Determinism - Is the playing field level ?

[Halc]

On 11/7/2023 at 7:59 AM, Eise said:

For the record, I do not say the world is determined: QM shows it isn't.

QM shows that it isn't predictable, but until the fully deterministic interpretations are falsified, QM does not kill determinism.

 

On 11/7/2023 at 8:02 AM, studiot said:

There is a cause and effect connection to determinism so if we can consider the very last cause before the effect Joigus comment of how far back can we go along the chain of cause and effect is pertinent.

If you can go back even a short time, then that prior state must be fully determined by the state shortly prior to that, and so on...

Hence if we can go back a little and retain determinism, then we can go back all the way to the beginning.  Of course there's no evidence of this short term determinism. For one, it presumes a meaningful state of a system, which is a counterfactual, and few interpretations of QM support counterfactuals.

On 11/7/2023 at 8:02 AM, studiot said:

When I said that humanity has never known enough to determine everything

Don't confuse determinism with predictability. One can have a nice classical fully determined universe (such a Newton might have envisioned) and it would still not be predictable. It's pretty easy to show that.

On 11/7/2023 at 9:21 AM, sethoflagos said:

Given a free neutron in whatever initial boundary conditions you care to set, in what sense could its instant of decay into a proton and W^- be understood to be '(pre)determined' prior to the actual event?

That's a good example of an uncaused thing. Bohmian mechanics (which supports counterfactuals) would I think assign hidden variables to the neutron system and a thousand identically set up systems would all decay after the same duration.  MWI (also deterministic) would say that it decays after every possible duration. Copenhagen simply says we cannot know. Most of the others say something on the order of it occurring at some random time, which in some cases is 'God rolling dice'. None of the modern deterministic interpretations were out there during Einstein's time, and he seemed like a determinist type to me, so that's too bad.

 

There are people (at least one of whom is contributing to this topic) which seem to spin a deterministic universe in a bad light, like it is somehow a thing to be avoided if possible, especially for decision making. I don't understand this aversion. I cannot conceive how a better decision can be made through a non-deterministic mechanism than through a deterministic one. All of evolution has favored structures that generate consistent output from identical inputs, despite leveraging quantum process in doing so. This shows that determinism is a good thing, even if it doesn't exist in reality.

[Anirudh Dabas]

15 hours ago, iNow said:

You said, “Only living beings can make choices or decisions.”

I asked how do you know. 

Rephrased: What information have you encountered that informs this conclusion, this conclusion you’ve asserted with such certainty and zero hedge, this conclusion you’ve avoided acknowledging may be invalid?

Said another way, how do you know that only living beings can make choices and decisions? Can you answer this without using new questions of your own? Without appealing to common sense or folk wisdom?

As curious as I am to know the true answer, I do think it's impossible to answer this question...

We've seen living beings, like animals, demonstrate behaviors that suggest they're considering different options before making a choice. This ability to make decisions is often linked to having some form of awareness or consciousness.

But I get it, this conclusion might not cover everything. The idea gets tricky when we talk about non-living things. There's ongoing debate about where the line is drawn between what's alive and what's not, and for instance, whether things like machines or AI could ever truly make choices or decisions.

The whole concept of what makes a choice or decision might be a lot fuzzier than we think. It's like we're still trying to figure out where consciousness starts and ends, and how that relates to making choices. This area is one big puzzle that we're still piecing together and has become a major question here...

 

[martillo]

1 hour ago, Halc said:

There are people (at least one of whom is contributing to this topic)...

May be you are referring to myself. I'm the only one here defending the "libertarian" current of philosophy on the subject in which "free will" and "determinism" cannot coexist at the same time. They would be mutually exclusive. What I point out is that there are deterministic situations sometimes and nondeterministic ones other times with some degree of freedom only because total freedom actually never exist. What I defend is that as there are undetermined situations sometimes the future is not determined and so as a whole is the case of "Indeterminism" and not "Determinism".

1 hour ago, Halc said:

This shows that determinism is a good thing, even if it doesn't exist in reality.

I think all the discussions in the forum in all areas are about the real things in the world and in the universe and not how we would like them to be.

I just say there are both, deterministic situations and nondeterministic ones and that because of the undetermined ones the future is actually undetermined.

This has nothing to do with good/bad subjective perceptions.

Edited November 8, 2023 by martillo

[martillo]

9 hours ago, joigus said:

It's just an attempt to focus the discussion on physical determinism, which is what you meant, I think. Is it not?

@studiot didn't answered that yet.

I think there is some indeterminism even in purely physical phenomena. If you would prefer to stay on physical determinism/indeterminism I would propose to analyze the "quantum tunneling" phenomenon for instance.

As far as I know there could be only a probability for an electron trespass a potential barrier through "quantum tunneling". I mean, actually a particular electron can undergo through "quantum tunneling" or not. There would be just a probability for it to do that. It doesn't mean it will do that.

Wouldn't "quantum tunneling" be an inherently nondeterministic phenomenon?

If some inherent nondeterministic phenomena actually do exist I conclude that is the case of Indeterminism and not Determinism in the universe.

Edited November 8, 2023 by martillo

[iNow]

1 hour ago, Anirudh Dabas said:

As curious as I am to know the true answer, I do think it's impossible to answer this question...

Perhaps, but then surely the poster should hedge and acknowledge uncertainty ✌🏼

[Anirudh Dabas]

Absolutely, acknowledging uncertainty is a crucial aspect of discussing complex topics like this one. While the statement might come across as definitive, it's important to recognize that our understanding of decision-making, consciousness, and the boundaries of what can truly make choices is an ongoing and evolving discussion.

[studiot]

3 hours ago, Halc said:

Don't confuse determinism with predictability. One can have a nice classical fully determined universe (such a Newton might have envisioned) and it would still not be predictable. It's pretty easy to show that.

Well why not show it then ?

 

3 hours ago, Halc said:

Hence if we can go back a little and retain determinism, then we can go back all the way to the beginning. 

Re this second quote and 'predictability v determinism'.

The mathematics of continued products would disagree with you.

 

9 hours ago, joigus said:

The words "elbow room" kind of gave it away.

There are two figures of speech (that I know of) involving elbows in the English language. Both are robust but quite inoffensive.

Howevr the German' Lebensraum' has connotations that might offend some members.

So I am trying to ignore it.

[sethoflagos]

3 hours ago, Halc said:

Hence if we can go back a little and retain determinism, then we can go back all the way to the beginning.  Of course there's no evidence of this short term determinism. For one, it presumes a meaningful state of a system, which is a counterfactual, and few interpretations of QM support counterfactuals.

By being explicitly non-local, Cramer's Transactional Interpretation is immune to Bell's inequality test while being entirely consistent with counterfactual definiteness. Which is somewhat interesting given its rooting in (explicitly) the relativistic form of the Schrodinger equation and its consistency with (though not a dependency on) an Einsteinian block universe (so I have been led to believe). This seems to make it a particularly interesting viewpoint from which to consider determinism and the relationships between past, present and future in general. I'd be interested in your thoughts on this perspective.   

[martillo]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

There are two figures of speech (that I know of) involving elbows in the English language. Both are robust but quite inoffensive.

Howevr the German' Lebensraum' has connotations that might offend some members.

So I am trying to ignore it.

I mentioned "elbow room" just because it appears in several articles about the libertarianism approach to "free will". For instance at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_(metaphysics)

I have found it defined as "space to move".

I associate it to "degrees of freedom" to make a choice in some situation.

Edited November 9, 2023 by martillo

[Halc]

3 hours ago, martillo said:

I'm the only one here defending the "libertarian" current of philosophy on the subject in which "free will" and "determinism" cannot coexist at the same time.

I do believe the libertarians assert both free will and determinism, that the one is possible despite the other. Your stance, at last what I can make of it, doesn't look like that.

I for one would I suppose qualify as libertarian, but only because I define free will in such a way that is 1) completely compatible with determinism, and 2) actually something that is desirable. A more typical definition of free will seems like something I'd not wish to have, and it is indeed often incompatible with determinism.

 

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Well why not show it then ?

Build two machines that play rock paper scissors. They are constructed so that each uses a completely deterministic in algorithm, and each has full access to the state and programming of the other.  If the behavior can be predicted because it is deterministic, then each robot can predict the move of the other and always win. Since the machines can't both win, predictability cannot be had despite the deterministic nature of the situation.

Godel did a simpler proof, but that one is a bit more on topic.

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Re this second quote and 'predictability v determinism'.

The mathematics of continued products would disagree with you.

I don't understand these comments or the relevancy to my comments to which they replied. Perhaps you don't grok what I said. I admit the lack of elegance in my conveying it.

37 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

By being explicitly non-local, Cramer's Transactional Interpretation is immune to Bell's inequality test while being entirely consistent with counterfactual definiteness.

I think any non-local interpretation can be (but not necessarily is) consistent with counterfactual definiteness.

Does determinism depend on counterfactuals?  MWI for instance is considered fully deterministic but denies counterfactuals, but I'm not sure how a wave function can be properly expressed in the absence of counterfactuals. I lack the expertise to resolve that.

You also mention a block universe, but I don't think a block universe necessarily implies determinism, so I don't see the relevance between one interpretation of time or another.

[martillo]

4 minutes ago, Halc said:

I do believe the libertarians assert both free will and determinism, that the one is possible despite the other. Your stance, at last what I can make of it, doesn't look like that.

I for one would I suppose qualify as libertarian, but only because I define free will in such a way that is 1) completely compatible with determinism, and 2) actually something that is desirable. A more typical definition of free will seems like something I'd not wish to have, and it is indeed often incompatible with determinism.

Seems it is not the case you mention. Just at Wikipedia it can be found at the very beginning of the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_(metaphysics) the following:

"Libertarianism is one of the main philosophical positions related to the problems of free will and determinism which are part of the larger domain of metaphysics.^[1] In particular, libertarianism is an incompatibilist position^[2][3] which argues that free will is logically incompatible with a deterministic universe. Libertarianism states that since agents have free will, determinism must be false and vice versa.^[4]"

 

[Halc]

9 minutes ago, martillo said:

Seems it is not the case you mention.

It indeed seems not the case.  The stanford page on libertarianism doesn't even mention determinism at all. I stand corrected on that point.

There's the compatibilist view I suppose, but it requires a sort of soft determinism. Now I really wonder why 'free will' is a desirable thing.

Edited November 9, 2023 by Halc

[TheVat]

5 hours ago, Halc said:

There are people (at least one of whom is contributing to this topic) which seem to spin a deterministic universe in a bad light, like it is somehow a thing to be avoided if possible, especially for decision making. I don't understand this aversion. I cannot conceive how a better decision can be made through a non-deterministic mechanism than through a deterministic one. All of evolution has favored structures that generate consistent output from identical inputs, despite leveraging quantum process in doing so. This shows that determinism is a good thing, even if it doesn't exist in reality.

If I were to guess at the reluctance, I would say they are not favoring a non-deterministic choice process (which could be randomness, rather than actual free agency) but rather one in which the self, the "I" has some kind of agency that is not tethered to physical causality.  It's aspect dualism, if you peek under the hood.  For some, it's a way to distance oneself from the clockwork universe.   

 

Side note: Leibniz thinking on counterfactuals somewhat anticipated MWI.  Leibniz argued that there could be an infinite number of alternate worlds, so long as they were not in conflict with laws of logic.  So there could exist worlds where counterfactuals were the reality, where Alice, regretting that she didn't call Bob, did in some world call Bob, with positive consequences.  Each world would still be deterministic from a physicalist perspective, but all counterfactuals would be permitted in a larger view of all possible Alices, with all possible evolutions of the state vector.

[Eise]

9 hours ago, martillo said:

I mentioned "elbow room" just because it appears in several articles about the libertarianism approach to "free will". For instance at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_(metaphysics)

Just as a side note:

Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting is also the title of a book by Daniel Dennett, in which he defends his compatibilist view on free will. He later wrote another book about it: Freedom Evolves.

 

[studiot]

12 hours ago, Halc said:

Build two machines that play rock paper scissors. They are constructed so that each uses a completely deterministic in algorithm, and each has full access to the state and programming of the other.  If the behavior can be predicted because it is deterministic, then each robot can predict the move of the other and always win. Since the machines can't both win, predictability cannot be had despite the deterministic nature of the situation.

Godel did a simpler proof, but that one is a bit more on topic.

Or they will never complete a game.

 

12 hours ago, Halc said:

I don't understand these comments or the relevancy to my comments to which they replied. Perhaps you don't grok what I said. I admit the lack of elegance in my conveying it.

 

17 hours ago, Halc said:

On 11/7/2023 at 1:02 PM, studiot said:

There is a cause and effect connection to determinism so if we can consider the very last cause before the effect Joigus comment of how far back can we go along the chain of cause and effect is pertinent.

If you can go back even a short time, then that prior state must be fully determined by the state shortly prior to that, and so on...

Hence if we can go back a little and retain determinism, then we can go back all the way to the beginning.  Of course there's no evidence of this short term determinism. For one, it presumes a meaningful state of a system, which is a counterfactual, and few interpretations of QM support counterfactuals.

 

I grokked that you didn't grok what I said so I will rephrase it.

I meant to clarify what definition of determinism was in play.

This asked whether determinism refers to a single event (eg your robots playing RPS) or goes back some indeterminate distance down a causal chain of events.

FYI my mathematical comment observes the fact that a chain of probabilities (eg a chain of event each with a probability) does not in general converge to zero but to a definite value and is therefore deterministic, even though we do not know the individual probabilities involved.
Probabilities trees are even more complicated.

 

Edited November 9, 2023 by studiot

[Halc]

12 hours ago, TheVat said:

It's aspect dualism, if you peek under the hood.

Aspect dualism is effectively a violation of known physics. Such a violation would be required for any agency that is not tethered to physical causality. A non-deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics does not open the door for this sort of thing since willed agency cannot emerge from the probabilistic description of quantum theory.

One that claims such a relationship would need to demonstrate some structure in the privileged arrangement of matter (probably just humans) where a signal is generated purposefully (not randomly) without cause. There's no structure in a person that is seemingly designed to do anything like that.  All structures at any scale seem to be evolved for repeatable (deterministic) operation, just as are transistors.

12 hours ago, TheVat said:

For some, it's a way to distance oneself from the clockwork universe.   

I'm sure. Humans are excellent at rationalizing what they want to be true. Most are not so great at actual rational thought.

Hence all the 'proofs' that not only does God exist, but a proof of exactly my version of God.  All those proofs (but one at most) must be wrong, and even that statement doesn't pass rational analysis.

12 hours ago, TheVat said:

So there could exist worlds where counterfactuals were the reality

This doesn't seem to make sense. It seems to suggest that MWI supports the existence of worlds where MWI is wrong, since MWI does not hold to PCD.

12 hours ago, TheVat said:

where Alice, regretting that she didn't call Bob, did in some world call Bob, with positive consequences.  Each world would still be deterministic from a physicalist perspective, but all counterfactuals would be permitted in a larger view of all possible Alices, with all possible evolutions of the state vector.

None of those seem to be examples of counterfactuals. They're all states measured by Bob and/or Alice.  The (one) universe as a whole is deterministic under MWI. I don't think the concept of a given world being deterministic is accurate there. It cannot be since any given world is the result of random events.

Yes, Alice & Bob hook up in some worlds and not in others. In other worlds, one or both don't even exist. But as a whole, all those states exist in superposition. I don't think that qualifies as a counterfactual of any kind. Saying the cat is dead is a counterfactual. Saying the cat is in superposition of dead and alive is not.

 

49 minutes ago, studiot said:

Or they will never complete a game.

Then the robot should predict the indecision and play anything (the game does have a time limit you know), instead of losing by default. You've just pretty much proved Godel's theorem about the halting problem.

52 minutes ago, studiot said:

This asked whether determinism refers to a single event (eg your robots playing RPS) or goes back some indeterminate distance down a causal chain of events.

It cannot do down either a single path or a finite distance. Events (such as my choice of footwear today) depend on many causes (the weather being but one), and those causes themselves have to have come about due to other states even prior. That 'chain' spreads both in width and depth all the way back to the big bang.  This is true under determinism or not. The difference is that under nondeterminism, some of those causal branches stop. A choice I make might be partially a function of a beta decay somewhere. That particular piece of state (among the myriad of states that contributed to my choice) was uncaused, a true random occurrence under nondeterministic interpretations.

The robots playing RPS is not a single event. I suppose their eventual choice is, but there's a lot of state that potentially contributes to its eventual choice (or lack of it).  If the robots are identically constructed, then it would be like you trying to win RPS with your own reflection.

I don't understand how any of that aids in the question of 'what definition of determinism is in play'. The definition is something along the lines of the complete lack of randomness: That identical closed systems in a given state will evolve the exact same way every time. Was there another definition that is fundamentally different than that?

 

1 hour ago, studiot said:

FYI my mathematical comment observes the fact that a chain of probabilities (eg a chain of event each with a probability) does not in general converge to zero but to a definite value and is therefore deterministic, even though we do not know the individual probabilities involved.

Only some systems exhibit this. You drop successive grains of sand from a fixed point and which way a given grain goes is fairly unpredictable, but the eventual conical hill of sand is very predictable.  Most systems are chaotic, under which small perturbations result in macroscopic differences. The weather, the formation of galaxies from a uniform early state, are examples of this.  Take the state of Earth just after the Theia event. From that state, life is unlikely to form, and if abiogenesis does occur, it will most improbably evolve into anything that would be recognized as a mammal.

[martillo]

 

1 hour ago, studiot said:

I meant to clarify what definition of determinism was in play.

I must point out that the key point of the discussion is about determinism/nondeterminism of the future.

While the present is determined by the past they both do not determine the future.

I mean that looking at the past we can always find the events and chains of events that leaded to the present but looking to the future not all the future events are completely determined.

Not only there is "quantum inndeterminism" in some future events but also your future choices or decisions cannot be completely determined.

Looking at the past when you made a choice, If I ask you what caused your choice you can always answer me the reason of the choice. Looking to the future not even you can answer about all of your choices in the future. The future has some degree of uncertainty.

The future is undetermined.

Is the case of Indeterminism.

Edited November 9, 2023 by martillo

[studiot]

42 minutes ago, martillo said:

2 hours ago, studiot said:

I meant to clarify what definition of determinism was in play.

I must point out that the key point of the discussion is about determinism/nondeterminism of the future

Interesting point, but don't we use 'hindcasting' to check/test hypotheses ?

[martillo]

10 minutes ago, studiot said:

Interesting point, but don't we use 'hindcasting' to check/test hypotheses ?

Hind-casting is used in predicting clima for instance. Is clima well predicted? I think is not the case. Fails too many times.

Edited November 9, 2023 by martillo

[studiot]

51 minutes ago, Halc said:

Then the robot should predict the indecision and play anything (the game does have a time limit you know), instead of losing by default. You've just pretty much proved Godel's theorem about the halting problem.

Obviously they played this game differently in your playgound.

54 minutes ago, Halc said:

Only some systems exhibit this. You drop successive grains of sand from a fixed point and which way a given grain goes is fairly unpredictable, but the eventual conical hill of sand is very predictable.  Most systems are chaotic, under which small perturbations result in macroscopic differences. The weather, the formation of galaxies from a uniform early state, are examples of this.  Take the state of Earth just after the Theia event. From that state, life is unlikely to form, and if abiogenesis does occur, it will most improbably evolve into anything that would be recognized as a mammal.

This is a ridiculous attempt to contradict by ridicule.

"Only some systems exhibit this."

I said generally, why repeat it ?

 

"Most systems are chaotic, "

Stated without a shred of proof.

 

"Take the state of Earth just after the Theia event. From that state, life is unlikely to form, and if abiogenesis does occur, it will most improbably evolve into anything that would be recognized as a mammal."

ditto

But here my comment about the compounding probabilities could apply.

Also you have again omitted any proof of you modifying adjectives.

 

"You drop successive grains of sand from a fixed point and which way a given grain goes is fairly unpredictable, but the eventual conical hill of sand is very predictable.  "

You actually agreed.

 

15 minutes ago, martillo said:

Hind-casting is used in predicting clima for instance. Is clima well predicted? I think is not the case. Fails too many times.

How does that invalidate my point ?

 

[martillo]

26 minutes ago, studiot said:

How does that invalidate my point ?

Seems I didn't get your point then...

You say hind-casting is used to check/test hypothesis. Seems you are talking about the scientific method to validate hypothesis then. I think the method is valid for deterministic processes only, not for nondeterministic ones.

Edited November 9, 2023 by martillo

[iNow]

1 hour ago, martillo said:

While the present is determined by the past they both do not determine the future.

Of course they do. It's the same system, and the future is just an as-yet unrealized past. The state of the future will be the result of the present and past. There is no difference here.

The problem is more about insufficient information to feed better forecasts than it is about impossibility, but scale of course matters. I may not be able to tell you where each individual raindrop will land, but I can tell you with great precision how much total rain will fall in the week ahead. 

[martillo]

2 hours ago, iNow said:

3 hours ago, martillo said:

While the present is determined by the past they both do not determine the future.

Of course they do. It's the same system, and the future is just an as-yet unrealized past. The state of the future will be the result of the present and past. There is no difference here.

The problem is more about insufficient information to feed better forecasts than it is about impossibility, but scale of course matters. I may not be able to tell you where each individual raindrop will land, but I can tell you with great precision how much total rain will fall in the week ahead. 

No. It is not about predictability of the future. It is about its nondeterministic essence. As several ones posted, Quantum Mechanics definitely "knocked out" determinism in the universe. You would have to demonstrate the contrary.

I just say that the indeterminism in our choices or decisions is also another source of indeterminism in the universe. But you (as Dennet) say that choosing is just an illusion of our minds. I'm not able to demonstrate that for now. I just can say that I don't believe is just an illusion. Not able to discuss about.

Anyway, "QM definitely knocked out determinism". Unless you demonstrate the contrary of course...

Edited November 9, 2023 by martillo

[iNow]

51 minutes ago, martillo said:

It is not about predictability of the future. It is about its nondeterministic essence.

That'd be a great name for a cologne. Beyond that, seems pretty useless. 

51 minutes ago, martillo said:

I'm not able to demonstrate that for now. I just can say that I don't believe is just an illusion.

You're free to believe or disbelieve any silly thing you want, but if you plan to defend your beliefs in a public space like this then you'll need to try harder. 

53 minutes ago, martillo said:

QM definitely knocked out determinism". Unless you demonstrate the contrary of course.

Again, I can only remind you, it depends on how one defines their terms. You're suggesting QM is truly random, but an entirely valid counter proposal is simply that it's not predictable with current models and tools. These differences matter, and others have already explored exaclty this.

 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chance-randomness/#ChanDete

Quote

there has recently been a considerable amount of work by philosophers defending the thesis that chance and determinism are consistent. <...> if Bohmians or Everettians are right (an open epistemic possibility), and quantum mechanics is deterministic, this view entails that nothing is actually random, not even the most intuitively compelling cases. 

 

This last part may be most useful in bolstering my stance that yours is misguided:
 

Quote

One reason for the continuing attractiveness of the thesis that randomness is indeterminism may be the fact that, until quite recently, there has been a tendency for philosophers and other to confuse unpredictability and indeterminism. Laplace’s original conception of determinism was an epistemic one:

"[A]n intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of all the [things which] compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis—it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as well as the past, would be present to its eyes. (Laplace 1826: p. 4)"

This kind of account still resonates with us, despite the fact that with the Montague-Earman definition we now have a non-epistemic characterisation of determinism. Since random sequences will, almost always, be unpredictable, it is clear why we might then taken them to be indeterministic. But once we keep clear the distinction between predictability and determinism, we should be able to avoid this confusion 

 

[martillo]

25 minutes ago, iNow said:

That'd be a great name for a cologne. Beyond that, seems pretty useless. 

Essence meaning (googling): "the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character."

 

25 minutes ago, iNow said:

You're free to believe or disbelieve any silly thing you want, but if you plan to defend your beliefs in a public space like this then you'll need to try harder. 

That goes for you too. I mentioned you would have to demonstrate your determinism confronting Quantum Mechanics uncertainty. You also have to demonstrate that choosing is just an illusion of our mind.

Edited November 9, 2023 by martillo