Quote:
Originally Posted by Vexx
Bringing a quote on "determinism":
Some folks argue that if you could step up from our view to a total spacetime view, free will would vanish -- problem is that view doesn't take into account quantum mechanics (i.e. its 'classical'). Every point from the "present" forward exists in a multiply possible set of conditions, so such a viewpoint would be clear and concrete to the past and murkier and cloudier to the future.
So free will *could* exist... BUT -- humans operate far more frequently on "mental automatic pilot" than they themselves often realize. They let their past experience and mental baggage, flaky world-view models, etc. drive their choices without re-examining them. This makes them very predictable. Brains that are always learning and adapting to new information (and hence rewiring itself, dropping connections, adding connections) are harder to predict for future behavior other than they're likely to be more successful in adjusting to new situations.
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I think it is more of a issue with "fear of the unknown". Simply put, if a person wants to draw a line down a self-generating Pascal's triangle to cover all the Fibonacci numbers, AND catch up to the point where the newest line is generated, and that the Pascal's triangle is only shown until the (n+x) point, and the nth point is where the person has drawn until.
By the time the person has finished calculating the next set of values he should take, he/she is already left far behind from the newest generated line. However if he/she had drawn down in advance by pattern recognition, he/she could have the combo broken.
The persistence of doubt in whether the future occurrences will have an unwanted impact on everyone drives people to use the past as a guide, which can result in the excessive pattern recognition - when followed, kills off the "free will".
To be or not to be? That's the question.
