Free will and consciousness - What are they?

[LordOfWizards]

The desire to look better is programmed into us via Sexual Selection.

And Hollywood.

 

[hitmouse]

And Hollywood.

I find that ale helps quite a lot.

 

[CrazyKB]

And Hollywood.

All Hollywood, (or the media in general) does is exacerbate our biological proclivities by giving images of physical attraction that are unattainable by the majority of the pubic, leading to a host of unrealistic/unhealthy attitudes.

 

[CrazyKB]

I am well aware of where colour as a phenomenon exists. It was a rhetorical point.
And, besides you agreed about where that resides.

I said the impression of free will, a subtle distinction. In the same way as people half way through a movie believe they can influence the outcome. Except that the movie in this case can have many different outcomes going forward.
Roger Penrose has similar views on quantum effects and consciousness, How far Consciousness and free will are sides of the same coin is debatable semantics but I believe they are.
Without getting into a mast nailing situation here is an article on it that we can add to the pile of ideas kicking around on the thread.

Can consciousness be explained by quantum physics? My research takes us a step closer to finding out

New experiments could help scientists settle the longstanding debate about whether consciousness is generated by quantum activity.

theconversation.com

Is this where you're coming from? I studied Psychology, I'm only a laymen in physics. She explains it better than I can.

 

[CrazyKB]

Pardon the rambling, but....

The first half of the title of this thread "made me" wonder whether or not free will has to be conscious, i.e. do we have to be aware of how the decision we took was made, or is it enough that the decision was made in that totality of our own decision making "machinery"?

But then it struck me (how dare it?!) that calling it "free will", rather than "will", suggests/implies/imposes on us the idea that there is both "free will" and "unfree will", which prompts the question of whose or what's "free will"... or is it "unfree will" all the way down.

Given that, deep down, the universe appears to be steeped in probabilities rather than certainties, can "unfree will" exist, and if it doesn't, is there only free will? Or is there no "will" at all, what with "our" "decisions" all being the outcome of unthinkably long chains of random events at an unthinkably small scale. But, of course, the problem with this is that, at least sometimes, we make decisions based on the information we have (it doesn't matter to the process whether or not this information is complete or even valid) by consciously applying rules (whose validity is not relevant to the process). So there is, at least on occasion, conscious "free will". Or is there...?

If we do have some sort of rudimentary free will, it's doesn't seem to work in our favor. How many times have we been faced with the task of making the right decision only to choose the one that works against us. The reason why (to give an example) most people fail at weight loss diets is because they give into the temptation for instant gratification (paired with food addiction). If we had absolute free will we would be able to control our brains from the top down. If you want to lost weight, you could prime the brain for maximum motivation to reach that goal, blocking all thoughts (I WANT SOME DAMN CAKE!!) that could derail your goal. So, even if we do have free will, it's not that 'free'. However, again, I'm on the side of the fence that says free will is an illusion. NOW WHERE'S THAT DAMN CAKE!!

 

[CrazyKB]

If there were no such thing as free will it would have a profound moral impact on the notions of crime and punishment.

Yes!! I had a debate with someone who believes that free will is an illusion, however still believes that we should punish criminals on moral grounds. The only arguments you could make for 'crime and punishment' is that it 'may' act as a deterrent for criminal behavior (that's a whole other discussion), while removing individuals that create harm to others. It could only act as a conditioning construct (operant conditioning), however could no long act as a moral one (you can't blame the criminal for their behavior).

 

[CrazyKB]

Human beings don't live "from a physics perspective." You're thinking of machines.
A survey in 2015 found 60% of neuroscientists think human beings use free will.
Clearly, free will is part of human life.

I don't know where you got that figure, however if it's accurate, perhaps it won't be long before all you have to do is flip a coin regarding weather or not a neuroscientist believes in free will. I would argue that we are (biological) machines. If you learn that someone you know has died, you don't use the conscious part of your mind (the part that apparently has free will) to make a decision on what emotions you should experience. The brain does that unconsciously, then sends them up to conscious awareness. They (emotions in this case) are determined by how the brain processes data, which is based in natural selection (our evolutionary past).

Here's a question for you and others who are reading this. Sam Harris brought up a good point regarding science and ethics. If science can one day create a pill for sadness (which will happen) for example, how should society deal with something like that? As Sam says: 'you just watched a loved one killed in a car crash, when do you take the pill? directly after the event then go to StarBucks'.

 

[Astro Pen]

Consciousness and free will are the same thing. I can conceive of no way you could have consciousness without the will to exercise it upon the world, whether realizable or constrained.
However, instead of the somewhat morally loaded term 'free will'. Let's be reductivist and ask simply: "Do you have free thought?"

 

[CrazyKB]

Consciousness and free will are the same thing. I can conceive of no way you could have consciousness without the will to exercise it upon the world, whether realizable or constrained.
However, instead of the somewhat morally loaded term 'free will'. Let's be reductivist and ask simply: "Do you have free thought?"

If I ask you if two plus two equals four, you'd say yes (I assume). That 'thought' wasn't created by the conscious part of you, the brain processed the data and gave you the 'output'. So, the question is do our thoughts come from our conscious selves, or from the unconscious mind (that we have no control over)? We all have thoughts that enter our minds that we don't like. I remember reading about OCD, most of us can dismiss unwanted thoughts, however those with OCD have trouble doing that. My point, is that the study illustrated some of the thoughts reported by many people, one of them being the sudden impulse to throw someone in front of a train. Our brains are always placing thoughts in our minds and we have no control over that (by we I mean our conscious self).

 

[Swank]

If I ask you if two plus two equals four, you'd say yes (I assume). That 'thought' wasn't created by the conscious part of you, the brain processed the data and gave you the 'output'. So, the question is do our thoughts come from our conscious selves, or from the unconscious mind (that we have no control over)? We all have thoughts that enter our minds that we don't like. I remember reading about OCD, most of us can dismiss unwanted thoughts, however those with OCD have trouble doing that. My point, is that the study illustrated some of the thoughts reported by many people, one of them being the sudden impulse to throw someone in front of a train. Our brains are always placing thoughts in our minds and we have no control over that (by we I mean our conscious self).

Just because some of our brain activity is not conscious hardly demonstrates that none of it is. I'm happy to not have to process whether to remove my hand from a burner or not.

 

[CrazyKB]

If there were no such thing as free will it would have a profound moral impact on the notions of crime and punishment.

I wanted to edit what I said, sorry for the double post.


Yes!! I had a debate with someone who believes that free will is an illusion, however still believes that we should punish criminals on moral grounds. The only arguments you could make for 'crime and punishment' is that it 'may' act as a deterrent for criminal behavior (that's a whole other discussion), and remove individuals that create harm to others. It can only act as a social construct (operant conditioning, making society safer), however could no long act as a moral one (you can't blame the criminal for their behavior).

 

[CrazyKB]

Just because some of our brain activity is not conscious hardly demonstrates that none of it is. I'm happy to not have to process whether to remove my hand from a burner or not.

Your conscious experience appears to be a simulation based on certain brain activity. Your disagreement was created before you became aware of it,, in your unconscious mind (there's good evidence to back that up), then sent up to conscious awareness (analogous to asking you if you believe that two plus two equals four). Think about that, did you ask yourself how you felt then wait for an answer, or did the thoughts and emotions 'pop into your mind' after you read my comment? As I said before, if you learned that someone you loved died, would you have to ask yourself (conscious part of you) how you should feel about that, or would you instantly feel the emotions that would accompany such an event (those thoughts and feelings created in your unconscious mind, then sent up to conscious awareness). Those feelings being based on how the brain processes data. Again, your conscious experience (thoughts) appear to be a simulation based on certain brain activity. This idea was first proposed by Freud and is backed up by modern Neuroscience.

 

[CrazyKB]

Human-level awareness implies the capacity of introspection: to know our state of mind and interpret it.
This includes our cognition and our mood... AIs have no mood and I am not sure they'll ever have one.
A friend of mine told me that language models GPT3 can actually interpret the conversation it is having, although anything deeper than that is completely beyond them. So they have some kind of cockroach-level sentience.
Regarding antivirus, maybe, security software in general. Also consider we might have security AIs trained in a different manner monitoring other AIs. Yes, they could look at them as a threat.
An area that is not very well developed is AI interpretability, neural nets are so big an complex interpreting them is a daunting task. We need to advance a lot in this area to avoid getting rouge AIs.

When do you believe AI will pass the Turing Test?

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

Human beings don't live "from a physics perspective." You're thinking of machines.
A survey in 2015 found 60% of neuroscientists think human beings use free will.
Clearly, free will is part of human life.

The upshot is that
40% of neuroscientists do not think human beings use free will.

40% is no small amount. I want to hear their argument, the contrary argument so persuasive among neuroscientists.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

When do you believe AI will pass the Turing Test?

Bots passed the Turing Test over a decade ago.

2011 Software tricks people into thinking it is human
2012 Silicon sirens: The naughty bots out to seduce you
2014 a computer having a conversation with 30 judges, had fooled them into thinking it was actually a human
2015 Bot passes the Turing test on Tinder

 

[CrazyKB]

Bots passed the Turing Test over a decade ago.

2011 Software tricks people into thinking it is human
2012 Silicon sirens: The naughty bots out to seduce you
2014 a computer having a conversation with 30 judges, had fooled them into thinking it was actually a human
2015 Bot passes the Turing test on Tinder

Interesting. I always agreed with Gary Marcus when he stated that the Turing Test can only show how easy it is to fool humans, not a measure of computer intelligence. Hopefully, I won't have to deal with HAL anytime soon.

 

[CultureCitizen]

When do you believe AI will pass the Turing Test?

It can already fool some people. It is not a completely reliable test ( particularly if the tester is not bright enough).
Chat GPT 3 is very close in spite of its common tendency to provide incorrect answers and assert false data with complete confidence.
Artificial general intelligence is another matter, that will probably take 8 to 12 more years. I am not certain. Last year I was sure it would take at least 12 years, at the current pace it may take less.

 

[CultureCitizen]

Bots passed the Turing Test over a decade ago.

2011 Software tricks people into thinking it is human
2012 Silicon sirens: The naughty bots out to seduce you
2014 a computer having a conversation with 30 judges, had fooled them into thinking it was actually a human
2015 Bot passes the Turing test on Tinder

Turing test on Tinder... I am quite sure Turin had not envisioned the test involving presenting pictures to be swiped to determine if a person was human, plus the test involved a series of questions used to purposefully determine who was the machine.

 

[CrazyKB]

The upshot is that
40% of neuroscientists do not think human beings use free will.

40% is no small amount. I want to hear their argument, the contrary argument so persuasive among neuroscientists.

Some of the counter arguments had to do with how the research was done (the methods used). In my opinion, I believe that some, however not all, of the push back is based on emotive reasoning. The concept of free will being an illusion can be disconcerting and we know that the brain holds on to cherished ideas. It's akin to the controversy that Big Bang Cosmology or Darwinian Evolution have faced in the past (and still to this day).

 

[Ursa major]

40% of neuroscientists do not think human beings use free will.

But they were the ones forced to think that....