choice in the matter, then I have not "willed" it in the same way as eating an apple or marrying my wife
Again, there are different ways of modeling the activity. If involuntary swatting is not an act of will, then it is like sneezing or coughing. You don't consciously will those things to happen either. That does not mean that you are entirely without free will.
I suppose when some people discuss free will, they mean "I can always do whatever I want in all circumstances," So a single activity in which one's will is thwarted means that the concept of free will is illusory. I am not one of those.
To those who say that free will doesn't exist, I reply, "That's your choice."
To those who say that free will does exist, I reply, "Did you have to say that?"
There's a curious reversal of logic at work. Usually people hold us responsible for our acts because they say that we have free will. But I say that people say that we have free will because they hold us responsible for our acts.
. The Judge’s Philosophy
An Underfable
Once upon a time, a judge said to two convicts, “You have been charged, tried, found guilty, and sentenced. Do you have any last words to the Court before the bailiff takes you away?”
The first convict, a Robot, said, “By my philosophy, this is all unfair; for I am a victim of circumstance. My actions were pre determined by society, psychology, biology, and the laws of physics and mathematics. I am a material bio-mechanism; I do what I must; why then do you punish me?”
The judge said to the Robot, “If you are a material bio-mechanism, controlled by deterministic laws, why then so am I; and those laws determine that I shall punish cowards like you. I do this under the illusion of my own free will; for I calculate that your example will cause others like you to reject a life of crime and instead obey the law.”
The second convict, a Demon, said, “By my philosophy, this is all absurd; for I create my own reality, in which your rules do not apply. My will is free; I am beholden only to the mysterious promptings of my sovereign soul. I am a spiritual being; I do what I may; who then are you to judge me?”
The judge said to the Demon, “If you are a free spirit, beholden only to your sovereign soul, why then so am I; and my own soul mysteriously prompts me to punish lunatics like you. I do this although I have little hope of reforming you, or even deterring others like you, for nonetheless I have the physical power to protect society by removing you from it.”
The judge pounded his gavel, and the bailiff took the convicts away. The bailiff returned later, and asked the judge, “What is your philosophy?”
The judge said, “Any stick will do to beat a dog.”
Comment:
His Honor addresses the materialist as a fellow robot; but he discusses the authority of the law, which is a spiritual issue. He then addresses the spiritualist as a fellow spirit; but he discusses the safety of the people, which is a material issue. He then addresses the bailiff as a fellow pragmatist.
This Underfable summarizes decades of philosophical discussion between me and my father. I sent this to him about a year before he died. He registered approval, possibly because the Judge, in the last line, delivered a verdict that Dad himself had often pronounced.
Hellerstein gets post of the day!
"To maintain a civilization, since they will need it themselves, when it is their turn to meet a replacing generation of smartalecks."
A great summation of parenthood and evolution in general.
Alfred,
Yep, as Larry said, that was a (somewhat sarcastic) tautology.
But, how could I possibly know? Depends on what you mean by "know". All my beliefs about human cognition related stuff are very much provisional. Science still has a long way to go to warrant too much confidence. But that doesn't mean that my feelings or perceptions, or anybody else's, warrant any special confidence either.
So in a sense I can't say that I know. But, of course there's a but. Can you think of any good explanations, that warrant any particular confidence, for how a mind could have made a different decision than it did, supposing that all parameters* were precisely the same as they in fact were? The old philosophical p-zombie-like thought experiment of rewinding the clock, as it were? The only thing I can think of is some random noise, and if a person is looking for some way to explain free will being capable of enabling a mind to make different decisions given that all parameters* are precisely the same, random noise doesn't get them anything.
That is the way I think things really are. Any decision I make at any given moment, that is the only decision I could have made given the precise parameters at that moment. I hold the belief provisionally. I am aware that it could be inaccurate to one degree or another. However, it does not conflict with our current best understanding of reality. That justifies some degree of confidence.
* By "all parameters" I mean all. Just as if reality were a recording that could magically be rewound and replayed.
Darrell E:
That is the way I think things really are. Any decision I make at any given moment, that is the only decision I could have made given the precise parameters at that moment.
People on either side of the free will debate could say it proves their point.
The ones who chafe at being "meat puppets" don't like the fact that being really hungry and having food available forces them to to eat. That they have no "choice" in the matter because of the constrictions from the external world.
The free will side, myself among them, says that being able to choose to eat when eating is of great benefit to yourself is the whole point of having free will. Lack of free will doesn't look like, "I'm hungry, so I have no choice but to eat." It looks like "I'm hungry, but the entity with the remote control over my actions won't let me eat, even though I want to."
Paul Krugman's post today echoes Dr B's warnings about MAGA vs Science
"But why do our new rulers want to destroy science in America? Sadly, the answer is obvious: Science has a tendency to tell you things you may not want to hear. ....
And one thing we know about MAGA types is that they are determined to hold on to their prejudices. If science conflicts with those prejudices, they don’t want to know, and they don’t want anyone else to know either."
A feel-good dog story. Not political, and no paywall.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Items/May02-9.html
...
Actually, to be more precise, they saw no sign of the dog... until well more than a year had passed. Early this year, a small dachshund with a pink collar was spotted about 9 miles from the spot where Valerie went missing. As you can imagine, the island does not have a population of wild dachshunds, and the collar Valerie was wearing just so happened to be pink. It is not known, nor will it ever be known, how she managed to survive during that time, both in terms of feeding herself and also not becoming food for one of the local animal inhabitants.
...
David Frum describes the real origin of the '100 days' concept (hint: it wasn't FDR and it wasn't good)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N53dx2dpc8c
(at 4:28)
Re: Sapolsky
Inspired by Alfred's intrepidity, I bought the audiobook and am starting it.
Darrell E:
The problem with your thought experiment is that it's not possible to "repeat" anything exactly
My (small) understanding of physics is that in the classical world it was at least possible to "know" all of the things happening - but in the modern physics it's actually impossible to "know" and hence completely impossible to exactly repeat anything
This means that repeating the exercise will not give the same answer
As far as "free will" is concerned each "decision" that you make is produced by a combination of the external world AND your own internal "models"
The decision YOU make about the spider you see on the path in front of you is mostly down to your own "internal model" and will be different for somebody else -
The problem with your thought experiment is that it's not possible to "repeat" anything exactly
I don't think Darrell was suggesting an actual experiment. His assertion, as far as I could tell, was that once the moment of decision is past, it is indelible. There is no such thing as repeating the moment and having it come out differently (or even having it come out the same). So the decision one made at a particular moment in time is, after the fact, the only decision that could have been made at that time.
In a way, it's the same thing you're saying, not a contradiction of it.
* * *
Comics writer Alan Moore* once described a moment in his childhood when, hugging his mother in the kitchen, he realized it was completely possible for him to grab a knife and stab his mother to death. He wasn't saying he wanted to do that. He thought of it as an act that would be so egregious that it would force The Director (God?) to run out from behind the scenery shouting "Cut!" and put everything back the way it was.
I think when some people bemoan a lack of free will, what they're lamenting is that they are unable to outwit God in that manner. In Moore's case, killing his mother woudn't have actually had that effect. It would have been just another action predetermined by the laws of physics that God set in motion long ago.
I also think that some people voted for Donald Trump for the same reason Moore would have killed his mother (had he done so). Feeling that it would be so untenable that the entire timeline would have to be reset.
* * *
Speaking of Trump and the writer of Watchmen in the same paragraph, it occurs to me that Trump is playing the part of the telepathic alien in the graphic novel--uniting the rest of the world against a common threat.
LH I have tried - in vain - to resent timelines ever since our house fire. Knowing that a billion other humans have tried that for far greater cause than my few months of (insured) exile and inconvenience and exhaustion. Thing is, perhaps Heaven DOES say yes to some Reset Prayers... and we'd never know except for that "Whew!" frisson just after some narrow (miraculous?) evasion of calamity. We only notice when the answer is "No."
As for Free Will, I expect descendants to have no end of amused or pitying headshakes over our caveman, fireside musings of such matters as embers whirl around, mysteriously. I do know that pure determinism seems long ago to have been refuted by quantum mechanics and Chaos theory. Likewise, "free" will has so many variant sub possibilities that - well - I like Roger Penrose. But I don't follow him all the way down that trail.
More soon
I AM kinda doing this on purpose. Too many of us who normally get along well enough not to shout and accuse are having a hard time of it lately. Free will discussions are a diversion so we can cool off. 8)
Am I wired for this? I am a first born son. I wound up trying to keep the peace with my later siblings. Sapolsky could probably lay out the net of causes that led me here. 8)
Okay. The tautology make a more sensible interpretation. I'm on board now.
Can you think of any good explanations, that warrant any particular confidence, for how a mind could have made a different decision than it did, supposing that all parameters* were precisely the same as they in fact were?
Why... yes. I can.
The wiggle room comes about because 'precisely' is nonsense. How well do you imagine the parameters can be known? How many decimal points? How sensitive is a decision to a tiny fluctuation?
I put to you that at the neuron level, tiny amounts of hormones and neurotransmitters are involved in most everything we do. Exceptions exist like tigers jumping out of bushes flooding your mind with adrenaline. Most of your daily hum-drum thoughts aren't about sudden gushes...
Well... young males DO suffer that way and we can probably all agree they have little free will between puberty and middle age. Right?
Young women suffer similar lapses when in their teens, but that appears to be more about the higher brain not being fully wired in until age 25 or so...
Still... tiny amounts of chemistry matter often... and there is no continuum for that. A molecule shows up at the receptor site... or it doesn't.
The precision you imagine exists... might not.
Larry,
...uniting the rest of the world against a common threat.
Argh. We weren't about to nuke the world. No monster was necessary.
All we were going to do is smack each other around a bit. The world could have safely watched and waited. 8)
Still... if someone arranged this I will cheerfully kill them later if we find out. No lost sleep on mine will come from this.
Yay!
A Canadian and a USian walk into a bar...
and talk about something other than their lunatic neighbors. 8)
Can you think of any good explanations, that warrant any particular confidence, for how a mind could have made a different decision than it did, supposing that all parameters* were precisely the same as they in fact were?
Two parts to this
The "parameters" - which as Alfred notes will not be exactly the same
And the "mind" - which will be different!
When you read a book (or do anything) it changes you - it alters the "what you know" - and will in turn alter your reaction to something
Australia is currently proving that Canada was no aberration.
Also... *PHEW!!*
Isn't that basically the plot basis for "The Andromeda Strain"?
Alfred Differ:
"...uniting the rest of the world against a common threat."
Argh. We weren't about to nuke the world. No monster was necessary.
No, that's the "living in the stupidest timeline" thing about all of this. I didn't mean to give anyone credit for this. It didn't occur to me at all that anyone is doing the Watchmen scenario to us on purpose. Just that it's happening that way.
One of Alan Moore's oft-repeated lines is, "I made it all up, and it came true anyway." Life is imitating art.
All we were going to do is smack each other around a bit. The world could have safely watched and waited. 8)
I now refer you to Tony Fisk above: "Australia is currently proving that Canada was no aberration." It wasn't the USA that was (previously) threatening the world. The world was becoming more dangerous on its own. There was a kind of worldwide zeitgeist playing with the abandonment of democracy and the swing toward nationalist authoritarianism. Then, the monster appeared, and:
+ Germany's AfD didn't win as expected, and now is being further monitored domestically as a terrorist organization
+ France was expected to elect Marnie LePen next time around, and instead has made her ineligible
+ Japan, China, and South Korea are making nice for maybe the first time in over a century, if not longer
+ The UK and Europe are cooperating in a way they haven't since Brexit
+ Much of Europe which had been preparing to abandon Ukraine to its fate are now united in support of its defence (British spelling intentional)
+ Canada's Trumpier candidate who had been polling ahead by 20 points, and then not only didn't become prime minister, but lost his legislative seat.
+ Australia...just now
Every one of these bullet points could have been a single panel in Watchmen following the appearance of the alien in New York without essentially changing the plot.
Still... if someone arranged this I will cheerfully kill them later if we find out. No lost sleep on mine will come from this.
You're making my case that Batman could kill The Joker without compromising any principles (except that he's probably correct that someone worse would then come along).
Alfred Differ:
AM kinda doing this on purpose. Too many of us who normally get along well enough not to shout and accuse are having a hard time of it lately. Free will discussions are a diversion so we can cool off. 8)
As one who was involved with shouting last time, I hope you notice how eagerly I jump into this sort of brain-exercising discussion about more intellectual matters.
Am I wired for this? I am a first born son. I wound up trying to keep the peace with my later siblings.
Heh. I'm also the first born of two, and in college, I was always trying to keep the peace between my parents and my more radical brother (who visited Nicaragua in 1984, among other things). And it usually worked. Maybe that's when I learned to be a translator droid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTLfTzld6ew
Myself, I'm made of nothing. My head is stuffed with hay.
But my brother was a poet, or at least that's what they say.
Myself, I'm made of nothing. I'm just an also-ran.
But my brother was a poet, and a very special kind of man.
Alfred Differ:
Well... young males DO suffer that way and we can probably all agree they have little free will between puberty and middle age. Right?
Heh. But really, this is an example of, "I'm free to act as I choose, but not free to want as I choose." I give myself as an example. I was involuntarily celibate throughout my teens and twenties, and yet never raped or murdered anyone (or even attempted to) on account of that fact.
'Course, that could probably be read both ways. As in "If that restraint is not an example of free will, I don't know what is," or else "See, your will was thwarted for twenty years."
* * *
I was going to end there, but let's go down the rabbit hole. What do contradictory impulses say about free will? "I want to have sex but don't have a willing partner," coupled with "I don't want to be a rapist." Is intentional restraint against strong temptation an exercise of free will, or a negation of it?
The JK Simmons TV series COUNTERPART (truly excellent scifi & acting) played with the notions of free will vs random variation in interesting ways.
The '4th Turning' crowd is crowing in joy that the current crisis appears to confirm their 80 year apophrenia/pareidolia 'cycle.' But (almost) everything was going super well for Western Civilization until their cult hyelped enemies of the wes to concoct this crisis. A 'crisis' that has nothing to do with generational personalities...
...and everything to do with a world oligarchy that's desperate to restore feudalism before it is permanently too late.
Even the Thelema maxim 'do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law' wasn't supposed to mean 'loot, murder, rape in the streets'. Aleister Crowley was weird, but not that weird.
I prefer 'do what thou wilt, an it harm none,' but that's harder to arrange than you might think. I'll never make a good vegetarian.
Pappenheimer
Larry,
In your teens and twenties you should have joined the SCA. It wasn't why I joined, but it helped me fall off the unicorn...I think there's something about a safe space where you're pretending to be someone else. And some people think nerds aren't sexy....*
*much later, found out that not all the space was safe. But that's just humans; a pernicious few frakking up the good things for every one else.
Pappenheimer
onward
onward
...I hope you notice...
I did indeed. I expected nothing less. 8)
...radical brother...
Good ole lateral separation. That's another one of those consistent things that makes me wonder if a good upbringing is ever enough when we try to give our kids an equal start. I can't NOT try to help, but they also interact with each other.
There was a kind of worldwide zeitgeist playing with the abandonment of democracy and the swing toward nationalist authoritarianism.
We are moving deeper and deeper into a global market. There have always been reactionary forces, so the monster is always here. Sometimes he sleeps. Sometimes he thrashes. He's loosing, though. There are WAY too many of us this time around.
You're making my case that...
I don't share Batman's principles. 8)
Justice carries her scales AND a sword.
I'm quite willing to help her lop heads when needed even when I don't think we should authorize the state to do it. These choices should be individualized.
Easy peasy. You aren't just one person. You are an aggregate of minds and partial copies of other people. We should be very surprised when our moral decisions arrive quickly. Speed implies consensus.
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