I'm not sure if I've seen that one already. But it was also Donald Hoffman who inspired me to start thinking more about this subject in the first place.

I remember an anecdote he once made. About in order to save a certain beetle from extinction, Australians had to change the color of their beer bottles because them beetles thought they could mate with them, and even started preferring them 😅

Edit: Your link is probably the same video I once saw... he made the exact same anecdote 🙃 Lot of more interesting stuff from him out there...

Had to look this one up... but I'm afraid I don't see the connection. Can you elaborate?

Your essay reminded me very much of this Ted talk by evolutionary psychologist Donald Hoffman.

He goes off the deep end a bit but I found it super interesting and relates to your topic.

I assume this is the truth. The reality of my life. Every day I think about this.

Oddly enough, the longer I live the more I remember about my life to be and to come.

I'll check him out. Thanks!

Experiments that are value-free are just whims, what the heck

To clarify a few benefits of this definition;

• We CAN benefit from spending more energy on a decision.
• We CAN delude ourselves more and more if we don't second-guess previous decisions (at our detriment to economy/social situation/professional situation/love life, etc). Previous decisions are just memories, we hold no more duty to them than the calories we spent watching the TV last night.
• We CAN make efforts to control for biases if we make an effort.
• We CAN make efforts to make higher quality decisions with even minor effort, especially if we mull over the decision until the actual deadline instead of jumping on the first decision that falls into our mind.
• WITHOUT this type of free will, more effort on decisions would be pointless, because we'd be just as likely to hit the best possible decision at 1 calorie spent as an infinite calories spent. So we should be happy we have this "lack" of free will as philosophers previously claimed we had, and instead have this free-will-within-causality.

For a well-known (although perhaps not popular) statistical guru, Nassim Taleb is worth while.

This could have been shortened to "no experiment is free from being accountable for inadvertent biases" but go off I guess.

This is the key thing, "first explicitly defining free will". Something I studied for a few years (full time).

Imagine this, a chess computer. Feed it more and more energy (time or computing power) and then it does better and better chess decisions. Give it infinite time or computing power. Does it have free will? No.

Because it has no insight into how or why it is doing what it is doing. It has no insight into how it made the decision it made at the 1 hour mark, and it has no insight into how it made the decision it made at the 2 hour mark if you let it keep thinking it over. It is thinking at introspectral magnitude zero, it has zero insight into its own brain.

Human brains are just the same, or any brains, only evolution is what programmed our brain's chess computer program, not a human programmer.

But if we had a brain scanner that allows us some insight into how exactly we made a decision, so that we can make a new decision knowing how we arrived at the previous introspectral magnitude zero decision, then we have an introspectral magnitude 1 decision.

Then we can use the brain-scan of the decision we made at introspectral magnitude 1 to find out how we made that decision, and make a new one (that either keeps the original decision, or doesn't), to get introspectral magnitude 2. Spectre 2 for short.

And we can keep going. If we keep going forever, with either an infinitely big brain that consumes an infinite amount of energy instantly, or an infinite amount of time, then we get up to an introspectrum level decision.

Introspectrum decisions is the closest thing to free will that exists in a causality-driven universe/multiverse.

This is kinda impractical for each decision, since infinite energy consumption for just ONE decision is rather impossible. But you can still approximate some introspectrum decisions within some degree of error that becomes negligible. A simple example is that you can always work out Pi to a suitable decimal count for whatever you are calculating, to such a degree of accuracy that you can't really decide that you're wildly wrong on the next trillion or infinite spectre levels. If you build a bridge with that level of Pi in your calculations, you're unlikely to later change your mind to any worthwhile degree. You might always find a better place to put the bridge, or a better bridge design, but you can approximate introspectrum level decisions in some situations.

For approximating introspectrum level decisions in humanity right now, you'd need to first be WELL versed in behavioral psychology (see Dan Ariely on youtube if this is the first time you hear that term), as well as evolution (see Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins for a good intro), as well as applied statistics (don't really know any great popular science figure-heads for that, just find whoever tells you the average doesn't reflect the data pool. For example, if you get 60% more money and lose 50% for each coin toss, the average wealth will go up but most will end up bankrupt). If you are WELL versed in all these things (and probably reasonably versed in a few other things I can't fit in this character limit), then you CAN even approximate introspectrum decisions in some cases even without an actual brainscanner capable of determining exactly how you arrived at your decision.

I coined introspectrum type free will years ago, maybe I should make it easier to find on google.

If I have to live the same life again forever I’m going to be annoyed

don't you love reading about something while realizing that you've already been intuitively putting it into practice?

I think you are conflating thoughts about laws of logic, T(L), with the actual structure of what logically holds, L.. But the painting of a pipe is not a pipe. And it doesn't need to be.

Since we can notice our thoughts, we can attempt empiricism on our rationalisms, and then we can model the structure of our thoughts on what pragmatically works when we make these attempts. We can form thoughts about what works and call those thoughts T(L). Because what worked actually worked, and what didn't work actually didn't work, we can know that T(L) corresponds to L to whatever degree our thoughts are really about what worked, which we can test empirically.

lol, first of all, define free will, properly. /s

I just remembered, there was a study that proofed the concept of the duality you mentioned. They measured the brain waves(i don't remember how) of people while making decisions. Pressing one of two buttons in this case i think. And it's exactly like you say, the decider acts at least half a second(could be more, but not less.) before the perceiver(or the person in that case?) thought now he makes the decision. Even when they thougt they do it by chance(in their mind rapidly switching between the buttons, and then just smash one of them) the scientists could always tell beforehand which button they will press.

Maybe i find it.

You must pair it with Nietzsche's general warning against contentment. Otherwise, yes, it quickly descends into a vat of weakness and risk aversion, where people say, "Well, sure, it's good enough that I'd just do it over and over, I guess, as opposed to any unknown alternative (including the void.)"

A more robust formulation would be: if you were going to have to repeat your life over and over, wouldn't you want it to be better in some way? If so, go make it happen already.

Granted, you can push back on the more robust version by attacking it in the exact same way as before: "Why risk it?"

I tend to think of it as a roundabout way of forcing people to realize that they're always settling. It at least serves to shatter the illusion that they're not.

True, no empirical evidence is really possible for free will (as far as I know). However, we can show rationally how determinism leads to absurdity and the impossibility of knowledge. For example: if all of your thoughts are mere byproducts of electro-chemical reactions in the brain (which you yourself don't even understand), then so are the laws of logic that are preconditions for knowledge of any kind. Not only would these laws of logic be reduced to blind chemical reactions with no real reference to "truth" and no way to epistemically justify them, but your brain (and hence mind) could also be determined to believe false things outside of your control. Basically, determinism makes epistemology impossible. It's an absurd and self-contradictory belief.

Keep it hidden otherwise they'll call you crazy

I've been experimenting with myself since I was 8.

Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.

Scientific evidence is not the only form of evidence.

The greatest trick the devil has played was convincing everyone that god won the war.

Here are my reasoning

One was that god was a created everything and based on the biblical text never destroyed. Miltons paradise lost makes it that rebellion and death were things that were created after satan uprising. Not a creation by god, which one could argue was not in gods nature. For the universe would be a representation of gods self. So we have a pacifist fighting a war with a being that by nature is not.

Second the universe is chaotic and then we have a scripture that tries and create structure amongst the chaos. when it would have been easier to create a system and a manual. Only reason one would create a structure after the fact is the lack of ability to change the universe.

I would disagree, you can always experiment with yourself and your inner self with the free will of thought not being outspoken for anyone to see.

I suspect many people would feel more content with their lot after engaging in this thought experiment. All the things we worry may happen disappear and make the mundane seem more special.

I think the reaction is made made by the decider too, and we can only observe our reaction. And again. And again. How should i say, the decider lives a few seconds in the future, or the observer is held back by our brain, he lives a few seconds in the past. So to speak anyway. "We" are always just observing.

I wrote this post, thought about it, thought about what i thought about it, and so on. Untill the decider decided to press the post button.

Practically an infinite loop.

The claim isn't that a position on free will can't be justified by any evidence, it's that it can't be justified by "empirical experiments" specifically.