Mike - thank you for posting some substance. I will give it a read. Gotta get some pizza figured out in my life after my early Friday evening nap. Then I will be back. Thanks again.
Mike - thank you for posting some substance. I will give it a read. Gotta get some pizza figured out in my life after my early Friday evening nap. Then I will be back. Thanks again.
Are you referring to my "Please disregard. I was in the wrong thread." post?
Mike, I know you aren't asking a critique, but I do think it's well written in substance. Im not sure how the rest of the book plays out in terms of defining your terms. You have probably handled that in other preliminary sections. Im thinking from a developmental editing perspective you may be leading the audience into your perspective somewhat
Quote
If you think free will is complicated or mysterious right now, this is just the beginning! It’s going to get worse, and soon.
Free will has always been an edgy item, but with the rapid advance of A.I. and robots, all public thought about free will is poised to plunge over a Niagara Falls of churning confusion.
For example: Why is it edgy for some? Maybe there are those in the scientific community who don't think it's edgy at all and could be more dismissive on that basis. Perhaps with clearly defining your terms (and for all I know you have) you would be able to lead other's who wouldn't consider this perspective into a braodened point of view with you leading the way with your work you are presenting. However, Im not here to do a developmental edit, or any editing at all really.
The topic is new to me from a scientific point of view so I did enjoy the read and enlarging my understanding somewhat in a direction I don't typically go on such matters - science. I think from a "religous" perspective freewill is perhaps oversimplified or perhaps it's just that simple but it basically comes down to the ability to make a choice between multiple options. Of course in this context concepts such as right/wrong come into play and it get's muddied very quickly. Gonna peruse it a little more later but nice work!
P.S. - I did see definitions devolop somewhat as the chapter progressed, so it's not like it's ignored. I just mean possibly defining them up front before progressing.
My theory can be a little bit rambling, because I am developing the ideas as I write, sometimes. The next effort will be more elegant, hopefully.
I tend to write in the same manner. Sometimes it's a matter of getting thoughts out onto the computer screen and then coming back around to straighten it all out.
I tend to write in the same manner. Sometimes it's a matter of getting thoughts out onto the computer screen and then coming back around to straighten it all out.
Yes! Personally, I do better getting ideas out on paper going from the basic premise that the mind is better suited for coming up with ideas versus remembering them. Some writers prefer to be more techinical up front, outlines and such. I've written that way before but in the end felt stifled.
I tend to write in the same manner. Sometimes it's a matter of getting thoughts out onto the computer screen and then coming back around to straighten it all out.
Yes, and sometimes you just need to get away from it for a while to do a real proofread.
Mike, I know you aren't asking a critique, but I do think it's well written in substance. Im not sure how the rest of the book plays out in terms of defining your terms. You have probably handled that in other preliminary sections. Im thinking from a developmental editing perspective you may be leading the audience into your perspective somewhat
For example: Why is it edgy for some? Maybe there are those in the scientific community who don't think it's edgy at all and could be more dismissive on that basis. Perhaps with clearly defining your terms (and for all I know you have) you would be able to lead other's who wouldn't consider this perspective into a braodened point of view with you leading the way with your work you are presenting. However, Im not here to do a developmental edit, or any editing at all really.
The topic is new to me from a scientific point of view so I did enjoy the read and enlarging my understanding somewhat in a direction I don't typically go on such matters - science. I think from a "religous" perspective freewill is perhaps oversimplified or perhaps it's just that simple but it basically comes down to the ability to make a choice between multiple options. Of course in this context concepts such as right/wrong come into play and it get's muddied very quickly. Gonna peruse it a little more later but nice work!
P.S. - I did see definitions devolop somewhat as the chapter progressed, so it's not like it's ignored. I just mean possibly defining them up front before progressing.
Thanks much for that.
I value critiques.
The edgy part comes in where people, sometimes even scientists, who have political or personal bias. Many think the judicial system is skewed due to outmoded ideas of free will. Others see their own personal failings as in the spotlight when free will is discussed. Many feel discouraged with their attempts to quit smoking, to eat better and exercise, and free will means weak will power to them. I see lots of personal and political edginess in the faces of people I discuss free will with.
The rest of the book is pretty wild, IMO. I was surprised at every turn in this project. The beginning was especially surprising, because it was in the solution to the mirror riddle that I saw this new strategy for dealing with free will. This was one of the biggest surprises of my life. It happened quite accidentally.
That is chapter 1 of my book. It should start off some discussions.
I'll explain more about this book soon.
Anyone who takes Mike seriously on this subject probably is more than one can short of a six pack.
WHY does anyone feed this troll?
And why is this thread in "About the Way?"
WTAF!
4 hours ago, Mike said:
Another very ODD part of the confusion, wrapped up in centuries old debates on FW versus determinism, is that the thoughts generated in such debates can trick some people to drift into a mini cognitive dissonance.
4 hours ago, Mike said:
For 25 years I’ve been anticipating the days we are living in right now with Artificial Intelligence all around us and growing fast. It’s just a short time away and children will be asking adults if robots have feelings or free will.
Anyone who takes Mike seriously on this subject probably is more than one can short of a six pack. Mike: How many cans can I have if I don't take myself seriously?
And why is this thread in "About the Way?" Mike: LoL I asked the same question.
I think it is so the music director can see it.
BTW, my approach to FW is not the usual philosophical one where I try to make the words sound elegant.
To me our biological mechanism for making decisions is NOT something grand and spectacular, like philosophy and religion have tried to make it sound.
Just the opposite, my hunch is that it is simple and biological, AND that it barely works.
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In addition to thinking of it to be LIKE a muscle, I think free will is LITERALLY complicated learning.
The concept of free will got real complicated, unnecessarily, around the year 1200 A.D., and my efforts are largely to unravel those complications.
So minFW is like a muscle,
but literally minFW is learning.
I would think that a biological / electrochemical approach is demystifying compared to a philosophical or religious analysis - mainly because the scientific method of observation and experimentation deals with hard evidence. …Whereas exploring the metaphysical is a lot of speculation working from a certain theory of what is true.
I find Freewill versus robotic or automatic responses/ reflexes interesting on a personal level - in my battle to control my weight - I stress out over can I muster up enough willpower to change a bad habit of porking out at the dinner table
The edgy part comes in where people, sometimes even scientists, who have political or personal bias. Many think the judicial system is skewed due to outmoded ideas of free will. Others see their own personal failings as in the spotlight when free will is discussed. Many feel discouraged with their attempts to quit smoking, to eat better and exercise, and free will means weak will power to them. I see lots of personal and political edginess in the faces of people I discuss free will with.
Yeah that’s my problem - now you can see from my previous post why I’m so edgy
The edgy part comes in where people, sometimes even scientists, who have political or personal bias. Many think the judicial system is skewed due to outmoded ideas of free will. Others see their own personal failings as in the spotlight when free will is discussed. Many feel discouraged with their attempts to quit smoking, to eat better and exercise, and free will means weak will power to them. I see lots of personal and political edginess in the faces of people I discuss free will with.
Im thinking that personal or political bias are more elements that help form a person's decisions, and though are contributing factors in the process, are also independant of one's free will. I say this because someone could arrive at the same conclusions as someone with personal or political bias independant of said bias.
I can understand freewill meaning weak will power to people, especially in our modern society where so many values, such as basic discipline, have been eroded. We are the informercial generation...lol....give us a product that makes life quick and easy and most of us are happy. Im not discounting the medical side of addictions such as smoking, or even mental disorders that can cause people to over/binge eat. Sometimes people just need help with these issues and all the freewill in the world will not overcome the addiction.
Im thinking along the lines of T-Bone that a metaphysical approach tends to be more inconvlusive versus biological / electrochemical approach. Why? Well, as soon as you introduce varying standards that influence free will then you are really down to a bowl of spaghetti becuase most people have their own standards (religous/moral tenets) for how they arrive at decisions and that could be based on an inderterminate number of factors that could be damn near impossible to quantify in any standardized fashion for comparison.
Yeah that’s my problem - now you can see from my previous post why I’m so edgy
I can completely sympathize, and not at all from a distance. I think everyone has self control issues like this. I had to blast through my edginess to discuss free will at Starbucks with strangers, only to often see the edginess in their faces.
I think Romans 7b keys in on this universal self discouragement with added spiritual stakes, and everyone can relate to it.
It looks to be the case that in the Middle Ages Thomas Aquinas confused the study of free will by putting it into the spiritual realm, instead of simple Biology. My hunch is that he used this verse addressed to Christians as a central idea in his free will analysis:
1 Corinthians 10:13
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man:
but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able;
but will with the temptation also make a way to escape,
that ye may be able to bear it.
It appears that there can be a spiritual boost that comes from being born again with spirit inside. The Enlightenment Philosophers tried to secularize this notion, but it ended up confusing the situation. The form of free will that Western Science has struggled with for the past couple hundred years still had the supernatural attached to it. This is why I opted to start out with the simple Biology of simple body and soul humans. Later, we can try and figure out how spirit interacts with the flesh.
Here is a Table of Contents for what I have written
so far in this book “Minimalistic Free Will.”
Chap. 1 - Introduction to the Need
Chap. 2 - The Theory
Chap. 3 - Minimal Robot Selves
Chap. 4 - Origins of minFW
Chap. 5 - Determinism
Chap. 6 - A General Theory on Deterministic Freedoms
A new approach to the free-will problem is to ask for drastically less freedom in exchange for a “peace treaty” with determinism.
Advocates of free will have been asking for way too much freedom, and it has led only to dead ends in the face of modern neuroscience. The way free will has often been defined puts it direct defiance of the well-established determinism in Physics and Chemistry.
Modern scientific determinism is used all the time to give us marvelous benefits in technology. Should we then expect that Biology is unable to exploit determinism in much the same way to give us consciousness, qualia, and will?It is the well-founded assumption of modern neuroscience that determinism fires ALL the nuts and bolts of the human brain’s consciousness. I am in total agreement with this.
In addition, I wish to assert that surprisingly free choices can be made, if the right tricky manipulations are made on these same deterministic factors.
In other words, there are ways that determinism can be turned on itself, and the result can be viewed as a “weak” form of free will.However, some long-standing intuitions on how freedom works will be challenged by this new form of Minimalistic Free Will, so prepare for a bumpy ride.
To keep them clearly separate, I’ll call this new and deliberately weakened form “minFW” to distinguish it from classical Libertarian Free Will, or “LibFW.”
The old, semi-magical idea of free will has pretty well dominated the thinking world for many centuries. It is also called Contra-Causal Free Will by some. Daniel Dennett brought up the idea that we should pursue the “varieties of free will worth wanting” and it was this tip from Dennett that started me thinking of minFW.
I purposely designed my theory to ask for MUCH LESS, in hopes of finding a new kind of freedom, one that is in 100% agreement with determinism. My thinking is that even a very small amount of freedom can add up significantly, through repeated applications.
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For many years now, various strategies to clarify free will regarded determinism as an enemy, and searched for ways to elude or nullify it. The long-term failure of Roger Penrose (see Chapter 5) to find any real determinism relief like this with Quantum Mechanics (also with Gödel’s Theorem) has convinced me to look in other directions.
This new minFW theory abandons those kinds of efforts to nullify determinism, but befriends it instead, and tries to use determinism, like it’s used all time in engineering and science.
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A brief preview of minFW:
.
It is the ability (or freedom)
to adjust one’s own synapses,
in order to perform better
the next time.
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In this theory, ZERO freedom is to be found at the time of a performance. All performances are accepted as robotic, and completely determined by prior synapse settings. Any small “amounts” of freedom come a little later, after this fully robotic performance… maybe. It must be done with sufficient energy and precision.
Put in discrete steps:
(1) ALL of my performances are robotic.
(2) I can somewhat observe my own performances.
(3) If I judge a performance to be sub-standard,
then I can prepare for my next robotic performance,
and possibly achieve a better one.
All of my actions in all 3 steps are assumed to be robotic, including the judging and preparation. I do have the biological abilities to TRY all this, and sometimes achieve success in modifying my own behavior.
Since all this is 100% deterministic, there is no inherent reason why this can’t be installed in an A.I. based robot that could handle all the inputs. The practical reasons that prevent this, are now dissolving with modern technology.
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The kind of minimal freedom or ability I am proposing in minFW is FAR less grandiose, when compared to LibFW.
This Minimalistic FW is NOT the same kind of magical, powerful, instantaneous freedom that LibFW promises. Quite the contrary, minFW takes time, effort, and if the effort isn’t smart enough it can fail. There is no guarantee that minFW will work at all.When it does work it’s usually partial.
However, partially successful minFW performances can add up.
Multiple attempts to behave contrary to the deterministic synapse settings that are inherited from yesterday can sometimes succeed, with just the right efforts.
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I contend that Libertarian Free Will is physically impossible, in that it requires a magical waiver from the laws of physics to operate. This is the classic free will versus determinism dilemma. This theoretical LibFW is a type of free will that is somehow immune to the determinism of natural Biological laws of past learning wrapped up in the Chemistry and Physics.
But free wills that can overrule Physics are not really needed for common, everyday living, nor can they be seen in real life. Magically free wills are not at all what is needed for us to responsibly control our lives, and function independently, and improve as we grow.
I am proposing a bare-bones model for free will here that will fill the bill for what we NEED in effectively operating our lives, YET it has no conflict with determinism. In fact, it uses determinism to operate, as we will soon see.
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Acting robotically is easy and sometimes preferable.
When acting robotically you don’t have to think so much about what’s going on, and going with the flow like this is a pretty normal mode of mind. But some other situations are not so easy, and require some clear focus and thought, and require some sort of appropriate response.
We sometimes walk into situations that require ethical decisions, and THAT’S when we usually think about using our best thinking, and that’s when free will might be most useful.
So, when I walk into an ethical situation it seems reasonable that I could use these two modes of thought: robotics and deep thought free will.But are we really in that fine-tuned control of our brain and mind? Let’s explore a few such situations with this new theory of minFW.
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AMOTORCYCLEANALOGY
Please allow me to give an ULTRA simplified analogy for this new model of free will, this Minimalist Free Will, or minFW.It doesn’t actually explain very much of the theory, but it can show how it differs from LibFW, and will be useful in keeping track of timing issues.
Imagine you are riding a small motorcycle late at night on empty roads, and are stopped at a red light. After waiting some time, you realize that your bike is not big enough to trip the sensing ground wires to the stoplight. This is hampering your freedom to ride. Your bike can’t trip the green light for you.
In this analogy your bike’s small metal content represents the settings of your brain’s synapses. It represents all that you have ever learned and experienced. This is pretty much an oversimplified analogy, but I think it will still work for what it’s designed. I plan to merely use it as a guide or template as we proceed, and NOT as an explanation of the brain’s functioning.
So, with your small motorcycle, let’s first see how Libertarian Free Will (LibFW) would work in this analogy. You arrive at the stoplight, and as soon as you realize that the bike can’t trip the switch, YOU magically trip the stoplight with nothing but the power of your LibFW, in spite of the bike’s low metal content.
This use of LibFW constitutes an override or a waiver from the electrical determinism of the sensing ground wires, bike metal, and stoplight circuitry. It takes no effort to exercise this kind of free will. You engage this magical LibFW, causing the stoplight to soon change to green, and you are now FREE to ride through the intersection.
If this LibFW sounds silly, it’s because I’m being purposefully dismissive. I have come to see it as resembling a scene in the old TV comedy series “Bewitched” where Samantha twitches her nose, and FLASH! … a magical event occurs!
Libertarian Free Will means freedom from all the Physics, Chemistry, and Neurobiology that would otherwise “force” us to act differently. LibFW is a lot like magic or a mini-miracle, and this is one reason it is unpopular in a lot of science circles these days.
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Now, in this ultra-simplified motorcycle analogy, let’s switch over to my new Minimalist Free Will model. This is surprisingly simple at first.With minFW you are SIMPLY STUCK when you reach the stoplight.That’s the end of this story with minFW.
There is no way to trip the light with your will. There is nothing in your minFW powered will that can affect the metal content of your bike, or cause the sense wires to trip the stoplight circuitry. So far, you are not experiencing any freedom at this intersection.
However, (and this is key) you ARE ABLE TO OBSERVE this dire situation, and realize that your freedom to ride your bike is being thwarted.Being a law-abiding citizen, you must turn around and give up in defeat, find another route, or wait for a car to come by to trip the light for you. This is not a good situation and there is no freedom to ride here.
However, upon later remembering your observed failure, and planning ahead for the NEXT time you want to ride through this intersection, you can bring some extra metal with you. Or, you could use a heavier bike. The next time you come to this same stoplight you can gain some freedom to ride, because the extra metal helps trip the traffic light's sensors!
The extra metal interacts deterministically with the electrical sense wires buried in the pavement, and so the next time you successfully trip the light, and are free to exercise your will to ride. This freedom to ride took some alert observations, and it took some work, and planning, and time, but eventually freedom to ride happened.
Plus, it could have failed if not enough extra metal was brought.
By bringing enough extra metal you have gained freedom from being stuck at the light; but not instantaneously, not effortlessly, and not magically. You used determinism to execute your will. It took some effort and it took some time and repetition. You paid for this freedom; this freedom was not free of cost.
So, minFW is expensive; it ain’t cheap.
In this analogy that illustrates the strange timing of minFW, we see zero freedom displayed in real time when first encountering the stoplight. The freedom showed up later, after a change in the configuration.
This delayed timing of the freedom in minFW is both crucial, and a hard lump to swallow.
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HOWminFWWORKS
When I walk into a situation that involves simple ethics, my instantaneous response is going to be 100% robotic, and fully determined by the brain synapses with which I carry into it.
Physical determinism dictates that I have NO ability or freedom to act otherwise; only what my prior settings dictate my response to be in this situation. It’s like a knee-jerk reflex, only many small such reflexes smoothly joined to produce smooth robotic motion.
This is not freedom. Being stuck at the stoplight on the small motorcycle is analogous to being stuck in this kind of robotic performance. Suppose, in this ethics situation, I was unprepared for the complexities and I fumbled my response in some way. My prior synapse settings failed me!That is life.
However, I am able to observe my inappropriate (robotic) response to the situation, and realize that it did not go according to my wishes. I had previous expectations as to how I ought to act in such a situation, and I am unhappy with my performance. I failed to act according to my expectations, my creed, my principles, my training.
HOWEVER, the NEXT time I encounter a similar situation it can turn out different.
Being unhappy with my performance means I compared it with my internally stored “will” or expectations, and my performance did not line up properly.
I had built some expectations of how I’d handle that kind of situation, and it was obvious to me that I fell short. These expectations are like a written will, or a credo, or a set of guiding principles that I had built within me from parents and family, from all my teachers, and all my life’s experiences. How these expectations were built is not important here. We all get this by relatively accidental means as children, and then we can tinker with it some as we grow.
What is important here is that I can HAVE such a set of guiding principles or expectations pre-installed in my mind before walking into that ethics situation.
What is also important is that I can observe and evaluate my robotic performance in that situation, the first time I encountered it. I can’t do anything about it but respond robotically. I just accept my actions as inevitable.
HOWEVER, the NEXT time I encounter a similar situation it can turn out different.
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I can rehearse in my mind how I will behave better that next time. I can memorize reasons why it is important for me to behave better. There are many other ways I can adjust my own brain synapses to prepare for the next event.
This takes work, and smart work at that. Bringing extra metal to the stoplight is analogous to this work.
With my newer set of synapses, all interacting deterministically in the next similar situation, my next robotic performance can be a little better, or maybe right on target!
This second time I walk into the situation, I’m ready to perform my robotic, “smooth knee-jerk” reaction, but THIS TIME with some different synapse settings, ones that line up better with my internal expectations.
It might take a few more repetitions before I can finally succeed in smoothly performing according to my expectations. It often takes some smart work, and planning, and diligence in repetition.
By working my mind with new learning and synapse weightings I have gained freedom from being stuck in my previous mode of behavior. But none of this came instantaneously, effortlessly, and magically. I had to use determinism to execute my will. It took some effort and it took some time to evolve, and some repetition.
I paid for this little bit of freedom; this freedom was not free of cost.
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Because this is SO radically different from classical free will, let’s quickly review it. Here in a nutshell how this theory works:
Oops! My robotic performance just failed
to match up to my standards !!!
Ok, NEXT time I’ll be ready for it,
and I’ll do better.
That’s it!It’s a pretty minimal theory.
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Below are some lyrics to the song “Stairway to Heaven” that look a lot like minFW.
“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow,
don’t be alarmed now.
It’s just a spring clean for the May queen.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by,
but in the long run
There’s still time
to change the road you’re on.”
This is almost the same as minFW
1 - wrong road is chosen (robotically).
2 - Wrongness of that road is recognized (robotically).
3 - With a time delay, and some smart synapse adjustment, the right road can be chosen (robotically).
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I can now think of my minFW as having some partial control over the route I take.
Of course, other factors will still have their strong say-so, as well. My steerage may be skiddy and partial, like driving on mud, and it requires my skills to be sharpened for maximum effect of this route freedom. It takes practice and work to exercise this kind of Minimalist Free Will.
This kind of free will is important to us, so we can improve ourselves, and learn how to behave in more happy ways, and thus inspiring others to do the same. It’s a freedom (or ability) to LEARN and change our own synapses in DESIRED (or willed) direction, but it takes effort and time.
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In previous sections, I used an ethics situation to illustrate minFW in action, as I walked into the situation and responded. My response, in first encountering that ethics situation was an un-free, destined, determined performance, in other words a totally robotic performance.
As first encounters often go, I was unhappy with my performance as I compared it with the set of ethics scenarios I had been trained on. So, compared to my internal expectations, I failed that first round, and I clearly noticed my robotic failure.
Afterwards, I had a chance to plan and rehearse my NEXT performance, and become ready to encounter similar circumstances differently.
This is all that is really needed in free will; freedom to perform better in life’s situations; freedom to LEARN how to steer a better course. This is the amount of free will worth wanting, to me.
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This is a very bland model for minFW that I am proposing.
It’s all synapse dependent and determined, yet it gives me a little bit of a rudder to steer my boat. There is nothing mystical or dualistic in here. It is 100% deterministic, yet it still affords me a little bit of control over my life, in spite of the obstacles, setbacks, and bad decisions. This much freedom is impressive in a 100% deterministic world!
Still it seems like a bland idea, compared to Libertarian FW.
This model of Minimalist Free Will is almost boring, because it’s so non-mystical, so non-grandiose. Centuries of thought went into building ridiculous expectations of free will, and this puny minFW deflates them all.
But we don’t NEED very much free will! Having a large repertoire of good pure robotic responses is convenient and sufficient most of the time. Life would be too cumbersome if many long lasting free-will decisions were demanded of us.
Not only are robotic behaviors easier, but sometimes can be more fun as well. I’m thinking of dance as a prime example. What about sports?
Repeatedly making OUR OWN minor adjustments in our own synapses can sometimes effectively compete with all the other deterministic forces that would, otherwise, be the major controlling and steering for our destiny. This is how a competent “self” arises.
With a boat, repeatedly making minor adjustments in the motor and rudder can effectively compete with all the other deterministic forces (wind & water) that would otherwise control and steer our boating destiny.
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This minFW that I am describing is like a muscle and it needs exercise in order to become strong. With repetition, it can sometimes become stronger than prior training influences and inherited DNA influences. Thus, we can slowly become the ultimate captain of our own ship. (no guarantee, though)
I can even see animals and robots having this kind of minimalist free will, but not in nearly as rich a form as ours… yet. They probably don’t have as complex an internal will to compare their performances to, and probably less ability to smartly prepare for improved performances. Still, I see the same principles can work for them (animals and robots) as for us.
For centuries models of free will have been metaphysical, mystical, dualistic, and grandiose. This minFW is a simple garden variety type.
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The “amount of freedom” in minFW is partial and weak, and takes a lot of effort and repetition to make it happen. That sounds like real life where people struggle with their own will and will power.
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SHOOTINGBASKETBALLHOOPS
The following surprised me late in the process of developing this theory. I did not expect it, but there it was one day. It was a simple logical consequence to what minFW was hammered out to be.
This surprise situation will be very similar to previous pages, except for the ethics situation I’m going to substitute shooting basketball hoops in its place. In other words, I want to now apply this minFW theory to learning how to shoot basketball hoops.
This is NOT an analogy; it’s an application.
Instead of an internal set of complex principles or expectations that revolve around an ethical situation, this merely involves a few of the rules of basketball hoop shooting. This GREATLY simplifies the situation down from complicated ethics to simple motor skills.
The only “ethical” principles here are
(1) stand on the line and
(2) throw the ball through the hoop.
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Imagine yourself to have never tried to sink a basket in this sport. When you walk into this hoop-shooting situation you respond to it robotically with no freedom to depart from what your “throwing synapses” are pre-set to determine in your performance.
You possess zero basketball skill in your real-time response, your first throw, but in REPEATED OCCURRENCES it (skill) can show up indirectly, as a learned behavior.
You shoot; you miss!
You are unhappy with your awkward shot, but a few seconds later you have ANOTHER chance to respond better. You note where your shot went wrong and imagine your muscles tipping slightly to compensate.
Being unhappy with your first performance means you compared it with your internal, stored “will” and the two did not line up properly. You had clear hopes of sinking your first shot, but a second later it was obvious to you that you fell short.
These expectations are the set of two rules in basketball hoop-shooting that you had built within your memory from seeing others do it. How this was built in you is not important here.
What is important is that you can have such a set of guiding principles or expectations pre-installed in your mind before walking into this hoop-shooting situation. What is also important is that you can observe and evaluate your robotic performance in this situation, this first time you encounter it.
Your failed performance in that first situation was a destined, determined, failed performance; a 100% robotic performance.
HOWEVER, you have a chance to plan and mentally rehearse your NEXT performance, and make yourself ready to encounter a similar situation differently. This can possibly be the emergence of a new basketball throwing skill for you.
You retrieve the ball after your miss, and your next time comes very quickly.
Maybe it will take 10 repetitions to alter your synapses enough to get your throwing performance to please you. You are able, with repeated effort, to contribute to the synapse weighting with which you aim and shoot the ball, more and more successfully.
This is all that is really needed in learning to shoot hoops in basketball; it’s freedom to do better, the ability (the freedom) to learn how to steer your repeated shots accurately.
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This is an exciting development! It looks like minFW is just ultra-complicated learning, but learning non-the less, and IDENTICAL to learning a simple motor skill!
In this analysis, learning a basketball throwing skill has been shown to be EQUAL to exercising some simple minFW.
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Though bland in its design, minFW takes a highly sophisticated notion like ethical behavior and reduces it to the simplicity of rats running a maze or humans shooting baskets.It seems that if minFW is biologically correct, free will is nothing but complex learning!
Put another way, this minFW is just a super complicated amalgamation of learning micro skills. It’s a freedom (or ability) to learn and change our own synapses in DESIRED (or willed) directions.
This reduces minFW to lots of small learned skills and the ability to learn more.
So, if laboratory inquiries happen to verify this kind of minFW as the true biological variety, that means our collection of these tiny skills demonstrate the “amount” of free will we have accumulated so far in life.
In other words, our free will changes every day according to what tiny skills we learn and build into it, daily.
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SAILBOATFREEDOM
This new model for minFW is very counterintuitive, especially if one is very familiar with the concepts and timing of LibFW. It is not easy to visualize this new type of freedom, but I’ve been working on some ways to help.
Pointing out the timing is one such way to help. Thinkers have been totally accustomed, via LibFW, to the idea that freedom MUST happen immediately, that is, simultaneous with the performance.
Less insistent, it seems, are classical thinkers on the idea of LibFW’s efficiency. I think that most of them feel their idea of FW is more metaphysical than physical, and it’s guaranteed to work 100% of the time, once invoked.
But even when we get it straight that minFW happens a little later, AND that it is only partial, AND that it takes energy to invoke, AND must be “smart” energy for efficiency, AND must TAKE energy to invoke, as well as repetition, AND… we STILL have a hard time believing that any freedom can actually be squeezed out of a 100% deterministic mechanism.
We have a profound bias against determinism, as being a freedom robber. Many of our circuits are saying that such a novel minFW idea must be CRAZY!And then it becomes even harder to visualize how it can happen.
These green and red sections need some re-writing:
But a marvelous thing happened in the world of sophisticated technology one day, and
I suddenly now have a new ADDITIONAL way to visualize genuine freedom emerging from another 100% deterministic mechanism. This sophisticated technological mechanism is new to me, but it’s been around for a while. Actually, it’s been around for about 22 centuries!
I am talking about SAILBOATS.
I was a Physics major fifty years ago, but never understood (or cared about) how sailboats worked. Now, I recently have come to see them as marvelous demonstrations of tricky determinism manipulation, being used to squeak out a useful amount of freedom.
I had not known that when the wind blows to the East, a sailboat can journey to a port directly West. I had not known that sailboats could sail a course that is directly AGAINST THE WIND.
Getting a deep feel for how a sailboat is a determinism converter promises to give greater understanding as to how minFW can squeak out a useful amount of freedom. With minFW we can actually sail our lives almost directly AGAINST THE WIND of our own synaptic sets of lifelong learning and habits.
What I see happening with the sailboat is that, through a tricky use of determinism (wind), the sailboat can achieve motion that APPEARS to defy that same determinism (wind). That is the core of my sailboat analogy. I think we humans can sometimes achieve a performance that SEEMS to defy determinism, through a tricky use of determinism.
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With sailboats the deterministic mechanisms used trickily are wind/water currents, the shape of the rudder and keel, and the shape and angles of the sails.
In the human use of minFW the deterministic mechanisms used trickily are one’s own synaptic brain settings, one’s own memory, and consulting others.
Determinism can be used to make physical systems APPEAR to have a little freedom from determinism.This is the essence of minFW theory.It is also the essence of how a sailboat works.
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This minFW is NOT freedom FROM determinism at all; it just looks that way at first glance. Partial freedom from the “self” of the past is what actually can be done with tricky determinism manipulations.
It is only an illusion that sometimes in life it might look like our biological equipment offers a little freedom FROM determinism, itself. If accounts of these seemingly free performances are magnified enough by poetry and philosophy, LibFW theories thrive.
The deterministic freedom that minFW allows is freedom or ability to move in life toward a desired goal, in spite of the past, and it does it by manipulating determinism in tricky ways.
Ditto the above for sailboats.
It is only an illusion that sailing against the wind might look like a little freedom FROM determinism (wind). The freedom that sailing allows is freedom or ability to sail a course toward a desired goal, in spite of the wind direction, and it does it by manipulating determinism (wind) in a tricky way.
For sailboats determinism makes some freedom possible, and the same is true in humans. Determinism HELPS us human robots to be a little bit free.
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The minFW theory says we are basically complicated robots, but wonderful robots that have the freedom to change, can have an internal will, and can improve it. We can be responsible robots. We can even be free robots, free of some constraints, but not all.
The freedom comes in being able to self-adjust our synapses, so that we are better robots the NEXT time we need to perform. But that self-adjustment is difficult, and not guaranteed. Like the sailboat, it takes repetition, energy, and it must be smart energy for it to work.
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I think that, for our brains, there is a surprising amount of freedom available WITH determinism’s help. It starts out very small, but it can add up.It’s not the immediate, cosmic, magical, total freedom from Physics that LibFW promises. It’s tiny and weak but it can surprisingly add up to substantial change.
Sailboats enjoy a similarly surprising degree of freedom in the ability to sail INTO the wind. It’s all done with Newtonian Physics and its simple determinism.
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Because this freedom is SO counterintuitive, I will repeat this idea from as many angles as possible. Please bear with the repetition if you already get the idea.
Tricky determinism can make physical systems APPEAR to have freedom from determinism. Actually, it is a configuration change that gives rise to a deterministic change.
Tricky determinism in sailboats allows them to sail up-wind, and appear to violate where the Physics would force them to go. But the magic here is an illusion. This is a type of “sailing freedom” from the domination of “wind direction” determinism.
Tricky determinism in humans allows us make decisions against our previous learning and habits, and sometimes even appear to violate where older synapses would have forced us to go. But the magic here is an illusion. This is MERELY a type of “will freedom” from the domination of past learning... through new learning.
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When a sailboat goes against the wind, every step of every process is 100% deterministic. There’s no magic freedom from Physics.
In minFW theory, every step of every process is 100% deterministic. There’s no magic freedom from Physics here, either.
One problem is that most people’s minds are SO primed with LibFW that they can tend to accidentally assume it, or drift over to it in the middle of a discussion about minFW. It’s new. It takes time and repetition to get used to all this.
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Like minFW, sailboat freedom is only partial. You can’t sail DIRECTLY into the wind. Just partially, but then you tack the other way, and it’s another partial gain in the desired direction.And all these partial freedoms in sailing add up:
Wind goes from West to East; sailboat goes from East to West (with tacking).
It LOOKS like a sailboat is not determined by the wind and is free to travel the water. It looks like it has a “waiver from the wind,” but actually there is no magic at all happening. It is an illusion that the boat is free of these wind forces. It uses these forces.
Sailboats are natural and follow natural laws. Their motion is not miraculous in any way. Humans are natural and follow natural laws. Our motion is not miraculous in any way. We can have marvelous benefits from pure robotic performances AND from minFW improvements, in between those performances.
The boat can literally defy the wind’s DIRECTION. The wind threatens to “own” the boat, but the boat goes where IT wants to go, not where the wind wants it to go. I think we humans have a similar setup.
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When I say “tricky” I mean complicated enough to elude our intuitive understanding. But if we think hard and get educated, some of this tricky complication can be untangled.
All my life I had dismissed sailboats as too simple to bother with. Boy! Was I wrong!
If I had not been seduced by powerboats and waterskiing while young, and had played with small sailboats a lot, then things may have gone different. But I was into exotic new Physics like Relativity and Quantum then, so sailboats were considered “finished” and old-fashioned Physics to me. It was several recent strokes of luck that first brought sailing to my attention, right at the time when tricky uses of determinism were the focus of my study.
Sailboat technology is awesomely tricky!Even the ANCIENT parts of it!
Explaining the Physics of how sailboats work is an ominous task, especially in this limited text medium. I can give it a try, though, and also refer to some useful You-Tube videos.
But first, before we go through the intense labor of following a text discussion of all this COMPLICATED stuff, actually seeing the magic is called for. The SIMPLE magic of sailing, the ancient part, can be seen in videos and even in homemade models.
The full determinism story in sailing is so complicated that, on first encountering it looks like magic. The reason for this is the overload of such new information causes a breakdown of our intuitions on how things work.The apparent magic in sailboats is due to our inexperience with the nuts and bolts, the Physics and determinism of sailing.
The ancient marvel of sailing is the ability to sail AGAINST the wind. The wind says to the boat “Go East”but with this ancient trick the boat can go West! This looks like a miracle when it is first seen and grasped. It’s complicated, but we CAN see it in videos.
The more modern “magic” of sailing is that some boats can go even FASTER THAN the wind!The wind says to the boat “Go 20 knots” but with this new trick some special boats can go 40 knots!This modern advance in sailing technology is not as easily visible in videos.
The best SIMPLE video I’ve found so far is at You-Tube and titled “Exploratorium Science at America’s Cup: ‘Sailing 101’” and is at:
It shows sailing perpendicular to the wind at the time of 1 minute, 35 seconds.
It shows sailing against (diagonally) against the wind at 1 min, 45 sec.
It shows sailing against (diagonally) against the wind at 4 min, 11 sec.
There are other videos… many others.
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Let’s paint a more vivid picture of this sailboat analogy.
There happens to be a very large imaginary body of water named Lake Ripple, and it has very dependable wind that always blows from West to East, thus its name.There is a town at the Western end of the lake named Terrapin, and another town on the East end named Fennario. It might help to draw a crude map as you read.
It’s important from the start, though, to not slide off this boat, and fall into the water, by missing this analogy’s aim.
This analogy has nothing to do with the sailboat captain’s free will or any decisions made on board.If you looked at the video suggested above, you saw that there was NO CAPTAIN on that toy boat, yet it went through the step of moving against the wind. A tiny “computer” made of rubber bands and tinker toys could be made to change the rudder and sails to complete a second tack, to correct the error part in the diagonal path of the boat.
So forget about the captain of the boat and his free will. He is not needed. He is on board for decoration ONLY in this analogy.
The freedom in this analogy is NOT about mental free will freedom of the captain’s brain, but is about SAILING FREEDOM, or geometrical navigational freedom.
There is zero free will in this analogy; only sailing freedom.
This mysterious, odd type of “sailing freedom” can teach us something about the even more mysterious and odd kind of freedom we have via minFW.
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On this very large lake, a sailboat captain is FREE to sail to any other dock on the lake, regardless of fact that the wind direction is directly into Fennario.
You are standing at the dock in Fennario right now, looking West, out at the huge Lake Ripple and the wind is in your face. You want to go to Terrapin, barely visible on the other side. The ripples look a bit large today.
The sailboat captain tells you, “Sure, I can take you to Terrapin! No problem. It’ll be easy in this nice wind.”
And he points DIRECTLY into the wind saying, “See that smokestack? That’s Terrapin Station.”
Do you believe him? Can he really get you there, sailing against the wind, with no motor?
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The boat is now in Fennario, and the goal is to sail West to Terrapin, which is AGAINST THE WIND. The boat is actually NOT able to go directly in a straight line to Terrapin, directly West, and completely against the wind. Patience is required, because like minFW, the freedom comes a little later.
What the captain does is launch off to the side a little, to the Southwest, in a diagonal path, somewhat AWAY from Terrapin’s direction. This path is also aimed somewhat TOWARDS Terrapin. and the movement away from the goal can be corrected in the captain’s next move. But so far, it’s a diagonal path across the lake at the start, and not due West at Terrapin.
After a several minutes on this course it becomes time to change the sails and rudder angle, so that the boat points the OTHER diagonal path (Northwest) to partially miss Terrapin. This SUBTRACTS from, or erases the earlier lost footage, while this angle’s partial success ADDS to the earlier one’s partial success.
This tricky adding of partial successes and subtracting of partial errors is called “tacking.”The boat makes a zig-zag course with this kind of tacking to eventually sail against the wind... TO GET TO Terrapin!
Inspiration!
Tacking consists of many partial failures, along with many partial successes.
The failures cancel each other out, and the successes add together!
It all looks like magic when real boats are sailing, but it is all due to the use of totally natural determinism… tricky determinism. This is very similar to how totally natural determinism HELPS us enjoy the benefits of minFW, which I think is our biological free will.
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Do you get it? Going upwind in a sailboat is analogous to the ILLUSION of exercising Libertarian Free Will on the macro scale, going against previous synapse settings, but it’s all still 100% deterministic.
In both cases, it looks like magic at the macro level but it is not; it’s only tricky determinism. When you look at the micro situation all the books balance, and no cheating was involved in granting some small amount of genuine freedom.
If the determining force of wind says “Move West!” and yet a boat moves East, that would initially LOOK like some kind of freedom from the wind’s influence.
But a sailboat traveling AGAINST the wind is NOT doing it by getting a waiver from the Laws of Physics. The boat is just using tricky determinism to create that illusion. It’s the same with brains.
There’s still more to the details of this Physics, but what we have seen already is a good start. We’ve seen that mechanical systems that are 100% deterministic can do some interesting and exotic things.
The way sailing into the wind works involves some deeper things like how the wind wraps around the sail in an uneven manner on each side (called the Bernoulli Principle). This makes the sail operate like an airplane wing in generating forces through shapes and motion. This advanced technology has been in our midst for a little over 2,000 years.
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And sailing gets even more exotic with modern advances in its technology. The way a sailboat can sometimes go faster than the wind is a LITTLE like how simple mechanical levers work. A famous quote by Archimedes on levers is: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”This is the power side of using levers.
He suggested that for great power to move very heavy things, you must push a long distance on the long lever arm, and then the short arm moves a tiny bit, but very powerfully. This is exactly how a crowbar or a hammer’s “nail puller” works.
For sailboats to move faster than the wind, the backwards version of Archimedes’ suggestion is needed. If you push on the SHORT lever arm, the long arm moves at a FASTER speed than your pushing moves. This is what some sailboats can do.Somehow, the boat gets pushed by the long lever arm, and the wind pushes on the short lever arm. Where these lever arms are exactly in the setup I am still pondering as this is still an open study for me. I am pretty sure, though, that the fulcrum action is done by the keel.
This is also similar to how a surfer, who rides along the wave, can pick up speeds greater than the wave. The term “scissoring” comes to mind.
There are many ways that determinism can produce surprising results.
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The sailboat freedom is its ability to SEEMINGLY defy the determinism of wind. The human minFW type of freedom is the performer’s ability to defy her form of determinism: prior synaptic settings. Our perception of both forms of freedom can be seemingly magnified when the details of this tricky use of determinism are not known.
Neither sailboat nor human actually do defy determinism in any way, though. It just looks that way when you don’t know the whole micro story. But in both instances, sailboat and human, a small amount of ACTUAL freedom is squeezed out, for all practical purposes.
This is not a defiance of determinism, just defiance of what determinism is often expected to do. The sailboat can go against the wind, and the human can go against her synapses. Both require smart work, and both are partial.
Our human freedom is in the ability to change our own synapses, and thus move our performances (via learning) in a desired direction.
The freedom a sailboat has is the ability to move in a desired direction, and thus change the direction that the wind would have it move.
Since both of these types of freedom take work and smart efforts, they can fail, and can be neglected entirely.
I define minFW’s freedom aspect as being able to free oneself of one’s own synaptic “prison.” To be free of even just one habit is a big deal! It’s the ability to go against the flow of one’s own nature AND nurture.It’s your ability to steer a course like a sailboat against some of what your DNA dictates and your teaching dictates.
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Here is a short poem I wrote for how minFW can crank out a little freedom, yet totally “roll” with determinism.Here, since this is an artistic expression, it is permissible for me to blend the captain’s free will with the sailboat’s freedom. Also, with that same poetic license I commission YOU to be the captain.
A sailboat is ruled from above and below.
Wind and currents DETERMINE its way.
Yet clever sail and rudder settings,
Can still get you where
YOUR will will will its way.
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I have a small collection of songs containing free will references. One was mentioned above from “Stairway to Heaven.” Here is another, “The Wheel,” from the Grateful Dead. It seems to depict both the robotic and the going further toward better.
This one is not about minFW at all, or even FW, but it sounds like it is. It’s more about the freedom you can feel out in the country, far from cities. It’s more like the “navigational freedom” that was seen in sailboat physics earlier.
The famous Philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote a book on free will titled “Elbow Room” and I learned a lot from him.
This thread obviously has nothing to do with The Way International. However, it is about Mike's narcissism.
Bully for him that he thinks about things other than Wierwille and PFLAP.
However, is this subject something he has any authoritative insight on? That's highly doubtful.
However, theoretical physicist Sean Carroll MIGHT have s bit of related insight.
I didn't go looking for this video. Because I have watched other Big Think vids, it showed up on YouTube when I went to YT.
My point: there are LOTS of subjects other than twi worth exploring. However, using Mike as a guide? You'll get what he wants to tell you. (For those who buy Wierwille's concept that you can't go farther than you're taught)
However, theoretical physicist Sean Carroll MIGHT have s bit of related insight.
I didn't go looking for this video. Because I have watched other Big Think vids, it showed up on YouTube when I went to YT.
BRAVO to your video link, Rocky!
Sean Carroll, being a Physicist, has VERY GOOD insights into this issue.
The part that I am working on comes up in the video under "Compatibilist" approaches. He admits that most of the work done in compatibilism has been "loosey goosey" and I agree. That is why I took the compatibilist approach; it seemed to need help.
I was surprised at how many concepts he corralled from this wild topic and brought into that one short video. It was obviously well written and thorough. I have used his overviews in my research. He had a good one out a few years ago comparing Free Will to Baseball.
The classic image of free will, or Libertarian Free Will, has it being instantaneous in time and above the laws of physics. Often implied with this LibFW is it always being thorough, effortless, never failing, never needing improvements, requiring no physical energy, and not requiring intelligent maneuvering.
Sharply contrasting is minFW, which offers a very small amount of comparable freedom, and comes it at a very high price! Plus, it’s not freedom WHEN you want it; you must wait for it. Not a metaphysical bargain by a long shot, but that’s biology for you!
The freedom in minFW comes in being able to self-adjust our synapses, so that we are better robots the NEXT time we need to perform. But that self-adjustment is difficult, and not guaranteed. It takes good DNA and good teachers, and energy, and applied smarts. It also often takes repetition, and clever settings of our human rudders and sails, much like the sailboat’s limited.
So, minFW is not at all the glamorous kind freedom most FW theorists and poets want, which is on-the-spot and immediate. LibFW can be made to sound beautiful, but that’s not the type of freedom that is really needed in everyday life and survival. Too much of that kind of freedom can even be dangerous. The needed freedom is the kind that is restrained for safety.
I have slowly come to view immediate, total LibFW as more of an excessive lust, and in the category of religion/philosophy/poetry. It just doesn’t seem to have any value as an everyday tool for real life. Who would hire a worker who was known for their wild unpredictable behavior on the job, when highly constrained behavior within well-defined limits is what is needed of them?
By contrast, minFW is NOT the ability to suddenly make a “free” move out-of-the-blue, but to gradually and carefully nudge one’s life course in a desired, pre-set direction, using determinism in the process. This mechanism is, again, similar to how a sailboat operates. It is highly constrained freedom, within well-defined limits.
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So why does minFW and its deep minimal-ness sound like it’s a degradation of human life down to the clunky level of a robot? It’s because this needs to be more thoroughly thought through. It’s new and unfamiliar, with lots of distortions in the background.
But really, think deeper, what’s so wrong with being a wet robot? I used to dread it, until I thought it through. Sometimes robotic is good, if it’s high enough quality robotics.
Forget clumsy, rigid, un-resourceful, old fashioned robots. Nobody wants THAT in their life! But when I play at sports or dance fast, I actually DO WANT some good robotic behavior coming from my cerebellum.
Of course, I also want careful deliberative action in my head at times, as well.
There seem to be two modes of thought possible, and both are good.What seems most interesting to me is the possibility that both what we feel to be robotic and feel to be deliberative, are actually this simple minFW mechanism operating in different brain systems and at different levels.
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Everything in the human body is gloriously complicated and it functions awesomely. However, it is a biological entity, and not a metaphysical one. Every seemingly perfectly glorious part and system in the body has approximations involved, and each degrades with use and disease, and operates less efficiently with time.The deliberative functions of the brain are no exception.
Since minFW takes work and smart efforts, it can fail and it can be neglected. It’s not the impossibly perfect, cosmic, or effortless thing that metaphysical theories want it to be. It’s biological free will, not metaphysical free will.
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Part of the false glory of LibFW is the way it supposedly eludes understanding. Can you imagine where we’d be today, medically, if processes other than free will in the human body were regarded as untouchable by science?
Let’s take digestion:A very strong case could have been made 400 years ago that digestion was clearly of God and had His stamp of complexity on it, and that humans had no business trying to figure out how it works.
Actually, I’ll bet there was this kind of opposition from the religious leaders of that day. I vaguely remember remnants of it in my Roman Catholic youth of the 1950s.
I think FW is going to unravel before us soon, in neuroscience, as being remarkably simple. It will still be marvelous (like digestion) but not supernatural (like LibFW).
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In real life we lack “will power” more often than not. We discover that our operation of FW fails regularly, and that it is a lot of work to make a minFW decision, or mold one’s own will from state A to state B.
Sometimes a lot of work is put into molding one’s will, and it STILL FAILS, in spite of the efforts. This is everyone’s experience in life: we all lack the free will we WANT to have!
Usually, in real life people talk about “will power” more than the idea of “free” will. We all can relate to the everyday problem of not having enough will power. The freeness in FW pops up more in the theoretical philosophical world, than in the everyday world of chores, and strong bad habits, and weak good habits.
It seems that within the will there can exist many competing desires. Sometimes it’s a war between mutually exclusive desires. This is why some writers say they hate the term “free will,” and feel it is anything BUT free, as long as this war continues. There is a war within the will. This makes the word “free” strange to many.
When I use the word “free” here in minFW, I associate the idea of freedom with ability.
freedom = ability to change
freedom = ability to learn
partial ability = partial freedom
Usually FW is thought of as an exotic, grandiose phenomenon, far above the category of “mechanism.”Usually, in this context, “skill learning” is thought of as only a simple, bland mechanism. This minFW theory says that FW is also that same bland mechanism that makes simple skill learning possible.
minFW = Learning
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I do not see any metaphysical “fairness” built into FW at all. Like most biology, there’s some kind of bell curve distribution describing “how much” minFW people have, like there is for muscle strength.
So, “how much” minFW people have in play is related to the DNA-supplied equipment they have to begin with, as well as to how well that minFW “muscle” has been exercised and developed, and what kind of teachers were involved.
Not everyone has the same intensity of minFW happening. Some are good at it, and some are not, but that in itself can be an evolving situation. People can gain and lose skills over a lifetime.
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I see minFW as not cheap; it’s very expensive free will. It takes effort, and smart effort at that, plus diligence in persistent application. It can fail, even when we put our best efforts into it. It is partial. It doesn’t look glamorous as it is explained. The more you look at minFW the more it looks to be mere learning in complicated garb.
I can exercise my free will to shoot a better basketball hoop next time, than I did last time. It works if I try it often enough. Likewise, I can exercise my free will to perform better in ethical dilemma XYZ next time, than I did last time XYZ came up. It works if I try it often enough.
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I must be up-front on this, though.
This minFW will NOT deliver the thrilling epiphany you are looking for, IF that sought-after epiphany is rooted in the glamorous, metaphysical flavor that Libertarian FW has. By design, that kind of “thrilling epiphany” has been deliberately removed, deleted, and avoided in all of this minFW theory.
The glamorous and quick part was deleted because it is not needed in biological life, and can even be detrimental to biological. The reason we have any kind of a biological “decision mechanism” is for survival, not for artistic and poetic beauty.
THAT’S what I mean by MINIMAL.
I use the word “bland” to describe this theory because, by design, it SHALL not give you the “grandiose” element that has always been associated with free will.
I can relate, though, to those who harbor a great desire for that grandiose key idea. I sought that exact same thing for many decades, until the well ran dry. That is why I decided several years ago to turn around and search in the opposite, bland, and minimal direction.
So minFW is not cosmic, not perfect, not effortless, but it DOES have a chance at being biological!
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This minFW is merely a partial freedom from some undesirable MACRO PATTERNS of that micro determinism.
Exactly like the odd freedom in sailing, minFW manipulates SOME useful patterns of determinism, in order to gain some partial freedom from some OTHER detrimental patterns of determinism.
It’s a “route to freedom” for important things that matter to survival, like gaining independent of some “other wills,” as well as from some previous versions of ourselves. These are macro patterns of determinism.
Micro-determinism is unimportant to us in everyday life.
Effective macro patterns of determinism must be used to overcome other macro patterns that are undesirable.
I don’t NEED to be free of the machinations of micro determinism. I do very much need to be free of other wills (some of them), and be able to change my own will, sometimes.
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Though minFW comes at a cost, you could look at it as an exchange of one freedom for another.
Nature is economical.When I designed minFW I was asking myself what is the LEAST amount of freedom that could still be useful. Asking for the minimum is a little like Feynman’s “Principle of Least Action” for systems evolving along a route that requires a minimum of energy.
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It’s not only in free will theory that things get OVER-HYPED these days. The general phenomenon of human consciousness as a whole has acquired an undeserved metaphysical and grandiose reputation over the centuries. This acquisition went unchecked, until modern neuroscience started looking seriously at the brain. It is humbling for us to be reduced down to mere biology, but it is also realistic.
I think a long time ago intellectuals started worshiping their own brains a little too much. It happens. In developing Philosophy, they wrote into the human mind all sorts of perfections and beauty that are not really there. By Descartes time it was being secularized and made to sound scientific.
Thus, for a long time the human mind was over-exalted, until recently when the tools were invented (MRI and CAT) that could start to scientifically analyze it.
It is nice to have a mind, but it is not the glorified “knower” that we poetically want it to be.It is humbling to think our mind is made of dirt. This is the essence of the title to Francis Crick’s last book, “The Astonishing Hypothesis.”It is astonishing to think that our wonderful consciousness, qualia, and will are mere mechanisms.
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The subjective feeling of FW seems far less robust than qualia, to me. And who can deny consciousness?Yet, I’ve been learning that they, too, are deterministic mechanisms, and now we know tricky determinism can produce some pretty exotic things. I suspect that sailing and minFW are not the only ones.
I think qualia and consciousness are like a shell game. It looks like magic, but it’s just a lot of complicated tricks that work well together, in order to get some everyday chores done. When the chores are finished, then maybe we can kick back and play with qualia and consciousness, and then try to theorize on them. But that’s not what they are primarily all about.
I think consciousness, qualia, free will, and subjective first-hand experience have all been over glorified in previous centuries by mystics and religion, and science is now just getting around to dealing with this problem.
All these items (qualia etc.) are fabulously wonderful, especially if we humans have good software installed in us. In other words, I’m shifting the real glory from the human brain over to the software that can be installed in human brain. If a human has bad software installed (teaching/experience) then it’s not so glorious.
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I think the glory and the grandiosity and the fabulous complexity of consciousness and free will have been hyped to the stars, and THUS made inaccessible to clear thought. Consciousness is a tool to be used in everyday life and survival. It should be probed with this in mind.
In other words, in the Dark Ages thinkers got tricked into worshipping their own brains, and we are still suffering from it. Modern science looks at the brain as NOT as an object of worship, but as a challenging object for analysis.
Analysis is taking something complicated and cutting it up into pieces for study. That’s what Neuroscience is right now doing. Every now and then some of the pieces are understood and put together, but the whole puzzle is far from solved.
When Consciousness and the human mind are figuratively cut up into pieces, it’s easier to stop worshipping them. The pieces are not as complicated and intimidating as the whole. Of course, re-assembly of the pieces after analysis is the essential NEXT step, in order to see the “emergent properties” emerge.
*/*/*
I totally appreciate having good teachers or “programmers” for my “software.” The operation of minFW augments this appreciation with the realization that I, MYSELF can ALSO be a participate in my own programming. I can BE one of those programmers if I work it right.
Admittedly, as children we are at the mercy of our initial programming, and in many ways, this is not fair! But later on, we can participate in this process and teach ourselves. We can somewhat change our behavior patterns, and THAT is our free will, our minFW. We have the ability to over-write our own biological programming. We don’t always use this ability well.
*/*/*
I figure you may still be in shock at the idea of being called a sophisticated robot.
Yes, I know this does feel a little a little bit like being stuck in the movie “Blade Runner”but SNAP OUT OF IT !!If it feels better to think of yourself as stardust, fine. But, that’s still pretty much the same as star dirt, isn’t it?
If we work our minFW to produce love, THAT is still genuinely special.
Let me expand on that:
If we (not special) work (not special) our minFW (not special) to produce love, THAT is still genuinely special.
There is some consolation for all this harsh minimal-ness. There is a hidden BENEFIT to having less than total freedom, on the spot, to act or decide.
I think, as a culture, going over-board with the ideology of American freedom can sometimes become confusing in issues where freedom comes up in practical ways. The idea that too much freedom can be bad or unsafe is too often automatically rejected, and never thought through.
But in theorizing about the mechanisms of the brain, it’s good to remember that too much spontaneous freedom of thought can be VERY bad in survival situations. Lots of freedom sounds great for artists, but for survival IS cosmic freedom really useful?We live in a culture with excess free time, and we don’t think through much about how FW and consciousness must work in austere circumstances.
But even logically, shouldn’t a totally “free” thought or action be viewed as dangerous to the thinker?To me it sounds like a great way to lose my place in a complicated set of thoughts. I want solid markers in my mind as I explore complicated ideas.
A thought, totally uninfluenced and guided by any past experience, may be poetically attractive at first, but WHO’S TO SAY there can be any practical, everyday-life benefit to such a type of freedom? Entropy would predict the opposite!
*/*/*
And now for your
Daily Deterministic Devotional
I want my free thoughts to NOT be influenced
by lots of proven energy-wasting routes.
But I very much DO want my free thoughts
to be guided, influenced, and even filtered
by proven worthwhile teachers.
It’s fun being a robot with good teachers!
*/*/*
Last year I started a comedy thread with this initial post:
I am NOT a robot!
(my mother board assures
me of this on every boot-up)”
Later on, in the comments I went on to joke:
“But REALLY folks.... all seriousness aside, I assure you that I’m fully human, but I just haven’t found a water tight proof of that for my Real ID yet. Are there any genuine (certified) humans out there who can help me with this? ……….But while I’m at it, just between you and me, has anyone figured out what to think about all these billions of little, tiny, wet, squirmy micro-robots that make up our brains?”
Yes, that is the harsh truth, the astonishing truth, that our mechanical consciousness is not as mystical and special as we sometimes wish or exaggerate it out to be.
Now, in addition to all that, if we want to DO special things with our limited equipment, then we can to seek special programming that is MORE SPECIAL than we are.
We can’t lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Instead we must be given a special bootstrap program that is more clever than we are, because it is written by a programmer cleverer than we are. THEN, and only then, can we do special things, via the special software’s teaching, with our un-special equipment. Teachers rule!
*/*/*
If we have a mechanistic, deterministic, MINIMALISTIC free will then why can’t robots (someday) have the same thing? I fully DO expect robots to someday have this kind of minFW. It is a totally deterministic mechanism, and so, robots with sufficient input/output skills should be able to do it.
People once thought that a robot could never discern faces, or be able to read the handwriting on a postal envelope. Robots nowadays are highly specialized. It may not be economical (yet) to give them totally general abilities yet. They need to pay for themselves.
This minFW theory aims to accept determinism 100% for human biological free will, and still find a mechanism that squeezes out a little freedom. Since there is nothing magical in how this minFW idea works, extending it to robots merely requires that we give them the necessary inputs, outputs, training, and a jump start program (teaching).
*/*/*
I figure that when we walk into a situation, we behave exactly as our synapses dictate, and it’s a totally robotic response in real-time. We bring with us all the synapses of our growing up AND any character-building synapse adjustments we PREVIOUSLY engaged in.
This way, as we develop our real time robotic responses more and more, eventually we can become a primary agent responsible for our robotic responses. This only happens to the degree that we successfully operate minFW over a long period of time.
This is the emergence of a genuine new “self.”
*/*/*
Confabulation in the brain emerges in MANY contexts, including normal conversations, meditation, and many brain diseases, and many injuries. It seems to be going on all the time, and sometimes leaks out.
For the most part, since minFW is not commonly worked anywhere near its potential, many people who think they are an independent “self” are really an amalgam of their most dominant teachers.
Like free will, I see no natural guarantee that genuine selves are a robust phenomenon. It’s complicated developing all those synapses deliberately, and it’s much easier to “go with the flow” when life gets difficult and busy.
Many neuroscience researchers have put forth notions that a lot of what we call consciousness is hyped and massively inflated, and most properly called confabulation.
*/*/*
I believe minFW describes what is going in the brain and in our lives. We have a large potential to have a small bit of freedom, but unfortunately few humans are clearly aware of this, and most of this potential is often wasted. In times when self-discipline is not a popular theme, genuine selfhood declines.
For the most part we act robotically, and then try to actuate some minFW when the robotic behavior is not working well. Because there is so little known here, few succeed, and when they do, teaching others is another challenge.
*/*/*
I have been settling with the idea that the “self” is that set of taught internal standards or expectations, PLUS the “wanting” nerve-ware being pretty much inherited, PLUS the experiences and ideas that have been focused on most.
A person must WANT to operate minFW to have it work successfully.
A person must ACTUALLY operate minFW to have it develop and mature.
*/*/*
I haven’t yet specifically addressed “wanting” in all this yet, and how much freedom we may have in sculpting our own desires. My focus has been on individual choices or performances.
In the background is the notion of “wanting” in the sense that we compare our performances with an internalized “want list” or a set of standards or expectations.
How that set of wants or expectations gets there, for children, is a matter of teaching. After childhood this internalized set of wants may have a sense of freedom or “free will” in that we may be able to modify and sculpt it to some extent.
*/*/*
I think the main reason free will and consciousness have been so resistant to analysis is because for centuries intellectuals have been over-hyping it in a sort of self-worship.
So, man pumps in artificial glamour, and then consciousness eludes scientific explanation.
The common objection to any good theory on consciousness is: “But there’s no glamour in your explanation of consciousness, so it must be deficient.”But the glamour doesn’t belong there to begin with. So, good theories develop only slowly, until recent modern neuroscience came along, and then the Internet came along.
There is survival value to people having consciousness and qualia in teaching children about the existence of other minds. Wondering about WHAT someone else’s qualia feels like, leads to more empathy and cooperation. This kind of wonder is something young children are capable of spontaneously discovering. Young children of 9 years can think about their own thinking, AND they can think about other people’s thinking.
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OldSkool
I do want to address this Mike. You constantly come at me like I have forgotten, or have been talked out of the truth of wierwille, or that I just don't understand where you are coming from. Personall
waysider
This right here. If you're unable to define and regulate your control factors and variables, your research is worthless. The best you could hope for would be an observational analysis of your collecte
Charity
I agree with So_Crates when he said "Here's a wild idea: why don't YOU become meek and I'll tell you about all the fruit in my life since I stopped making PLAF the center of my life." There have
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OldSkool
Mike - thank you for posting some substance. I will give it a read. Gotta get some pizza figured out in my life after my early Friday evening nap. Then I will be back. Thanks again.
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Mike
BTW, my approach to FW is not the usual philosophical one where I try to make the words sound elegant.
To me our biological mechanism for making decisions is NOT something grand and spectacular, like philosophy and religion have tried to make it sound.
Just the opposite, my hunch is that it is simple and biological, AND that it barely works.
*/*/*/*/*
In addition to thinking of it to be LIKE a muscle, I think free will is LITERALLY complicated learning.
The concept of free will got real complicated, unnecessarily, around the year 1200 A.D., and my efforts are largely to unravel those complications.
So minFW is like a muscle,
but literally minFW is learning.
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Mike
Are you referring to my "Please disregard. I was in the wrong thread." post?
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OldSkool
Yeah...gotta analyze that for a few hours...lol
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OldSkool
Mike, I know you aren't asking a critique, but I do think it's well written in substance. Im not sure how the rest of the book plays out in terms of defining your terms. You have probably handled that in other preliminary sections. Im thinking from a developmental editing perspective you may be leading the audience into your perspective somewhat
For example: Why is it edgy for some? Maybe there are those in the scientific community who don't think it's edgy at all and could be more dismissive on that basis. Perhaps with clearly defining your terms (and for all I know you have) you would be able to lead other's who wouldn't consider this perspective into a braodened point of view with you leading the way with your work you are presenting. However, Im not here to do a developmental edit, or any editing at all really.
The topic is new to me from a scientific point of view so I did enjoy the read and enlarging my understanding somewhat in a direction I don't typically go on such matters - science. I think from a "religous" perspective freewill is perhaps oversimplified or perhaps it's just that simple but it basically comes down to the ability to make a choice between multiple options. Of course in this context concepts such as right/wrong come into play and it get's muddied very quickly. Gonna peruse it a little more later but nice work!
P.S. - I did see definitions devolop somewhat as the chapter progressed, so it's not like it's ignored. I just mean possibly defining them up front before progressing.
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OldSkool
I tend to write in the same manner. Sometimes it's a matter of getting thoughts out onto the computer screen and then coming back around to straighten it all out.
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Nathan_Jr
O
The real writing comes in the rewriting.
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OldSkool
Yes! Personally, I do better getting ideas out on paper going from the basic premise that the mind is better suited for coming up with ideas versus remembering them. Some writers prefer to be more techinical up front, outlines and such. I've written that way before but in the end felt stifled.
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Mike
Yes, and sometimes you just need to get away from it for a while to do a real proofread.
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Mike
Thanks much for that.
I value critiques.
The edgy part comes in where people, sometimes even scientists, who have political or personal bias. Many think the judicial system is skewed due to outmoded ideas of free will. Others see their own personal failings as in the spotlight when free will is discussed. Many feel discouraged with their attempts to quit smoking, to eat better and exercise, and free will means weak will power to them. I see lots of personal and political edginess in the faces of people I discuss free will with.
The rest of the book is pretty wild, IMO. I was surprised at every turn in this project. The beginning was especially surprising, because it was in the solution to the mirror riddle that I saw this new strategy for dealing with free will. This was one of the biggest surprises of my life. It happened quite accidentally.
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Rocky
Anyone who takes Mike seriously on this subject probably is more than one can short of a six pack.
WHY does anyone feed this troll?
And why is this thread in "About the Way?"
WTAF!
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Mike
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T-Bone
I would think that a biological / electrochemical approach is demystifying compared to a philosophical or religious analysis - mainly because the scientific method of observation and experimentation deals with hard evidence. …Whereas exploring the metaphysical is a lot of speculation working from a certain theory of what is true.
I find Freewill versus robotic or automatic responses/ reflexes interesting on a personal level - in my battle to control my weight - I stress out over can I muster up enough willpower to change a bad habit of porking out at the dinner table
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T-Bone
Yeah that’s my problem - now you can see from my previous post why I’m so edgy
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OldSkool
Im thinking that personal or political bias are more elements that help form a person's decisions, and though are contributing factors in the process, are also independant of one's free will. I say this because someone could arrive at the same conclusions as someone with personal or political bias independant of said bias.
I can understand freewill meaning weak will power to people, especially in our modern society where so many values, such as basic discipline, have been eroded. We are the informercial generation...lol....give us a product that makes life quick and easy and most of us are happy. Im not discounting the medical side of addictions such as smoking, or even mental disorders that can cause people to over/binge eat. Sometimes people just need help with these issues and all the freewill in the world will not overcome the addiction.
Im thinking along the lines of T-Bone that a metaphysical approach tends to be more inconvlusive versus biological / electrochemical approach. Why? Well, as soon as you introduce varying standards that influence free will then you are really down to a bowl of spaghetti becuase most people have their own standards (religous/moral tenets) for how they arrive at decisions and that could be based on an inderterminate number of factors that could be damn near impossible to quantify in any standardized fashion for comparison.
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Mike
I can completely sympathize, and not at all from a distance. I think everyone has self control issues like this. I had to blast through my edginess to discuss free will at Starbucks with strangers, only to often see the edginess in their faces.
I think Romans 7b keys in on this universal self discouragement with added spiritual stakes, and everyone can relate to it.
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Mike
It looks to be the case that in the Middle Ages Thomas Aquinas confused the study of free will by putting it into the spiritual realm, instead of simple Biology. My hunch is that he used this verse addressed to Christians as a central idea in his free will analysis:
1 Corinthians 10:13
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man:
but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able;
but will with the temptation also make a way to escape,
that ye may be able to bear it.
It appears that there can be a spiritual boost that comes from being born again with spirit inside. The Enlightenment Philosophers tried to secularize this notion, but it ended up confusing the situation. The form of free will that Western Science has struggled with for the past couple hundred years still had the supernatural attached to it. This is why I opted to start out with the simple Biology of simple body and soul humans. Later, we can try and figure out how spirit interacts with the flesh.
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Mike
Here is a Table of Contents for what I have written
so far in this book “Minimalistic Free Will.”
Chap. 1 - Introduction to the Need
Chap. 2 - The Theory
Chap. 3 - Minimal Robot Selves
Chap. 4 - Origins of minFW
Chap. 5 - Determinism
Chap. 6 - A General Theory on Deterministic Freedoms
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OldSkool
I am willing to read more. I enjoyed what you posted. Keep on keeping on!
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Mike
Thanks for the encouragement.
This next chapter is twice as long.
I hope it doesn't break the software
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Mike
Minimalistic Free Will
Chapter 2 - The Theory
#####################
A new approach to the free-will problem is to ask for drastically less freedom in exchange for a “peace treaty” with determinism.
Advocates of free will have been asking for way too much freedom, and it has led only to dead ends in the face of modern neuroscience. The way free will has often been defined puts it direct defiance of the well-established determinism in Physics and Chemistry.
Modern scientific determinism is used all the time to give us marvelous benefits in technology. Should we then expect that Biology is unable to exploit determinism in much the same way to give us consciousness, qualia, and will? It is the well-founded assumption of modern neuroscience that determinism fires ALL the nuts and bolts of the human brain’s consciousness. I am in total agreement with this.
In addition, I wish to assert that surprisingly free choices can be made, if the right tricky manipulations are made on these same deterministic factors.
In other words, there are ways that determinism can be turned on itself, and the result can be viewed as a “weak” form of free will. However, some long-standing intuitions on how freedom works will be challenged by this new form of Minimalistic Free Will, so prepare for a bumpy ride.
To keep them clearly separate, I’ll call this new and deliberately weakened form “minFW” to distinguish it from classical Libertarian Free Will, or “LibFW.”
The old, semi-magical idea of free will has pretty well dominated the thinking world for many centuries. It is also called Contra-Causal Free Will by some. Daniel Dennett brought up the idea that we should pursue the “varieties of free will worth wanting” and it was this tip from Dennett that started me thinking of minFW.
I purposely designed my theory to ask for MUCH LESS, in hopes of finding a new kind of freedom, one that is in 100% agreement with determinism. My thinking is that even a very small amount of freedom can add up significantly, through repeated applications.
*/*/*
For many years now, various strategies to clarify free will regarded determinism as an enemy, and searched for ways to elude or nullify it. The long-term failure of Roger Penrose (see Chapter 5) to find any real determinism relief like this with Quantum Mechanics (also with Gödel’s Theorem) has convinced me to look in other directions.
This new minFW theory abandons those kinds of efforts to nullify determinism, but befriends it instead, and tries to use determinism, like it’s used all time in engineering and science.
*/*/*
A brief preview of minFW:
.
It is the ability (or freedom)
to adjust one’s own synapses,
in order to perform better
the next time.
.
*/*/*
In this theory, ZERO freedom is to be found at the time of a performance. All performances are accepted as robotic, and completely determined by prior synapse settings. Any small “amounts” of freedom come a little later, after this fully robotic performance… maybe. It must be done with sufficient energy and precision.
Put in discrete steps:
(1) ALL of my performances are robotic.
(2) I can somewhat observe my own performances.
(3) If I judge a performance to be sub-standard,
then I can prepare for my next robotic performance,
and possibly achieve a better one.
All of my actions in all 3 steps are assumed to be robotic, including the judging and preparation. I do have the biological abilities to TRY all this, and sometimes achieve success in modifying my own behavior.
Since all this is 100% deterministic, there is no inherent reason why this can’t be installed in an A.I. based robot that could handle all the inputs. The practical reasons that prevent this, are now dissolving with modern technology.
*/*/*
The kind of minimal freedom or ability I am proposing in minFW is FAR less grandiose, when compared to LibFW.
This Minimalistic FW is NOT the same kind of magical, powerful, instantaneous freedom that LibFW promises. Quite the contrary, minFW takes time, effort, and if the effort isn’t smart enough it can fail. There is no guarantee that minFW will work at all. When it does work it’s usually partial.
However, partially successful minFW performances can add up.
Multiple attempts to behave contrary to the deterministic synapse settings that are inherited from yesterday can sometimes succeed, with just the right efforts.
*/*/*
I contend that Libertarian Free Will is physically impossible, in that it requires a magical waiver from the laws of physics to operate. This is the classic free will versus determinism dilemma. This theoretical LibFW is a type of free will that is somehow immune to the determinism of natural Biological laws of past learning wrapped up in the Chemistry and Physics.
But free wills that can overrule Physics are not really needed for common, everyday living, nor can they be seen in real life. Magically free wills are not at all what is needed for us to responsibly control our lives, and function independently, and improve as we grow.
I am proposing a bare-bones model for free will here that will fill the bill for what we NEED in effectively operating our lives, YET it has no conflict with determinism. In fact, it uses determinism to operate, as we will soon see.
*/*/*
Acting robotically is easy and sometimes preferable.
When acting robotically you don’t have to think so much about what’s going on, and going with the flow like this is a pretty normal mode of mind. But some other situations are not so easy, and require some clear focus and thought, and require some sort of appropriate response.
We sometimes walk into situations that require ethical decisions, and THAT’S when we usually think about using our best thinking, and that’s when free will might be most useful.
So, when I walk into an ethical situation it seems reasonable that I could use these two modes of thought: robotics and deep thought free will. But are we really in that fine-tuned control of our brain and mind? Let’s explore a few such situations with this new theory of minFW.
*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/
*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/
*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/
A MOTORCYCLE ANALOGY
Please allow me to give an ULTRA simplified analogy for this new model of free will, this Minimalist Free Will, or minFW. It doesn’t actually explain very much of the theory, but it can show how it differs from LibFW, and will be useful in keeping track of timing issues.
Imagine you are riding a small motorcycle late at night on empty roads, and are stopped at a red light. After waiting some time, you realize that your bike is not big enough to trip the sensing ground wires to the stoplight. This is hampering your freedom to ride. Your bike can’t trip the green light for you.
In this analogy your bike’s small metal content represents the settings of your brain’s synapses. It represents all that you have ever learned and experienced. This is pretty much an oversimplified analogy, but I think it will still work for what it’s designed. I plan to merely use it as a guide or template as we proceed, and NOT as an explanation of the brain’s functioning.
So, with your small motorcycle, let’s first see how Libertarian Free Will (LibFW) would work in this analogy. You arrive at the stoplight, and as soon as you realize that the bike can’t trip the switch, YOU magically trip the stoplight with nothing but the power of your LibFW, in spite of the bike’s low metal content.
This use of LibFW constitutes an override or a waiver from the electrical determinism of the sensing ground wires, bike metal, and stoplight circuitry. It takes no effort to exercise this kind of free will. You engage this magical LibFW, causing the stoplight to soon change to green, and you are now FREE to ride through the intersection.
If this LibFW sounds silly, it’s because I’m being purposefully dismissive. I have come to see it as resembling a scene in the old TV comedy series “Bewitched” where Samantha twitches her nose, and FLASH! … a magical event occurs!
Libertarian Free Will means freedom from all the Physics, Chemistry, and Neurobiology that would otherwise “force” us to act differently. LibFW is a lot like magic or a mini-miracle, and this is one reason it is unpopular in a lot of science circles these days.
*/*/*
Now, in this ultra-simplified motorcycle analogy, let’s switch over to my new Minimalist Free Will model. This is surprisingly simple at first. With minFW you are SIMPLY STUCK when you reach the stoplight. That’s the end of this story with minFW.
There is no way to trip the light with your will. There is nothing in your minFW powered will that can affect the metal content of your bike, or cause the sense wires to trip the stoplight circuitry. So far, you are not experiencing any freedom at this intersection.
However, (and this is key) you ARE ABLE TO OBSERVE this dire situation, and realize that your freedom to ride your bike is being thwarted. Being a law-abiding citizen, you must turn around and give up in defeat, find another route, or wait for a car to come by to trip the light for you. This is not a good situation and there is no freedom to ride here.
However, upon later remembering your observed failure, and planning ahead for the NEXT time you want to ride through this intersection, you can bring some extra metal with you. Or, you could use a heavier bike. The next time you come to this same stoplight you can gain some freedom to ride, because the extra metal helps trip the traffic light's sensors!
The extra metal interacts deterministically with the electrical sense wires buried in the pavement, and so the next time you successfully trip the light, and are free to exercise your will to ride. This freedom to ride took some alert observations, and it took some work, and planning, and time, but eventually freedom to ride happened.
Plus, it could have failed if not enough extra metal was brought.By bringing enough extra metal you have gained freedom from being stuck at the light; but not instantaneously, not effortlessly, and not magically. You used determinism to execute your will. It took some effort and it took some time and repetition. You paid for this freedom; this freedom was not free of cost.
So, minFW is expensive; it ain’t cheap.
In this analogy that illustrates the strange timing of minFW, we see zero freedom displayed in real time when first encountering the stoplight. The freedom showed up later, after a change in the configuration.
This delayed timing of the freedom in minFW is both crucial, and a hard lump to swallow.
*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/
*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/
*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/
HOW minFW WORKS
When I walk into a situation that involves simple ethics, my instantaneous response is going to be 100% robotic, and fully determined by the brain synapses with which I carry into it.
Physical determinism dictates that I have NO ability or freedom to act otherwise; only what my prior settings dictate my response to be in this situation. It’s like a knee-jerk reflex, only many small such reflexes smoothly joined to produce smooth robotic motion.
This is not freedom. Being stuck at the stoplight on the small motorcycle is analogous to being stuck in this kind of robotic performance. Suppose, in this ethics situation, I was unprepared for the complexities and I fumbled my response in some way. My prior synapse settings failed me! That is life.
However, I am able to observe my inappropriate (robotic) response to the situation, and realize that it did not go according to my wishes. I had previous expectations as to how I ought to act in such a situation, and I am unhappy with my performance. I failed to act according to my expectations, my creed, my principles, my training.
HOWEVER, the NEXT time I encounter a similar situation it can turn out different.
Being unhappy with my performance means I compared it with my internally stored “will” or expectations, and my performance did not line up properly.
I had built some expectations of how I’d handle that kind of situation, and it was obvious to me that I fell short. These expectations are like a written will, or a credo, or a set of guiding principles that I had built within me from parents and family, from all my teachers, and all my life’s experiences. How these expectations were built is not important here. We all get this by relatively accidental means as children, and then we can tinker with it some as we grow.
What is important here is that I can HAVE such a set of guiding principles or expectations pre-installed in my mind before walking into that ethics situation.
What is also important is that I can observe and evaluate my robotic performance in that situation, the first time I encountered it. I can’t do anything about it but respond robotically. I just accept my actions as inevitable.
HOWEVER, the NEXT time I encounter a similar situation it can turn out different.
*/*/*
I can rehearse in my mind how I will behave better that next time. I can memorize reasons why it is important for me to behave better. There are many other ways I can adjust my own brain synapses to prepare for the next event.
This takes work, and smart work at that. Bringing extra metal to the stoplight is analogous to this work.
With my newer set of synapses, all interacting deterministically in the next similar situation, my next robotic performance can be a little better, or maybe right on target!
This second time I walk into the situation, I’m ready to perform my robotic, “smooth knee-jerk” reaction, but THIS TIME with some different synapse settings, ones that line up better with my internal expectations.
It might take a few more repetitions before I can finally succeed in smoothly performing according to my expectations. It often takes some smart work, and planning, and diligence in repetition.
By working my mind with new learning and synapse weightings I have gained freedom from being stuck in my previous mode of behavior. But none of this came instantaneously, effortlessly, and magically. I had to use determinism to execute my will. It took some effort and it took some time to evolve, and some repetition.
I paid for this little bit of freedom; this freedom was not free of cost.
*/*/*
Because this is SO radically different from classical free will, let’s quickly review it. Here in a nutshell how this theory works:
Oops! My robotic performance just failed
to match up to my standards !!!
Ok, NEXT time I’ll be ready for it,
and I’ll do better.
That’s it! It’s a pretty minimal theory.
*/*/*
Below are some lyrics to the song “Stairway to Heaven” that look a lot like minFW.
“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow,
don’t be alarmed now.
It’s just a spring clean for the May queen.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by,
but in the long run
There’s still time
to change the road you’re on.”
This is almost the same as minFW
1 - wrong road is chosen (robotically).
2 - Wrongness of that road is recognized (robotically).
3 - With a time delay, and some smart synapse adjustment, the right road can be chosen (robotically).
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I can now think of my minFW as having some partial control over the route I take.
Of course, other factors will still have their strong say-so, as well. My steerage may be skiddy and partial, like driving on mud, and it requires my skills to be sharpened for maximum effect of this route freedom. It takes practice and work to exercise this kind of Minimalist Free Will.
This kind of free will is important to us, so we can improve ourselves, and learn how to behave in more happy ways, and thus inspiring others to do the same. It’s a freedom (or ability) to LEARN and change our own synapses in DESIRED (or willed) direction, but it takes effort and time.
*/*/*
In previous sections, I used an ethics situation to illustrate minFW in action, as I walked into the situation and responded. My response, in first encountering that ethics situation was an un-free, destined, determined performance, in other words a totally robotic performance.
As first encounters often go, I was unhappy with my performance as I compared it with the set of ethics scenarios I had been trained on. So, compared to my internal expectations, I failed that first round, and I clearly noticed my robotic failure.
Afterwards, I had a chance to plan and rehearse my NEXT performance, and become ready to encounter similar circumstances differently.
This is all that is really needed in free will; freedom to perform better in life’s situations; freedom to LEARN how to steer a better course. This is the amount of free will worth wanting, to me.
*/*/*
This is a very bland model for minFW that I am proposing.
It’s all synapse dependent and determined, yet it gives me a little bit of a rudder to steer my boat. There is nothing mystical or dualistic in here. It is 100% deterministic, yet it still affords me a little bit of control over my life, in spite of the obstacles, setbacks, and bad decisions. This much freedom is impressive in a 100% deterministic world!
Still it seems like a bland idea, compared to Libertarian FW.
This model of Minimalist Free Will is almost boring, because it’s so non-mystical, so non-grandiose. Centuries of thought went into building ridiculous expectations of free will, and this puny minFW deflates them all.
But we don’t NEED very much free will! Having a large repertoire of good pure robotic responses is convenient and sufficient most of the time. Life would be too cumbersome if many long lasting free-will decisions were demanded of us.
Not only are robotic behaviors easier, but sometimes can be more fun as well. I’m thinking of dance as a prime example. What about sports?
Repeatedly making OUR OWN minor adjustments in our own synapses can sometimes effectively compete with all the other deterministic forces that would, otherwise, be the major controlling and steering for our destiny. This is how a competent “self” arises.
With a boat, repeatedly making minor adjustments in the motor and rudder can effectively compete with all the other deterministic forces (wind & water) that would otherwise control and steer our boating destiny.
*/*/*
This minFW that I am describing is like a muscle and it needs exercise in order to become strong. With repetition, it can sometimes become stronger than prior training influences and inherited DNA influences. Thus, we can slowly become the ultimate captain of our own ship. (no guarantee, though)
I can even see animals and robots having this kind of minimalist free will, but not in nearly as rich a form as ours… yet. They probably don’t have as complex an internal will to compare their performances to, and probably less ability to smartly prepare for improved performances. Still, I see the same principles can work for them (animals and robots) as for us.
For centuries models of free will have been metaphysical, mystical, dualistic, and grandiose. This minFW is a simple garden variety type.
*/*/*
The “amount of freedom” in minFW is partial and weak, and takes a lot of effort and repetition to make it happen. That sounds like real life where people struggle with their own will and will power.
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SHOOTING BASKETBALL HOOPS
The following surprised me late in the process of developing this theory. I did not expect it, but there it was one day. It was a simple logical consequence to what minFW was hammered out to be.
This surprise situation will be very similar to previous pages, except for the ethics situation I’m going to substitute shooting basketball hoops in its place. In other words, I want to now apply this minFW theory to learning how to shoot basketball hoops.
This is NOT an analogy; it’s an application.
Instead of an internal set of complex principles or expectations that revolve around an ethical situation, this merely involves a few of the rules of basketball hoop shooting. This GREATLY simplifies the situation down from complicated ethics to simple motor skills.
The only “ethical” principles here are
(1) stand on the line and
(2) throw the ball through the hoop.
*/*/*
Imagine yourself to have never tried to sink a basket in this sport. When you walk into this hoop-shooting situation you respond to it robotically with no freedom to depart from what your “throwing synapses” are pre-set to determine in your performance.
You possess zero basketball skill in your real-time response, your first throw, but in REPEATED OCCURRENCES it (skill) can show up indirectly, as a learned behavior.
You shoot; you miss!
You are unhappy with your awkward shot, but a few seconds later you have ANOTHER chance to respond better. You note where your shot went wrong and imagine your muscles tipping slightly to compensate.
Being unhappy with your first performance means you compared it with your internal, stored “will” and the two did not line up properly. You had clear hopes of sinking your first shot, but a second later it was obvious to you that you fell short.
These expectations are the set of two rules in basketball hoop-shooting that you had built within your memory from seeing others do it. How this was built in you is not important here.
What is important is that you can have such a set of guiding principles or expectations pre-installed in your mind before walking into this hoop-shooting situation. What is also important is that you can observe and evaluate your robotic performance in this situation, this first time you encounter it.
Your failed performance in that first situation was a destined, determined, failed performance; a 100% robotic performance.
HOWEVER, you have a chance to plan and mentally rehearse your NEXT performance, and make yourself ready to encounter a similar situation differently. This can possibly be the emergence of a new basketball throwing skill for you.
You retrieve the ball after your miss, and your next time comes very quickly.
Maybe it will take 10 repetitions to alter your synapses enough to get your throwing performance to please you. You are able, with repeated effort, to contribute to the synapse weighting with which you aim and shoot the ball, more and more successfully.
This is all that is really needed in learning to shoot hoops in basketball; it’s freedom to do better, the ability (the freedom) to learn how to steer your repeated shots accurately.
*/*/*
This is an exciting development! It looks like minFW is just ultra-complicated learning, but learning non-the less, and IDENTICAL to learning a simple motor skill!
In this analysis, learning a basketball throwing skill has been shown to be EQUAL to exercising some simple minFW.
*/*/*
Though bland in its design, minFW takes a highly sophisticated notion like ethical behavior and reduces it to the simplicity of rats running a maze or humans shooting baskets. It seems that if minFW is biologically correct, free will is nothing but complex learning!
Put another way, this minFW is just a super complicated amalgamation of learning micro skills. It’s a freedom (or ability) to learn and change our own synapses in DESIRED (or willed) directions.
This reduces minFW to lots of small learned skills and the ability to learn more.
So, if laboratory inquiries happen to verify this kind of minFW as the true biological variety, that means our collection of these tiny skills demonstrate the “amount” of free will we have accumulated so far in life.
In other words, our free will changes every day according to what tiny skills we learn and build into it, daily.
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SAILBOAT FREEDOM
This new model for minFW is very counterintuitive, especially if one is very familiar with the concepts and timing of LibFW. It is not easy to visualize this new type of freedom, but I’ve been working on some ways to help.
Pointing out the timing is one such way to help. Thinkers have been totally accustomed, via LibFW, to the idea that freedom MUST happen immediately, that is, simultaneous with the performance.
Less insistent, it seems, are classical thinkers on the idea of LibFW’s efficiency. I think that most of them feel their idea of FW is more metaphysical than physical, and it’s guaranteed to work 100% of the time, once invoked.
But even when we get it straight that minFW happens a little later, AND that it is only partial, AND that it takes energy to invoke, AND must be “smart” energy for efficiency, AND must TAKE energy to invoke, as well as repetition, AND… we STILL have a hard time believing that any freedom can actually be squeezed out of a 100% deterministic mechanism.
We have a profound bias against determinism, as being a freedom robber. Many of our circuits are saying that such a novel minFW idea must be CRAZY! And then it becomes even harder to visualize how it can happen.
These green and red sections need some re-writing:
But a marvelous thing happened in the world of sophisticated technology one day, and
I suddenly now have a new ADDITIONAL way to visualize genuine freedom emerging from another 100% deterministic mechanism. This sophisticated technological mechanism is new to me, but it’s been around for a while. Actually, it’s been around for about 22 centuries!
I am talking about SAILBOATS.
I was a Physics major fifty years ago, but never understood (or cared about) how sailboats worked. Now, I recently have come to see them as marvelous demonstrations of tricky determinism manipulation, being used to squeak out a useful amount of freedom.
I had not known that when the wind blows to the East, a sailboat can journey to a port directly West. I had not known that sailboats could sail a course that is directly AGAINST THE WIND.
Getting a deep feel for how a sailboat is a determinism converter promises to give greater understanding as to how minFW can squeak out a useful amount of freedom. With minFW we can actually sail our lives almost directly AGAINST THE WIND of our own synaptic sets of lifelong learning and habits.
What I see happening with the sailboat is that, through a tricky use of determinism (wind), the sailboat can achieve motion that APPEARS to defy that same determinism (wind). That is the core of my sailboat analogy. I think we humans can sometimes achieve a performance that SEEMS to defy determinism, through a tricky use of determinism.
*/*/*
With sailboats the deterministic mechanisms used trickily are wind/water currents, the shape of the rudder and keel, and the shape and angles of the sails.
In the human use of minFW the deterministic mechanisms used trickily are one’s own synaptic brain settings, one’s own memory, and consulting others.
Determinism can be used to make physical systems APPEAR to have a little freedom from determinism. This is the essence of minFW theory. It is also the essence of how a sailboat works.
*/*/*
This minFW is NOT freedom FROM determinism at all; it just looks that way at first glance. Partial freedom from the “self” of the past is what actually can be done with tricky determinism manipulations.
It is only an illusion that sometimes in life it might look like our biological equipment offers a little freedom FROM determinism, itself. If accounts of these seemingly free performances are magnified enough by poetry and philosophy, LibFW theories thrive.
The deterministic freedom that minFW allows is freedom or ability to move in life toward a desired goal, in spite of the past, and it does it by manipulating determinism in tricky ways.
Ditto the above for sailboats.
It is only an illusion that sailing against the wind might look like a little freedom FROM determinism (wind). The freedom that sailing allows is freedom or ability to sail a course toward a desired goal, in spite of the wind direction, and it does it by manipulating determinism (wind) in a tricky way.
For sailboats determinism makes some freedom possible, and the same is true in humans. Determinism HELPS us human robots to be a little bit free.
*/*/*
The minFW theory says we are basically complicated robots, but wonderful robots that have the freedom to change, can have an internal will, and can improve it. We can be responsible robots. We can even be free robots, free of some constraints, but not all.
The freedom comes in being able to self-adjust our synapses, so that we are better robots the NEXT time we need to perform. But that self-adjustment is difficult, and not guaranteed. Like the sailboat, it takes repetition, energy, and it must be smart energy for it to work.
*/*/*
I think that, for our brains, there is a surprising amount of freedom available WITH determinism’s help. It starts out very small, but it can add up. It’s not the immediate, cosmic, magical, total freedom from Physics that LibFW promises. It’s tiny and weak but it can surprisingly add up to substantial change.
Sailboats enjoy a similarly surprising degree of freedom in the ability to sail INTO the wind. It’s all done with Newtonian Physics and its simple determinism.
*/*/*
Because this freedom is SO counterintuitive, I will repeat this idea from as many angles as possible. Please bear with the repetition if you already get the idea.
Tricky determinism can make physical systems APPEAR to have freedom from determinism. Actually, it is a configuration change that gives rise to a deterministic change.
Tricky determinism in sailboats allows them to sail up-wind, and appear to violate where the Physics would force them to go. But the magic here is an illusion. This is a type of “sailing freedom” from the domination of “wind direction” determinism.
Tricky determinism in humans allows us make decisions against our previous learning and habits, and sometimes even appear to violate where older synapses would have forced us to go. But the magic here is an illusion. This is MERELY a type of “will freedom” from the domination of past learning... through new learning.
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When a sailboat goes against the wind, every step of every process is 100% deterministic. There’s no magic freedom from Physics.
In minFW theory, every step of every process is 100% deterministic. There’s no magic freedom from Physics here, either.
One problem is that most people’s minds are SO primed with LibFW that they can tend to accidentally assume it, or drift over to it in the middle of a discussion about minFW. It’s new. It takes time and repetition to get used to all this.
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Like minFW, sailboat freedom is only partial. You can’t sail DIRECTLY into the wind. Just partially, but then you tack the other way, and it’s another partial gain in the desired direction. And all these partial freedoms in sailing add up:
Wind goes from West to East; sailboat goes from East to West (with tacking).
It LOOKS like a sailboat is not determined by the wind and is free to travel the water. It looks like it has a “waiver from the wind,” but actually there is no magic at all happening. It is an illusion that the boat is free of these wind forces. It uses these forces.
Sailboats are natural and follow natural laws. Their motion is not miraculous in any way. Humans are natural and follow natural laws. Our motion is not miraculous in any way. We can have marvelous benefits from pure robotic performances AND from minFW improvements, in between those performances.
The boat can literally defy the wind’s DIRECTION. The wind threatens to “own” the boat, but the boat goes where IT wants to go, not where the wind wants it to go. I think we humans have a similar setup.
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When I say “tricky” I mean complicated enough to elude our intuitive understanding. But if we think hard and get educated, some of this tricky complication can be untangled.
All my life I had dismissed sailboats as too simple to bother with. Boy! Was I wrong!
If I had not been seduced by powerboats and waterskiing while young, and had played with small sailboats a lot, then things may have gone different. But I was into exotic new Physics like Relativity and Quantum then, so sailboats were considered “finished” and old-fashioned Physics to me. It was several recent strokes of luck that first brought sailing to my attention, right at the time when tricky uses of determinism were the focus of my study.
Sailboat technology is awesomely tricky! Even the ANCIENT parts of it!
Explaining the Physics of how sailboats work is an ominous task, especially in this limited text medium. I can give it a try, though, and also refer to some useful You-Tube videos.
But first, before we go through the intense labor of following a text discussion of all this COMPLICATED stuff, actually seeing the magic is called for. The SIMPLE magic of sailing, the ancient part, can be seen in videos and even in homemade models.
The full determinism story in sailing is so complicated that, on first encountering it looks like magic. The reason for this is the overload of such new information causes a breakdown of our intuitions on how things work. The apparent magic in sailboats is due to our inexperience with the nuts and bolts, the Physics and determinism of sailing.
The ancient marvel of sailing is the ability to sail AGAINST the wind. The wind says to the boat “Go East” but with this ancient trick the boat can go West! This looks like a miracle when it is first seen and grasped. It’s complicated, but we CAN see it in videos.
The more modern “magic” of sailing is that some boats can go even FASTER THAN the wind! The wind says to the boat “Go 20 knots” but with this new trick some special boats can go 40 knots! This modern advance in sailing technology is not as easily visible in videos.
The best SIMPLE video I’ve found so far is at You-Tube and titled “Exploratorium Science at America’s Cup: ‘Sailing 101’” and is at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oODen08FGU&t=113s
It shows sailing perpendicular to the wind at the time of 1 minute, 35 seconds.
It shows sailing against (diagonally) against the wind at 1 min, 45 sec.
It shows sailing against (diagonally) against the wind at 4 min, 11 sec.
There are other videos… many others.
*/*/*
Let’s paint a more vivid picture of this sailboat analogy.
There happens to be a very large imaginary body of water named Lake Ripple, and it has very dependable wind that always blows from West to East, thus its name. There is a town at the Western end of the lake named Terrapin, and another town on the East end named Fennario. It might help to draw a crude map as you read.
It’s important from the start, though, to not slide off this boat, and fall into the water, by missing this analogy’s aim.
This analogy has nothing to do with the sailboat captain’s free will or any decisions made on board. If you looked at the video suggested above, you saw that there was NO CAPTAIN on that toy boat, yet it went through the step of moving against the wind. A tiny “computer” made of rubber bands and tinker toys could be made to change the rudder and sails to complete a second tack, to correct the error part in the diagonal path of the boat.
So forget about the captain of the boat and his free will. He is not needed. He is on board for decoration ONLY in this analogy.
The freedom in this analogy is NOT about mental free will freedom of the captain’s brain, but is about SAILING FREEDOM, or geometrical navigational freedom.
There is zero free will in this analogy; only sailing freedom.
This mysterious, odd type of “sailing freedom” can teach us something about the even more mysterious and odd kind of freedom we have via minFW.
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On this very large lake, a sailboat captain is FREE to sail to any other dock on the lake, regardless of fact that the wind direction is directly into Fennario.
You are standing at the dock in Fennario right now, looking West, out at the huge Lake Ripple and the wind is in your face. You want to go to Terrapin, barely visible on the other side. The ripples look a bit large today.
The sailboat captain tells you, “Sure, I can take you to Terrapin! No problem. It’ll be easy in this nice wind.”
And he points DIRECTLY into the wind saying, “See that smokestack? That’s Terrapin Station.”
Do you believe him? Can he really get you there, sailing against the wind, with no motor?
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The boat is now in Fennario, and the goal is to sail West to Terrapin, which is AGAINST THE WIND. The boat is actually NOT able to go directly in a straight line to Terrapin, directly West, and completely against the wind. Patience is required, because like minFW, the freedom comes a little later.
What the captain does is launch off to the side a little, to the Southwest, in a diagonal path, somewhat AWAY from Terrapin’s direction. This path is also aimed somewhat TOWARDS Terrapin. and the movement away from the goal can be corrected in the captain’s next move. But so far, it’s a diagonal path across the lake at the start, and not due West at Terrapin.
After a several minutes on this course it becomes time to change the sails and rudder angle, so that the boat points the OTHER diagonal path (Northwest) to partially miss Terrapin. This SUBTRACTS from, or erases the earlier lost footage, while this angle’s partial success ADDS to the earlier one’s partial success.
This tricky adding of partial successes and subtracting of partial errors is called “tacking.” The boat makes a zig-zag course with this kind of tacking to eventually sail against the wind... TO GET TO Terrapin!
Inspiration!
Tacking consists of many partial failures, along with many partial successes.
The failures cancel each other out, and the successes add together!
It all looks like magic when real boats are sailing, but it is all due to the use of totally natural determinism… tricky determinism. This is very similar to how totally natural determinism HELPS us enjoy the benefits of minFW, which I think is our biological free will.
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Do you get it? Going upwind in a sailboat is analogous to the ILLUSION of exercising Libertarian Free Will on the macro scale, going against previous synapse settings, but it’s all still 100% deterministic.
In both cases, it looks like magic at the macro level but it is not; it’s only tricky determinism. When you look at the micro situation all the books balance, and no cheating was involved in granting some small amount of genuine freedom.
If the determining force of wind says “Move West!” and yet a boat moves East, that would initially LOOK like some kind of freedom from the wind’s influence.
But a sailboat traveling AGAINST the wind is NOT doing it by getting a waiver from the Laws of Physics. The boat is just using tricky determinism to create that illusion. It’s the same with brains.
There’s still more to the details of this Physics, but what we have seen already is a good start. We’ve seen that mechanical systems that are 100% deterministic can do some interesting and exotic things.
The way sailing into the wind works involves some deeper things like how the wind wraps around the sail in an uneven manner on each side (called the Bernoulli Principle). This makes the sail operate like an airplane wing in generating forces through shapes and motion. This advanced technology has been in our midst for a little over 2,000 years.
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And sailing gets even more exotic with modern advances in its technology. The way a sailboat can sometimes go faster than the wind is a LITTLE like how simple mechanical levers work. A famous quote by Archimedes on levers is: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” This is the power side of using levers.
He suggested that for great power to move very heavy things, you must push a long distance on the long lever arm, and then the short arm moves a tiny bit, but very powerfully. This is exactly how a crowbar or a hammer’s “nail puller” works.
For sailboats to move faster than the wind, the backwards version of Archimedes’ suggestion is needed. If you push on the SHORT lever arm, the long arm moves at a FASTER speed than your pushing moves. This is what some sailboats can do. Somehow, the boat gets pushed by the long lever arm, and the wind pushes on the short lever arm. Where these lever arms are exactly in the setup I am still pondering as this is still an open study for me. I am pretty sure, though, that the fulcrum action is done by the keel.
This is also similar to how a surfer, who rides along the wave, can pick up speeds greater than the wave. The term “scissoring” comes to mind.
There are many ways that determinism can produce surprising results.
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The sailboat freedom is its ability to SEEMINGLY defy the determinism of wind. The human minFW type of freedom is the performer’s ability to defy her form of determinism: prior synaptic settings. Our perception of both forms of freedom can be seemingly magnified when the details of this tricky use of determinism are not known.
Neither sailboat nor human actually do defy determinism in any way, though. It just looks that way when you don’t know the whole micro story. But in both instances, sailboat and human, a small amount of ACTUAL freedom is squeezed out, for all practical purposes.
This is not a defiance of determinism, just defiance of what determinism is often expected to do. The sailboat can go against the wind, and the human can go against her synapses. Both require smart work, and both are partial.
Our human freedom is in the ability to change our own synapses, and thus move our performances (via learning) in a desired direction.
The freedom a sailboat has is the ability to move in a desired direction, and thus change the direction that the wind would have it move.
Since both of these types of freedom take work and smart efforts, they can fail, and can be neglected entirely.
I define minFW’s freedom aspect as being able to free oneself of one’s own synaptic “prison.” To be free of even just one habit is a big deal! It’s the ability to go against the flow of one’s own nature AND nurture. It’s your ability to steer a course like a sailboat against some of what your DNA dictates and your teaching dictates.
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Here is a short poem I wrote for how minFW can crank out a little freedom, yet totally “roll” with determinism. Here, since this is an artistic expression, it is permissible for me to blend the captain’s free will with the sailboat’s freedom. Also, with that same poetic license I commission YOU to be the captain.
A sailboat is ruled from above and below.
Wind and currents DETERMINE its way.
Yet clever sail and rudder settings,
Can still get you where
YOUR will will will its way.
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I have a small collection of songs containing free will references. One was mentioned above from “Stairway to Heaven.” Here is another, “The Wheel,” from the Grateful Dead. It seems to depict both the robotic and the going further toward better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzGWYShgmfk
The wheel is turning
and you can’t slow down
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still
If the thunder don’t get you
then the lightning will
Won’t you try just a little bit harder
Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?
Won’t you try just a little bit harder
Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?
Round, round robin run round,
got to get back to where you belong
Little bit harder, just a little bit more
A little bit further than you gone before
The wheel is turning
and you can’t slow down
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still
If the thunder don’t get you
then the lightning will
Small wheel turn by the fire and rod
Big wheel turn by the grace of God
Every time that wheel turn ‘round
Bound to cover just a little more ground
The wheel is turning
and you can’t slow down
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still
If the thunder don’t get you
then the lightning will
Won’t you try just a little bit harder
Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?
Won’t you try just a little bit harder
Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?
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Another song by the Grateful Dead is “Victim or the Crime,” but it only asks free will and determinism questions, with no solution suggested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lygh4jxfvl4
Patience runs out on the junkie
The dark side hires another soul
Did he steal his fate or earn it?
Was he force fed, did he learn it?
Whatever happened to his precious self control?
Like him, I’m tired of try’n to heal
This tomcat heart with which I’m blessed
Is destruction loving’s twin?
May I choose to lose or win?
Maybe when my turn comes I will have guessed.
These are the horns of the dilemma
What truth this proof against all lies?
When sacred fails before profane
The wisest man is deemed insane
Even the purest of romantics compromise.
What fixation feeds this fever?
As the full moon pales and climbs
Am I living truth or rank deceiver?
Am I the victim or the crime?
Am I the victim or the crime?
Am I the victim or the crime, or the crime?
And so I wrestle with the angel
To see who’ll reap the seeds I sow
Am I the driver or the driven?
Will I be damned to be forgiven?
Is there anybody here but me who needs to know?
What it is that feeds this fever
As the full moon pales and climbs
Am I living truth or rank deceiver?
Am I the victim or the crime?
Am I the victim or the crime?
Am I the victim or the crime, or the crime?
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This one is not about minFW at all, or even FW, but it sounds like it is. It’s more about the freedom you can feel out in the country, far from cities. It’s more like the “navigational freedom” that was seen in sailboat physics earlier.
The famous Philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote a book on free will titled “Elbow Room” and I learned a lot from him.
“Elbow Room” here sung by Iris Dement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjRFhQmfWo8
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End of Chapter 2
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Rocky
This thread obviously has nothing to do with The Way International. However, it is about Mike's narcissism.
Bully for him that he thinks about things other than Wierwille and PFLAP.
However, is this subject something he has any authoritative insight on? That's highly doubtful.
However, theoretical physicist Sean Carroll MIGHT have s bit of related insight.
I didn't go looking for this video. Because I have watched other Big Think vids, it showed up on YouTube when I went to YT.
My point: there are LOTS of subjects other than twi worth exploring. However, using Mike as a guide? You'll get what he wants to tell you. (For those who buy Wierwille's concept that you can't go farther than you're taught)
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Mike
BRAVO to your video link, Rocky!
Sean Carroll, being a Physicist, has VERY GOOD insights into this issue.
The part that I am working on comes up in the video under "Compatibilist" approaches. He admits that most of the work done in compatibilism has been "loosey goosey" and I agree. That is why I took the compatibilist approach; it seemed to need help.
I was surprised at how many concepts he corralled from this wild topic and brought into that one short video. It was obviously well written and thorough. I have used his overviews in my research. He had a good one out a few years ago comparing Free Will to Baseball.
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/07/13/free-will-is-as-real-as-baseball/
https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/free-will-is-as-real-as-baseball
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Mike
Minimalistic Free Will
Chapter 3 - Minimal Robot Selves
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On the Essence of Minimalness
The classic image of free will, or Libertarian Free Will, has it being instantaneous in time and above the laws of physics. Often implied with this LibFW is it always being thorough, effortless, never failing, never needing improvements, requiring no physical energy, and not requiring intelligent maneuvering.
Sharply contrasting is minFW, which offers a very small amount of comparable freedom, and comes it at a very high price! Plus, it’s not freedom WHEN you want it; you must wait for it. Not a metaphysical bargain by a long shot, but that’s biology for you!
The freedom in minFW comes in being able to self-adjust our synapses, so that we are better robots the NEXT time we need to perform. But that self-adjustment is difficult, and not guaranteed. It takes good DNA and good teachers, and energy, and applied smarts. It also often takes repetition, and clever settings of our human rudders and sails, much like the sailboat’s limited.
So, minFW is not at all the glamorous kind freedom most FW theorists and poets want, which is on-the-spot and immediate. LibFW can be made to sound beautiful, but that’s not the type of freedom that is really needed in everyday life and survival. Too much of that kind of freedom can even be dangerous. The needed freedom is the kind that is restrained for safety.
I have slowly come to view immediate, total LibFW as more of an excessive lust, and in the category of religion/philosophy/poetry. It just doesn’t seem to have any value as an everyday tool for real life. Who would hire a worker who was known for their wild unpredictable behavior on the job, when highly constrained behavior within well-defined limits is what is needed of them?
By contrast, minFW is NOT the ability to suddenly make a “free” move out-of-the-blue, but to gradually and carefully nudge one’s life course in a desired, pre-set direction, using determinism in the process. This mechanism is, again, similar to how a sailboat operates. It is highly constrained freedom, within well-defined limits.
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So why does minFW and its deep minimal-ness sound like it’s a degradation of human life down to the clunky level of a robot? It’s because this needs to be more thoroughly thought through. It’s new and unfamiliar, with lots of distortions in the background.
But really, think deeper, what’s so wrong with being a wet robot? I used to dread it, until I thought it through. Sometimes robotic is good, if it’s high enough quality robotics.
Forget clumsy, rigid, un-resourceful, old fashioned robots. Nobody wants THAT in their life! But when I play at sports or dance fast, I actually DO WANT some good robotic behavior coming from my cerebellum.
Of course, I also want careful deliberative action in my head at times, as well.
There seem to be two modes of thought possible, and both are good. What seems most interesting to me is the possibility that both what we feel to be robotic and feel to be deliberative, are actually this simple minFW mechanism operating in different brain systems and at different levels.
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Everything in the human body is gloriously complicated and it functions awesomely. However, it is a biological entity, and not a metaphysical one. Every seemingly perfectly glorious part and system in the body has approximations involved, and each degrades with use and disease, and operates less efficiently with time. The deliberative functions of the brain are no exception.
Since minFW takes work and smart efforts, it can fail and it can be neglected. It’s not the impossibly perfect, cosmic, or effortless thing that metaphysical theories want it to be. It’s biological free will, not metaphysical free will.
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Part of the false glory of LibFW is the way it supposedly eludes understanding. Can you imagine where we’d be today, medically, if processes other than free will in the human body were regarded as untouchable by science?
Let’s take digestion: A very strong case could have been made 400 years ago that digestion was clearly of God and had His stamp of complexity on it, and that humans had no business trying to figure out how it works.
Actually, I’ll bet there was this kind of opposition from the religious leaders of that day. I vaguely remember remnants of it in my Roman Catholic youth of the 1950s.
I think FW is going to unravel before us soon, in neuroscience, as being remarkably simple. It will still be marvelous (like digestion) but not supernatural (like LibFW).
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In real life we lack “will power” more often than not. We discover that our operation of FW fails regularly, and that it is a lot of work to make a minFW decision, or mold one’s own will from state A to state B.
Sometimes a lot of work is put into molding one’s will, and it STILL FAILS, in spite of the efforts. This is everyone’s experience in life: we all lack the free will we WANT to have!
Usually, in real life people talk about “will power” more than the idea of “free” will. We all can relate to the everyday problem of not having enough will power. The freeness in FW pops up more in the theoretical philosophical world, than in the everyday world of chores, and strong bad habits, and weak good habits.
It seems that within the will there can exist many competing desires. Sometimes it’s a war between mutually exclusive desires. This is why some writers say they hate the term “free will,” and feel it is anything BUT free, as long as this war continues. There is a war within the will. This makes the word “free” strange to many.
When I use the word “free” here in minFW, I associate the idea of freedom with ability.
freedom = ability to change
freedom = ability to learn
partial ability = partial freedom
Usually FW is thought of as an exotic, grandiose phenomenon, far above the category of “mechanism.” Usually, in this context, “skill learning” is thought of as only a simple, bland mechanism. This minFW theory says that FW is also that same bland mechanism that makes simple skill learning possible.
minFW = Learning
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I do not see any metaphysical “fairness” built into FW at all. Like most biology, there’s some kind of bell curve distribution describing “how much” minFW people have, like there is for muscle strength.
So, “how much” minFW people have in play is related to the DNA-supplied equipment they have to begin with, as well as to how well that minFW “muscle” has been exercised and developed, and what kind of teachers were involved.
Not everyone has the same intensity of minFW happening. Some are good at it, and some are not, but that in itself can be an evolving situation. People can gain and lose skills over a lifetime.
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I see minFW as not cheap; it’s very expensive free will. It takes effort, and smart effort at that, plus diligence in persistent application. It can fail, even when we put our best efforts into it. It is partial. It doesn’t look glamorous as it is explained. The more you look at minFW the more it looks to be mere learning in complicated garb.
I can exercise my free will to shoot a better basketball hoop next time, than I did last time. It works if I try it often enough. Likewise, I can exercise my free will to perform better in ethical dilemma XYZ next time, than I did last time XYZ came up. It works if I try it often enough.
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I must be up-front on this, though.
This minFW will NOT deliver the thrilling epiphany you are looking for, IF that sought-after epiphany is rooted in the glamorous, metaphysical flavor that Libertarian FW has. By design, that kind of “thrilling epiphany” has been deliberately removed, deleted, and avoided in all of this minFW theory.
The glamorous and quick part was deleted because it is not needed in biological life, and can even be detrimental to biological. The reason we have any kind of a biological “decision mechanism” is for survival, not for artistic and poetic beauty.
THAT’S what I mean by MINIMAL.
I use the word “bland” to describe this theory because, by design, it SHALL not give you the “grandiose” element that has always been associated with free will.
I can relate, though, to those who harbor a great desire for that grandiose key idea. I sought that exact same thing for many decades, until the well ran dry. That is why I decided several years ago to turn around and search in the opposite, bland, and minimal direction.
So minFW is not cosmic, not perfect, not effortless, but it DOES have a chance at being biological!
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This minFW is merely a partial freedom from some undesirable MACRO PATTERNS of that micro determinism.
Exactly like the odd freedom in sailing, minFW manipulates SOME useful patterns of determinism, in order to gain some partial freedom from some OTHER detrimental patterns of determinism.
It’s a “route to freedom” for important things that matter to survival, like gaining independent of some “other wills,” as well as from some previous versions of ourselves. These are macro patterns of determinism.
Micro-determinism is unimportant to us in everyday life.
Effective macro patterns of determinism must be used to overcome other macro patterns that are undesirable.
I don’t NEED to be free of the machinations of micro determinism. I do very much need to be free of other wills (some of them), and be able to change my own will, sometimes.
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Though minFW comes at a cost, you could look at it as an exchange of one freedom for another.
Nature is economical. When I designed minFW I was asking myself what is the LEAST amount of freedom that could still be useful. Asking for the minimum is a little like Feynman’s “Principle of Least Action” for systems evolving along a route that requires a minimum of energy.
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It’s not only in free will theory that things get OVER-HYPED these days. The general phenomenon of human consciousness as a whole has acquired an undeserved metaphysical and grandiose reputation over the centuries. This acquisition went unchecked, until modern neuroscience started looking seriously at the brain. It is humbling for us to be reduced down to mere biology, but it is also realistic.
I think a long time ago intellectuals started worshiping their own brains a little too much. It happens. In developing Philosophy, they wrote into the human mind all sorts of perfections and beauty that are not really there. By Descartes time it was being secularized and made to sound scientific.
Thus, for a long time the human mind was over-exalted, until recently when the tools were invented (MRI and CAT) that could start to scientifically analyze it.
It is nice to have a mind, but it is not the glorified “knower” that we poetically want it to be. It is humbling to think our mind is made of dirt. This is the essence of the title to Francis Crick’s last book, “The Astonishing Hypothesis.” It is astonishing to think that our wonderful consciousness, qualia, and will are mere mechanisms.
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The subjective feeling of FW seems far less robust than qualia, to me. And who can deny consciousness? Yet, I’ve been learning that they, too, are deterministic mechanisms, and now we know tricky determinism can produce some pretty exotic things. I suspect that sailing and minFW are not the only ones.
I think qualia and consciousness are like a shell game. It looks like magic, but it’s just a lot of complicated tricks that work well together, in order to get some everyday chores done. When the chores are finished, then maybe we can kick back and play with qualia and consciousness, and then try to theorize on them. But that’s not what they are primarily all about.
But like with minFW, I will be looking on the minimal side first when I try to picture the workings of consciousness and the formation of a self. This may seem uncomfortable to you, and it one time it was very uncomfortable for me. But I’ve just learned in recent years it’s better to de-glorify and demystify human consciousness.
I think consciousness, qualia, free will, and subjective first-hand experience have all been over glorified in previous centuries by mystics and religion, and science is now just getting around to dealing with this problem.
All these items (qualia etc.) are fabulously wonderful, especially if we humans have good software installed in us. In other words, I’m shifting the real glory from the human brain over to the software that can be installed in human brain. If a human has bad software installed (teaching/experience) then it’s not so glorious.
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I think the glory and the grandiosity and the fabulous complexity of consciousness and free will have been hyped to the stars, and THUS made inaccessible to clear thought. Consciousness is a tool to be used in everyday life and survival. It should be probed with this in mind.
In other words, in the Dark Ages thinkers got tricked into worshipping their own brains, and we are still suffering from it. Modern science looks at the brain as NOT as an object of worship, but as a challenging object for analysis.
Analysis is taking something complicated and cutting it up into pieces for study. That’s what Neuroscience is right now doing. Every now and then some of the pieces are understood and put together, but the whole puzzle is far from solved.
When Consciousness and the human mind are figuratively cut up into pieces, it’s easier to stop worshipping them. The pieces are not as complicated and intimidating as the whole. Of course, re-assembly of the pieces after analysis is the essential NEXT step, in order to see the “emergent properties” emerge.
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I totally appreciate having good teachers or “programmers” for my “software.” The operation of minFW augments this appreciation with the realization that I, MYSELF can ALSO be a participate in my own programming. I can BE one of those programmers if I work it right.
Admittedly, as children we are at the mercy of our initial programming, and in many ways, this is not fair! But later on, we can participate in this process and teach ourselves. We can somewhat change our behavior patterns, and THAT is our free will, our minFW. We have the ability to over-write our own biological programming. We don’t always use this ability well.
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I figure you may still be in shock at the idea of being called a sophisticated robot.
Yes, I know this does feel a little a little bit like being stuck in the movie “Blade Runner” but SNAP OUT OF IT !! If it feels better to think of yourself as stardust, fine. But, that’s still pretty much the same as star dirt, isn’t it?
If we work our minFW to produce love, THAT is still genuinely special.
Let me expand on that:
If we (not special) work (not special) our minFW (not special) to produce love, THAT is still genuinely special.
We have the freedom of will in minFW to nudge our robot lives towards love, over and over, RIGHT! Isn’t that more important than what kinds of gears, levers, fluids, bones, carbon, etc. into which we install our Love Software? It’s not what we are, it’s what we DO that really matters.
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There is some consolation for all this harsh minimal-ness. There is a hidden BENEFIT to having less than total freedom, on the spot, to act or decide.
I think, as a culture, going over-board with the ideology of American freedom can sometimes become confusing in issues where freedom comes up in practical ways. The idea that too much freedom can be bad or unsafe is too often automatically rejected, and never thought through.
But in theorizing about the mechanisms of the brain, it’s good to remember that too much spontaneous freedom of thought can be VERY bad in survival situations. Lots of freedom sounds great for artists, but for survival IS cosmic freedom really useful? We live in a culture with excess free time, and we don’t think through much about how FW and consciousness must work in austere circumstances.
But even logically, shouldn’t a totally “free” thought or action be viewed as dangerous to the thinker? To me it sounds like a great way to lose my place in a complicated set of thoughts. I want solid markers in my mind as I explore complicated ideas.
A thought, totally uninfluenced and guided by any past experience, may be poetically attractive at first, but WHO’S TO SAY there can be any practical, everyday-life benefit to such a type of freedom? Entropy would predict the opposite!
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And now for your
Daily Deterministic Devotional
I want my free thoughts to NOT be influenced
by lots of proven energy-wasting routes.
But I very much DO want my free thoughts
to be guided, influenced, and even filtered
by proven worthwhile teachers.
It’s fun being a robot with good teachers!
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Last year I started a comedy thread with this initial post:
I am NOT a robot!
(my mother board assures
me of this on every boot-up)”
Later on, in the comments I went on to joke:
“But REALLY folks.... all seriousness aside, I assure you that I’m fully human, but I just haven’t found a water tight proof of that for my Real ID yet. Are there any genuine (certified) humans out there who can help me with this? ………. But while I’m at it, just between you and me, has anyone figured out what to think about all these billions of little, tiny, wet, squirmy micro-robots that make up our brains?”
Yes, that is the harsh truth, the astonishing truth, that our mechanical consciousness is not as mystical and special as we sometimes wish or exaggerate it out to be.
Now, in addition to all that, if we want to DO special things with our limited equipment, then we can to seek special programming that is MORE SPECIAL than we are.
We can’t lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Instead we must be given a special bootstrap program that is more clever than we are, because it is written by a programmer cleverer than we are. THEN, and only then, can we do special things, via the special software’s teaching, with our un-special equipment. Teachers rule!
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If we have a mechanistic, deterministic, MINIMALISTIC free will then why can’t robots (someday) have the same thing? I fully DO expect robots to someday have this kind of minFW. It is a totally deterministic mechanism, and so, robots with sufficient input/output skills should be able to do it.
People once thought that a robot could never discern faces, or be able to read the handwriting on a postal envelope. Robots nowadays are highly specialized. It may not be economical (yet) to give them totally general abilities yet. They need to pay for themselves.
This minFW theory aims to accept determinism 100% for human biological free will, and still find a mechanism that squeezes out a little freedom. Since there is nothing magical in how this minFW idea works, extending it to robots merely requires that we give them the necessary inputs, outputs, training, and a jump start program (teaching).
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I figure that when we walk into a situation, we behave exactly as our synapses dictate, and it’s a totally robotic response in real-time. We bring with us all the synapses of our growing up AND any character-building synapse adjustments we PREVIOUSLY engaged in.
This way, as we develop our real time robotic responses more and more, eventually we can become a primary agent responsible for our robotic responses. This only happens to the degree that we successfully operate minFW over a long period of time.
This is the emergence of a genuine new “self.”
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Confabulation in the brain emerges in MANY contexts, including normal conversations, meditation, and many brain diseases, and many injuries. It seems to be going on all the time, and sometimes leaks out.
For the most part, since minFW is not commonly worked anywhere near its potential, many people who think they are an independent “self” are really an amalgam of their most dominant teachers.
Like free will, I see no natural guarantee that genuine selves are a robust phenomenon. It’s complicated developing all those synapses deliberately, and it’s much easier to “go with the flow” when life gets difficult and busy.
Many neuroscience researchers have put forth notions that a lot of what we call consciousness is hyped and massively inflated, and most properly called confabulation.
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I believe minFW describes what is going in the brain and in our lives. We have a large potential to have a small bit of freedom, but unfortunately few humans are clearly aware of this, and most of this potential is often wasted. In times when self-discipline is not a popular theme, genuine selfhood declines.
For the most part we act robotically, and then try to actuate some minFW when the robotic behavior is not working well. Because there is so little known here, few succeed, and when they do, teaching others is another challenge.
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I have been settling with the idea that the “self” is that set of taught internal standards or expectations, PLUS the “wanting” nerve-ware being pretty much inherited, PLUS the experiences and ideas that have been focused on most.
A person must WANT to operate minFW to have it work successfully.
A person must ACTUALLY operate minFW to have it develop and mature.
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I haven’t yet specifically addressed “wanting” in all this yet, and how much freedom we may have in sculpting our own desires. My focus has been on individual choices or performances.
In the background is the notion of “wanting” in the sense that we compare our performances with an internalized “want list” or a set of standards or expectations.
How that set of wants or expectations gets there, for children, is a matter of teaching. After childhood this internalized set of wants may have a sense of freedom or “free will” in that we may be able to modify and sculpt it to some extent.
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I think the main reason free will and consciousness have been so resistant to analysis is because for centuries intellectuals have been over-hyping it in a sort of self-worship.
So, man pumps in artificial glamour, and then consciousness eludes scientific explanation.
The common objection to any good theory on consciousness is: “But there’s no glamour in your explanation of consciousness, so it must be deficient.” But the glamour doesn’t belong there to begin with. So, good theories develop only slowly, until recent modern neuroscience came along, and then the Internet came along.
There is survival value to people having consciousness and qualia in teaching children about the existence of other minds. Wondering about WHAT someone else’s qualia feels like, leads to more empathy and cooperation. This kind of wonder is something young children are capable of spontaneously discovering. Young children of 9 years can think about their own thinking, AND they can think about other people’s thinking.
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end of Chapter 3
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