Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.robotics,comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!jqb
From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Message-ID: <jqbCzI9IE.Cqt@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <3agf03$qi5@mp.cs.niu.edu> <3aj3dv$8qt@mp.cs.niu.edu> <jqbCzHM1K.ELM@netcom.com> <3ak0va$n6e@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 1994 08:13:25 GMT
Lines: 104
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:25322 comp.robotics:15481 comp.ai.philosophy:22292

In article <3ak0va$n6e@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>There are differences of opinion on whether the observers have to be
>conscious.  Many insist that they must be conscious humans.

Perhaps there are people who think such a silly thing.  You don't, I don't,
Marcus Daniels doesn't, and most likely no one who who would deny free will
in this forum does, so what possible force does this line of argument have?
How can you argue "you may find this theory implausible, but here's something
*really* stupid that some people seem to believe"?

>The
>Schroedinger cat argument was intended to attack CI, and it would
>have no content if the cat consciousness was sufficient.

Well, this isn't the point of this discussion, but the S-C-A doesn't really
change if it's a physicist is in the box instead of a cat.  Life and death
of the inhabitant are still in superposition until we open the box.  A very
careful exploration of this scenario will reveal the source of the philosophical
confusion.
>
>Since my example was for illustration of another point, rather than
>for arguing about QM, I do not need to address Bohm or Everett.  But,
>for what it's worth, Everett seems to push Occam too hard for my
>liking.

I believe just the opposite.  The Everett interpretation is the natural one;
the extra entities of consciousness and observer status are introduced not
for purposes of parsimony, to avoid psychologically disturbing results.

>I haven't thought enough about Bohm to have developed an
>opinion.

Yeah, the issues between Everett and Bohm are beyond my technical understanding.

>>                   I don't see how the fact that some physicists have poor
>>philosophical (not theoretical; the theoretical model is very robust)
>>models of QM acts as support for your proclamations about free will.
>
>You have apparently missed my point, if you reach that conclusion.

You said "this may seem implausible but then there's CI".  Just what was your
point?

>>If you don't take wave function collapse seriously, why do you take your
>>own explanations of free will seriously?
>
>I didn't think I had given an explanation of free will.  I had only
>presented an argument against the denial of free will.

Let's not quibble, Neil.  Read that as "your own explanations regarding
free will".

>>That's how it strikes me.  Certainly your strange idea that, if the absence of
>>a certain sort of free will could open the possibility of producing bogus
>>scientific results, then therefore such free will is a necessary axiom
>>of doing science, leads me to think that you have pulled the wool over your
>>own eyes.  Among 1000 experimenters flipping coins ten times in a row, we expect
>>one to get ten heads in a row.  That one experimenter may conclude that her
>>coin is biased.  That's a bad result, but it doesn't lead us to conclude
>>that binomial probability distributions are inconsistent with doing science.
>
>Perhaps I did not explain myself well.  Perhaps it is difficult to
>explain well.

Perhaps you are simply confused.

>However your 1000 experimenter example has no obvious
>relation to what I was trying to say.

No obvious relation to

>Now suppose the scientist has no free will.  It might happen that
>sometimes when there is current flowing the needle deflects, but at
>other times when there is current it does not.  That is, the
>deflection of the needle might be completely independent of the
>current.  It might just happen, however, that whatever physical
>forces cause her to act are such that she only attempts this
>experiment at the times when the needle will deflect.  Thus the
                                                        ^^^^^^^^
>result of her experimentation is a totally bogus physical law.
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>The ability to do experimental science presupposes free will.

??  I gave another case where the result of experimentation is totally
bogus physical law.  The relation seems obvious to me.  The form of the
argument seems identical.  But the fact that something, whether absence
of free will or binomial probability distributions, causes experimentation
to result in totally bogus physical law, does not mean that the ability to
do experimental science presupposes its inverse.  We've known that since Hume,
haven't we?

I haven't even addressed the fact that you present a peculiarly specific
case of absence of free will, so even if your argument were correct, it would
only apply to those specific forms of absence of free will that are manifested
as correlations between attempts to experiment and the results of experiments.
That's a common form of experimenter bias, and since it does happen, then it
seems to be independent of the free will question (unless its occurrence
supports the absence of free will, which isn't the result you are looking for).



-- 
<J Q B>
