[margalabargala]

> However, this does not indicate that multiple behaviors were physically possible

Okay, fine, but what indicates that multiple behaviors were not physically possible?

Our consciousnesses are emergent properties of networks of microscopic cells, and of chemicals moving around those cells at a molecular level. It seems perfectly reasonable that our consciousness itself could be subject to quantum effects that belie determinism, because it operates at a scale where those effects are noticable.

[FeepingCreature]

> Okay, fine, but what indicates that multiple behaviors were not physically possible?

I don't follow. Whether multiple behaviors are possible or not possible, you have to demonstrate that the human feeling of free-will is about that; you have to demonstrate that the human brain somehow measures actual possibility. Alternatively, you have to show that the human cognitive decision algorithm is unimplementable in either of those universes. Otherwise, it's simply much more plausible that the human feeling of freedom measures something about human cognition rather than reality, because brains in general usually measure things around the scale of brains, not non-counterfactual facts about the basic physical laws.

[margalabargala]

Well, no, your hypothesis is not automatically the null hypothesis that's true unless someone else goes through all goalposts regardless of where you move them to.

I know you thought about it for a moment, and therefore had an obvious insight that 40% of the profession has somehow missed (just define terms so to mean things that would make you correct, and declare yourself right! Easy!) but it's not quite that simple.

Your argument that you just made basically boils down to "well I don't think it works that way even though no one knows. But also it's obvious and I'm going to arbitrarily assign probabilities to things and declare certain things likely, baselessly".

If you read elsewhere in this thread then you might find that exact approach being lampooned :-)

[FeepingCreature]

Okay, you know what?

I'll let my argument stand as written, and you can let yours stand as written, and we'll see which one is more convincing. I don't feel like I have any need to add anything.

edit: Other than, I guess, that this mode of argument not being there is what made LessWrong attractive. "But what's the actual answer?!"

[margalabargala]

The attraction of LessWrong is that they take unanswerable questions with unknowable answers and assign an "actual answer" to them?

That my friend is a religion.

[FeepingCreature]

The attraction is that they say "actually, this has an answer, and I can show you why" and then they actually do so.

Philosophy is over-attached to the questions to the point of rejecting a commitment to an answer when it stares them in the face. The point of the whole entire shebang was to find out what the right answer was. All else is distraction, and philosophy has a lot of distraction.

[margalabargala]

> and I can show you why

But you haven't, you've just said "I have decided that proposition X is more likely than proposition Y, and if we accept X as truth then Z is the answer".

You've not shown that X is more likely than Y, and you have certainly not shown that it must be X and not Y.

Your statements don't logically follow. You said:

> it's simply much more plausible that the human feeling of freedom measures something about human cognition rather than reality

You said your opinion about some probabilities, and somehow drew the conclusion that it was "obvious that 40% of a field's practitioners are wrong".

Someone saying "actually, this has an answer, and I can show you why" to a currently fundamentally unanswerable question is simply going off faith and is literally a religion. It's choosing to believe in the downstream implication despite no actual foundation existing.