The only way free will can work is if the Many worlds therom of quantum mechanics is true, and each conscious derision results in a new universe. And quantum mechanics means that most of these decisions are being made by particles, with life forms being pretentious bundles.
the privileged observer is just pop mysticism and the academic sources it emanated from should be fucking ashamed of themselves
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I think it comes from the accademic delusion that it's possible to measure something completely passively without effecting the results. Something which happens all the time at the macro level, but which academics rarely admit.
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Zoologists and Anthropologists act like some white guy in khakis with a clipboard hovering over everyone isn't going to effect behavior. And at the quantum level, how exactly do you measure a particle without bombarding it with more particles?
End of conversation
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I used to encourage reading the paper but
@Alrenous linked me to a blog that makes it clearer https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~jas/one/freewill-theorem.html … -
wow... so yeah, that is definitely a reduction to absurdity of free will... and not only did everybody in the Reception section of the Wikipedia article miss the point, so did Conway
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It's a reduction to /quantum mechanics/ of free (will|whim). Absurdity is your adjective.
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well... no? people are consistently talking about it as if it demonstrates the existence of free will. it doesn't; if you take free will *as a postulate* it demonstrates consequences of that. Conway then demonstrates free will by handwaving.
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t h e a x i om o f c h o i c e i s a x i o m a t i c
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i'm trying to think of something that has less factual illustrative power than choice of axioms and it's damned hard unless all you want illustrated is what axioms somebody likes
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This started with "The only way free will can work is if the Many worlds theorem of quantum mechanics is true", which is refuted by the Strong Free Will Theorem.
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oh, i have no investment in that position and don't think it's the case, but Conway here doesn't refute it either, in the whole thing free will is just a black box hypothetical causal phenomenon whose provenance isn't raised as a question
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