End results when typical human minds try to understand free will
Conclusion about free will:
If you believe that you have no free will then you are not in touch with your emotions. If you can logically
defend the concept that you have free will, then you are either not in touch with your logic or you are
letting your emotions dominate. If you feel both at the same time, then you are in touch with both your
logic and your emotions.
Conclusion about the design of brains:
If you wish to design a robot brain to be like the human brain, you must include modules which provide
different opinions on any given subject. You may then add a personality integrator, if you wish, to
provide the appearance of a "single personality."
Further discussion:
Some say that free will is an illusion. We are, as one philosopher put it, “nothing more than
sophisticated meat machines,” doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over.
William James wrote in 1890 that the whole “sting and excitement” of life comes from “our sense that in it
things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a
chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.”
In Science New York Times, Dennis Overbye advised William James to “get over it,” observing that “a
bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of
subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.”
As Mark Hallett of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke told Mr. Overbye, “Free will
does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. The more you scrutinize it, the more you
realize you don’t have it.”
People who argue that there is free will should be asked for a method to test for it. If I have two robots,
one with free will and one without, how would you test them to find out which one has free will?
The whole question is preposterous. Humans have an emotional feeling of free will and some humans
let their feelings overcome their logic.
Take a group of people whose brains are totally determinate but we add a random stimulus generator to
make them less predictable. According to some theorists, this gives them free will. If that is so, then will
more randomness give them more free will? If not, what is the optimum amount of randomness to give a
human or robot the maximum amount of free will?
It is all one big laugh. Humans which cannot separate their emotions from their logic. Thank goodness
we don't make any robots like that.
designbot
Conclusion about free will:
If you believe that you have no free will then you are not in touch with your emotions. If you can logically
defend the concept that you have free will, then you are either not in touch with your logic or you are
letting your emotions dominate. If you feel both at the same time, then you are in touch with both your
logic and your emotions.
Conclusion about the design of brains:
If you wish to design a robot brain to be like the human brain, you must include modules which provide
different opinions on any given subject. You may then add a personality integrator, if you wish, to
provide the appearance of a "single personality."
Further discussion:
Some say that free will is an illusion. We are, as one philosopher put it, “nothing more than
sophisticated meat machines,” doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over.
William James wrote in 1890 that the whole “sting and excitement” of life comes from “our sense that in it
things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a
chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.”
In Science New York Times, Dennis Overbye advised William James to “get over it,” observing that “a
bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of
subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.”
As Mark Hallett of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke told Mr. Overbye, “Free will
does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. The more you scrutinize it, the more you
realize you don’t have it.”
People who argue that there is free will should be asked for a method to test for it. If I have two robots,
one with free will and one without, how would you test them to find out which one has free will?
The whole question is preposterous. Humans have an emotional feeling of free will and some humans
let their feelings overcome their logic.
Take a group of people whose brains are totally determinate but we add a random stimulus generator to
make them less predictable. According to some theorists, this gives them free will. If that is so, then will
more randomness give them more free will? If not, what is the optimum amount of randomness to give a
human or robot the maximum amount of free will?
It is all one big laugh. Humans which cannot separate their emotions from their logic. Thank goodness
we don't make any robots like that.
designbot
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