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Free-will and the average person. (pg. 4)
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| Tranceporter99 |
| what an awful thread. your scenario is not grounded in any sort of reality, which makes it worthless. it doesn't ask anything of our world, because there is no reality of what your saying. even if we clone humans, there are too many variables to come up with to equate to your scenario. |
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| The17sss |
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what he said. It can all be chalked up to being a difference that makes no difference |
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| Crebilis |
| quote: | | What matters is that both of them have lived the same experiences, have the same interests, and haven't done anything different so far, and you've got practically the same person in the very same situation dealing with the very same issue. Now, based on that, can they ever disagree, in spite of that? Why (not)? |
2 new alternate universes come into existance. That's also what happened because of the choice that created the previous split-up. Every choice, brings different options, and an alternative universe is created for every possible option. (Which makes a hell of a lot of alternative universes). Perhaps there is an alternative universe where there is (or is not, depending on wether we have it or not) free will. |
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| Domesticated |
| The average person has too much of it. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
It depends on how closely you measure their paralellism. If you zoom out far enough, there would probably be no difference in their behaviour but if you zoomed in close enough, there are aspects of our behaviour that I think would change each time you replayed a scenario. This isn't necessarily because I think people are constantly re-evaluating themselves, but because there's a degree of randomness in our behaviour.
Something as simple as what we happen to look at whilst walking can infuence an entire train of thought which can lead to a decision. You can't seriously tell me that what we happen to notice whilst walking along is governed by our personality or our make-up. |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
"Average person" is an interesting way to put it. Whether intentional or not, it implies that there exists people both inferior and superior to this dynamic - as if some are extraordinary enough to overcome the randomness that affects human decision or that some are slaves to it. If free will is not universal in this sense, what is it that determines the amount of free will somebody has?
Is it education?
Or are some people simply born more free than others?
To draw from popular myth, we have Lucifer. Now Christians are sort of split between whether or not God's angels had free will or not - I think there is textual evidence for them having free will to a certain extent, their service to their creator giving God the ability to interfere with this should he wish, but it's not an unheard-of theory that they are his servants; his drones. In any case, this doesn't quite lend itself towards a Dominion of rebel angels led by one ambitious child of light to usurp their creator's seat. Or at least it doesn't lend itself towards them being punished for it. See, if we are to assume that Lucifer was made as best as God could make him, as ambitious and proud as he were, then he did not fall from Grace - he used the best of his ability to achieve a purpose he was created with.
Now of course I am being metaphorical with all of this and not religious, but I think that myth adequately illustrates free will in more ways than one. First off, I believe we all have a bit of Lucifer in us - the ambition to achieve - to dominate others - as though it were our purpose. And why shouldn't we? If there is consistency amongst humans to drown out the popular conception of individuality, it is this latent and rabid competitive streak we are ingrained with from the very start; the will to consume through the most available and effective means at our disposal, most often achieved by banding with others of our species and using the most effective technology to either intimidate the opposition into submission, or destroy their very being. We have found innumerable ways to obfuscate this in current society, but a voracious heart still pounds in human beings. History makes no argument against this.
Secondly, Lucifer sought to overcome his creator; his passion, his drive, bestowed upon him by creation and, in a sense, his subsequent denial of his own existence by denial of his creator's sovereignty. It would seem as though the very hand of fate pushed Lucifer towards fulfilling his very nature, forced his hand against a forced hand, as it were. What his heeding to desire did was push him against a brick wall; his downfall analagous to the torment of existentialism. See, were Lucifer imbued by God with free will - granted a gift through existence - he was simultaneously cursed with it as well. Were he not given free will, were he destined to be subjugated all along, the result is still the same. Free will would not have saved him from damnation - if anything, it would have been his undoing.
Lucifer is only an example though. My point being that free will or not, we are all imbued with basic means for survival. These drives are constantly pulling and pushing our actions, yet we take them for granted. Our modern and bloated sense of civilization has instituted a system of taboos that sometimes vary among location, but are remarkably consistent upon inspection. Kill, but don't kill. , but don't . Sex and death ever-looming over us, taboos are a way to curb perceived suffering, curb 'freedom' in the most animalistic sense. Did we will this into existence? Or is the taboo as a means to thwart violence by means of societal reprimand merely an eventuality in the same way that it is a means to control our "base" nature, thereby defining human nature as the denial of nature?
Should we perceive free will as merely a reduction of personal choices, I fail to see how it overcomes our basic, programmed aims. If humans all have free will, if it is a universal trait, then it is not free at all - it is a granted, biological function that must serve a purpose, have an end, and - more often than not - have a startling implication towards the state of our being. If I cannot opt out of free will, if it is thrust upon me because of my being, and I must be held accountable for my actions in some universal sense, then it is both a curse and a contradiction; traits that most certainly lend themselves to similarity with many other humanistic sensibilities. |
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| Alccode |
Interesting thought experiment. The way you've depicted it, my feeling is that Billy and Billy' will do the exact same thing at that moment, whether it's picking up the phone or not.
Even if you want to put it in terms of probabilities, then the probability of Billy and Billy' doing the same thing would be extremely high, IMO.
The reason is that these two identical worlds have so far, in your scenario, had identical histories. Let alone the lives of the twin Billy's, but there has been life and evolution, the same geophysical events, the same asteroid impacts, the same extinctions, all the way up to the "present", where we have the same human society and human historical events down to the very last detail -- so much so, that we even have twin Billy's, who go to the same twin schools and are fans of the same twin football teams.
So simply on account of the math, the probability that on Earth, we've had sequence of events E1 ^ E2 ^ ... ^ E-n, and that on twin Earth, we've also had those same events E1' ^ E2' ^ ... ^ E-n', then the chances that E-n+1 differs from E-n+1' are infinitesimally (sp?) small.
Thus we seem to have no choice but to conclude that Billy and Billy' will do the same thing in their respective universes.
However, it might not seem that this really addresses the free will issue per se. One could always claim that even though the chance that their behaviour would differ is infinitesimally small, nevertheless there is a chance, and so, in principle, E-n+1 (Billy calls) and E-n+1' (Billy gets cold feet) could differ. But then, it doesn't really speak to their free will very much. Sure, Billy' might not end up calling, but if the chances of him calling are 99.99999999%, I'm not so sure that that speaks very well for his supposedly "free" will.
We might instead call it, "Incredibly biased against one possibility will", at which point the "freedom" part falls apart, and we've got (near? full?)-determinism.
Disclaimer: the results of the above analysis seem to depend on the premises of the scenario. If we don't consider the Twin Earth scenario, then the above reasoning doesn't apply anymore. |
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| Meat187 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Alccode
So simply on account of the math, the probability that on Earth, we've had sequence of events E1 ^ E2 ^ ... ^ E-n, and that on twin Earth, we've also had those same events E1' ^ E2' ^ ... ^ E-n', then the chances that E-n+1 differs from E-n+1' are infinitesimally (sp?) small.
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No! Probability has no memory. |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
| You're telling me. I asked Probability to pick up the kids after soccer practice last Thursday because I had a late meeting... They were waiting there until EIGHT O' CLOCK. I had to pick them up myself. I was so livid. |
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| PETRAN |
Nice thought experiment, but i see dumb people (that can't understand it and fixate to the parallel universe too much lol).
I wanted to write something similar to alccode but this guy came first! :whip:
So, since the two guys share identical experiences, they would also have identical personalities and identical memories to influence their desicion. So, there would be an extremely high probability of doing the exact same thing. BUT, it would still be a probability not some-kind of deterministic cause-effect path. The reason i guess would be that a person is a multi-factorial entity, that is, many factors act and interact at the same time, leading to complex thinking and behaviour. Plus, these factors are numerous and flexible. So, whilst those (multiple) factors would PROBABLY lead to a similar chain of thoughts-and hence-behaviour, there would still be a chance that one-just one-of them would lead to a different result (ksss does not compute) changing the whole mind-state of the moment! So, yes there is still a little room for cute little free-will :) (but very little :( ) |
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| dj_alfi |
Let's say they decide to call; In the exact moment Billy and Billy' has decided, their timelines will skew into another alternate timeline where they decide not to call.
So, in both universes both Billy and Billy' will call Barbina and don't call Barbina. |
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