34 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2024
    1. Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself.

      for - quote / critique / question - Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself. - The Gospel of Wealth - Andrew Carnegie

      quote / critique / question - Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself. - The Gospel of Wealth - Andrew Carnegie - The problem with this reasoning is that it is circular - By rewarding oneself an extreme and unfettered amount of wealth for one's entrepreneurship skills creates inequality in the first place - Competition that destroys other corporations ends up reducing jobs - At the end of life, the rich entrepreneur desires to give back to society the wealth that (s)he originally stole - If one had reasonable amounts of rewarding innovation instead of unreasonable amounts, the problem of inequality can be largely mitigated in the first place whilst still recognizing and rewarding individual effort and ingenuity

    1. the false reality governed by images facilitates the work of the cap capitalist system the system gives you the illusion of having Free Will and choosing what you consume but in reality everything has already been decided for you

      for - society of the spectacle - insight - quote - illusion and free will

      society of the spectacle - insight - quote - illusion and free will - The false reality governed by images - facilitates the work of the capitalist system - The system gives you the illusion of having Free Will and choosing what you consume - but in reality everything has already been decided for you

  2. Sep 2024
    1. hard problem proposed here has been suggested by David Chalmers as satisfying the following requirements

      for - David Chalmers - hard problem of consciousness - citation - Federico Faggin - Giacomo Mauro D'ariano - Hard Problem and Free Will: An Information-Theoretical Approach

      Comment - Federico Faggins, in other talks emphasizes that - consciousness is not an epi-phenomena of materalism, but rather - consciousness is a foundational experience and materialism is derived from it -

    2. for - Giocomo Mauro D'Ariano - Federico Faggin - Hard Problem and Free Will: An Information-Theoretical Approach - consciousness research

      reference - youtube discussion of this paper by Giocomo Mauro D'Ariano - https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDb1XyS8gTo

  3. Aug 2024
    1. for - Federico Faggin - quantum physics - consciousness

      summary - Frederico Faggin is a physicist and microelectronic engineer who was the developer of the world's first microprocessor at Intel, the Intel 4004 CPU. - Now he focuses his attention on developing a robust and testable theory of consciousness based on quantum information theory. - What sets Frederico apart from other scientists who are studying consciousness is a series of profound personal 'awakening'-type experiences in which has led to a psychological dissolution of the sense of self bounded by his physical body - This profound experience led him to claim with unshakable certainty that our individual consciousness is far greater than our normal mundane experience of it - Having a science and engineering background, Faggin has set out to validate his experiences with a new scientific theory of Consciousness, Information and Physicality (CIP) and Operational Probabilistic Theory (OPT)

      to - Frederico Faggin's website - https://hyp.is/JTGs6lr9Ee-K8-uSXD3tsg/www.fagginfoundation.org/what-we-do/j - Federico Faggin and paper: - Hard Problem and Free Will: - an information-theoretical approach - https://hyp.is/styU2lofEe-11hO02KJC8w/link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-85480-5_5

    2. in your book one of the quotes was Free Will is the ultimate cause of reality

      for - quote - free will is the ultimate cause of reality - Frederico Faggin

  4. Mar 2024
    1. With her, on her, what you will.

      Shows that it is entirely Othello's choice to interpret Iago's words, that Iago is simply an inkling that knows none, and that it is man's tendency to suspect that causes the downfall.

    2. That we should, with joy, pleasance revel and applause,transform ourselves into beasts!

      Touches on innocence, free will and lack of constraint, lack of morality, lack of humanity == Blake's innocence == protection from Iago

    3. You have lost no reputation at all unless yourepute yourself such a loser.

      Again example why he is a creator: Free will.

  5. Sep 2022
    1. which is why we model the future as something we can influence.

      Yeah, but those who would model the future for the sake of influencing it are driven to do so because they have no free well. And similarly, there are people who will patently refuse to pursue such an approach because they are driven to it by their lack of free will.

    2. Given our lack of complete microscopic information, the question we should be asking is, "does the best theory of human beings include an element of free choice?"

      This is a good question. And we don't need to be able to predict the future to answer it.

    3. The problem with this is that it mixes levels of description. If we know the exact quantum state of all of our atoms and forces, in principle Laplace's Demon can predict our future. But we don't know that, and we never will, and therefore who cares? What we are trying to do is to construct an effective understanding of human beings, not of electrons and nuclei.

      This is a non-sequitur. Being able to predict the future is irrelevant. What matters is that whatever we do will be "determined" by the laws of physics and the state of the system at the moment of a decision.

    4. The consequence argument points out that deterministic laws imply that the future isn't really up for grabs; it's determined by the present state just as surely as the past is. So we don't really have choices about anything.

      Yup, that makes sense to me. I'm fine with that too.

      Still, however, everyone is ignoring the influence of learning on our future state.

    5. while we can still influence later times

      But can we? If there's no libertarian free will, then we cannot influence the future because we cannot choose to do differently than we will have done.

    6. Of course, just because it can be compatible with the laws of nature, doesn't mean that the concept of free will actually is the best way to talk about emergent human behaviors.

      And that's the crux of the matter. Knowing that free will is only constructed, we can decide it would be best to not base certain decisions on its existence. For instance, how we deal with crime and punishment.

      Of course, if there's no free will, then there are some people who will never accept it's non-existence.

    7. The concept of baseball is emergent rather than fundamental, but it's no less real for all of that. Likewise for free will. We can be perfectly orthodox materialists and yet believe in free will, if what we mean by that is that there is a level of description that is useful in certain contexts and that includes "autonomous agents with free will" as crucial ingredients.

      Again, the problem here is that we can define and characterize baseball such that we can unequivocally say that a given entity either is or is not "baseball".

      But we cannot do that for free will - because we cannot measure it.

      Carroll is also being quite utilitarian, which is fine. My idea is that considering the utility of a concept only matters for emergent properties because they are constructed and not fundamental. The fundamentals have no utility; they just are.

    8. When we talk about air in a room, we can describe it by listing the properties of each and every molecule, or we speak in coarse-grained terms about things like temperature and pressure. One description is more "fundamental," in that its regime of validity is wider; but both have a regime of validity, and as long as we are in that regime, the relevant concepts have a perfectly good claim to "existing."

      Another way of saying this is that temperature and pressure are emergent properties of the more fundamental properties of the molecules of air.

      The problem with applying this to free will, though, is that unlike temperature, we have no way to measure free will. If we can't measure it, I am quite comfortable in denying this analogy.

    9. But in either event, they believe that our freedom of choice cannot be reduced to our constituent particles evolving according to the laws of physics.

      But why would they believe something so silly?

    10. There are people who do believe in free will in this sense; that we need to invoke a notion of free will as an essential ingredient in reality, over and above the conventional laws of nature. These are libertarians, in the metaphysical sense rather than the political-philosophy sense.

      A good way to characterize free will from a purely scientific point of view.

    11. When people make use of a concept and simultaneously deny its existence, what they typically mean is that the concept in question is nowhere to be found in some "fundamental" description of reality.

      Yes! This is very important. Recognizing that "race" is constructed rather than fundamental is the first step to recognizing the race is irrelevant, and that it can be jettisoned from our reasoning. Similarly, once we can see that "free will" is constructed and not fundamental, we can get past its philosophical shackles.

    12. John Searle has joked that people who deny free will, when ordering at a restaurant, should say "just bring me whatever the laws of nature have determined I will get."

      This is silly and unhelpful. How would the staff know what the laws of nature have determined without knowing more about the patron than even the patron themself know?

    13. Likewise, people who question the existence of free will don't have any trouble making choices.

      And there's the problem: do we really make choices? Or are we just unaware of the deterministic algorithm making the choice for us?

    14. It's possible to deny the existence of something while using it all the time. Julian Barbour doesn't believe time is real, but he is perfectly capable of showing up to a meeting on time.

      This is the difference between a social construct and a distinct physical phenomenon. In this regard, “time” is like “race”.

  6. Jan 2022
    1. Many scientists say that the American physiologist Benjamin Libet demonstrated in the 1980s that we have no free will. It was already known that electrical activity builds up in a person’s brain before she, for example, moves her hand; Libet showed that this buildup occurs before the person consciously makes a decision to move. The conscious experience of deciding to act, which we usually associate with free will, appears to be an add-on, a post hoc reconstruction of events that occurs after the brain has already set the act in motion.

      This could only demonstrate that there is no such thing as free will if a person is a distinct entity from her brain--as though the brain "decides for her" what she will do, while the "person" is merely carried along for the ride.

      That's absurd, of course. The brain is the person, or anyway the most substantial part of what we'd consider the person to be, so when your brain makes a decision, you are making that decision. If consciousness is a post-hoc reconstruction of mental processes, then so much for consciousness--and if your conception of free will depends on consciousness not looking like that, then so much for free will, but it doesn't have to be that way.

  7. May 2021
  8. Dec 2020
    1. It is clear from Bandura’s theory that individuals have the capacity to make their own choices and that several factors influence these choices

      Is there a conflict here with the notion of free will (i.e. that we don't have any)? See Dennet, Harris, Coyne for alternative positions to the notion that we have any agency i.e. that in any situation we could have done something other.

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  9. Sep 2020
    1. Therefore, part of the job of the quarantine-net is to safeguard the amounts of negative-polarity stimulus that gets in so that humans “are not hindered from free choice.” Orion can still get in but only to the degree allowed by karma and calling.

      This reminds me of the action of breathing and "free-will". We can freely choose to "STOP BREATHING". But to continue living in third density our bodies must breath and will KICK IN and automatically breath even if the brain has to make us black out to resume breathing!

  10. Nov 2019
    1. were the peoples of the world to grasp the true significance of the words of God, they would never be deprived of their portion of the ocean of His bounty

      Bounty comes from understanding the words. The Revelation is, firstly, the words (and the spiritual energy they contain).

  11. Sep 2017
    1. patterns

      That there are patterns in the structures of networks that cut across nature, people and technology makes me wonder about human control, free will and agency. Is life controlled by networks rather institutions, culture and choice?

  12. Mar 2017
    1. “A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.” — James Allen

      free will aint free... free will has to be designed into your life, by active thinking and active doing

  13. Jul 2016
    1. “the free software movement does this.” And again, I have to say: not quite. 

      True. But some of us are saying something slightly different. The free software movement shares some of those principles and those go back to a rather specific idea about personal/individual agency.

  14. Apr 2016
    1. “free thinker” has a specific meaning in liberal societies with a European background

      Yet people assume that the issue of Free Will is a universal obsession. As per Foucault’s episteme, the notion is so strong as to restrict the imagination.