I could recreate a simulation of you and anticipate your every thought...

[Broken Pope]

... If I had a powerful enough computer.

This is about determinism. I challenge anybody to assert that they truly exert any individual control over their actions.

From long before you were born - from the big bang and before - your atoms and their constituent components were always going to follow the path that led to their composition as the baby you.

Your brain - through an astonishingly complex process of influences and effects - was always going to take on the shape and form it now has. Even to the sub-atomic level.

Every physical object in the universe has a minute effect on every other one, but the nature of those effects is standard. The outcome was always going to be you. Not you with a better temper, not you with another 3 eyelashes. You.

Every interaction you will ever have - from the womb to the grave - will happen in exactly the way it was always going to happen. Even when you read this post, and type a response insisting that you just stamped your foot when you otherwise would not have done (just to show you were in control); that was always going to be so.

You were always going to be a person who believed irrationally in free will. I was always going to be the person who disabused you. You were always destined to stamp your foot in that petulant way; its who you are.

If I could run a simulation which factored the precise position of every quark and electron at time x, on a hugely powerful computer, I would be able to tell you the precise position of every quark and electron at point y.

This is true regardless of whether those particles are in mineral, vegetable, animal - or human - matter. The same rules of physics apply. It is a nonsense to suggest otherwise.

Sic probo.

[Chaigidel]

you have no proof that you can actually simulate the universe to that level of detail-- while I do believe that things always are happening a certain way, I think that certain way factors in uncertainty in order to function in actual reality, without the variable of and/nor your computer would not be able to function either ---its key to the whole thing that part of the system remains , permanently variable.

now we could argue chemistry and I would still say the whole is greater than the sum of the parts the human mind is capable of operating against its own program, which clearly proves free will; for what is free will but being able to work against that which you are inherently designed to do.

suicide is another good example of freewill; going completely against every cell in your body, every drive of your organism.

and I think you have one sentence in the middle wrong I will restate it

You were always going to be the person who believed irrationally in determinism. I was always going to be the person who disabused you. You were always destined to stamp your foot in that petulant way; its who you are.

[Juvenal]

Determinism is as far as I can understand it a religious belief.

A complete simulation of the Universe would necessarily need to incorporate a simulation of the simulation of the Universe, and so on ad infinitum.

Even though Quantum Theory holds that coherant particles follow deterministic rules, this is effectively unobservable because any observation forces decoherance, yielding a probabilistic and fundamentally unpredictable result.

Determinism cannot be tested because no repeatable experiment can be devised (unless you know how to restart the Universe).

Even if the Universe really is deterministic, it doesn't actually have any effect on free-will because the computations that give rise to the behaviour of anything at the macro-level seem to be irreducible. In other words there is no shorter way to determine with certainty what I am going to decide to do in any given situation short of actually running the Universe through that period of time and seeing what happens.

[Broken Pope]

Determinism is as far as I can understand it a religious belief.

Not quite. You go on to say there is no ultimate proof for determinism and that it is incapable of proof. I suggest it is the best explanation we have based on empiricism. So we're hardly talking about blind faith here are we?

A complete simulation of the Universe would necessarily need to incorporate a simulation of the simulation of the Universe, and so on ad infinitum.

Yes. The computer analogy just helps get the message across. I doubt there will ever be a computer capable of these sort of calculations.

Even though Quantum Theory holds that coherant particles follow deterministic rules, this is effectively unobservable because any observation forces decoherance, yielding a probabilistic and fundamentally unpredictable result.

Yes; Schrodinger's cat. But nobody has yet shown a physical process that is variable or random.

Determinism cannot be tested because no repeatable experiment can be devised (unless you know how to restart the Universe).

You can never 'prove' that 2 +2 = 4, but it seems the most logical answer, and most of the times I do that sum, it seems to come out right.

Even if the Universe really is deterministic, it doesn't actually have any effect on free-will because the computations that give rise to the behaviour of anything at the macro-level seem to be irreducible. In other words there is no shorter way to determine with certainty what I am going to decide to do in any given situation short of actually running the Universe through that period of time and seeing what happens.

It has no practical effect whatever. Things are so complex that they will always appear random. People will always think they have control over things.

From a philosophical perspective, it is important. Ask a religeous person what they make of it...

[Broken Pope]

you have no proof that you can actually simulate the universe to that level of detail

I doubt there will ever be a computer capable of it. That doesn't matter. Its the principle we're talking about here.

while I do believe that things always are happening a certain way, I think that certain way factors in uncertainty in order to function in actual reality, without the variable of and/nor your computer would not be able to function either ---its key to the whole thing that part of the system remains , permanently variable.

What is your mystery variable? If I let go of a glass in 1:1 gravity, it will always drop. Not most of the time, or usually. Always. Allowing for fluctuations in air-flow, air-pressure and relative humidity, it will always drop in a uniform way.

now we could argue chemistry and I would still say the whole is greater than the sum of the parts

Chemistry tells us the whole is the sum of its parts.

the human mind is capable of operating against its own program, which clearly proves free will; for what is free will but being able to work against that which you are inherently designed to do.

That is a contradiction in terms. If it was something you were going to do, you would do it. If it was not something you were going to do, you would not.

suicide is another good example of freewill; going completely against every cell in your body, every drive of your organism.

This is based on two fallacies. Firstly (obvioulsy), your cells do not think.

Secondly, you seem to be saying you (as an organism) have a 'will-to-life'. You have not. That is why you (as an individual) will die of old age. From the individual's point of view, it would have been preferable to evolve away from ageing and dying. To the species, it would have been disastrous.

So your own body is going to kill you some day. All that evolution wants out of you is that you help to promote the longevity of your species. For some individuals (sadly and brutally), the best thing they can do with themselves to promote that goal is to die before they have the chance to reproduce or to adversely effect other people.

You should read 'The Selfish Gene' - brilliant book. Your DNA is not your friend!

[portugal11]

sucide isnt going against free will, because of your gene's and environment (everything you experienced so far in the world) it has led you to kill yourself or make any other action

[saglam2000]

i didn't bother reading the whole thing so i read the part about vegetables and free will doesn't exist. make me a vegetable and then plot my life please

[portugal11]

i didn't bother reading the whole thing so i read the part about vegetables and free will doesn't exist. make me a vegetable and then plot my life please

u should probably read the whole post

[The Colonel]

did einstein not once say that the universe throws the dice? if everything was so predictable i'd think we'd be on to it by now. The universe is based on random events and chaos. chaos is part of science, so it has nothing to do with religion, like how in natural chemical reactions there is a favor of entropy, which is disorder, nature is naturaly disordely and unpredictable. just look at the chaos theory, which is scientific. i dont think religion plays a role here.

[portugal11]

i'd think we'd be on to it by now.

well then ur underestimating how complex it is, in order to predict someone's actions you would need to know everything about there gene's and everything they have experienced in there environment ex. when there walking down the street they see a butterfly

the few things that appear random are likely just our lack of knowledge

[The Colonel]

well then ur underestimating how complex it is, in order to predict someone's actions you would need to know everything about there gene's and everything they have experienced in there environment ex. when there walking down the street they see a butterfly

the few things that appear random are likely just our lack of knowledge

we cannot know everything, and there are just some unexlpainable things. A man once tried to learn everything in the world, spent his entire life seeking all the knowledge, and in his death, he still did not get what he wanted.

[portugal11]

we cannot know everything, and there are just some unexlpainable things. A man once tried to learn everything in the world, spent his entire life seeking all the knowledge, and in his death, he still did not get what he wanted.

im not saying we can know everything, but i believe the things that are "unexplainable" are just unexplainable right now, 1000 years ago alot of things were unexplainable

[Chaigidel]

einstien actually said he does not believe god throws dice-- if the deterministic universe is true it only makes god true; but I agree, chaos is accounted for in science, your view of the subject is too narrow pope

[portugal11]

if the deterministic universe is true it only makes god true

thats not exactly true considering almost every christian i know believes that there is free will and that is why god does not interfere

[The Colonel]

sorry about the misquote. But according to science herself and theories in chaos and random order, nature is in itself free will, and we are part of nature. Sure, you can probably estimate what one person would do based on common behavior,but then again people are naturally unpredictable, and your predictions may not always be true.

[Broken Pope]

according to science herself and theories in chaos and random order, nature is in itself free will, and we are part of nature.

'Chaos' theory is not a theory that states physical processes are random or chaotic. That is a common misconception. It just posits that systems are extremely complex and that small variations here or there can have unexpectedly large effects somewhere down the line.

If you notice, I have acknowledged all of those factors in my original post.

Sure, you can probably estimate what one person would do based on common behavior,

No. You could not, because the smallest variant could radically alter the situations a person ends up facing or the way the person reacts to it.

but then again people are naturally unpredictable, and your predictions may not always be true.

People are wholly predictable. For the reasons already discussed, they appear unpredictable. If you had all the data, everyone would be wholly predictable.

Why not?

[Chaigidel]

then why does a and/nor computer function better than yes/no?

[The Colonel]

then why does a and/nor computer function better than yes/no?

im sorry, im not quite understanding your proposal here

*edit*

oh i get you know, and i completely agree with you above, im just trying to argue from a scientific non-religious POV.

[Chaigidel]

well to me, if the universe was inherently perfectly orderd, just too complex for me to understand then I would have to say that would be the most glaring evidence for the eventual existence of a "supreme being" a unified complex of all the information and energy in the universe; what occurs in organization in life I mean and in chemistry? -- things organize themselves according to specific energy, and shapes ; they fall into place according to those variables. Now it wouldnt necessarily point at jesus-- but it would point at something we could recognize with the term God.

[Problem Sleuth]

well to me, if the universe was inherently perfectly orderd, just too complex for me to understand then I would have to say that would be the most glaring evidence for the eventual existence of a "supreme being" a unified complex of all the information and energy in the universe; what occurs in organization in life I mean and in chemistry? -- things organize themselves according to specific energy, and shapes ; they fall into place according to those variables. Now it wouldnt necessarily point at jesus-- but it would point at something we could recognize with the term God.

Actually, it wouldn't be any more complex. It wouldn't be 'perfectly ordered', just predictable. You can take a set material, say, C4, and if you have every last variable into one computer (like, say, the exact moisture in the air down to the very last molecule, the exact number of air particles flowing around, exact number of C4 atoms and their exact placement, etc etc) and you could know exactly how the explosion turned out. That doesn't make the explosion ordered, it just means the laws of physics are true.