Dissolving the Question

I have no idea why or how someone first thought up this question. People ask each other silly questions all the time, and I don't think very much effort has gone into discovering how people invent them.

However, note that most of the silly questions people ask have either quietly gone away, or have been printed in children's books to quiet their curiosity. This type of question- along with many additional errors in rationality- seems to attract people. It gets asked over and over again, from generation unto generation, without any obvious, conclusive results.

The answer to most questions is either obvious, or obviously discoverable- some easy examples are "Does 2 + 2 = 4?", or "Is there a tiger behind the bush?". This question, however, creates a category error in the human linguistic system, by forcibly prying apart the concepts of "sound" and "mental experience of sound". Few people will independently discover that a miscategorization error has occurred; at first, it just seems confusing. And so people start coming up with incorrect explanations, they confuse a debate about the definition of the word "sound" with a debate about some external fact (most questions are about external facts, so this occurs by default), they start dividing into "yes" and "no" tribes, etc.

At this point, the viral meme-spreading process begins. An ordinary question ("Is the sky green?") makes reference to concepts we are already familiar with, and interrelates them using standard methodology. A nonsensical question either makes reference to nonexistent concepts ("Are rynithers a type of plawistre?"), or uses existing concepts in ways that are obviously incorrect ("Is up circular?"). Our mind can deal with these kinds of questions fairly effectively. However, notice the form of a question asked by the tribal chief/teacher/professor/boss: things like "Does electromagnetism affect objects with no net charge?". Even at large inferential distances, the audience will probably pick up on some of the concepts. Most laymen have heard of "electromagnetism" before, and they have a vague idea of what a "charge" is. But they lack the underlying complexity- the stuff beneath the token "electromagnetism"- needed to give a correct answer.

From the inside, this sounds pretty much like the makes-a-sound question: familiar concepts ("tree", "falling", "sound") are mixed together in ways which aren't obviously nonsense, but don't have a clearly defined answer. The brain assumes that it must lack the necessary "underlying knowledge" to get past the confusion, and goes on a quest to discover the nonexistent "knowledge". At the same time, the question conveys an impression of intelligence, and so the new convert tells it to all of his friends and co-workers in an attempt to sound smarter. Many moons ago, this exact question even appeared in a cartoon I saw, as some sort of attempt to get kids to "think critically" or whatever the buzzword was.

I think a brain architecture/algorithm that would debate about free will would have been adapted for large amounts of social interaction in its daily life. This interaction would use markedly different skills (eg language) from those of more mundane activities. More importantly it would require a different level of modeling to achieve any kind of good results. One brain would have to contain models for complicated human social, kin and friendly relationships, as well as models for individuals' personalities.

At the center of the mesh of social interactions would be the tightest wad connections. That would be the brain/person, interacting with and modeling all the other members of their tribe/society. However, their brain cannot model itself modeling others with perfect fidelity, and so many simplifications are made even there. These simplifications pile on top of the perceptual differences that a human sees between (itself, other humans) and (everything else). A whole different mental vocabulary arises between descriptions/models of fellow humans and descriptions/models of everything else. Only in humans does it make predictive sense to talk about intent, capability, and inclination, and the wide gap between these kinds of perceived "properties" of fellow socially interacting humans, and the generally much simpler properties seen in inanimate objects and animals, leads the brain to allocate them to widely separated groups of buckets. It is this perceived separation in mental thing-space that leads to the the a free-will boundary being drawn around the cluster of socially interacting humans. When this boundary is objected to, people go their natural arguing ways.

This is just a first attempt, so I think I may have fallen for some of the traps specifically proscribed against in the post. I hope others will attempt to put up their own explanations and maybe even poke some holes in mine :)

I'll definitely pay attention to further comments on this homework assignment.

I would say: people have mechanisms for causally modeling the outside world, and for choosing a course of action based on its imagined consequences, but we don't have a mechanism for causally modeling the mechanism within us that makes the choice, so it seems as if our own choices aren't subject to causality (and are thus "freely willed").

However, this is likely to be wrong or incomplete, firstly because it is merely a rephrasing of what I understand to be the standard philosophical answer, and secondly because I'm not sure that I feel done.

A difference of predictions between Maksym's proposed answer and mine occurs to me. If the sense of free will comes from not being able to model one's own decision process, rather than from taking the intentional stance towards people but not other things, then I would think that each individual would tend to think that she has free will, but other people don't. Since this is not the default view, my answer must be wrong or very incomplete.

"Many philosophers - particularly amateur philosophers, and ancient philosophers - share a dangerous instinct: If you give them a question, they try to answer it."

This line goes in that book you're going to write.

You will find that the need to nail things down is mostly a male thing. Women are more driven to add complexity, as more interesting to them.

http://home.att.net/~rhhardin9/vickihearne.womenmath.txt

And ``algorithm'' is a picture in Wittgenstein's sense.

A warning to those who would dissolve all their questions:

Why does anything at all exist? Why does this possibility exist? Why do things have causes? Why does a certain cause have its particular effect?

I don't think this answer meets the standards of rigour that you set above, but I'm increasingly convinced that the idea of free will arises out of punishment. Punishment plays a central role in relations among apes, but once you reach the level of sophistication where you can ask "are we machines", the answer "no" gives the most straightforward philosophical path to justifying your punishing behaviour.

Things in thingspace commonly coming within the boundary 'free will' :

moral responsibility could have done otherwise possible irrational action possible self-sacrificial action gallantry and style (thanks to Kurt Vonnegut for that one) non-caused agency I am a point in spacetime and my vector at t+1 has no determinant outside myself whimsy 'car c'est mon bon désir' absolute monarchy you can put a gun at my head and I'll still say 'no' idealistic non-dualism consciousness subtending matter disagreeing with Mum & Dad disagreeing with the big Mom & Pop up there in the White House armed response no taxation without representation ... no taxation even with representation (daft ) 'No dear not tonight I've got a headache....' ....

aw hell, just go read Dennett : 'Elbow Room', he did it better than I could.

Only in humans does it make predictive sense to talk about intent, capability, and inclination, and the wide gap between these kinds of perceived "properties" of fellow socially interacting humans, and the generally much simpler properties seen in inanimate objects and animals, leads the brain to allocate them to widely separated groups of buckets. It is this perceived separation in mental thing-space that leads to the the a free-will boundary being drawn around the cluster of socially interacting humans.

careful there. animistic beliefs are quite widespread in tribal societies, so the notion that the brain allocates two entirely distinct clusters to humans and animals vs. inanimate objects is quite suspect.

When you're done, you'll know you're done, but unfortunately the reverse implication does not hold.

So when you have the impression you are done, you are not necessarily done because some have this impression without really being done. But then when you are really done, you won't actually know you are done, because you will realize that this impression of being done can be misleading.

So here's your homework problem: What kind of cognitive algorithm, as felt from the inside, would generate the observed debate about "free will"?

I've written up my answer to this on my blog.

I claim that the reason we posit a thing called free will is that almost all of our decision-making processes are amenable to monitoring, analysis and even reversal by “critic” algorithms that reside one (or more) levels higher up. [I say almost all, because the top level has no level above it. The buck really does stop there]. There would probably be no feeling of free will if there were only two levels, but I think that with three or more, you have situations where ... continue reading

Robin: So when you have the impression you are done, you are not necessarily done because some have this impression without really being done. But then when you are really done, you won't actually know you are done, because you will realize that this impression of being done can be misleading.

You'd think it would work that way, but it doesn't. Are you awake or asleep right now? When you're asleep and dreaming, you don't know you're dreaming, so how do you know you're awake?

If you claim you don't know you're awake, there's a series of bets I'd like to make with you...

Then there's Edmond Jabes, on freedom and how words come to mean anything.

Eliezer, you seem to be saying that the impression you get when you are really done feels different from the impression you get when you ordinarily seem to be done. But then it should be possible to tell when you just seem to be done, as this impression is different. I can imagine that sometimes our brains just fail to make use of this distinction, but it is quite another to claim that we could not tell when we just seem to be done, no matter how hard we tried.

Eliezer, also, the bet your proposed would only be enforced in situations where I am not dreaming, so it would really be a bet conditional on not dreaming, which defeats the purpose.

When you're asleep and dreaming, you don't know you're dreaming, so how do you know you're awake? If you claim you don't know you're awake, there's a series of bets I'd like to make with you...

1) Some people claim they can recognize that they're in a dream state.

2) The quoted claims are an example of the rhetorical fallacy known as equivocation.

When I'm dreaming, I always know I'm dreaming, and when I'm awake I always know I'm awake.

I realize that this doesn't apply to many other people, however... even the second part.

A fuller explanation of the preceding: As an example of Robin's point, "I can imagine that sometimes our brains just fail to make use of this distinction," the reason that some people don't know when they're dreaming is that that are unable, at that time, to pay attention to all the aspects of their experience; otherwise they would be able to easily distinguish their state from the state of being awake, because the two states are very different, even subjectively. I pay attention to these aspects even while dreaming, and so I recognize that I'm dreaming.

Ughh more homework. Overcoming bias should have a sister blog called Overcoming laziness.

Eliezer, you seem to be saying that the impression you get when you are really done feels different from the impression you get when you ordinarily seem to be done. But then it should be possible to tell when you just seem to be done, as this impression is different.

Yes, exactly; it feels different and you can tell the difference - but first you have to have experienced both states, and then you have to consciously distinguish the difference and stay on your guard. Like, someone who understands even classical mechanics on a mathematical level should not be fooled into believing that they understand string theory, if they are at all on their guard against false understanding; but someone who's never understood any physics at all can easily be fooled into thinking they understand string theory.

I think I'll give this a try. Let's start with what a simple non-introspective mind might do:

Init (probably recomputed sometimes, but cached most of the time): I1. Draws a border around itself, separating itself from the "outside world" in its world model. In humans and similarly embodied intelligences you could get away with defining the own body as "inside", if internal muscle control works completely without inspection.

Whenever deciding on what to output: A1. Generates a list of all possible next actions of itself, as determined in I1. For human-like embodieds, could be a list of available body movements. A2. Computes a probability distribution about the likely future states of the world resulting from each action, consulting the internal world-model for prediction. Resolution, temporal range and world-model building are beyond the scope of this answer. A3. Assigns utilities to each considered future state. A4. Assigns preferences to the probability distribution of futures. This could e.g. use Expected Utility or some satisficing algorithm. A5. Chooses the possible next action with the most-prefered distribution of futures. Tie breaking is implementation defined. A6. Execute that action.

As part of A2, the reactions of other intelligent entites are modeled as part of the general world model. This kind of mind architecture does not model itself in the present; that'd lead to infinite recursion: "I'm thinking about myself thinking about myself thinking about ...". It also wouldn't achieve anything, since the mind as instantiated necessarily has a higher resolution than any model of itself stored inside itself. It will, however, model past (for lost data) or future versions of itself.

The important point here is that this mind doesn't model itself while computing the next action. In the extreme case it needn't have facilities for introspection at all. Humans obviously have some such facilities. Either inbetween deciding on output, inbetween the individual steps A1-A6, completely in parallel, or some combination of those, humans spend cputime to analyze the algorithm they're executing, to determine systematic errors or possibilities for optimization. I'll call the neural module / program that does this the introspector. When introspecting a thread which generates motor output (A1-A6 above), one (very effective) assumption of the introspected algorithm will always turn out to be "My own next action is to-be-determined. It'd be ineffective for me to run a model of myself to determine it.". For a mind that doesn't intuitively understand the self-reference and infinite-recursion parts, this turns into "My own actions can't be modeled in advance. I have free will.".

In the cases where the introspected thread is running another instance of the introspector, the introspector still isn't attached to its own thread; doing that would lead to infinite recursion. Each introspector will work similarly to the motor-output-choosing algorithm described above, except that the generated output will be in the form of new mental heuristics. Therefore, the same "It'd be ineffective to run a model of myself to determine my next action." assumption in the algorithm can be observed, and "Free will." is still the likely conclusion of a mind that doesn't understand the rationale behind the design.

Most of the proposed models in this thread seem reasonable.

I would write down all the odd things people say about free will, pick the simplest model that explained 90% of it, and then see if I could make novel and accurate predictions based on the model. But, I'm too lazy to do that. So I'll just guess.

Evolution hardwired our cognition to contain two mutually-exclusive categories, call them "actions" and "events."

"Actions" match: [rational, has no understandable prior cause]. "Rational" means they are often influenced by reward and punishment. Synonyms for 'has no understandable prior cause' include 'free will', 'caused by elan vitale' and 'unpredictable, at least by the prediction process we use for things-in-general like rocks'.

"Events" match: [not rational, always directly caused by some previous and intuitively comprehendable physical event or action]. If you throw a rock up, it will come back down, no matter how much you threaten or plead with it.

We are born to axiomatically believe actions we take of this innate 'free will' category have no physical cause. In this model, symptoms might include:

• believing there is an interesting category called 'free will'

• believing that arguing whether humans either belong to, or don't belong to, this 'free will' category, is an interesting question

• believing that if we don't have 'free will', it's wrong to punish people

• believing that if we don't have 'free will', we are marionettes, zombies, or in some other way 'subhuman'.

• believing that if we don't understand what causes a thunderstorm or a crop failure or an eclipse, it is the will of a rational agent who can be appeased through the appropriate sacrifices

• believing that if our actions are caused by God's will, fate, spiritual possession, an ancient prophesy, Newtonian dynamics, or some other simple and easily-understandable cause, we do not have 'free will'. However, if our actions are caused by an immaterial soul, spooky quantum mechanics, or anything else that 'lives in another dimension beyond the grasp of intuitive reason', then we retain 'free will'.

I'm not particularly confident my model is correct, the human capacity to spot patterns where there are none works against me here.

Great post, Rolf Nelson.

HOMEWORK REPORT

With some trepidation! I'm intensely aware I don't know enough.

"Why do I believe I have free will? It's the simplest explanation!" (Nothing in neurobiology is simple. I replace Occam's Razor with a metaphysical growth restriction: Root causes should not be increased without dire necessity).

OK, that was flip. To be more serious:

Considering just one side of the debate, I ask: "What cognitive architecture would give me an experience of uncaused, doing-whatever-I-want, free-as-a-bird Capricious Action that is so strong that I just can't experience (be present to) being a fairly deterministic machine?"

Cutting it down to a bare minimum: I imagine that I have a Decision Module (DM) that receives input from sensory-processing modules and suggested-action modules at its "boundary", so those inputs are distinguishable from the neuron-firings inside the boundary: the ones that make up the DM itself. IMO, there is no way for those internal neuron firings to be presented to the input ports. I guess that there is no provision for the DM to sense anything about its own machinery.

By dubious analogy, a Turing machine looks at its own tapes, it doesn't look at the action table that determines its next action, nor can it modify that table.

To a first approximation, no matter what notion of cause and effect I get, I just can't see any cause for my own decisions. Even if somebody asks, "Why did you stay and fight?", I'm just stuck with "It seemed like a good idea at the time!"

And these days, it seems to me that culture, the environment a child grows up within, is just full of the accouterments of free will: make the right choice, reward & punishment, shame, blame, accountability, "Why did you write on the wall? How could you be so STUPID!!?!!", "God won't tempt you beyond your ability to resist." etc.

Being a machine, I'm not well equipped to overcome all that on the strength of mere evidence and reason.

Now I'll start reading The Solution, and see if I was in the right ball park, or even the right continent.

Thanks for listening.

Eliezer, you wrote:

But when you're really done, you'll know you're done. Dissolving the question is an unmistakable feeling...

I'm not so sure. There have been a number of mysteries throughout history that were explained by science, and the resolution didn't feel immediately satisfying to people even though they do to us now -- like the explanation of light as being electromagnetic waves.

I frequently find it tricky to determine whether a feeling of dissatisfaction indicates that I haven't gotten to the root of a problem, or whether it indicates that I just need time to become comfortable with the explanation. For instance, it feels to me like my moral intuitions are objectively correct rules about how people should and shouldn't behave. Yet my reason tells me that they are simply emotional reactions built into my brain by some combination of biology and conditioning. I've gotten somewhat more used to that fact over time, but it certainly didn't feel at first like it successfully explained why I feel that X is "wrong" or Y is "right."

Eliezer, you wrote:

But when you're really done, you'll know you're done. Dissolving the question is an unmistakable feeling...

I'm not so sure. There have been a number of mysteries throughout history that were explained by science, and the resolution didn't feel immediately satisfying to people even though they do to us now -- like the explanation of light as being electromagnetic waves.

I frequently find it tricky to determine whether a feeling of dissatisfaction indicates that I haven't gotten to the root of a problem, or whether it indicates that I just need time to become comfortable with the explanation. For instance, it feels to me like my moral intuitions are objectively correct rules about how people should and shouldn't behave. Yet my reason tells me that they are simply emotional reactions built into my brain by some combination of biology and conditioning. I've gotten somewhat more used to that fact over time, but it certainly didn't feel at first like it successfully explained why I feel that X is "wrong" or Y is "right."

Eliezer, you wrote:

But when you're really done, you'll know you're done. Dissolving the question is an unmistakable feeling...

I'm not so sure. There have been a number of mysteries throughout history that were resolved by science, but people didn't immediately feel as if the scientific explanation really resolved the question, even though it does to us now -- like the explanation of light as being electromagnetic waves.

I frequently find it tricky to determine whether a feeling of dissatisfaction indicates that I haven't gotten to the root of a problem, or whether it indicates that I just need time to become comfortable with the explanation. For instance, it feels to me like my moral intuitions are objectively correct rules about how people should and shouldn't behave. Yet my reason tells me that they are simply emotional reactions built into my brain by some combination of biology and conditioning. I've gotten somewhat more used to that fact over time, but it certainly didn't feel at first like it successfully explained why I feel that X is "wrong" or Y is "right."

The neural explanation doesn't seem parsimonious, given that there appears to be a much simpler cognitive "glitch" that causes the tree-falling-in-the-forest argument and the free will argument: our habitual propensity to mistake the communication devices known as words with the actual concepts they correspond to in our own minds. And as a natural consequence, people forget that the concept they associate with a word might be different from the concept another person associates with the same word.

One common result of these errors is that arguers forget to check that their definitions agree. That explains the how of the tree-falling-in-the-forest argument entirely, with no lingering doubts.

Another common result is the tendency you mention, of philosophers to try to answer questions as stated, as if the words must mean something coherent just because they sound like they should. This explains many of the free will arguments, although - here's the tricky part - every thinker's arguments would have to be explained via a slightly different manifestation of the error:

Thinker A reified. Thinker B equivocated on the meaning of "free." Thinker C conflated agents because the words in their argument didn't distinguish agency clearly enough. Nevertheless, the underlying error is the same. (Needless to say, the fact that everyone will interpret the words and make the argument differently precludes the possibility of a categorical dismissal of all concepts that anyone will ever call "free will.")

"What kind of cognitive algorithm, as felt from the inside, would generate the observed debate about 'free will'?"

As I understand it, there was no debate on free will before about three centuries ago. Since that time, the idea that we might all be automata has been taken somewhat seriously. In earlier times, it would have been considered absurd to question free will.

So, did our cognitive algorithm change back around the time of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton? Of course not. So how can the algorithm be "blamed" for the existence of a debate? By itself it cannot. So we have to imagine that the debate arises from the combination of algorithm and data. The algorithm is the same, only the data has changed. And clearly the new data which enables the debate is the evidence that the physical universe may be lawlike and deterministic, together with a learned bias toward monism.

Ok, so I think I have improved the question a little, but I have come nowhere close to either answering or dissolving it. So, come at it from a different direction:

My personal tapdance for avoiding the free-will debate is to refuse to see any contradiction between the claims "I have a choice" and "I am an automaton". Seeing a contradiction there (I claim) is the flaw in our cognitive algorithm. And to make it completely obvious that there is no contradiction, we need to actually construct an automaton with free-will. How do we know when we have succeeded? Well, the automaton simply has to pass the free-will Turing test.

Now here is where it gets interesting. I imagine that a critic will say something like, "Sure, you can build a machine that can fool me. You can fool every one else too. But there is one person you can never fool. Yourself. You, having built the machine, will understand its workings, and hence will know that it doesn't really have free will."

Not too bad as an argument against the possibility of AFW (Artificial Free Will). But it gives us the hint that lets us dissolve the original question. We now see that free-will is in the eye of the beholder. To every one else, my automaton is free, to me it is not. Freedom is not a unary predicate. It is a two-place predicate - you need to identify both the candidate automaton/agent and the observer who evaluates it. One observer sees the device as determined, another observer sees it as free. And they can both be right. There is no contradiction. The free-will debate is hereby dissolved.

So, pop back to the original question. Why does there seem to be a real debate? Well, obviously, it is because there seems to be a real contradiction. So, what feature of the algorithm makes it seem that there must be a contradiction here? If my analysis is correct, it is the gizmo which biases us against concepts which are "subjective" (i.e. observer dependent) and in favor of an illusion of objective reality. A metaphysics that says "An agent is either free or it is not".

My apologies for the length of this comment.

Here's my attempt (I haven't read the comments above in detail, as I don't want the answer spoiled in case I'm wrong).

For whatever reason, it is apparent that the conscious part of our brain is not fully aware of everything that our brain does. Now let's imagine our brain executing some algorithm, and see what it looks like from the perspective of our consciousness. At any given stage in the algorithm, we might have multiple possible branches, and need to continue to execute the algorithm along one of those possible branches. To determine which branch to follow, we need to do some computation. But that computation isn't done on a conscious level (or rather, sometimes it is, but the fastest computations are done on a subconscious level). However, the computation is done in parallel, so our consciousness "sees" all of the possible next steps, and then feels as if it is choosing one of them. In reality, that "choice" occurs when all of the subconscious processes terminate and we pick the choice with the highest score.

My $0.02: all it takes is a system a) without access to its own logs, and b) disposed to posit, for any event E for which a causal story isn't readily available, a default causal story in which some agent deliberately caused E to advance some goal.

Given those two things, it will posit for its own actions a causal story in which it is the agent, since it's the capable-of-agency thing most tightly associated with its actions.

Note that this does not require there not be free will (whatever that even means, assuming it means anything), it merely asserts that whether there is or not (or a third alternative, if there is one), the system will classify its actions as its own doing unless it has some specific reason to otherwise classify them.

Some rough notes on free will, before I read the "spoiler" posts or the other attempted solutions posted as comments here.

(Advice for anyone attempting reductions/dissolutions of free will or anything else: actually write notes, make them detailed when you can (and notice when you can't), and note when you're leaving some subproblem unsolved for the time being. Often you will notice that you are confused in all kinds of ways that you wouldn't have noticed if you had kept all of it in your head. (And if you're going to try a problem and then read a solution, this is a good way of avoiding hindsight bias.))

What kind of algorithm feels like free will from the inside?

Some ingredients:

• Local preferences:

  The algorithm doesn't necessarily need to be an optimization process with a consistent, persistent utility function, but when the algorithm runs, there needs to be some locally-usable preference function over outcomes, since this is a decision algorithm.

• Counterfactual simulation:

  When you feel that you "could" make one of several (mutually exclusive) "choices", that doesn't mean that all of them are actually possible (for most senses of "possible" that we use outside the context of being confused about free will); you're going to end up doing at most one of them. But it occurs to you to imagine doing any of them, because you don't yet know what you'll decide (and you don't know what you'll decide because this imagining is part of the algorithm that generates the decision). So you look at the choices you think you might make, and you imagine yourself making each of those choices. You then evaluate each imagined outcome according to some criterion (specifying which, I think, is far outside the scope of this problem), and the algorithm then returns the choice corresponding to the imagined outcome that maximizes that criterion.

  (Imagining a maybe-impossible world — one where you make a specific decision which may not be the one you will actually make — consists of imagining a world to which all of your prior beliefs about the real world apply, plus an extra assumption about what decision you end up making. If we want to go a bit deeper: suppose you're considering options A, B, and C, and you're imagining what happens if you pick B. Then you imagine a world which is identical to (how you imagine) the real world, except with a different agent substituted for you, identical to you except that their decision algorithm has a special case for this particular situation consisting of "return B".)

  (I realize that I have not unpacked this so-called "imagining" at all. This is beyond my current understanding, and is not specific to the free will issue.)

Why does that feel non-deterministic?

Because we don't have any way of knowing the outcome for sure other than just following the algorithm to the conclusion. Due to the mind projection fallacy, our lack of knowledge of our deterministic decisions feels like those decisions actually not being deterministically implied yet.

...Let me phrase that better: The fact that we don't know what the algorithm will output until we follow it to its normal conclusion, feels like the algorithm not having a definite output until it reaches its conclusion. Since our beliefs about reality just feel like reality, our blank or hazy or changing map of the future feels like a blank or hazy or changing future; as is pointed out in "Timeless Causality", changing our extrapolation of the future feels like changing the future. When you don't know what decision you'll make, that feels like the future itself is undecided. And the fact that we can imagine multiple futures until it's not imaginary or the future anymore, feels like there are multiple possible futures until we pick one to go with.

Why does the idea of determinism feel non-free?

Well, there's the whole metaphor of "laws", to begin with. When we hear about fundamental physical laws, our intuition doesn't go straight to "This is the fundamental framework in which everything in the universe happens (including everything about me)". "Laws" sound like constraints imposed on us. It makes us imagine some causal force acting on us and restricting us from the outside; something that acts independently of and sometimes against mental causes, rather than what you see when you look at mental causes under a microscope (so to speak).

That also seems to explain why people think that physical determinism would preclude moral responsibility. When someone first tells you that everything about you is reducible to lawful physics, it can intuitively sound like being told that you're under the Imperius curse or that you're a puppet and some some demon called "Physics" is pulling the strings. If your intuition says that determinism means people are puppets, then surely it's easy to think that implies people cannot be held responsible for their actions, clearly Physics must get the credit or the blame.

(In one sense, yes, physics must get the credit or blame — but only the region of physics that we call "you" for short.)

And there's the fact that, if it's explained poorly, the idea of physical determinism can sound about the same as the idea of fate. (Or even if it is explained well, but you pattern-match it as "fate" from the beginning and let that contaminate your understanding of the rest of the explanation.) Of course, the ideas couldn't be more different, fate is the idea that your choices don't matter because the outcome will be the same no matter what; and this (rightly) sounds non-free, because it implies that this algorithm you're running doesn't ultimately have any influence on the future. Physical determinism, on the other hand, says quite the opposite, that the future is causally downstream from your actions, which are causally downstream from the algorithm you're running; but given sufficiently confusing/confused descriptions of determinism (like "everything is predetermined"), it is possible to mistake them for each other.

Why does the idea of predictability feel non-free?

The previous bit, on physical determinism feeling non-free, isn't the whole story. Even when the idea of "lawfulness" isn't invoked, people still think as though being theoretically predictable is a limitation on free will. They still wonder things like "If God is omniscient, then he must know every decision I will make, so how can I have free will?" (And atheists say things like this a lot to argue that an omniscient god is impossible because then we couldn't have free will (particularly as an argument against religious traditions that argue (badly) against the problem of evil by saying that God gave us free will). I'm not sure if this is because it's a soldier on their side or if they just don't know reductionism. Probably some of both.) This probably goes back to the bit about the mind projection fallacy; if you don't know what you're going to do, that feels like reality itself being indeterminate, and if you're told that reality itself is not indeterminate — that the territory isn't blank where your map is blank — then, if you haven't learned to strictly distinguish between the map and the territory, you'll say "But I can see plainly that the territory is blank at that point!", and you'll dismiss the idea that your decisions could theoretically be predictable.

(Tangential to the actual reduction, but: this seems like it could be covered by a principle analogous to the Generalized Anti-Zombie Principle. If the thing you think "free will" refers to is something that you'd suddenly have less of if I built a machine that could exactly predict your decisions (even if I just looked at its output and didn't tell you it even existed), then it's clearly not the thing that causes you to think you have "free will".)

Why do we "explain" free will in terms of mysterious substances placed in a separate realm declared unknowable by fiat?

I don't have the cognitive science to answer that, and I'll consider it outside the scope of the free will problem in particular, because that's something we seem to do with everything (as in MAMQ), not just free will.

Your challenge does not prove anything. A very complex algorithms can never have free will. Complexity may limit predictability but does not demonstrate free will. Collision of two balls can be predicted. Three ball collision are much more difficult to predict. Hundreds of balls may be beyond our current technology to predict. There is a number of balls where computers the size of the Universe could not predict.

Free Will does not exist.

Big statement. I can hear the uproar.

Consider: After the Big Bang, the Universe cooled and matter coalesces. No Free Will was involved. Stars formed and exploded creating heavy elements. No Free Will was involved A cloud of dust coalesces with 8 planets. One in the sweet spot. No Free Will was involved. Life begins on the third planet from the star. No Free Will was involved. Animals crawled our the water. No Free Will was involved. An animal drops from the trees and walked on 2 feet. No Free Will was involved. The Sun rises above the horizon yesterday, today and tomorrow. No Free Will was / is / will be involved. In 200 years, we will all be dead. No Free Will will be involved. Chemical reactions occur in the human brain. No Free Will is involved. A Neuron fires. No Free Will is involved. Million neurons fire. No Free Will is involved. Every thing that did happen because it happened. No Free Will is involved. Tomorrow, things will happen because time moves on. No Free Will is involved.

All of these happen for one and only one reason. Time moves one direction, and there is only one time stream known or knowable to science.

My answer to that assignment is that i have no idea how that would work or how i could figure out how it would. Did i guess the password? if not then is it swordfish? Just give me a gold star!

I've been going through the sequences, and this is probably the post I disagree with most.

Philosophy may lead you to reject the concept, but rejecting a concept is not the same as understanding the cognitive algorithms behind it.

More importantly, rejecting a concept doesn't solve the problem the concept is used for. The question to ask isn't what the precise definition of free will is, or whether the concept is coherent. Ask instead "What problems am I trying to solve with this concept?"

Because we do use the concept to solve problems. People take actions, and those actions have effects on us. When do I retaliate against a harmful action, and when do I reward a beneficial action? How do I update my evaluation of the actor, in terms of the likelihood that they will repeat this kind of beneficial or harmful behavior?

It's nonsense to say that free will doesn't exist - because the problem the concept is used to solve does exist, and if you say free will doesn't exist, you'll still end up creating a concept just like it to solve this problem. And for the most part, people are already effectively using the concept to reward and punish appropriately. They are effectively solving a problem. By and large, they use the concept of free will to both accurately predict future behavior (epsitemic rationality) and effectively take action (instrumental rationality). Isn't that what rationality is all about?

Now both sides haven't effectively made that concept coherent with their knowledge of physics, one side thinking the concept is nonsense, and the other side thinking they're not bound by the laws of physics. Both sides are making a mistake. The concept isn't nonsense, because it solves real problems, and we are bound by the laws of physics.

See compatibilism for details. Problem solved. A Rationalist solves problems.

So, to know if an answer is complete, you go by how certain cognitive processes make you feel? Seriously? Feelings lie. All the time.

I am curious why your posts tend to treat questions like this ("Does free will exist?") as being substantially different from questions like "Does some god exist?"

My tackle at this question: Why do people debate free will?

The topic itself is of intense interest to humans, because we’d like to believe we have it, or that it exists. This is because we’d like to believe we have control over our own actions and our thoughts, since that would give us the feeling that because of said control we can shape our surroundings in search of our own happiness, or that happiness is achievable. But the crutch of the problem is we can’t just believe in free will now, because we have no idea, no proof or theories on how it exists. Thus we can’t fully and wholly believe free will exists. But we want to, so we try to justify its existence to ourselves by focusing our confusion through the question "Is there free will?" and try to answer the question, as our past experiences have taught us by shaping our confusion into a question, the confusion can usually be absolved with an answer. And we know that if we can arrive at a logical conclusion, we will believe in the answer.

I'm not sure if I even approached the right question, but I feel like I'm done.

Those who dream do not know they dream, but when you wake you know you are awake.

I actually use this fact to enable lucid dreaming. When I'm dreaming, I ask myself, "am I dreaming?" And then I answer yes, without any further consideration, as I've realized that the answer is always yes. Because when I'm awake, I don't ask that question, because there's never any doubt to begin with. So when I'm dreaming and I find myself unsure of whether or not I'm dreaming, I therefore know that I'm dreaming, simply because the doubt and confusion exists. It's a method that's a lot simpler (and more accurate) than trying to analyze the contents of the dream to see if it seems real.

EDIT: made small edits.

in my opinion, the question is brilliant and its importance is misunderstood, though EY somewhat dances around it.

Whether or not the tree makes a noise is irrelevant once no one can hear it, and thus whether or not the tree is heard is a pre-condition to knowledge that it has fell/made noise. the point then is that (i) the lack of truth to a statement and (ii) truth of a statement that cannot be understood are effectively the same thing.

In other words, what is pointless is trying to pin down truths that cannot be conclusively proven within the bounds of human comprehension (e.g., is there free-will, what is the meaning of life), because practically speaking you're in the same place you would be if there was no answer -- just arguing amongst those who choose to consider the question in the first place.

'Free will' is the halting point in the recursion of mental self-modeling.

Our minds model minds, and may model those minds' models of minds, but cannot model an unlimited sequence of models of minds. At some point it must end on a model that does not attempt to model itself; a model that just acts without explanation. No matter how many resources we commit to ever-deeper models of models, we always end with a black box. So our intuition assumes the black box to be a fundamental feature of our minds, and not merely our failure to model them perfectly.

This explains why we rarely assume animals to share the same feature of free will, as we do not generally treat their minds as containing deep models of others' minds. And, if we are particularly egocentric, we may not consider other human beings to share the same feature of free will, as we likewise assume their cognition to be fully comprehensible within our own.

...d-do I get the prize?

Um...the halting problem+godel's incompleteness theorem, aka you cannot predict yourself completely? I think i'm missing a piece or two, and I probably am thanks to having "incompleteness theorem and halting problem" as a cached thought.

At any rate, I made a comparison between free will and arbitrary code while thinking about this.

oh horrors.

Free will is basically asking about the cause of our actions and thoughts. The cause of our neurons firing. The cause of how the atoms and quarks in our brains move around.

To know that X causes the atoms in our brain to move a certain way, we'd have to know that every time X happens, the atoms in our brain would move in that specific way. The problem is that we would have to see into the future. We'd have to see what results from X in every future instance of X. We don't have that information. All we have are our past and current experiences, that we use to induce what will happen in the future. (This is nothing new, just the induction fallacy.)

So, it seems that we can't determine causes. Maybe somehow if our understanding of physics allows us to deconstruct time and see the future, we might be able to determine causes, but right now we can't do that, so it seems that we can't determine causes.

If we can't determine causes, we can't know whether or not we have free will.

Let's consider two possibilities:
1) our "consciousness" causes the atoms in our brain to move in certain ways
2) "physics" causes the atoms to move the way they do

Regardless of whether (1) or (2) is correct, it wouldn't lead to any different experiences for us. We'd still act and think the way we do, and we'd still psychologically feel like we're in control of our thoughts and actions. I think this is what Eliezer is saying; that the question of free will is pointless because regardless of what the answer is, it won't lead us to different experiences.

My objection - just because we don't know the true cause doesn't mean we can't. Knowing the true cause would (at the very least) be interesting. For that reason, I don't think the question of free will is "meaningless". I know it doesn't seem like we could know the true cause, but it's tough to predict what we might know, say, a million years from now.

Objection to myself: I'm not sure exactly what I mean by consciousness. If "consciousness" doesn't "mean something", then the question is basically a matter of physics and what laws of physics govern the movement of the atoms in our brains, which isn't as interesting, at least to me.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what it would mean for "consciousness" to be the cause of the atoms in our brains moving. As far as our experiences and ability to measure things goes, it probably doesn't "mean" anything. I guess that that is the point Eliezer is making.

I'm still notably confused, but I'm definitely getting closer. I would very much appreciate it if anyone could help me understand why it doesn't mean anything for "consciousness" to cause the atoms in our brains to move.

If we’re pretending that free will is both silly and surprising, then why aren’t we more surprised by stronger biases towards more accurate notions like causality?

If there was no implicit provision like this, there’s no sense to asking any question like “why would brains tend to believe X and not believe not X?” To entertain the question, first we entertain a belief that our brains were “just naïve enough” to allow surprise at finding any sort of cognitive bias. Free will indicates bias--this is the only sense I can interpret from the question you asked.

Obviously, it is irrational to believe strongly either way if no evidence is commonly admitted. Various thought experiments could be made to suggest free will is not among those beliefs we hold by evaluation of log-likelihoods over hypotheses given evidence. And so, if “free will” is significantly favored while also baseless, then a cognitive bias remains one of the better possible explanations for the provisional surprise we claim about observing belief in free will.

At least it is so in my general, grossly naïve understanding. And in lieu of a stack trace, I'll say this: cognitive biases seem like heuristic simplifications that cause general errors in the calculation of inference. They favor improper scoring when betting expectations in certain contexts. Assuming any reason exists, the motivation is most likely as with over-fitting in any other model—it’s a sampling bias. And, since engineering mistakes into our brain sounds generally harmful, each type of over-fitting must pay off tremendously in some very narrow scope of high risk, high reward opportunities.

The need to reason causally isn’t any more apparent than free will, but it just sounds less mysterious because it fits the language of mathematics. Causality and free will are related, but learning causality seems such a necessary objective to a brain that I doubt we’d get so many other biases without getting causality ensured first. I doubt we’re built without an opinion on either issue.

"Free will" is a black box containing our decision making algorithm.

What kind of mind would invent "free will"? The same mind that would neatly wrap up any other open ended question into a single label, be it "élan vital" or "philogeston". Our minds are fantastic at dreaming up explanations for things, and if they are not easily empirically testable at the time, then such explanations tend to stick. Without falsifying evidence, our pet theories tend to remain, and confirmation bias slowly hardens them into what feels like brute facts.

It's appealing because it ties up (or at least hides) loose ends. If we play taboo on free will, we might get something like the concept that people can narrow a number of possible futures into one future that is optimal. With this definition, free will would indeed exist. If, however, free will was postulated in such a say as to include some fantastical element, or another black box, Occam's razor may strike it down. Alternatively, it may be superficially appealing enough to stick, so long as we don't think about it too thoroughly. For example, the idea that humans are in control of their actions feels like an explanation, but contains control as a nested black box.

But what does this process actually feel like when we make such a mistake? Well, it's based on implicit assumptions, so nothing feels amiss. You don't realize that you are making an implicit assumption. All the loose ends look like they are tucked away, at least at a glance. but if you take a closer look, say by repeatedly asking "why?", then you start to feel less confident. This is a sign of trouble, but you should make sure aren't just asking "does 1 plus 1 really equal 2" in a pretentious tone of voice. If repeated self inquiry seems to be creating a rabbit hole of nested black boxes, then you should go back to the highest level box, and try a different form of inquiry. Ask yourself if there's anything about the nested black boxes that feel wrong. Use all your tools as a rationalist to inquire into this, and hopefully find a path of inquiry besides infinite regression. For a thorough analysis, ask yourself whether the nested boxes make observable predictions, and how those predictions might differ from reality.

With our example of playing taboo on free will to get the idea that humans are in control of their actions, we might intuit that "control" is just an inherently complex concept. Although usually applying agency during an explanation is a good way of sicking Occam's razor on it, perhaps this is an exception. We are discussing agency itself, after all. But what does it mean to have agency? What are the observable differences in the world? When we hold these sorts of questions in our minds, and again try to play taboo, we are more likely to get something like the concept that people can narrow a number of possible futures into one future that is optimal. That's a much different answer, because a computer program could also down-select from a number of different options, given some criteria. This answer also doesn't leave loose ends, and doesn't leave that nagging feeling of doubt that comes from having left something unexplained. It turns out that all our sense of confusion was contained within the mysticism implied by using the phrase “free will”. It may be easy to forget about that doubt when only taking a broad view, but as soon as you zoom in on the problem it will become detectible. We live in a messy world, and so frequently have to say say "good enough" and leave unexplained doubts due to time constraints, but when we decide that something is important and pursue the little doubting feeling to it's conclusion, it can be incredibly satisfying. You've just answered one of the mysteries of the universe, after all.

So that's what it feels like to make and then correct a mistake, but why and how did we make the mistake in the first place? Well, our minds are naturally wired around concepts of agency. This is an observable fact in others, and as in personal examples; it really does feel like the dice are out to get us, or that "the system" must be consciously malicious rather than merely incompetent. It is even more natural to endow ourselves with that same vague agency we give inanimate objects and bureaucratic systems. It's only been in the past couple hundred years that humanity has been able to group everything under the same laws of physics. Before that, the stars obeyed their own special rules, and living things were unexplainable mysteries running on "élan vital" instead of something more akin to a combustion reaction. Unless we specifically look close enough at a belief to notice that requires the world to operate under a different set of physical principles, we will default to what is most natural to believe.

As for why the concept of free will should exist in the first place, it is because it is the most natural explanation. It is a fault in out minds that the most natural is not also the simplest, but it is also a useful feature. This form of vague, associative reasoning let's us jump to reasonably accurate conclusions quickly. The difference between the two breakdowns of free will I gave is that one only uses known, well understood phenomena, and the other revolves around making the concept of agency unexplainable. One might also entangle the question with the concept of self and our individual sense of identity. By rolling a bunch of concepts up into one, there are less easily recognizable loose ends. The problem is that tools like associative reasoning and vague definitions aren't enough to actually arrive at a satisfying answer. It ties up enough loose ends that we declare that we've solved it, and move on, ignoring the incompleteness.

Note that this in itself isn't a completely 100% exhaustive expiation of why we naturally want to believe in free will. Where does this concept come from? How do we form it in the first place? To fully answer these, we'd have to also examine the concept if our personal sense of identity, since that is the thing that gets conflated with the “free will” concept to form the more vague and fluffy version. If someone thinks computers don't or can't have free will but humans can, this is likely what they mean by “free will”. Our sense of identity is a large issue, and well enough outside the scope of the question that I think it isn't necessary for this explanation. I'll leave that particular novel length post for someone else.

Noise / sound exist independently of observation, at least so long as you subscribe to the idea that there exists an objective reality outside of your own mind. They are pressure waves transmitted through some medium.

The tree makes a sound, which no one hears.

The answer to this seems to be as to the sound example and to most philosophical debates in general:

1)Different categorization patterns, or, simply put, different meanings of a word. In this situation, even two words: people can disagree on what "will" is (in the context of "free") and on what "free" is (in the context of "will"; let us assume a Frege-Heimian world where if you know the two nodes you always know their combination to ignore the "context" addenda).

2)Politization of the question. In the world where "free is good", having free will is good. In the world where "determinism is good" and "free will is incompatible with determinism" having free will is bad. And people want to be good. Also, we may want to agree with someone (say, Gandhi) and disagree with someone (say, Fomenko) no matter what they say. Thus affective death spirals and one-sided politics and whatnot.

I think we care about whether or not we have free will because we associate it with accountability - both our own and others.

If someone picks me up and throws me on you, you should not blame me for getting slammed - this is not my fault, and I had no say in the matter. If someone points a gun at me and tells me to hit you, you probably won't blame for complying. But if you had to rank my accountability in these two cases, it's obvious that I'm more accountable in the latter because I did have a choice - I could not hit you and get shot. This is a very unfavorable choice and you would not expect me to pick it, so in the global scale of accountability it doesn't really count as a choice - but if we zoom in to just these two cases it's more choice than the no choice I got at the former case.

Moving on: if I steal food because I'm hungry, should I be held accountable?

This question is controversial in ethical philosophy, and I won't form an opinion because the point of this exercise is not to solve such controversies - it's to understand the cognition behind them. If I don't eat for long enough, I will die. But unlike the case with the gun, I will not die immediately if I don't steal this bread right now - so I don't face immediate death, only hunger. I have more choice here - not enough choice to make me consensually accountable, but enough to push it from consensually unaccountable to controversial.

So, accountability is directly linked to will - the more freely I can use my will, the more accountable I should be for my actions. We want to know if people have free will because we want to know if (or - to what degree) they should be held accountable.

Why do we care about accountability? Because we want to punish and/or reward, but we don't want to do that based on luck. If you punish me for stealing, but I stole because I'm hungry, then you punish me for being unlucky enough to go hungry - which is morally wrong. But it it "really" was my will to steal, then you are punishing me for stealing - which is morally right.

We care about free will because we don't want to punish/reward people because of their circumstances - only because of their essences. To discuss the actual difference between circumstances and essences is to answer the question of free will - which is outside the scope of this exercise.

This question never sounded like a meaningful one to me. By the time I first heard it, I was familiar with the understanding of sound as vibrations in the air, so the obvious answer was "yes."

As Sam Harris points out, the illusion of free will is itself an illusion. It doesn't actually feel like you have free will if you look closely enough. So then why are we mistaken about things when we don't examine them closely enough? Seems like a too-open-ended question. 

Three things bother me here, and they're all about which questions are being asked.

1. The "tree falling in a forest" questions isn't, as far as I've encountered it outside of this blog, about the definition of sound. Rather, it's about whether or not reality behaves the same when you do not observe it, an issue that you casually dismissed, without any proof, evidence, or even argument. There are ways to settle this dispute partially, though they are not entirely empirical due to the nature of the conundrum.

2. Ignoring the question of free will, ill defined as it may be, is merely -pretending to be wise-. You're basically saying you now know not to ask these questions, without explaining why (at least here). If there are any convincing arguments that settle a well-defined notion of free will, I welcome them.

3. Last but not least, I'm bothered by the choice of a question to settle all arguments - just write the mental processes that lead to the argument? Why stop there? Why not map the specific clusters of neurons and synapses activating the argument and reinforced by it? Having written down this stack of processes, can you perform neurosurgery that will stop this pattern of thinking (but not unrelated ones)? In Science, there may be such a thing as "being done", but this isn't it. Not by a longshot.