| > I suspect it is improbable, because an honest, undeniable belief that you lack free will would drive someone stark raving mad. This presumes that humans are some kind of ultra-rational uber-mensch that is incapable of ignoring inconvenient facts. Truth of the matter is that an illusion of free-will is just as good as the real thing from the perspective of an individual human's mind. Also I think you're confusing free-will and predictability, everyone kind of seems to do this for whatever reason, but they aren't mutually exclusive at all. All of your actions can be the result of quantum mechanical effects, eg. "true randomness", but still be completely unpredictable beyond a certain time/noise horizon even with a 'perfect' simulation. But unless you want to suggest that the free-will arises from the quantum-foam (which I mean, is as unfalsifiable a claim as any other religion, so go for it), you kinda run out of room to fit the free-will. As for my experience of not believing in free-will? Its been pretty much fine. I suspect that belief in something free-will-like is pretty evolutionary adaptive, so I think we'd expect it to arise in most simulated minds subject to similar evolutionary pressures. The only thing I haven't really figured out is why we aren't just p-zombies, but what is life without some mysteries, right? (And given this, I wholeheartedly agree with u/mikeschurman about the need for a justice system that isn't unnecessarily cruel) |