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Free Will

Edited by Eliezer Yudkowsky, et al. last updated 1st Oct 2020

Free will is one of the easiest hard questions, as millennia-old philosophical dilemmas go. Though this impossible question is generally considered fully and completely dissolved on Less Wrong, aspiring reductionists should try to solve it on their own.

Non-spoiler posts

The following posts can be read to set up the problem of "free will" and what constitutes a good solution from a reductionist perspective, without entirely giving away the solution. (When Yudkowsky wrote these posts, he thought he could get away with just leaving it as a practice problem, and some of the posts state that the problem will be left open. However Yudkowsky did eventually find that he needed to write out the whole solution.)

  • How An Algorithm Feels From Inside (see also the wiki page)
  • Dissolving the Question - this is where the "free will" puzzle is explicitly posed, along with criteria for what does and does not constitute a satisfying answer.
  • Wrong Questions
  • Righting a Wrong Question

For spoiler posts see free will (solution).

See also

  • How an algorithm feels from the inside
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Posts tagged Free Will
3Free will isn’t a concept (unless you mean determinism)
KatjaGrace
18y
1
49Passing the Recursive Buck
Eliezer Yudkowsky
17y
17
35Nonsentient Optimizers
Eliezer Yudkowsky
17y
48
25Free Will as Unsolvability by Rivals
Pavitra
15y
11
8Separate morality from free will
PhilGoetz
15y
85
10Dissolution of free will as a call to action
Dr_Manhattan
14y
11
21The scope of "free will" within biology?
Jay_Schweikert
14y
30
20My summary of Eliezer's position on free will
Solvent
14y
101
32[link] Scott Aaronson on free will
DanielVarga
12y
109
31Quotes and Notes on Scott Aaronson’s "The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine"
Shmi
12y
83
12How would not having free will feel to you?
Shmi
12y
70
12Free will as an appearance to others
Yuxi_Liu
6y
21
25A critical agential account of free will, causation, and physics
Ω
jessicata
6y
Ω
10
10What is the subjective experience of free will for agents?
QΩ
Gordon Seidoh Worley
6y
QΩ
19
0Is Free Will A Myth?
Precious Oluwatobi Emmanuel
5y
4
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