[vidarh]

I didn't say anything about whether free will exists or not, actually. The comment was specifically worded to explain why some people react to coming to believe there is no free will.

But, sure, I personally do not believe in free will. I'm saying there is no rational basis for thinking anyone has free will ever. I'm saying there is no evidence to suggest free will is possible. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that believing in free will is a religious belief with no support.

But that doesn't mean that events does not have effects on what happens next, just that we don't have agency. That an IF ... THEN ... ELSE ... statement is purely deterministic for deterministic inputs does not mean that changing the inputs won't affect the outputs.

If you "choose" to lay down and do nothing because you decide nothing matters because you don't have free will, you will still lose your job and starve. That it wasn't a "true" "free" choice does not change the fact that it has consequences.

One of the consequences of coming to accept that free will is an illusion is that you need to come to terms with what that means for your beliefs about a wide range of things.

Including that vengeance which might seem moral to some extent if the person who did something to you or others had agency suddenly become immoral. But we still have the feelings and impulses. Reconciling that is hard for a lot of people, and so a lot of people in my experience when faced with a claim like the one I made above that we have no free will tend to react emotionally to the idea of the consequences of it.

[dmbche]

Are there deterministic solutions to the three body problem? Or the double pendulum? Or can you tell the t° at any point on earth for say, a millisecond in, say, 6h (feel free to chose a prefered point and time)? And what precision could you realistically produce in that?

If there are non deterministic processes that can be proven to exist, and those interact with deterministic processes, doesn't it follow that the deterministic process becomes non deterministic (since the result of the interaction is necessarily non deterministic), and that it is not continually deterministic.

So - can you see how nothing can be deterministic other than in isolation (or thought experiment really)?

Edit0: typo

[Retric]

There are deterministic solutions to the three body problem or the double pendulum in Newtonian mechanics.

We can’t measure things to arbitrary precision due to quantum mechanics, but Philosophy isn’t bound by the actual physical universe we inhabit. Arbitrary physical models allow for the possibility of infinite precision in measurement and calculation resulting in perfect prediction of future states forever. Alternatively, you could have a universe of finite precision (think Minecraft) which also allows for perfect calculation of all future states from initial starting conditions.

[dmbche]

I agree, and indeed there are solutions to chaotic systems - the problem being precision as you mentionned. To me the precision problem it is important : it reframes the "mechanical universe" as being way out of our grasp not because of our understanding but because of it's structure. You got me!

Not certain that philosophy is not bound by our universe - is that something you could elaborate (or lend a link) on?

To apply these hypotheticals to our universe implies (from my understanding) that the density of information present at any and all times since it's inception was present (while compressed) at it's creation/whatever - which I imagine I can find some proof of theoretical maximum information density and information compression compare that to the first state of the universe we can measure to have a better idea if it tracks.

[Retric]

> Not certain that philosophy is not bound by our universe - is that something you could elaborate (or lend a link) on?

I simply mean it’s happy to assume perfect information, perfect clones, etc. The trolly problem generally ignores the possibility that choosing a different track could with some probability result in derailment because the inherent question is simplified by design. We don’t need for the possibility of perfect cloning to exist to consider the ramifications of such etc.

[dmbche]

I think I see a distinction in that a hypothetical universe with perfect information is pertinent precisely because it is comparable to our measurable universe and could be tested against.

I guess that's the point of any hypothetical, exploring a simplified model of something complex, but it's not easy to simplify the fabric of reality itself.