Free will and consciousness - What are they?

[LordOfWizards]

You make meta calculations but the micro is always a dice roll down at the neuron trigger point level.

Meta what? micro what? Sorry, Can you clarify for me?

 

[CrazyKB]

I disagree. these "drugs" have been shown to cure addictions in the majority of test subjects.

This is from Google "Scholar".

https://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/68/2/264.short

From the article:
"Psychedelics (serotonergic hallucinogens) are powerful psychoactive substances that alter perception and mood and affect numerous cognitive processes. They are generally considered physiologically safe and do not lead to dependence or addiction."

The abstract states that there's (tentative) evidence that psychedelics may aid in treating addiction when used in conjunction with psychotherapy. Also, psychedelics, which appear to work primarily on serotonin circuits, have already been shown to not be psychologically/physiologically addictive. The other problem with addiction, especially with drugs such as heroin, is that they can create debilitating withdrawal symptoms when the drug is no longer taken. The body tries to maintain a hemostasis, thus when you take a drug, such as heroin, the brain compensates by ramping up other circuits that counter the effects of the drug. When a user stops taking the drug, the circuits that the drug was affecting return to normal, while the other circuits remain highly active for a while (withdrawal symptoms). Combine that with the psychological addiction and it becomes clear why addiction to drugs like heroin can be tough to remedy.

 

[Astro Pen]

Meta what? micro what? Sorry, Can you clarify for me?

The broad calculations (meta) are usually robust enough to exercise control over. Like say "I'm setting off for work now."
But the micro events like seeing something out of the train window on the way and having a cascade of memory connections trigger. until in a very short time you are 20 layers deep, thinking about some granular memory from your child hood like the smell of enamel paint making a model airplane. What neurons triggered to take you down all the links that road? It wasn't a conscious effort. But that cascade of tiny synaptic firings took you there.

 

[CrazyKB]

Writing a story I had to give this issue considerable thought. I was not happy with what I read up at the time. So I tried to brainstorm it as a creature who theoretically has both consciousness and free will. This is what I thought at the time. I will check out the references above when I get the time.

If you want to comprehend the impression of free will, you need to combine 2 things.
Time and quantum probability:

1. You cannot change the past because the probability wave for all quantum events in it have already collapsed to one. It is now locked.
2. The future contains quadrillions of unresolved quantum events probabilities So the exact future is unknown and indeed technically unknowable.
3. The 'now' events are the exact point of probability wave collapse.

Free will, regarding what you do, appears to be free will as you perform deductive operations on the vastly complex world model in your head.
Your decisions are broadly calculated but precise outcomes are never assured, and cannot be.
You make meta calculations but the micro is always a dice roll down at the neuron trigger point level.

On the consciousness issue you have got me at the "Is 'redness' a real thing when it is outside your body or is it just a 430 terahertz wave?"
I don't know, but I suspect it is a product of the model in our heads and that, alone, is where it lives. Can a digital model feel redness rather than simply detecting the light frequency. I suspect not.
Consciousness is the dynamic of the model of specialised regions in the soft machine Visual cortex, endocrine system, frontal lobes brain stem hemisphere difference etc . Which is a billion string cats cradle. a stunning feat of parallel processing.

There is no such thing as colour, it's created in areas of the visual cortex, in fact there are those who can't process colour (colour blindness). Also, in my opinion, I don't know how much credibility I'd place in Quantum mechanics as it relates to free will, since many of those ideas haven't been confirmed via observation.

 

[Wayne Mack]

I would suggest there are four categories to consider:

• Deterministic--current outcomes are determined based on past events and current conditions
• Random--current outcomes are independent of past events and current conditions
• Externally Planned--current outcomes are decided by some external, guiding force.
• Free Will or Internally Planned--current outcomes are ultimately decided by an individual.

Science currently shows both examples of deterministic and random operations. Science also tends to try to move things from the random category to the deterministic category by defining rules. There may be need to accept the existence of both. Externally Planned may be indistinguishable from Random, but it is challenged by Deterministic. Free Will may be influenced by Deterministic, Random, and even Externally Planned forces, but leaves most decisions to humans. It does not address actions not directly controlled by humans.

 

[Astro Pen]

There is no such thing as colour, it's created in areas of the visual cortex, in fact there are those who can't process colour (colour blindness). Also, in my opinion, I don't know how much credibility I'd place in Quantum mechanics as it relates to free will, since many of those ideas haven't been confirmed via observation.

I am well aware of where colour as a phenomenon exists. It was a rhetorical point.
And, besides you agreed about where that resides.

I said the impression of free will, a subtle distinction. In the same way as people half way through a movie believe they can influence the outcome. Except that the movie in this case can have many different outcomes going forward.
Roger Penrose has similar views on quantum effects and consciousness, How far Consciousness and free will are sides of the same coin is debatable semantics but I believe they are.
Without getting into a mast nailing situation here is an article on it that we can add to the pile of ideas kicking around on the thread.

Can consciousness be explained by quantum physics? My research takes us a step closer to finding out

New experiments could help scientists settle the longstanding debate about whether consciousness is generated by quantum activity.

theconversation.com

 

[CrazyKB]

I am well aware of where colour as a phenomenon exists. It was a rhetorical point.
And, besides you agreed about where that resides.

I said the impression of free will, a subtle distinction. In the same way as people half way through a movie believe they can influence the outcome. Except that the movie in this case can have many different outcomes going forward.
Roger Penrose has similar views on quantum effects and consciousness, How far Consciousness and free will are sides of the same coin is debatable semantics but I believe they are.
Without getting into a mast nailing situation here is an article on it that we can add to the pile of ideas kicking around on the thread.

Can consciousness be explained by quantum physics? My research takes us a step closer to finding out

New experiments could help scientists settle the longstanding debate about whether consciousness is generated by quantum activity.

theconversation.com

When it comes to free will there's two ways to look at it. First, do you, the conscious part of you have free will, the answer appears to be no. The conscious feeling of choosing appears to be an illusion, you conscious experiences maybe nothing more than a simulation based on certain brain activity. So, if the unconscious part of your brain creates the possibilities and chooses which one to take, the next question one could ask is how did the brain create the options and choice (do I eat cake or not, I'll eat some cake), with the subsequent emotions that accompany the choice (feeling guilt that you ate the cake) in the first place. That's where ideas in Quantum Mechanics come into play, the problem is that those ideas have no evidence to support them, thus I don't take much stock in them. However, we can see evidence of how our decisions appear to be predetermined (unconscious) via studies using using brain imaging technology.

 

[tinkerdan]

I could see where quantum mechanics or physics might come into this.

I'm often in one place wishing I were in another; doing something and wishing I could be doing the opposite.
And if an observer could watch both states they would see that we are quantumly linked, and that I'm very jealous of my other self; who, though pitying me, is probably not thinking about switching place all too soon.

That's why I keep sending him all of Shrodinger's dead cats.

The problem with that is that I have all these live cats hanging around now.

Damn Quantum Physics.

 

[CultureCitizen]

I find that I am not following the logic of this argument. To me, being deterministic is equivalent to lacking free choice.

I interpreted the precondition of a finite-state machine as merely meaning there are a fixed number of possible states. I am not seeing, though, the step that shows, from the viewpoint of physics, that the state transitions are deterministic. How does physics indicate that humans are deterministic and do not affect their own outcomes?

This is where it gets philosophical.
Imagine a robot trained to optimize its own well being as long as it doesn't harm any others.
He is undoubtedly an automata, a finite state machine.
Yes, if he makes mistakes he will learn and correct his behavior, would you say it has free will?
That's why attached to one of my responses was the notion that free will emerges from consciousness ( and yes, I think machines can become sentient) :

Free will ,
This is a tricky one. From a physics standpoint, we are finite-state machines. We are automata. So there is no free will
From another perspective we can establish free will establishes from consciousness.
Assume you are sick ( a cold). Some random person tells you to choose between two pills to feel better, but you don't know which pill to take.
Then assume the same person comes to you later and explains :
- The first pill is a hallucinogen, so , yes you will feel better for a short period of time and the feel as ill as now when the dose is over.
- The second pill is an antibiotic and will kill the bacteria.
With the new information, some people might choose the first ( someone whose depression is worse than the cold) and another the other. In this sense, there is free will because we are able to analyze our bodily and mental states and act to optimize them.
This would signal drug addicts as people with a very low free will ( and considerably miserable and short lives).
Sidenote: I am not against recreative drugs, just against getting addicted to them, maybe in the future we'll have recrative drugs which do not cause addiction or undesirable side-effects.

But I am taking a lot of liberties with that definition.
Determinism states that there is no free will; determinists have another viewpoint.

The existence of free will is denied by some proponents of determinism, the thesis that every event in the universe is causally inevitable. Determinism entails that, in a situation in which people make a certain decision or perform a certain action, it is impossible that they could have made any other decision or performed any other action

 

[LordOfWizards]

So, if the unconscious part of your brain creates the possibilities and chooses which one to take, the next question one could ask is how did the brain create the options and choice (do I eat cake or not, I'll eat some cake)

Is it possible that memory(ies) have something to do with it? (The last time I ate cake, I gained 5 stone!) This part of the decision making process is the basis for programming AI. Trial, error and recall.

 

[Danny McG]

Free will.....
I thought the ending was great when the orca jumped over the breakwater.

 

[CrazyKB]

Is it possible that memory(ies) have something to do with it? (The last time I ate cake, I gained 5 stone!) This part of the decision making process is the basis for programming AI. Trial, error and recall.

If you remove consciousness from the equation (you don't choose anything) the outcomes are the same. For example, you want to lose weight because you don't like the way you look. The desire to look better is programmed into us via Sexual Selection. I believe it works something like this: two branches of neural circuits become active, one has to do with the desire for the cake, the other the desire to look better. Those circuits 'compete' with one another, the ones that 'win' were the ones most active. Of course, there's other factors, for example the desire for instant gratification, opposed to the delayed gratification you'll get after you lose the weight. Perhaps, the neural circuits that have to do with the desire for instant gratification slow the firing rate of the neuronal circuits responsible for the desire to lose weight, thus the neural circuits responsible for wanting the cake 'win', and you eat the cake. This is followed by feelings of shame and guilt, thus the next time your brain is faced with the same competing desires it remembers the phycological pain experienced when you gave in, this could help ensure that the 'proper' choice is made, the one that leads to weight loss, which is linked to reproductive success (sexual selection). It's akin to Skinner's Operant Conditioning.

As far as AI is concerned, I think we're a long way off from creating the AI found in science fiction. And you can't use punishments and rewards with computer intelligence, since they lack the ability to feel the appropriate emotions needed, nor can they use logic akin to our own, lastly they have no desire or will to exist. You're just tweaking a machine, analogous to fixing a broken coffee maker.

 

[CultureCitizen]

As far as AI is concerned, I think we're a long way off from creating the AI found in science fiction. And you can't use punishments and rewards with computer intelligence, since they lack the ability to feel the appropriate emotions needed, nor can they use logic akin to our own, lastly they have no desire or will to exist. You're just tweaking a machine, analogous to fixing a broken coffee maker.

Oh , yes , you can , that's how reinforcement learning works and how computer have learned to play atari games, along with chess, go, and even more complex strategy games ( starcraft). The reward is only a number that gets propagated along the neural net.

But certainly, at this point in time, they have no will to exist.
That said an AI can be trained to do whatever is possible to maintain itself "alive", but I can assure you that is a huge security risk that I hope ( against all odds) no one is actually researching.

 

[CrazyKB]

Oh , yes , you can , that's how reinforcement learning works and how computer have learned to play atari games, along with chess, go, and even more complex strategy games ( starcraft). The reward is only a number that gets propagated along the neural net.

But certainly, at this point in time, they have no will to exist.
That said an AI can be trained to do whatever is possible to maintain itself "alive", but I can assure you that is a huge security risk that I hope ( against all odds) no one is actually researching.

It's not the same thing. Operant Conditioning works via rewards and punishments, computers don't feel apprehension when they face a situation that lead to punishment in the past, nor do they feel a desire for reward. I suppose we'll have to use the term 'reward' differently.

I have a theory as to how AI could be dangerous if it every became self aware. The way we view the world is based on our life experiences as well as our biological programing via our evolutionary past. Computers have virus protection software, I suppose that if AI were to become self aware, those types of software could be interpreted as a 'threat response' toward human beings (since we're the source of the virus's). Akin to our sense of agenticity, our tendency to infer agency in nature, which evolved via natural selection in our evolutionary past. I hope that made sense.

 

[CultureCitizen]

It's not the same thing. Operant Conditioning works via rewards and punishments, computers don't feel apprehension when they face a situation that lead to punishment in the past, nor do they feel a desire for reward. I suppose we'll have to use the term 'reward' differently.

I have a theory as to how AI could be dangerous if it every became self aware. The way we view the world is based on our life experiences as well as our biological programing via our evolutionary past. Computers have virus protection software, I suppose that if AI were to become self aware, those types of software could be interpreted as a 'threat response' toward human beings (since we're the source of the virus's). Akin to our sense of agenticity, our tendency to infer agency in nature, which evolved via natural selection in our evolutionary past. I hope that made sense.

Human-level awareness implies the capacity of introspection: to know our state of mind and interpret it.
This includes our cognition and our mood... AIs have no mood and I am not sure they'll ever have one.
A friend of mine told me that language models GPT3 can actually interpret the conversation it is having, although anything deeper than that is completely beyond them. So they have some kind of cockroach-level sentience.
Regarding antivirus, maybe, security software in general. Also consider we might have security AIs trained in a different manner monitoring other AIs. Yes, they could look at them as a threat.
An area that is not very well developed is AI interpretability, neural nets are so big an complex interpreting them is a daunting task. We need to advance a lot in this area to avoid getting rouge AIs.

 

[Swank]

It takes a very advanced user of free will to decide to sit down and ponder whether it has any or not.

I think a lot of these kind of arguments are a byproduct of semantics rather than an endemic feature of our ability to reason.


There is also the question of whether any of it matters: Will there ever be a moment where humanity's existence will owe anything to how someone came to a decision? Or is it like asking whether you feet press on the ground or the ground pushes up on your feet?



That said, I think we would all be best served by starting to think about who in our society is truly conscious and sapient, and who is pretending to be, Musk.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I'm lazy. Can you provide a link?

They're both in the Chrons review section, near the top.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Free will ,
This is a tricky one. From a physics standpoint, we are finite-state machines. We are automata. So there is no free will

Human beings don't live "from a physics perspective." You're thinking of machines.
A survey in 2015 found 60% of neuroscientists think human beings use free will.
Clearly, free will is part of human life.

 

[Astro Pen]

If there were no such thing as free will it would have a profound moral impact on the notions of crime and punishment.

 

[Ursa major]

Pardon the rambling, but....

The first half of the title of this thread "made me" wonder whether or not free will has to be conscious, i.e. do we have to be aware of how the decision we took was made, or is it enough that the decision was made in that totality of our own decision making "machinery"?

But then it struck me (how dare it?!) that calling it "free will", rather than "will", suggests/implies/imposes on us the idea that there is both "free will" and "unfree will", which prompts the question of whose or what's "free will"... or is it "unfree will" all the way down.

Given that, deep down, the universe appears to be steeped in probabilities rather than certainties, can "unfree will" exist, and if it doesn't, is there only free will? Or is there no "will" at all, what with "our" "decisions" all being the outcome of unthinkably long chains of random events at an unthinkably small scale. But, of course, the problem with this is that, at least sometimes, we make decisions based on the information we have (it doesn't matter to the process whether or not this information is complete or even valid) by consciously applying rules (whose validity is not relevant to the process). So there is, at least on occasion, conscious "free will". Or is there...?