A definition of free will

[Craig4]

But it's a direct observation. Is reality uncertain on a macro level? No way! So why are we humans uncertain? Because we have false beliefs! The uncertainty is an illusion. Lack of knowledge is not the same thing as uncertainty. Uncertainty means confusion. And that confusion is an illusion.

Whatever floats your boat. No serious person would use your silly little idea to do anything important.

 

[Complexity]

The question is when Van Flandern wrote that, if it was before he did his practical work related to GPS satellites. And Van Flandern had some fringe ideas, but I think they were good ideas.

You have no basis for having an opinion on which ideas are good and which are not, therefore your opinions are irrelevant.

 

[Complexity]

I may remember incorrectly but as I recall it I did some similar web searches for Van Flandern and GPS some months or year ago, and found several sources mentioning Van Flandern's critical comments about GPS. I sense a conspiracy, but could be wrong.

You are one of the most consistently wrong people I've encountered.

 

[Anders Lindman]

Whatever floats your boat. No serious person would use your silly little idea to do anything important.

Serious people are those who would benefit most! Their tenseness comes from confusion. Tenseness and confusion go together and hold each other in place.

 

[Anders Lindman]

You are one of the most consistently wrong people I've encountered.

I think you are lying.

 

[Complexity]

I think you are lying.

No, you don't - you merely don't like what I am saying.

There is no reason for me to lie.

You have been making outrageous statements since I encountered you on the 'singularity' thread, zapping here and there leaving little piles of error behind you.



Rather than continue to add to this public record at your current rate, please take some time to read some good science books.

 

[Anders Lindman]

No, you don't - you merely don't like what I am saying.

There is no reason for me to lie.

You have been making outrageous statements since I encountered you on the 'singularity' thread, zapping here and there leaving little piles of error behind you.



Rather than continue to add to this public record at your current rate, please take some time to read some good science books.

It's easy to just claiming that I'm wrong without providing any evidence. You are probably too afraid to admit when you don't know something.

 

[Aridas]

Not exactly, but close enough that it makes little difference.
(Sometimes it's hard to explain abstract concepts in words, but how else to explain them?)

I'm fine with leaving it there. I can agree, though, that abstract concepts can, very easily, be hard to describe exactly with words.

Again, if an ALL-KNOWING GOD, knows what you will do, you have no free-will.

Paul

I'm actually going to requote Brian-M to you.

Assuming the universe is deterministic, how are you any less free to not do it than if there was no all-knowing god? In what possible way would this affect your ability to choose/act?

His point with this is, in my eyes, completely valid. In short, any problem arises not *because* there is an Omniscient God, as you keep implying, but rather, because the kind of choice that is being spoken about doesn't exist in the first place, regardless of whether the Omniscience actually exists in the first place or not.

In short, what matters more is whether the Omniscience could potentially exist, not whether it does.

 

[Brian-M]

The question is when Van Flandern wrote that, if it was before he did his practical work related to GPS satellites. And Van Flandern had some fringe ideas, but I think they were good ideas.

According to WikiSource, it was published 2008. That's ten years after his work with GPS.

Look at the comments for the video. The dates for when Van Flandern wrote or said the different things need to be checked. I read somewhere that he claimed something not correct with the GPS system and relativity. Now I can't find any of those sources? I only found that YouTube comment, which isn't much of a source. That in itself is a bit suspicious imo, but this is not the conspiracy section so I will not go into it more here.

The reading through the comments I found this...

@DaBearscz27227348 Tom Van Flandern who worked on GPS said the programmers never used einstein's Relativity, He said the programmers "have basically blown off Einstein." There are some effects with the atomic clocks, but not as Einsteins theory states.

ParasiteJR 1 month ago

Attempting too track down the source of that claim leads me to Conservapedia...

http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_relativity

Tom Van Flandern, an astronomer hired to work on GPS in the late 1990s, concluded that "[t]he GPS programmers don't need relativity." He was quoted as saying that the GPS programmers "have basically blown off Einstein."[19]

Following the Conservapedia reference leads me to an article on salon.com...

http://www.salon.com/2000/07/06/einstein

Van Flandern has argued that because of Einstein’s theory of relativity, clock rates on GPS satellites should need to be adjusted continuously to keep them in sync with users on Earth. But they’re not, he told the American Spectator (April 1999). The GPS programmers don’t need relativity. “They have basically blown off Einstein,” Van Flandern says.

I tried following this to the American Spectator, but they don't have online editions of the magazine from that time. The closest I can find is a reference to it in the Reader's Mail in 2005...

http://spectator.org/archives/2005/12/29/treaty-or-trick/print

In an article published in The American Spectator in April, 1999, I discussed some of Van Flandern's views about relativity.

But Van Flandern also said (and I quoted him as saying) that the clock corrections built into the Global Positioning System are non-Einsteinian.

So the quote is apparently an accurate one. However, given that in the 2008 document I linked to he says GPS itself is a practical realization of Lorentz's "universal time" and subsequent re-interpretation of SR allowed that theory to survive these objections, it's most likely at the time he didn't consider this form of physics to be compatible with relativity, but later changed his mind.

 

[Complexity]

It's easy to just claiming that I'm wrong without providing any evidence. You are probably too afraid to admit when you don't know something.

The evidence is scattered throughout the threads you have started, and probably many others.

Many people have told you you are wrong. Some have even bothered to tell you why what you said is wrong.

I don't think you deserve any such time from us, however - you have done nothing to suggest that you are open to learning.

Do your own work.

 

[Anders Lindman]

According to WikiSource, it was published 2008. That's ten years after his work with GPS.

That sounds suspicious. Only one year before he died. If this was the conspiracy section I would say that he either was forced to do it, or that the article is a fake smokescreen, and that he was murdered in 2009.

 

[Anders Lindman]

The evidence is scattered throughout the threads you have started, and probably many others.

Many people have told you you are wrong. Some have even bothered to tell you why what you said is wrong.

I don't think you deserve any such time from us, however - you have done nothing to suggest that you are open to learning.

Do your own work.

Again, I say that when telling something is wrong you need to say why it is wrong to remain credible instead of trying to use ridicule as a bullying smokescreen.

 

[yy2bggggs]

That sounds suspicious. Only one year before he died. If this was the conspiracy section I would say that he either was forced to do it, or that the article is a fake smokescreen, and that he was murdered in 2009.

Wait... you just invented a conspiracy theory to justify your claims, and Brian-M is suspicious?

 

[Anders Lindman]

Wait... you just invented a conspiracy theory to justify your claims, and Brian-M is suspicious?

No, the article is suspicious (from a book it seems). Did Van Flandern really write that part?

"The contributors are the editors separately, as well as Craig Callender, Anthony Valentini, Tim Maudlin, Franco Selleri, Tom Van Flandern, Michael Tooley, Richard Swinburne, Thomas M. Crisp, and John Lucas; in short, theologians, physicists, philosophers of physics, philosophers of language and metaphysicians." -- http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24498-einstein-relativity-and-absolute-simultaneity/

 

[Manopolus]

Hmm... what a bunch of hooey.

As far as I can tell, life is not a mathematical equation. Math and logic are tools used by humans, not things which define or confine us. Once you start down this path, it's like you're using a yardstick to measure the weight of an hour.

It merely does not apply. It can only apply if the mind is exactly like a computer, which it is not.

0111010110001110000101011101011111111101 does not compute in this brain.

Free will is a thing which is empirically seen. You do make choices, and there is often uncertainty for a period before that choice is made. It's up to you to prove that this is an illusion if you want to prove determinism. I have yet to see any evidence. You should probably start by accurately predicting a person's behavior in a complex environment with various not-so-overwhelming sources of stimulation and nearly infinite paths of possible divergence (in other words, the boring, everyday world of humdrum). Good luck with that.

Admittedly, you can predict a specifically conditioned person's behavior in tightly controlled circumstances with specific, limited options -- but that's not the world we live in.

--It's not the world I live in, anyway--

 

[Anders Lindman]

Hmm... what a bunch of hooey.

As far as I can tell, life is not a mathematical equation. Math and logic are tools used by humans, not things which define or confine us. Once you start down this path, it's like you're using a yardstick to measure the weight of an hour.

It merely does not apply. It can only apply if the mind is exactly like a computer, which it is not.

0111010110001110000101011101011111111101 does not compute in this brain.

Free will is a thing which is empirically seen. You do make choices, and there is often uncertainty for a period before that choice is made. It's up to you to prove that this is an illusion if you want to prove determinism. I have yet to see any evidence. You should probably start by accurately predicting a person's behavior in a complex environment with various not-so-overwhelming sources of stimulation with nearly infinite paths of possible divergence (in other words, the boring, everyday world of humdrum). Good luck with that.

Admittedly, you can predict a specifically conditioned person's behavior in tightly controlled circumstances with specific, limited options -- but that's not the world we live in.

--It's not the world I live in, anyway--

There are two hypotheses in my definition. The first is that reality is a deterministic process. The second is that this process is computationally irreducible. This means that it's impossible to fully predict the future. The only way to move towards the future is for the process of creation to run, and our free will is a part of that process, not separate from it.

So there is a single path going from the past up to the present moment, but no path beyond that. The path into the future is created moment to moment and cannot be fully predicted beforehand.

The other kind of determinism, the one Laplace proposed, means that the future can in theory be seen for someone with enough power to calculate it. Computational irreducibility pulls that possibility away and makes the future undetermined, and the only way to determine it completely is by the process of creation in the moment.

 

[yy2bggggs]

No, the article is suspicious (from a book it seems). Did Van Flandern really write that part?

Is it really more likely the government forged it and killed him?

 

[Paulhoff]

Originally Posted by Brian-M
Assuming the universe is deterministic, how are you any less free to not do it than if there was no all-knowing god? In what possible way would this affect your ability to choose/act?

If the universe is deterministic, you only have the Illusion of free-will, how can it be anything else.

Paul

 

[Complexity]

That sounds suspicious. Only one year before he died. If this was the conspiracy section I would say that he either was forced to do it, or that the article is a fake smokescreen, and that he was murdered in 2009.

Why don't you start a thread on this in the conspiracy forum and leave all of this conspiracy nonsense out of this thread?

 

[Anders Lindman]

If the universe is deterministic, you only have the Illusion of free-will, how can it be anything else.

You are thinking of it as if people are victims of the universal creation. That's a false view. People ARE the universal creation in action. One could say that we don't have any other choice than to have free will.