Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ebg13 2543 days ago
It sounds like you're starting from an assumption that thoughts are somehow inherently different from responses. But we don't actually know if they are. Nothing that we've ever learned about how brains work has ever shown that choices, really all thoughts, are anything other than automatic. Our behaviors are tremendously complex, but that doesn't demonstrate that we have free will.

So the question shouldn't be whether we can adapt in ways that plants can't but rather what degree of adaptability feels sufficiently thoughtful to our meat computers.
1 comments
loup-vaillant 2543 days ago
> Our behaviors are tremendously complex, but that doesn't demonstrate that we have free will.

If by "free will", you do mean what I think you mean, it would be very surprising we have it. It would basically imply dualism, which I have dismissed a long time ago.

Of course our thoughts are entirely automatic. They're physical processes like any other. It would still be nice to understand their structure. I for one would be thrilled to learn how choices actually happen.

link
ppm34 2542 days ago
How does an electron decide where to go in the dual hole experiment?
link
loup-vaillant 2542 days ago
Like the double slit experiment with a photon, or the semi-transparent mirror?

Simple: it goes both ways. Then decoherence happens, the universe splits in half, and we experience being in either one of those halves. What we observe is but a glimpse of what actually happen. We don't have access to the other side (split universes don't communicate with each other, contrary to what much sci-fi material describes).

That may sound weird, but the alternative (that half the amplitude is "not real", or that it "collapses" (in a way that is non-local, that is, exceeds the speed of light), is even weirder.

Or you could just refuse to answer the question, and stick to "this equations mean I should observe this with those statistics".

link