An FAQ About Your New Birth Control: The Music of Rush - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency 🎸
"No one has ever gotten pregnant while listening to Rush. Clinical studies show that when combined with watching a male sexual partner play air bass along to the extended solo in 'Freewill,' the contraceptive efficacy of Rush approaches 100 percent."
The problem of free will raises all kinds of questions. What does it mean to make a decision, and what does it mean to say that our actions are determined? What are laws of nature? What are causes? What sorts of things are we, when viewed through the lenses of physics, and how do we fit into the natural order? Ismael provides a deeply informed account of what physics tells us about ourselves.
#TheMetalDogArticleList #BraveWords
The RUSH Song That Was Never Officially Released As A Single But Became A Radio Staple; PROFESSOR OF ROCK Investigates (Video)
#AI#Automation#Philosophy#FreeWill: "Experiments show that people tend to confirm decisions made by machines, even against their better judgment.
We’ve all seen the GIF of the tourists who have driven into the middle of a lake because their GPS system told them to. We humans are ultimately herd creatures. We are rather lazy and prefer to follow orders – even those of a machine. A doctor who has to make a lot of decisions quickly under great pressure would probably welcome a machine to help her decide what to do. But the world isn’t built like that – there isn’t always a right answer as to which patient should get the precious kidney. In the most interesting cases in human life, the options are «en par.» That’s why AI systems should ask for an active decision in hard cases."
I'm usually closer to camp Free Will, but I can't deny that there are plenty of examples of God dragging people kicking and screaming into His service.
One issue that keeps coming up in #FreeWill research is which kind of decisions to investigate. Should we study arbitrary decisions or should we be looking for free will in deliberate choice where deciding is hard?
Free will—yea or nay? A neuroscientist and geneticist sets out to rescue the beleaguered concept from its many deniers—including some famous physicists.
“We make decisions, we choose, we act. These are the fundamental truths of our existence and absolutely the most basic phenomenology of our lives. If science seems to be suggesting otherwise, the correct response is not to throw our hands up …"
Even though it might be true that we are just brains in vats seeing computer simulations (and I recently learned the original plot of The Matrix), does it matter? We might as well act as if we are what we appear to be, since the alternative is just nihilism: nothing matters. It's the better wager to make.
I feel the same way about #FreeWill. I don't think we actually have it, but we might as well act as if we do since determining the difference is too difficult to be practically useful.
Yes, we have free will. No, we don't. It depends who you ask... I recently spoke with two scientists who reached radically opposing conclusions on the issue of agency for @NautilusMag:
» what I’ve done in the book is sketch what I think is just really a framework for thinking about those things
...
that an organism could have causal power in and of itself and could could have control and could exercise choice.
...
even after having written this book, this question of choice is the one that still just niggles at me and « https://braininspired.co/podcast/175/
“'Children in the US can be legally married in 41 states, physically punished by school administrators in 47 states, sentenced to life without parole in 22 states, and work in hazardous agriculture conditions in all 50 states.' Over and over again, the worst states for children are clustered around the 'pro-life' Bible Belt, and the map of the states that are the worst for children looks a lot like a map of red-state America."
@gwynnion
Thanks for bringing more attention to this issue…
Every time I see another gov or statehouse neglect to see #kids as…
Autonomous human beings…w/right’s & #freedom (s) we all demand for ourselves.
Kid’s rights…legal #emancipation was debated frequently in ‘80’s.
Today’s kids are only seen as an extension of their #parents & #community.
To do w/as they like…ownership…no #freewill.
Is that what we want for this country?
What kind of future do you see if this continues?
Why do some people get so easily influenced by what "popular" people on the internet are saying!?
It seems those people don't have a will on their own. Even if that "popular" person has experience in some topic, don't let that drown out your own inner voice about that topic! You are on to something! Trust your #intuition!
(Of course this doesn't mean you shouldn't be open-minded to other people's perspectives and willing to learn from others.)
@janriemer I think most people don’t like, or want to think for themselves. They’d rather outsource this to the masses.
Seneca used to say
“Do you ask me what you should regard as especially to be avoided? I say, crowds; for as yet you cannot trust yourself to them with safety.”
And I agree with him. Developing self, and critical thinking, is the one things you can do to improve your life and well being.
Even if you believe in a mechanistic/deterministic universe, at a macro-level events are unpredictable. If a person's mental state (decision-making) is one of those undeterminables, then, we have free will.
Besides, there are too many examples from science, nature & human history where conditions/forces/incentives balanced on a knife's edge where outcomes could've been determined by a butterfly sneeze or mental coin flip.
Just came across the "Free Will Theorem" by #Conway and Kochen. It states that if we have free will in the sense that our choices are not a function of the past, then so must some elementary particles. And of cause logic demands that if particles cannot make decisions then there is no free will for us.