On the one hand I hate Elon Musk. On the other hand I also hate advertisement.

So… win / win?

I think a lot of what people experience as free will is just rationalization after the fact based on past experiences and internal belief/value systems.

Yeah I’d agree with that except that it’s not a rationalization, it’s more like acceptance of reality and the only sensible way to think.

You could add that a mind with free will is a massively complex information processing system that can’t be predicted from the outside. It might be deterministic and repeatable, but even if you had access to a copy of the mind, you couldn’t input the exact same real world inputs to predict an outcome. At least not outside of a laboratory and artificially created world. So it’s not about “couldn’t ever make a different choice” but that the choice cannot be predicted from either outside or inside.

Maybe something like the second law of thermodynamics: “Free will of a mind is the tendency to be unpredictable without full knowledge of all external and internal information”.

So you theoretically could take free will away for a known simulated mind in a controlled known simulated environment. Otherwise even a simulated human mind running deterministically on a PC would have free will.

Looking at neurological pathologies or cultural differences is interesting, e.g. leasure time, or more time to grow up as a teenager and access to education has a huge impact. As does the increasing disinformation on news and social media. The concept of free will is useful to improve our society to allow people to make more conscious decisions. Or to understand how people are more and more programmed to say and think certain things because the “technology of propaganda” is advancing. Simply having access to truthful information and having time to think increases our potential for consciousness and free will. In our nihilistic and postmodernist times this is important.

Of course, most of our decisions are made subconsciously without thinking. But a simulated human mind on a PC could go back and examine why it has made a decision. Maybe temporarily rewind and see what decision it would have made in a slightly different mood or with more information. It could then learn and train itself to be more conscious or even edit itself. So being actually deterministic would not decrease consciousness or free will, it could increase it from the perspective of a mind.

So whatever you think about the mental phenomenon, it is a useful and valuable concept from the perspective of the mind(s). Obviously the universe doesn’t care but that is it’s problem 🌌😜

Yeah I’m just arguing for fun :) But I do think questions like this might become relevant in the foreseeable future with AGI. Kurzgesagt has an interesting video on free will in case I haven’t linked that already.

that’s how compatibilists have re-defined free will, it’s not what people generally think of when they think of free will

I’d still argue this is a kind of category error made by philosophers. The concept of free will existed within human minds before philosophers mused about it. It’s a very useful concept for minds regardless of the true nature of our physical universe.

Concepts can exist without being “real” as in a phenomenon in the physical universe outside of minds. Concepts can exist only in minds, many do. You could argue money isn’t real except in our collective consciousness. But what does that mean?

Or you could for example say that humans don’t exist because all you see is quantum physics. Waves in water don’t exist because only molecules or even just subatomic particles exist. Just as quantum physics can’t tell you anything about the concept of “wet pants” from wading through the ocean, it can’t tell you anything about free will.

I don’t know if our universe is deterministic or not, from what I understand waveform collapse casts some doubt about this. But even if you had human minds on deterministic computer hardware, I’d say the conclusion doesn’t follow.

Just because I’d always make the same choice under the same conditions, doesn’t mean I didn’t make a choice.

I do agree that “free will” in a deterministic universe isn’t as cool as I’d like to be. I guess that is what I mean with “pure mind”. There is an unease there or an embarrassment of thinking of yourself as just a flesh brain. But how WOULD a pure mind with true free will decide given the same circumstances? Non-deterministic with some random influence? Wouldn’t that be the an illusion as well?

What else is free will but a conscious decision based on thinking and inputs, however that works?

Maybe the better question is to what degree do we have free will in a certain environment. Just as consciousness might have degrees.

I’d be curious what you would call “the phenomenon previously known as free will”? And what conclusions would you draw if free will doesn’t exist, what would be the impact on ethics, law and sociology? Does it all topple like a jenga tower? Does none of it mean anything?

Well imagine we could copy or approximate a human mind and run it on a typical computer, free from an quantum effects. From the outside you would say “no this is not a mind, this is a computer!” (I threw it on the ground). You could restart a human mind simulation (which would be deeply unethical of course) and it would return the same results, but it would still not be predictable outside of such a simulation.

But from the inside your mind you would of course say you have free will because that is how you defined it. The word has meaning because we created the meaning. In a universe with only such PC based human minds, you wouldn’t argue that you don’t have free will because we’re just software running silicon chips. Otherwise you’d have to invent a new word for what you meant with free will, like internally derived mental agency or something. But that is just rhetoric.

A classical computer based human mind would in fact be more free since it could investigate, analyze and edit it’s own mind, overcoming things that it perceives as weaknesses or faults. Like my evolutionary programming might have made me biased to conserve energy and time and not think too hard on certain new information, dismissing it instead. Maybe instead you’d want to be more open minded. That still would be repeatable and deterministic but arguably more free than a normal human mind.

So I think arguing that free will is based on determinism, repeatability or predictability is sort of an appeal to a “pure mind”. Not sure if that is a good way to put it, but like appealing to higher standard like we’re supposed to be a supernatural soul or something. We’re not, but we still came up with that word all on our own.

Sure, it’s impossible to keep a democracy going with those sanctions. The US is allowing nobody to trade with them. Eventually they’ll surrender or collapse.

Hmm well arguably I ought to rethink my opinion now that lemmy is working well enough.

Look at how many niche communities tried to move from reddit to lemmy and failed. Basically all of them. Even just a little pushback of reddit did a lot (not letting communities be abandoned or closed). Then lemmy is becoming increasingly fragmented (e.g. US imperialists and socialist instances). Then you have people deleting years worth of contribution and valuable content on reddit, answers to questions etc. Or what happens when ~20% of the current lemmy instances fold because of server cost or lost interest? And ultimately how much of a dent on a civilization level is the fediverse going to make?

All that are example of how network effects create a “toll” if you try to leave them.

The EU recently mandated that messenger apps need to create a compatibility layer and afaik even that looks like it’s going to fail to work as thought.

I honestly don’t see how you can do that. The problem is that the opposition and the media is presumably propped up by the US. Under that type of siege (and it is a siege, the US is at war with Venezuela) you don’t have lots of choices. History has shown the results of US interventionism in many countries. So I do think it’s an either/or thing.

PS: Just look at Argentina how quickly the democratic and social progress of a country can be dismantled.

Because of network effects the understanding of a monopoly has to grow with changing technology.

The fundamental problem is that it wouldn’t even be desireable to split up many of the new social media and internet technologies because that would reduce the quality for everyone, increase costs to support as a business and increase environmental damage from duplicating server storage and power consumption.

What we need is to turn them into public utilities that have significant democratic input by their own workforce (the experts and enthusiasts) and the users (the billions of people who actually create the value for the thing).

But would you surrender your country to Russia or China just because your current leader is a corrupt asshole? Would you have voted for Biden instead of Trump?

The US could have run a social democrat in Venezuela and they’d have won. Instead they picked some ultra-right wing reactionary assholes to support. They picked people who supported the 2002 coup and are in favour of the crushing economic warfare against Venezuela.

Of course there is legitimate protest against Maduro. But he’s the only choice if you don’t want your country to be forever owned and irrevocably fucked by the US imperialist boot. They have oil. That’s all a regime propped up by the US would need to support, oil extraction. No schools, no universities, no roads, no hospitals, just oil extraction. It’s a fucking grim future if you understand the rules.

My argument would go something like this: If you are the computer, then it is free will. If you could predict the computer, you could argue, but you can’t. You can’t even do this theoretically since you’d need more mass than the universe and can’t initialize your predictive model. So you can only say “that decision was made inside that brain”. That is at least one sensible definition of free will.

It’s like looking at a motor that breaks down and then saying that it’s not really the motor that breaks because the motor had no choice in it’s parts breaking. That’s just rhetoric.

The error I believe is that we don’t want to accept that sentience can arise from mechanical universe and it’s a matter of degree and that this can create meaning. People want to set the bar higher because they want the idea of some type of “pure mind”. But since we’re already discussing the meaning of all these things, arguing that what you are reading is just quantum physics is rhetoric.

Either what you are saying is supposed to be meaningful, or you concede that your words are meaningless. Then I anyone else wins the argument by default ;)

Basically the definition of free will can only be made by someone who claims that meaning exists, emerging from the material world. Therefor within that emergent layer of mind and meaning, a definition of free will other than basic physics is at least acceptable.

Sortition

Oh thanks! It seems a lot of the arguments agree with what I was speculating. I find it suspicious that you hear so little about this idea.

Of course none of that would work with the abysmal current state of news media.

Well I believe the government had to clamp down on opposition because they actually are in league with the imperialist side of the US and want a coup and overthrow democracy in Venezuela. I don’t think they falsified the results, until I see actual evidence, and not just claims of having evidence by the lying US.

It’s similar to Iran: The guardian council was established to prevent coup attempts by e.g. the CIA. Election interference creates a legacy of problems. Many countries in the world can’t have a free democracy because the US can bring such a huge influence to bear. The USA deserve to be hated by many people of the earth. The US experienced that kind of interference the first time in 2016.

But my point is that if your country is under siege by a hostile foreign power you have to hold fast and prevent the take over at any cost. This is where crackdowns and oppression become less black and white and the use of force and violence is an imperative.

The Venezuelan government has been remarkably calm and measured though. They didn’t even arrest Juan Guaidó who clearly is a US puppet.

Well maybe this time, instead of energizing and recruiting more fascist it will show them the error of their ways.

Also the other man is the active person while the girlfriend is passive and doesn’t have agency.

Also “having sex” turns fucking into a materialistic transaction instead of something you do together. According to marxist / leninist mythology that makes this a shitpost.

Oh right :D

Fascism is also on the rise because of improved technology for thought control / propaganda / public relations / advertising. Social media lets the worst of humanity band together and pool their energy.

But wealth inequality, both worse effective quality of life for the poor and increased economic power by the wealthy is I believe a main driver. Technology is just the tool. The ultra wealthy and their lackeys today have more power than ever and are more isolated and inundated with ideology that is basically insane.

I wonder if there are studies that show correlations between quality of life and fascism in different nations.

My dad fought the Nazi’s they lost

“Oh I’m sorry. How did they die?”

“Die? No, we lost them. And now we cannot find them”

“Oh there they are! Right there!”

The US defines sanctions as acts of war, like economic warfare. So the US is at war with Venezuela. How can that fact not play a role in the evaluation of the claims? It’s like giving claims by Russia equal weight as claims from Ukraine about their own election.

And of course, how could you even expect free and fair elections while under siege?

The emperor has new body paint

Personally I preferred punk in the “deliberately ugly” way

Is there any good ideas on a plausible way to manage power? The fundamental laws governing power, politics, wealth etc seem to always lead to negative outcomes.

Like state socialism led to the same complete concentration of economic power in the hands of the few as late stage capitalism is doing now. But I’ve never heard of any plan to address this.

One idea would be to randomly select representatives, bypassing filters that select for those who are best at accumulating power at the expense of anything else. Randocracy?

Or are we just out of good ideas?

Economic warfare