gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) (04/20/89)
In article <17374@cup.portal.com> dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) writes: >In article <2792@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk > Which is to say, no choice at all. The illusion of choice is one of >the most pervasive fictions of Western thought, arising at least in part >from our inability to predict with any accuracy our own or other's actions. I see. And I presume the laws of physics give rise to this illusion. We are then, determined to believe in choice? >It would be more accurate to say that our self-models and other-models are >hopelessly inadequate for prediction purposes. And must remain so. If the laws of physics demand that we have the illusion of choice, then this illusion must persist. If the laws of physics must prevail over everything, then there must be no progress, no history. All is determined. > To put it another way: Those bounds of the laws of physics are much >tighter than you think. So I presume America's future decisions over abortion, school prayers and the budget deficit are all going to be determined by the laws of physics? > Sure you do. Preventing unwanted feedback in a system under study is >one of the first things considered. A simple example is that of a >high-power oscillator with the frequency driven by current. As soon as >you apply an old-fashioned voltmeter to the driving line to find the >current flow, the rate of oscillation begins to vary erratically. Why? >Because the output of the oscillator has induced an A/C current in the >voltmeter's probe wires. The system under study has altered its behavior >on being told what that behavior is. It has "sussed out what you're up >to." You understand this, and know the possible effects. > The psychology experiments are an example of feedback of a more >complex nature. By feeding the system under study (a person or group of >persons) information about the larger system (the subject-experimenter >system) you alter the behavior of the system. You cannot predict how though. The subjects range of choice (variation of response if you want) is not predictable. All knowledge here can only be post-hoc, and there is no immediate hope of this changing. I suggest you acquaint yourself with research methods in psychology, since the argument cannot be carried any further without some common knowledge here. > Is that 'CANNOT' a theoretical or a practical one? In practice, I >will agree with you. Working out the wave functions for systems of that >magnitude is clearly not practical in this universe, for logistical >reasons. A computer capable of doing the calculations would require more >atoms than exist in the cosmos. And by the time it finished working out >the answers, the question-askers would likely be extinct. What's the value of a concept like 'theoretical possibility'. It's of no real interest. Practice is the only thing which matters. There are already results that show that a digital computer cannot hope to apply AI techniques to massive rule-bases in real-time and achieve human performance (CACM paper, 1988, example was truth maintainance on a very fast computer). What is possible depends on the theory. The truth of any theory rests ultimately on what can be done with it. >What predicts what the movement of each of these particles will be? >Physical law. What therefore predicts the movement of the entire arm? >Physical law. What decides where to put the arm. Me, within my physical limitations. I've just tapped the desk twice. I presume the laws of physics forced me to do this here and now. > Specific knowledge of these areas is not germane to the problem at >hand; meta-knowledge (knowledge about knowledge of these areas) of them >is. Where does this meta-knowledge come from. Let's take psychology for example, and the history of Art. What counts as metaknowledge here, and how might it be relevant to the deterministic modelling of human agency, with special reference to drive for abstraction between the wars. Physics indeed. Sheer fantasy. This is marvellous example of the self-imposed ignorance of the AI type - I don't need to know the details, because I can tell, without looking at them, from my meta-knowledge, that I can ignore the details. For this poster at least, the complaint of self-imposed ignorance is apt. Epistemicly, it is as irrational a claim as any that comes from the 'religious' corners. (Note: some comp.ai readers take'ignorant' etc. to always be a pejorative, and their use an act of abuse. Neither is the case in my dialect of English, but to avoid future offence, I'll stick to "ignore", "don't know" etc., as in Maddox's lampoon :-)) > > All of these obey the laws of physics. Perhaps your point is that >they obey other laws. This is true, to some extent. But these other laws >are either approximations of combinations of simpler laws, or are directly >reducible to simpler laws. Not according to systems thinking, if I have understood it correctly. > That's an interesting opinion. I could just as easily say that >nothing useful comes of suppressing AI research. Yes it does, you can direct the resources to something useful :-) > AI's sole purpose is not to advance knowledge of human psychology. It >has many purposes. That's one. Perhaps it doesn't fulfill that one well. >Another is to come up with potentially useful applications. That one it >fills extraordinarily well. Examples please. Folk around here have been asking for them for years. To qualify applications must be in use, have a manual, a user base and be applied to real work. We'll begin with Prospector and Smart Network Management Systems. Any others? -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert
arm@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Macalalad) (04/20/89)
Dan- I basically agree with your argument, but there are a couple of side issues which I want to explore. First, the area of free will. In article <17374@cup.portal.com> dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) writes: > Given enough processing power, one could in theory predict the >action of every particle in the universe, and therefore the behavior of >every system, whether human or not, in that universe. I think that there is a little more to the debate of free will. For example, just because we are able in principle to predict the movement of the sun does not imply that we in any way *cause* that movement. True, the movement of the sun can be predicted by our scientific laws, but the movement is caused by properties intrinsic to the sun, such as its mass, velocity, etc. Its "actions" are a function of its composition. In this sense, then, every object has a "will," based on its composition, which determine its actions, given an "input." Now this is probably diluting our everyday use of "will," but I think the meaning is still useful. What, then, is a free will? It certainly is not something unpredictable, since free will was embraced by a culture which also embraced the notion that a deity knew every event in a person's life even before that person was born. No, free will pertained more to the responsibility of a person's actions. Traditionally, all things in the universe followed God's will, so they were not responsible for their actions. God was. But God gave humans free will, to choose to do His will or go their own way, and to be responsible for their choices. Of course, science has little to say on this subject, since it cannot measure God's will, whatever that is. As our culture grew more and more secularized, the notion of God and God's will made less and less sense, and the notion of free will drifted from moral choices to merely choices. Here, then, free will becomes susceptible to scientific arguments that choice is an illusion. But I don't think that the notion of free will has lost its emphasis on responsibility. The courts, for one, are thinking of responsibility when they take into account whether criminals are acting out of their own free will, or whether they were insane or under the influence of drugs. Thus, any effective arguments against free will must tackle the issue of responsibility. This topic has drifted quite a bit, and probably isn't appropriate for this newsgroup. I would suggest followups to a religious newsgroup, but I don't read any. Email any replies to me. Getting back to AI, >>Other branches which require MORE THAN physics to explain them are >>biology (the originator of systems thinking) and, I am told, >>Chemistry. Chess doesn't obey the laws of physics either. > > All of these obey the laws of physics. Perhaps your point is that >they obey other laws. This is true, to some extent. But these other >laws are either approximations of combinations of simpler laws, or are >directly reducible to simpler laws. The simpler laws themselves are >amenable to the same kind of decomposition, and so on, until one reaches >the particle level. The rules of chess are independent of the laws of physics. An implementation of chess in our universe (i.e. a chess game :-) must follow the laws of physics, if only by virtue of being in our universe. But I can certainly imagine a chess game being played in an alternate universe where the laws of physics are very different. This would not be possible if the laws of chess were ultimately the laws of physics. Sorry for the digression. >Dan Hankins -Alex Macalalad
ingoldsb@ctycal.COM (Terry Ingoldsby) (04/21/89)
> Given enough processing power, one could in theory predict the action > of every particle in the universe, and therefore the behavior of every > system, whether human or not, in that universe. And all from the laws of > > Dan Hankins NO! Absolutely NOT true. This is the fundamental mistake that most people make, generally because all the physics they are familiar with is Classical Physics. Classical physics is a good approximation for large numbers of particles, at non-relativistic speeds. All physics philosophies attempt to describe natural phenomena; Quantum physics is closer to the `truth' (please lets not start a discussion of the meaning of truth - I mean the way things behave in nature) than is Classical (Newtonian physics). Quantum physics cannot predict where one particle passing through a slit is going to go. Not with 1, 10 or 100 supercomputers. All it can do is tell you the probability of a particle going in a particular direction. Terry Ingoldsby Land Related Information Systems The City of Calgary ctycal!ingoldsb@calgary.UUCP or ...{alberta,ubc-cs,utai}!calgary!ctycal!ingoldsb
ian@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk (Ian Finch) (04/21/89)
In article <2826@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>, gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: > In article <17374@cup.portal.com> dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) writes: >>It would be more accurate to say that our self-models and other-models are >>hopelessly inadequate for prediction purposes. > > And must remain so. If the laws of physics demand that we have the > illusion of choice, then this illusion must persist. If the laws of > physics must prevail over everything, then there must be no progress, > no history. All is determined. This is the precise opposite of what the laws of physics say. Quantum mechanical theory means that all is undetermined; the Universe is governed by randomness. > So I presume America's future decisions over abortion, school > prayers and the budget deficit are all going to be determined by the > laws of physics? The brains of the people making those decisions are subject to the laws of physics, and therefore the decisions are (albeit indirectly). > You cannot predict how though. The subjects range of choice > (variation of response if you want) is not predictable. All knowledge > here can only be post-hoc, and there is no immediate hope of this > changing. I suggest you acquaint yourself with research methods in > psychology, since the argument cannot be carried any further without > some common knowledge here. The argument *can* continue without common knowledge, if people knew what they were talking about this argument would be contrary to standard comp.ai procedure. > What's the value of a concept like 'theoretical possibility'. It's of > no real interest. Practice is the only thing which matters. This attitude leads to mental stagnation. Theory should always precede practical issues --- who knows what tomorrow's technology will bring? > What decides where to put the arm. > Me, within my physical limitations. I've just tapped the desk twice. > I presume the laws of physics forced me to do this here and now. Your brain made that decision in accordance with the laws of physics. >> AI's sole purpose is not to advance knowledge of human psychology. It >>has many purposes. That's one. Perhaps it doesn't fulfill that one well. >>Another is to come up with potentially useful applications. That one it >>fills extraordinarily well. > > Examples please. Folk around here have been asking for them for > years. To qualify applications must be in use, have a manual, a user > base and be applied to real work. Why must a *potentially* useful application ``have a manual, a user base and be applied to real work''? AI research should aim to have practical uses in real work, but in the majority of cases it has not yet reached that stage. Things that have fulfilled your criteria are citation browsing systems and applications like Hypercard on the Macintosh. AI is a young subject. Whilst this should not be used as an excuse, it *is* a valid reason why it has not reached the level of maturity of other disciplines. Ian Finch Janet: ian@uk.ac.liv.cs.mva --------- Internet: ian%mva.cs.liv.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu UUCP: ...mcvax!ukc!ian@uk.ac.liv.cs.mva ================================================================================ Vila: I've got this shocking pain right behind the eyes. Avon: Have you considered amputation? - Blake's Seven ================================================================================
dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) (04/22/89)
In article <2812@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: >>>No I wouldn't. I just exercise choice within the bounds of the laws of >>>physics. >I got the train to Charing Cross today, rather than Queen Street or >Partick. I make these choices regularly. And my (hypothetical) Artificial Neural Network 'animal' decides to move North to find food rather than West, East or South. It makes these choices regularly. The main constraint is the placing of food (food is closer to the North), but then who cares what caused the placement of the food. Whether placed by a human or another ANN, the animal makes its decision based on its prior experience and the current input. I still don't see where any of this makes free will necessary. Any action which you can explain by free will I can equally well (or better) explain by appealing to the incompleteness of self- and other-models. I'd love to see a counter-example. Dan Hankins
dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) (04/22/89)
In article <2792@tank.uchicago.edu> cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes: >The interesting question, to my thinking, is that if choice really is an >illusion, what is the point of this illusion's having evolved in the first >place? It's a useful hack that serves until something better comes along, just like Newton's laws of motion, geocentric astronomy, the ether theory of space, alchemy, and other notions too numerous to mention. Punishment, responsibility, rights, and other notions that in operation help society survive require the notion of free will to justify them. More recently, there have grown other ways of looking at these issues that are as or more effective in practice than those based on free will. >> But if you say that the laws of physics cannot even in _theory_ >>explain these macro-level phenomena, then I must disagree with you. >>[...] The fact that we don't have the computational resources to >>actually make the prediction doesn't matter; that's a logistical problem, >>not a theoretical one. > >There are two problems here. First, modern physics have given up as >hopelessly flawed the Newtonian belief that if one knows the complete >state of the Universe at one instant, he should then be able to predict >all the future states of the Universe, should he only know the appropriate >physical laws. Well, yeah. The difference now is that instead of a single state, one has to compute an entire wavefront of possibilities, which collapses to a single point at the moment of measurement. So although it is not possible to predict the _precise_ state of the system, it is possible to predict the possible _range_ of states. The direction of collapse of the function, as far as we know, has nothing to do with consciousness; rather, it follows the probabilities. Indeterminancy which you do not control does not give you free will, any more than making all your decisions by flipping a coin would. I omitted discussion of the random nature of wave function collapse because I didn't think it affected the point being made, either in a positive or negative way. >[re difference between theory and practice and its dissolution] >One may say that, in theory, an electron occupies a particular point in >space at a particular time, but since we will never be able to observe it >as such, we are best to treat an electron as though it occupies a >probability function, and not a point in space. Latest I heard, a few months ago, there was still considerable debate on this point. The unsettled question is essentially this: Is the universe deterministic, and are we embedding the limits of measurability into our theories, or are the entities involved really spread out in some fashion (i.e. macro-level visualizations are simply not applicable at the micro-level)? Obviously I lean toward the claim that you can't carry macro-level analogies too far. An electron really _is_ smeared out in space in important ways, and therefore there is a valid distinction between theory and practice. >question. I think it was either Stephen Hawkins or Heinz Pagels who refer If you're going to use the respectability of some famous person to back up your position, you could at least spell his name correctly. And just because Stephen Hawking says something doesn't make it true (although it raises the probability). I do agree in this case; you can't predict the exact position of all the particles. They're too smeared around. You can, however, compute the range of positions. >One final note here, is that there is an implicit assumption throughout >Mr.Hankins posting that Mind is subject to physical law. That's all well >and good, and it may very well be true, but it is an ASSUMPTION which has >never been proven, either by physics or any other science. Well, let me put it this way: That which we define as Mind is an observable information behavioral phenomenon. That is to say, there is some set of behaviors sharing certain characteristics that we label as Mind. In order to have knowledge of something, one must observe it or infer it from observable phenomena. Since all observable phenomena/behaviors are physical in nature, then so are all their inferred properties. One observes a computer in operation, and infers from its physical observable behavior that an instance of a program is operating within it. The instance of a program is itself a physical phenomenon, being characterized entirely by physically observable behavior. One observes a human being in operation, and infers from her observable behavior that a mind (an instance of Mind) is operating within it. The mind is itself a physical phenomenon, being characterized entirely by physically observable behavior. One is as physical as the other. >The quantity or quality that we know and experience as self and >conveniently refer to as Mind is so far removed from physics that most >physicists would just as leave pretend that it doesn't even exist. And yet >we know that it does. Don't we? The physicists do not pretend that it doesn't exist; they simply ignore it because it does not affect the outcomes of events on the scale they are used to dealing with. They know that Mind is an epiphenomenon of the operation of physics, rather than the other way around. In order for mind to do something not predictable by physical law, it would have to _consistently_ move particles to extremely low probability positions. That is, if the particle movements show the normal wave function spread, then they are following the laws of physics and not of Mind. On the other hand, if they are consistently moving to the low-probability locations, then the physicist had better start looking for an external force such as Mind. Far as I know, it's the first of these two situations that holds. Dan Hankins
dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) (04/22/89)
In article <2826@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: >> Which is to say, no choice at all. The illusion of choice is one of >>the most pervasive fictions of Western thought, arising at least in part >>from our inability to predict with any accuracy our own or other's >>actions. > >I see. And I presume the laws of physics give rise to this illusion. We are >then, determined to believe in choice? Some of us are. Others are not. It's impossible to predict. >If the laws of physics must prevail over everything, then there must be no >progress, no history. All is determined. I don't see where determinism eliminates progress or history. History is a record of events that have happened. Determinism is irrelevant to that. Unless, of course, you are talking of _social theories_ of history. I don't claim complete knowledge, of course, but those I am familiar with (Spengler, Marx, Adam Smith, Illuminism) all ascribe some measure of predictability, and therefore determinism to the history of societies. In theories of history, as in theories of anything else, some will fit the data and some will not. Some theories will fit the data but be ineffective for lack of predictive power. 'Demonic' theories explain computers quite well, but are ineffective for predicting a computer's future behavior or for modifying that behavior. Theories of history based on the notions of free will, responsibility, and so on may well be consistent with known history. But they are poor predictors of future behavior. As for progress, determinism is _not_ the same as fatalism. Our lack of knowledge of the future means that we must ever strive to improve it. Self-organizing systems such as genetic algorithms and artificial neural networks are completely deterministic. Yet they do progress from an ineffective existence to an effective reality. >So I presume America's future decisions over abortion, school prayers and >the budget deficit are all going to be determined by the laws of physics? Yes. But not knowing what those decisions are going to be, it behooves us to behave _as if_ we had a choice (free will is a _useful_ illusion, in a large number of cases - just like Newton's laws of motion). Fatalism places the object of Fate outside of the system, in some sense. In Fatalism the human is acted on by fate but has no power to act on fate. Determinism allows the physical system to be _part_ of the much larger system, and therefore to influence it as it is influenced, just as each of Lorenz's three equations change the behavior of the other two. >[discussion of oscillator circuit in part driving itself omitted] >> The psychology experiments are an example of feedback of a more >>complex nature. By feeding the system under study (a person or group of >>persons) information about the larger system (the subject-experimenter >>system) you alter the behavior of the system. > >You cannot predict how though. The subjects range of choice (variation of >response if you want) is not predictable. All knowledge here can only be >post-hoc, and there is no immediate hope of this changing. I suggest you >acquaint yourself with research methods in psychology, since the argument >cannot be carried any further without some common knowledge here. I agree. I cannot predict how informing the human subject of the purpose of the experiment will affect that human's performance in the experiment, except within certain _very_ broadly based parameters. But the same is true of physical systems. Something as simple as a convection roll's behavior cannot be predicted because of the way that each parameter (speed, top/bottom heat gradient, left/right heat gradient) alters the other two in some very sensitive ways. This is even more true of an artificial neural network program. The results of disturbing the system, say with feedback about its own behavior, cannot be predicted without _complete_ knowledge of the current state of the net and complete knowledge of the current input. Even then, the only way to predict the precise output is to run the program. If the complete current state of the net is unavailable, as it might well be on a highly parallel asynchronous implementation (like a hardware-based neural network), then its behavior is just as difficult to predict as that of a biological system (i.e. animal or man) of equal complexity. The upshot: Deterministic systems are in principle just as difficult to predict as so-called freely willed ones. >There are already results that show that a digital computer cannot hope to >apply AI techniques to massive rule-bases in real-time and achieve human >performance (CACM paper, 1988, example was truth maintainance on a very >fast computer). What is possible depends on the theory. The truth of any >theory rests ultimately on what can be done with it. This clearly sounds like you think the only route AI takes is the symbolic LISP or Prolog based inferential one, as in expert systems and the like. The experiment you describe sounds like it was performed on a standard Von Neumann architecture, possibly (although not probably, from your account of the nature of the computations) using vector processors. The limitations of the Von Neumann architecture are well known. The limitations of massively parallel architectures, such as neural networks directly implemented in hardware, are not as well known. It is known that an electronic neuron is at least as fast as a biological one. Repeat: AI techniques are not limited to rule-based inference systems. Connectionism (i.e. implementing the important parts of human neural systems in silicon) is coming on strong. >>What predicts what the movement of each of these particles will be? >>Physical law. What therefore predicts the movement of the entire arm? >>Physical law. > >What decides where to put the arm. Me, within my physical limitations. >I've just tapped the desk twice. I presume the laws of physics forced me >to do this here and now. Yes. You could not have done otherwise. Your only reason for thinking that you could have done otherwise is that your model of your own behavior is incomplete. You simply _don't know enough_ about the state of your brain and your body at the time you tapped the desk, even afterwards, to see the causal connections. One might as well say that a cloud has free will. Any behavior you can ascribe to free will I can ascribe to action which is not predictable (incomplete models) and therefore _appears_ to have the possibility of coming out differently. >> Specific knowledge of these areas is not germane to the problem at >>hand; meta-knowledge (knowledge about knowledge of these areas) of them >>is. > >This is marvellous example of the self-imposed ignorance of the AI >type - I don't need to know the details, because I can tell, without >looking at them, from my meta-knowledge, that I can ignore the >details. For this poster at least, the complaint of self-imposed >ignorance is apt. Epistemicly, it is as irrational a claim as any >that comes from the 'religious' corners. Would you be happier if I called this meta-knowledge by its more common name: Epistemology? For the purposes of an investigation into the rate of fall of a 1 kg weight on the moon, I think I can safely ignore the details of polymer chemistry. >> All of these obey the laws of physics. Perhaps your point is that >>they obey other laws. This is true, to some extent. But these other >>laws are either approximations of combinations of simpler laws, or are >>directly reducible to simpler laws. > >Not according to systems thinking, if I have understood it correctly. Please be more specific. Holistic theories I have encountered put holism and reductionism on two sides of the same coin. Sure, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts... it's their product :-). Seriously, though, it seems that most of the power of holistic reasoning comes out of the combinatorial explosion and from nonlinearity (chaos, or sensitive dependence on initial conditions if you like). >> AI's sole purpose is not to advance knowledge of human psychology. >>It has many purposes. That's one. Perhaps it doesn't fulfill that one >>well. Another is to come up with potentially useful applications. That >>one it fills extraordinarily well. > >Examples please. Folk around here have been asking for them for years. >To qualify applications must be in use, have a manual, a user base and be >applied to real work. Genetic algorithms are in use in a variety of commercial environments, such as flow control on large oil pipelines. Expert systems are sold and used in a wide variety of environments every day. I remember one in particular as long ago as 1978 assisting in medical diagnosis at the Mayo clinic. Expert systems are perhaps AI's biggest commercial success. Robotics. Robots in a large number of automated and semi-automated factories are programmed using large symbolic AI systems. Databases. Advances in natural language processing are used in at least one commercial database system. Games. Computer based games are a multimillion dollar business, and they are often among the first to employ AI techniques, in order to get smart opponents. There are plenty of commercially available chess-playing programs based on a combination of brute force and AI, combat flight simulators with smart enemy planes (more on this later), Go playing programs, Reversi playing programs, role-playing programs employing NL advances, and so on. Military applications. The military often want to implement smart enemies on their simulators, and also they use expert systems for battle management assistance (not always successfully - note that a poorly written program does not invalidate the concept, merely the implementers). Dan Hankins
dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) (04/22/89)
In article <10268@ihlpb.ATT.COM> arm@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Macalalad) writes: >[...] any effective arguments against free will must tackle the issue of >responsibility. This is one of the major reasons why the notion of free will is held onto so strongly by a great many people. Without free will, responsibility (per se) goes out the window. Unable to imagine any effective alternative to responsibility/recognition/punishment for controlling human behavior, many see a lack of the notion of free will as leading to fatalism and criminal anarchy. Instead, what those who deny free will do is to point to the possibility of a science of human behavior as an alternative to those ancient and often ineffective methods of control. Instead of punishing the criminal (which suppresses the behavior in the short term but reinforces the criminal tendencies), the determinist advocates finding ways to permanently modify that behavior, or remove the behavior's source (capital punishment/banishment). Once in full swing, such approaches to suppressing behavior unwanted by society would lead to far more effective deterrents to crime. >But I can certainly imagine a chess game being played in an alternate >universe where the laws of physics are very different. This would not be >possible if the laws of chess were ultimately the laws of physics. Depends on which laws of physics are the important ones and whether the other universe shares the important ones. That aspect of particles called _position_, for instance, is vital to playing a game of chess. There's a limit to how different those laws could be. Dan Hankins
jwm@stdc.jhuapl.edu (Jim Meritt) (04/26/89)
In article <286@ctycal.UUCP> ingoldsb@ctycal.COM (Terry Ingoldsby) writes: }> Given enough processing power, one could in theory predict the action }> of every particle in the universe, and therefore the behavior of every }> system, whether human or not, in that universe. And all from the laws of }> }> Dan Hankins } }NO! Absolutely NOT true. This is the fundamental mistake that most people }make, generally because all the physics they are familiar with is Classical }Physics. Classical physics is a good approximation for large numbers of }particles, at non-relativistic speeds. All physics philosophies attempt to }describe natural phenomena; Quantum physics is closer to the `truth' (please }lets not start a discussion of the meaning of truth - I mean the way things }behave in nature) than is Classical (Newtonian physics). Quantum physics }cannot predict where one particle passing through a slit is going to go. Not }with 1, 10 or 100 supercomputers. All it can do is tell you the probability }of a particle going in a particular direction. Not to mention that Chaos makes it impossible to make the prediction no matter HOW powerful your processor since you do not know PRECISELY the initial conditions (because 'precisely' simply isn't, given Heisenburg & Planck) The Universe is a strange place... With strange attractors! The above was test data, and not the responsibility of any organization.
cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (05/02/89)
>In article <2792@tank.uchicago.edu> cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes: > >>The interesting question, to my thinking, is that if choice really is an >>illusion, what is the point of this illusion's having evolved in the first >>place? > > It's a useful hack that serves until something better comes along, >just like Newton's laws of motion, geocentric astronomy, the ether theory >of space, alchemy, and other notions too numerous to mention. > I tend to agree that the belief in freewill exists because it is useful, but you should realize that almost any biological trait we possess can be characterized in the same way, so I would hesitate to call it a 'hack'. Your comparison with Newton's laws, etc., is somewhat strained. That is, I see an individual's belief in his own freedom of will as something quite different from his belief that the world is flat. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the former seems to me to be somehow related to the individual's cognitive functioning, while the latter is not. There is a higher level debate, such as we're seeing now, about whether free will exists. This is more or less on the same cognitive level as a belief in Newtonian (or any other physics). To clarify, I'm sure that even B.F.Skinner suffers from the unfortunate illusion of 'free choice'. He may, at some higher level, 'know' that his choices are not free, but his day to day experience is that same as anyone else's. > Punishment, responsibility, rights, and other notions that in >operation help society survive require the notion of free will to justify >them. This argument is interesting in that it claims that a belief in choice is a necessary condition for *society* to exist. This is 100% consistent with the radical thesis of Julian Jaynes, that consciousness as we know it has developed within the last three to four thousand years, and that before that time, men were basically automata who instead of making choices, received instructions from 'Gods' located in the region of the right hemisphere of of the brain which corresponds to Wernicke's area in the left hemisphere. >More recently, there have grown other ways of looking at these >issues that are as or more effective in practice than those based on free >will. > I assume that you're talking about behavioral modification, which was never intended to supplant an individual's fear of punishment, for example. Certainly there are Utopian visions of a society based upon Skinnerian behaviorism, but as far as I'm concerned, they are pie in the sky. Behavioral therapy is more or less as effective now as hypnotism was in the latter part of the last century. We see some results, but there are generally problems. Very, very few therapists still cling to the Skinnerian dogma. Analysis is important, if only to arrive at the proper behavioral therapy. Simply treating the symptom generally does not make the problem go away. > >>> But if you say that the laws of physics cannot even in _theory_ >>>explain these macro-level phenomena, then I must disagree with you. >>>[...] The fact that we don't have the computational resources to >>>actually make the prediction doesn't matter; that's a logistical problem, >>>not a theoretical one. >> >>There are two problems here. First, modern physics have given up as >>hopelessly flawed the Newtonian belief that if one knows the complete >>state of the Universe at one instant, he should then be able to predict >>all the future states of the Universe, should he only know the appropriate >>physical laws. > > Well, yeah. The difference now is that instead of a single state, one >has to compute an entire wavefront of possibilities, which collapses to a >single point at the moment of measurement. > Wait a minute. there is a huge difference between the causal determinism you've been suggesting and 'an entire wavefront of possibilities'. Physicists treat quantum events as though they are truly random events that follow a known probability distribution. The so-called 'collapse' of the wave function is the actual position at the time of measurement. It cannot be predicted, only observed. > So although it is not possible to predict the _precise_ state of the >system, it is possible to predict the possible _range_ of states. Your computation instantly becomes intractable and hence *theorectically* impossible. And that is IFF you somehow, magically 'know' the precise state of the Universe at a given point of time. Otherwise, recent theories of chaos suggest that as time goes on, your margin of error will increase exponentially. Not quite what I'd call predictability. You're not suggesting that we predict the range of states of an electron as it orbits a nucleus. You're suggesting that we can reasonably predict the range of states of all of the particles within an individual human being and all of the environment which may affect his choice. There is no way they can be more predictable than the position of a single particle, which is to say, they can NEVER be known exactly. Moreover, the level of certainty can only decrease as the system gets larger. >The direction of collapse of the function, as far as we know, has nothing to do >with consciousness; rather, it follows the probabilities. Indeterminancy >which you do not control does not give you free will, any more than making >all your decisions by flipping a coin would. Nothing 'follows' the probabilites. You're implying a causation here that doesn't exist. Face it. Modern physics believes that God does play dice with the Universe. I am not arguing for the existence of free will. I am arguing against your Eighteenth century determinism, which you have tried to couch in modern terms. > > I omitted discussion of the random nature of wave function collapse >because I didn't think it affected the point being made, either in a >positive or negative way. > I think you're somewhat missing the point. Quantum mechanics is founded on the uncertainty principle, which basically states that yeah, well even though in 'theory' a particle may exists with a given momentum at a particular point in time-space, we can never measure both the momentum and the position, so we may as well throw out the whole theory. Similarly, it seems to me that even though 'in theory' we may be able to predict an individual's behavior, in practice this is, and probably always will be, impossible. So why not follow the lead of modern physics? Rather than argue about whether or not free will actually exists, I'd say that over time, we may be able to better predict an individuals behavior, but there will *always* be some level of unpredictabilty. Whether this is due to actual 'freedom of the will' is irrelevant. One person can call it free will, another person can call it delta. Total predictability is IMPOSSIBLE. > >That which we define as Mind is an >observable information behavioral phenomenon. That is to say, there is >some set of behaviors sharing certain characteristics that we label as >Mind. > That is not what I define as Mind. Who are 'we'? As far as I can tell, the whole problem that Science has with Mind is that it insists on reducing it to something it can observe. > In order to have knowledge of something, one must observe it or infer >it from observable phenomena. Or, we could _experience_ it. >>question. I think it was either Stephen Hawkins or Heinz Pagels who refer > > If you're going to use the respectability of some famous person to >back up your position, you could at least spell his name correctly. And >just because Stephen Hawking says something doesn't make it true (although >it raises the probability). I do agree in this case; you can't predict >the exact position of all the particles. They're too smeared around. You >can, however, compute the range of positions. > Go ahead, pick on my spelling. And while you're at it, go ahead and omit the latter part of my statement: I think it was either Stephen HawkING or Heinz Pagels who refer to your position as THE NEWTONIAN DREAM. (And, for all that I can remember, it's spelled PAGEL, not Pagels. So what?) In this case, I don't think anyone cares whether your position really is the Newtonain dream, whether you agree that it is or not. I wasn't really trying to rely on the credibility of the individual's cited, I think the 'A or B said' form of the quotation is sufficient proof of that, but I did think it useful to point out that knowledgable, modern physicists have given up thinking like you do. I, for one, have no reason to believe that the human mind transcends physical law. For those of you who feel that this implies that there is no thing as free will, I suppose that we can leave it at that. My gripe here is with a particular defense of the 'the will is not free' position.
cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (05/02/89)
>In article <2792@tank.uchicago.edu> cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes: > > >>The quantity or quality that we know and experience as self and >>conveniently refer to as Mind is so far removed from physics that most >>physicists would just as leave pretend that it doesn't even exist. And yet >>we know that it does. Don't we? > > The physicists do not pretend that it doesn't exist; they simply >ignore it because it does not affect the outcomes of events on the scale >they are used to dealing with. They know that Mind is an epiphenomenon of >the operation of physics, rather than the other way around. > > In order for mind to do something not predictable by physical law, it >would have to _consistently_ move particles to extremely low probability >positions. That is, if the particle movements show the normal wave >function spread, then they are following the laws of physics and not of >Mind. On the other hand, if they are consistently moving to the >low-probability locations, then the physicist had better start looking for >an external force such as Mind. Far as I know, it's the first of these two >situations that holds. > > >Dan Hankins To begin with, there is a major difference between 'physical law' and 'known physical law'. Nothing can occur which violates physical law, by definition. On the other hand, no one believes that physical law, as we currently understand it, explains everything. Now look around you. Your terminal, your desk, your hands, your clothes - almost everything that surrounds you is in an EXTREMELY low probability position. We're supposed to believe that life started in some protein/amino acid soup some billion or so years ago and then randomly grew to the point it exists today. The probabilities of such an accident occurring according to the known laws of physics is infinitesmally small. Most physicists I know are happy with some statement of the form 'While the organization of the biosystem may be steadily increasing, it does so at the expense of the environment, so the laws of thermodynamics are not violated.' As long as the total entropy of the universe is growing, they don't worry too much about the problem of the physical subsystem we can conveniently call Life. Let me characterize the unknown force which impels the ever-increasing organization of the biosystem as Mind. Has modern physics ever shown that no such force exists? Have they ever even tried to explain it? Am I really supposed to believe that such a thing can really happen by random accident? If a force exists which is capable of establishing such an enormously 'low probability wave function' as the Earth's biosystem, in complete contradiction to the laws of physical probability as we currently comprehend them, why can't you accept the possibility that maybe, just maybe, this same force really is capable of choice, which YOU have characterized as the ability to consistantly move matter into low probability locations? R.Kohout
dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) (05/06/89)
In article <3018@tank.uchicago.edu> cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes: >>>[... why do people believe in free will? ...] >> >> It's a useful hack that serves until something better comes along, >>just like Newton's laws of motion, geocentric astronomy, the ether theory >>of space, alchemy, and other notions too numerous to mention. > >I tend to agree that the belief in freewill exists because it is useful, >but you should realize that almost any biological trait we possess can be >characterized in the same way, so I would hesitate to call it a 'hack'. There are lots of biological traits that can be described as hacks. Of course, they aren't hacks in the sense that they were invented by some being, but they are hacks in the sense that they are crude but useful features. They serve a purpose which could be achieved better by some other feature. A good example of this is the tails of many simians. The tail is a hack in that it is a crude way of maintaining balance when compared to an advanced nervous system. Monkeys of various varieties have them, while more intelligent simians such as chimpanzees, baboons and great apes do not. >Your comparison with Newton's laws, etc., is somewhat strained. That is, I >see an individual's belief in his own freedom of will as something quite >different from his belief that the world is flat. Perhaps I'm wrong, but >the former seems to me to be somehow related to the individual's cognitive >functioning, while the latter is not. So what? Both are models of the behavior of the world or parts of it. Remember that like many other so-called cognitive concepts, we first learn what free will is by having behavior consistent with it pointed out to us. We then generalize from that behavior to a concept of free will. And it is always pointed out by examples of _human_ behavior, never animal or natural. But once that generalization is made, if one is willing to open up one's mind to the possibility that other things can have 'free will', then one can see behavior consistent with it everywhere. The kind of behavior predicted by the notion of free will turns out to be identical to the kind of behavior predicted by the notion of non-linear dynamic systems (i.e. chaos). 'Man is the measure of all things' is a recent idea, stemming largely from Judeo-Christian notions of the place of Man in the Universe. Some cultures still do not share it. No wonder our distant ancestors believed that free will can be ascribed in equal measure to all active and capricious things, from animals to weather. >>More recently, there have grown other ways of looking at these >>issues that are as or more effective in practice than those based on free >>will. >I assume that you're talking about behavioral modification [...] >[...] Very, very few therapists still cling to the Skinnerian dogma. >Analysis is important, if only to arrive at the proper behavioral >therapy. Simply treating the symptom generally does not make the problem >go away. True, but: this does not invalidate the central thesis of behaviorism, which in its purest form is simply radical empiricism. Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. If all one is doing in behavioral therapy is treating the symptom, then one is oversimplifying behaviorism. I do not believe that behavioral science is at a point where one can have a full-fledged behavioral treatment program. Some aspects of human behavior are understood, but by no means all or even enough. A great deal of data collection and scientific method remains to be performed. Trying to treat someone behaviorally on the basis of a few days or weeks of observation is roughly equivalent to trying to alter the behavior of an unsupervised neural network program without knowing the full history of its input. Note that even traditional analysis is in some sense behavior modification; there are a lot of feedback systems in human behavior (in Skinnerian terminology, one might call them 'hidden' or 'internal' behaviors), and by introducing additional information into the system or modifying that system's feedback through analysis one is performing a kind of behavior modification. >Wait a minute. there is a huge difference between the causal determinism >you've been suggesting and 'an entire wavefront of possibilities'. >Physicists treat quantum events as though they are truly random events >that follow a known probability distribution. The so-called 'collapse' of >the wave function is the actual position at the time of measurement. It >cannot be predicted, only observed. Since you wrote this, I've done some deeper reading into quantum mechanics, and now understand the issues much better than I did before. I was wrong, and you were right. Quantum physics doesn't allow us to predict anything except in a probabilistic way. The wave function only collapses at the moment of actual interaction. Not human observation; that is not necessary. I can describe an experiment which demonstrates this But this does not give one free will that a computer cannot have; QM applies equally to human brains and computer circuits. If you wish to argue that it applies better to brains than circuits, then you have to show that human neurons amplify quantum effects in a way that electronic circuits do not. Even if you could, the electronic circuits could be modified to do the same kind of amplification. If humans can have free will, then computers can too, unless you define free will as something only humans have. In which case you have assumed what you wish to prove. In any case, QM does not give anything free will, unless you are willing to define free will simply as a matter of an imprecise modelling, an inability to predict the next state. A simple thought experiment will show this. Suppose that a man gives up his 'free will', and agrees to be told what to do. From this point onward, he is a puppet. His instructions come from a computer screen in front of him. He can be told to press either the button marked _yin_, or the one marked _yang_. The computer is connected to a measuring device like the one in Schroedinger's box. That is, there is a 50% probability (from the wave function of the isotope) that the computer will instruct him to press yin or yang. So the computer opens the shutter, waits the specified time, and looks at the scintillation counter. No emission happened; the wave function collapsed and the isotope did not decay. So the computer instructs the man to press yang, and he does. Is this free will? Or just indeterminancy? >>That which we define as Mind is an observable information behavioral >>phenomenon. That is to say, there is some set of behaviors sharing >>certain characteristics that we label as Mind. > >That is not what I define as Mind. Who are 'we'? As far as I can tell, the >whole problem that Science has with Mind is that it insists on reducing it >to something it can observe. All things must be experienced to be known. That which is not observed is not known. Don't tell me atoms are not observed; they are indeed observed, though indirectly. After all, how did you originally learn about Mind? It was either by having certain phenomena pointed out to you and labelled with the term (from which your brain generalized the concept), or by being defined as a grammatical collection of other words, each of which in turn either has a basis in observation of phenomena or is defined with other words and so on. At some point all the words must be associated with observed phenomena or you don't know what they mean. >> In order to have knowledge of something, one must observe it or >>infer it from observable phenomena. > >Or, we could _experience_ it. Experience is observation. >I, for one, have no reason to believe that the human mind transcends >physical law. For those of you who feel that this implies that there is no >thing as free will, I suppose that we can leave it at that. My gripe here >is with a particular defense of the 'the will is not free' position. Well, like I said, I will back off on the computability portion of the argument. But I warned you that I was a radical empiricist, and on that position I will stand. I am also convinced that it is reasonable to say that 'free will' and 'incomplete modelling' are equally potent ways of talking about certain aspects of human behavior. The notion of incomplete modelling is more powerful in several ways. 1. It is more general. It accounts for the behavior of not only humans but a whole multitude of other physical systems. 2. It is more testable. You can come up with ways to falsify it. You can't falsify 'because I felt like it'. 3. It is more repeatable. You can try the same thing a lot of times on a lot of different people and get a nice probability curve, even when some of the parts of the model remain unknown. Dan Hankins
dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) (05/06/89)
In article <3019@tank.uchicago.edu> cs_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes: >Now look around you. Your terminal, your desk, your hands, your clothes - >almost everything that surrounds you is in an EXTREMELY low probability >position. We're supposed to believe that life started in some protein/amino >acid soup some billion or so years ago and then randomly grew to the point >it exists today. The probabilities of such an accident occurring according >to the known laws of physics is infinitesmally small. I don't think so. In a universe this size, I would think that the odds that something self-organizing and reproducing would get started are pretty good. If in fact the odds of something like that getting started are really that small, then I must remind you that it only had to happen _once_. Once you have things that are self-organizing and reproducing in an environment where work can be done (i.e. not yet at maximum entropy), then the odds begin to work for you; the principles of evolution take over. The many-worlds view of quantum physics, which makes precisely the same predictions and is no less subject to Occam's Razor, makes life here even more plausible. With all possibilities realized in the form of 'splitting' universes, we happen to live in the one where the initial accident did happen. >Let me characterize the unknown force which impels the ever-increasing >organization of the biosystem as Mind. I have no need of that hypothesis. I've seen Genetic Algorithms in action. They work, and all in accordance with the laws of probability. >Has modern physics ever shown that no such force exists? Having made the hypothesis, the burden of proof is on you to show that it does exist, not on others to show that it does not. That's how scientific method works. I could hypothesize that Pluto is inhabited by little green men who live underground. Am I correct until someone shows me that no such thing exists? >Have they ever even tried to explain it? Do you mean your hypothesis that a force of consciousness called Mind causes the local reversal of entropy in the biosphere? They're not required to. If you mean the reversal of entropy itself, it is well explained by probabilistic laws. >Am I really supposed to believe that such a thing can really happen by >random accident? Yes. >If a force exists which is capable of establishing such an enormously 'low >probability wave function' as the Earth's biosystem, in complete >contradiction to the laws of physical probability as we currently >comprehend them, why can't you accept the possibility that maybe, just >maybe, this same force really is capable of choice, which YOU have >characterized as the ability to consistantly move matter into low >probability locations? Because the probability function of the Earth's biosystem is not as low-probability as you think. Flip a hundred coins, numbered one to 100. The probability of coming up with the particular sequence you got is roughly 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Yet there it is, staring you in the face. And you will find that if you do it enough times, certain _kinds_ of sequences happen more often than others. For instance, sequences containing 50 heads and 50 tails will show up more often than any other. Like I said before, only the initial self-organizing reproducing organism needed to be formed by chance. And in a Universe this size existing for this amount of time, the odds that _one_ such gadget would come about are not that bad. Dan Hankins
wallingf@cpsvax.cps.msu.edu (Eugene Wallingford) (05/06/89)
In article <18020@cup.portal.com> Daniel B. Hankins writes: > > 'Man is the measure of all things' is a recent idea, stemming largely -------------------------------- >from Judeo-Christian notions of the place of Man in the Universe. Some >cultures still do not share it. No wonder our distant ancestors believed >that free will can be ascribed in equal measure to all active and >capricious things, from animals to weather. > Just a side note... I believe it was Protagoras who made this point the cornerstaone of his philosophy. When and where did Protagoras live? As I also recall from a distant philosophy class, this notion fell out of favor with most metaphysicians for a particular reason. Can anyone fill me in?
mccoy@accuvax.nwu.edu (Jim McCoy ) (05/12/89)
In article <2879@cps3xx.UUCP> wallingf@cpsvax.UUCP (Eugene Wallingford) writes: >In article <18020@cup.portal.com> Daniel B. Hankins writes: > >> >> 'Man is the measure of all things' is a recent idea, stemming largely > -------------------------------- >>from Judeo-Christian notions of the place of Man in the Universe. Some >>cultures still do not share it. No wonder our distant ancestors believed >>that free will can be ascribed in equal measure to all active and >>capricious things, from animals to weather. >> > >Just a side note... I believe it was Protagoras who made this point >the cornerstaone of his philosophy. When and where did Protagoras live? >As I also recall from a distant philosophy class, this notion fell out >of favor with most metaphysicians for a particular reason. Can anyone >fill me in? You are correct. Protagoras was a Greek philosohper who lived in the 5th century BC (i think ...) who proposed this idea. This is the cornerstone of the competitive nature of the greek system, and you will find this idea laced through-out the works of plato, and others of this era (the "Golden Age of Greece"). This was in NO way a judeo-christian idea and had been around for a LONG time. This idea was used to supplant the nature of the greek religious system (not openly, of course), for using this justification, one could no longer claim that everything was the work of the gods or because of devine will. Previous to this, it is beleived that the fundemental nature of the greek religious system was based on a quid pro quo nature with the gods: if you performed a sacrifice (using the proper ceremony) the god would grant you a favor, but if the ceremony was performed wrong (or not enough was sacrificed) then disaster would befall you. This system made it very easy to place blame on devine will ("It wasn't my fault, Apollo was jealous of the sacrifice Pericles made to Zues yesterday and was not in the mood to grant me a boon"). But, this digress into classics and need a quick push back onto track. BTW, what was the original topic :-) jim ------------------------------< Jim McCoy >------------------------------------ mccoy@accuvax.nwu.edu | "...far too many notes for my taste" .oddjob!nucsrl!blekko!holmes!mccoy | -Phantom of the Opera -------------------------(#include <disclaimer.h>)-----------------------------