This was an interesting read. There were two steps in this reasoning that really tripped me up, though. The first to me seems to be a flaw. The second, I’d love to see more info on.
1) you seem very quick to dismiss the factor of “Jewish culture,” without giving it the same inspection as any other theory. Ashkenazi Jewish culture is definitely not the same as Sephardi Jewish culture (or any other type), so just noting that this effect seems to be primarily Ashkenazi isn’t enough to invalidate the theory. Not to mention the other factors you bring up later about how regions associated with Ashkenazi Jews were the main ones really... (read 580 more words →)
I second this. In my comment this is why I wanted to ask more about what's meant by "observer" in the definition. An individual mind/perspective (regardless of computational power) being able to predict action is different than "predictability" by theoretical simulations of the universe.
That said, if we do define free will as predictability by a fellow human observer, then we could absolutely have free will of that type. We don't even really need proof of that, we can just observe the plethora of evidence that people do not often perfectly predict each others actions.
I do like the idea of coming up with a good way to quantify the degree of deterministic free will. While it's not necessarily a useful concept in terms of actionability, when did that ever stop curiosity? I think we can fairly reasonably estimate that this degree of free will is very very low.
In response to defining types of free will, I'd personally propose "experiential free will" and "deterministic free will." The former refers to the more common usage. When someone says "I have free will" outside of a rigorous philosophical debate, they usually mean "I experience life in such a way that I feel I can make at least some conscious... (read more)
If in a deterministic universe, no observer B can 100% correctly predict the behavior of subject A, except when B is in the future of A, we can say that subject A has free will.
This strikes me as a very unintuitive definition of free will.
We often talk about free will experientially; defining it based on a specific external observer strikes me as odd. But before I critique that in any way, I'd love more clarification on what you mean by "observer." Is this anything capable of prediction (e.g. a faithful simulation of the universe)?
But more importantly, I think "100% correctly" is doing the bulk of the work here. I fully agree with... (read more)
B (at least B as I intended him) is trying to create consistent general principles that minimize that inevitable repugnancy. I definitely agree that it is entirely impossible to get rid of it, but some take the attitude of “then I’ll have to accept some repugnancy to have a consistent system” rather than “I shall abandon consistency and maintain my intuition in those repugnant edge cases.”
Perhaps I wasn’t clear, but that was at least the distinction I intended to convey.
I'm beginning this post with the assumption that there is no "moral reality," namely that there is no objective truth about what we should or should not do.[1]
Instead, I will (I hope non-controversially) consider morality to be some set of emotional intuitions possessed by any given individual. These moral intuitions, like any other human quality, were formed through a combination of evolutionary benefit and cultural context. And, as a notable characteristic, these intuitions do not form a particularly self-consistent system. A common example used here is the failure to scale: the resources we would expend to do some moral good X three times is not necessarily thrice the amount we would expend... (read 1813 more words →)
I’ve often heard and seen the divide people are talking about where people involved in the tech world are a lot more skeptical than your average non-tech friend. I’m curious what people think is the reason for this. Is the main claim that people in tech have been lulled into a false sense of security by familiarity? Or perhaps that they look down on safety concerns as coming from a lay audience scared by Terminator or vague sci fi ideas without understanding the technology deeply enough?