[stavros]

> Especially that computers can decide what comes next, but only a human can choose what to do.

I don't understand this, all the programs I've ever written make decisions based on some factors.

Are you talking about free will? If so, what is free will?

[johnnyworker]

snippet from the WP article on the book:

> Weizenbaum makes the crucial distinction between deciding and choosing. Deciding is a computational activity, something that can ultimately be programmed. It is the capacity to choose that ultimately makes one a human being. Choice, however, is the product of judgment, not calculation. Comprehensive human judgment is able to include non-mathematical factors such as emotions. Judgment can compare apples and oranges, and can do so without quantifying each fruit type and then reductively quantifying each to factors necessary for mathematical comparison.

Okay, so what is judgement? I haven't read that particular book and I don't quite remember his argument from interviews and lectures I saw, so this might be wrong, but I'd say it's for example saying "this is fair" when you measure the slices of pie you cut a cake into. That is, calculating that they're of equal size is pure computation; but there is no way to compute that when sharing cake with your friends, the slices should be equal.

Just like you can compute how much clean drinking water an average or specific person needs a day, with at least some accuracy, but when it comes to the question "should there be life in the universe" or "should people die of thirst", no computation could answer it. You could choose to write a program that decides it based on a random seed or a super complex algorithm taking a billion factors into account, but and then that program would decide the question, but it's essentially still something you did / chose.

[vidarh]

It's basically a religious view. For a "judgement" to be non-computable, it'd need to come from some factor in the human brain which violates know physics and can't be reproduced outside a human brain.

It's little more than arguing for a "soul" with no evidence for any effect that can't be explained by cause and effect.

[johnnyworker]

> For a "judgement" to be non-computable, it'd need to come from some factor in the human brain which violates know physics and can't be reproduced outside a human brain.

You say this as if we are even close to understanding much less reproducing the human brain completely, which probably would have to include the web of relations with all sorts of other living things that also go into the judgements we make, and the emotions we have while making them. Until you actually do draw the rest of the owl, it's not exactly "religious" to say there's no owl.

[vidarh]

No, it's an argument from logic that applies to any claim that any given entity can do things that are not computable.

> Until you actually do draw the rest of the owl, it's not exactly "religious" to say there's no owl.

The "real owl" here is to assume the human brain does something non-computable, in violation of all known physics and logic.

[johnnyworker]

You cannot compute what you don't understand, and even if you did by accident, you wouldn't know you computed it, as long as you don't understand what you're trying to do. That seems obvious to me.

And "computable" and "computable for us" are very different things. It's not about the machines or algorithms we might make one day, provided that we fully understand everything that goes into our our thoughts and emotions with nothing left unaccounted for, and everything turning out to be countable; it's about the ones we are actually making, back then and today, and then in some cases outsource our decisions to.

[vidarh]

You're misunderstanding the terms. For something to be computable is very different from whether or not we know or are presently able to compute it.

For something to be computable, it only needs to be possible to show that it is logically possible, by e.g. decomposing the problem into elements we know are computable or showing an example.

The existence of the human brain absent any evidence of any supernatural element is strong evidence that human reasoning is computable, and it's a reasonable, testable, falsifiable hypothesis to make: If you want to counter it "all" you need to do is to show evidence of any state transition in even a single brain that does not follow known laws of physics. Just one.

Alternatively, even just coherently describing a decision-making process that it is possible to construct a proof wouldn't be computable using known logic.

Either would get you a Nobel Prize, in either physics or maths. Absent that, even just a testable hypothesis that if proven would increase the likelihood of finding either of the above would be a huge step.

In the absence of all of that, it's pure faith to presume human reasoning isn't computable.

[aatd86]

Doing things because you can and not because you have to? Creative endeavors in the largest sense?

[arrrg]

Am I ever doing things because I can and not because I have to? Also, what mechanism determines what things I want to do because I can do them? And isn’t that mechanism then just not just another part of the machine.

Just because it feels as though I do things because I can doesn’t mean that is actually true.

[aatd86]

As long as you can imagine different possible futures and decide upon which one you want to try and realize, I think you have choice.

Choice stems from uncertainty, partial knowledge. It might be an illusion for an observer outside of the system, but as far as a participant within the system is concerned, there is choice, then there is free will.

I am writing this because I ca n but I don't need to do it. I have futures where I don't do that and do something more rewarding instead and still. As long as I am aware of the choices, then I have free will.

[vidarh]

This is the compatibilist view. But if it is an illusion, then that means the "choice" is computable and a computer can create the same outcomes.

[stavros]

Does a program have to do things? What can it do? What does a human have to/can do?

[aatd86]

Traditionally, a program is a series of instructions. The program doesn't really act on its own.

Now, a program which is objective driven and can infer from new inputs might be something else.

Just like humans try to maximize the stability of their structures via a reward system. (it got slighty complex, faulty at times, or the tradeoff between work vs reward is not always in favor of work because we do not control every variable, hence procrastination for example, or addiction which is not a conscious process but neuro-chemically induced).

[stavros]

But what does "act on its own" mean? If I give the program some randomness over its next action, is that "acting on its own"? When I'm at work, I act according to a series of instructions. Am I not acting on my own?

This is a very philosophical discussion, but if I had an infinitely-powerful computer and could simulate an entire universe based on a series of instructions (physical laws), would the beings in that universe that created societies not be "acting on their own"?

[aatd86]

Yes, as long as the computer chooses its next set of instructions in order to maximize a given value (the objective), I would say that it acts on its own. Instruction set that was never defined by anyone that is.

If the instruction set is limited and defined by someone else, I believe it doesn't.

I think, re. the simulated universe, that for us, they wouldn't have free will because we know causality (as long as we are all knowing about the simulation). But as far as they would be concerned, wouldn't they have free will if they know that they don't know everything and whether the future they imagine is realizable?

If they knew with certainty that something was not realizable, they wouldn't bother, but since they don't know, either they try to realize a given future or they don't.

Partial information provides choice of action, therefore free will.

[pixl97]

>Partial information provides choice of action, therefore free will.

So how would an agent based system connected to a multi-modal LLM/AI fall into this?

[vidarh]

How do you imagine that act of choosing happens in your brain in a way that isn't computable?

[aatd86]

Computable by who? Because you don't have the full list of correlations and there are superlinear things (tail events) you'll get a probabilistic estimation at best.

[moffkalast]

Just because we have quantum RNG in our heads that doesn't make us automatically better. If anything it makes us worse since we don't act on reason alone.

[aatd86]

I don't know if there is a quantum rng or just an inference machine that manages to recognize patterns within input data and can do some math sometimes.

[adestefan]

A girl would like to ask a boy to the high school dance.

A computer can do all the calculations to decide on if it's a good idea. Given the inputs of the time they have spent together, the number of glances that are passed between then in the halls between classes, if he doesn't have a date yet or not, etc. The probability adds up to ask.

So the machine decides to ask.

The girl feels it. Has all the time they've spent together has made her feel a certain way? Maybe a weird tingle each time their arms touch. Is that glance in the hall this morning not just an accident, but him going a little out of his way for her to notice? She's asked around and knows that no one else has asked him, but doe he really not have a date yet? Can she overcome the bit of anxiety about asking a boy to the dance? Will she be able to accept the risk of rejection knowing that the chances may be high he says yes?

Only she can choose.

[holoduke]

All the tingles, feelings, anxieties and hesitations are activities triggered by little programs that work autonomously and are fully deterministic. The girl is fooled

[cmrdporcupine]

Even if you accept a strong determinist position, there is still a distinction:

The determining factors driving a computer program can be fully quanitified; the sets of inputs and conditions is finite, can be reasoned over, and described fully.

That's basically the fundamental description of computing, in fact, and what makes a Turing machine.

The determining factors "IRL" are effectively infinite, a causal "chain" of infinite (or near infinite) complexity that expands backwards to the Big Bang, (or whatever) and sideways around the planet and beyond. There is no catalog you could make of all the "causes" that could isolate things enough to truly reason over and describe them all.

And so, yeah, to say it's all just "little programs" is the most ridiculous reductionism, that basically purposefully neglects to see the complexity and depth of the world around us.

I personally take a strongly determinist, materialist philosophical position. But I would never ever express that in terms of "programs" or anything similar.

[d0mine]

You assume classic, non-quantum world.

The entropy of the observable universe is _finite_. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/4118/how-many-by...

[adestefan]

HN consistently reminds me of the park bench scene in Good Will Hunting.

[belter]

An illusory choice...

"Does Quantum Mechanics Rule Out Free Will?" - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-quantum-mech...