Steve Dustcircle

When Chat-GPT gets to use the new Willow quantum chip, it might consider itself to have freewill. 🙂

jakelafort wrote:
do you suppose the genesis of general intelligence in AI is the one and only way that free will is possible?

I don’t know anything about AI.  I’m talking about living brains.  Free will is limited by influences, restrictions and circumstances.

_Robert_ wrote:
Or maybe we are merely consciously informed of the decision we believe we made, since the brain is just matter and energy,

Maybe it’s matter and energy that has the faculty of free will.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
What Is Ockham’s Razor?

Ockham’s Razor is a useful way to think, but people try to apply it to moral theory sometimes, where it doesn’t work.  The simpler explanation is not always the better one.

Simon Paynton wrote:
Presumably it requires the ability to consciously deliberate between different behavioural options.

Or maybe we are merely consciously informed of the decision we believe we made, since the brain is just matter and energy, like pile of rocks tumbling down a hillside.  One rock bounced left, the other to the right. Did you see that?

jakelafort wrote:
Evolution for instance.

The claim of evolution requires proof.  However, we already have a wealth of supporting evidence for it, including predictive power.

At what point does free will appear? Is it with chimps and gorillas also? Whales?

I’d say it depends on cognitve power, intelligence and flexibility.  So, humans have a l…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Simon, the starting point for free will, god, or any popular belief puts the burden of proof on the proponent. So if Sapolsky refutes all of the arguments he has won the day.

I’d say that whoever is making a claim, has a burden of proof to prove or demonstrate the truth of that claim.  However, you can’t prove a negative, so…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
His book Determined dispatches every free will argument ever made.

I still haven’t heard any argument in favour of the non-existence of free will apart from “if free will exists, we can’t work it out” – the argument from ignorance.

Looking at the recent murder of an Insurance CEO and the attempts on Trump, it seems that anti-right wing, anti-Trump, anti-conservative young white males know how to buy a gun and pull a trigger. Christian Nationals and Corporate/MAGA officials live in a physically more dangerous world now. Perhaps the proposed “draining of the swamp” cuts to…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
@jakelafort – I’ve been asked it a few times as well. I just don’t fit the picture. My nephew is as autistic as it’s possible to be, apparently. He’s a nice young man. There was a scandal about language boards a few years ago, my nephew faced a lot of cognitive dissonance from professionals who insisted he was an imbecile.

[Read more]

@jakelafort – I’ve been asked it a few times as well.  I just don’t fit the picture.

My nephew is as autistic as it’s possible to be, apparently.  He’s a nice young man.  There was a scandal about language boards a few years ago, my nephew faced a lot of cognitive dissonance from professionals who insisted he was an imbecile.  This article is shi…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Hope it wasn’t a Zebco. Fortunes are made on comparitively small investments. I had an uncle who was brilliant but not able to function. As a child he would always go to a brokerage after school. (He dropped out of school before 10th grade) Anyways he had a stock he loved and my dad begged his to buy it. But nobody in his f…

[Read more]

heatherspoonheim wrote:
Come to think of it – that may apply to me.

I definitely have some autistic traits but I don’t feel I’m on the spectrum.  I don’t feel a shock of recognition when I hear what it is like for people.

I like things to be neat and orderly and I’ve been told (by a boss who didn’t like me) that I’ve got an organised mind.  I’m…[Read more]

No, but I bought a few shares 🙂 See graphs in article.

@Reg, that kid should buy you a whisky. I tipped a buddy about this new website called ebay.  I bought a fishing reel. He bought stock.

I was talking to a teenager 3 years ago after a park run. Just after Covid. I was 40 years older than him and I finished 40 seconds ahead of him. (No, I am NOT competitive!!). He said his disability forced him to be “a geek” and was obsessive with numbers. He said he had an unusual type of autism. I told him that it was not a disability that he…[Read more]