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.
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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Conway explicitly provides a model of free will which doesn't rely on Many Worlds.
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he provides a model of necessary derivation of free will of collections of particles from free will of particles, he doesn't provide a model of free will at all; his fully baseless axiom of free will could rely on many-worlds or not, the question isn't asked
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