Tag: free will

Spiraling Death Syndrome

crimson

I’ve worked in IT for a very long time. “Spiraling Death Syndrome,” or SDS, was a problem that occurred to some dial-up modems whereby they would reduce the connection speed in order to accommodate issues on the telephone line, but not recover. That is, the device would connect your computer to the Internet successfully, and full speed initially, but as you used your connection, it would progressively become slower and slower until it was unusable. Technically, this sort of technology still exists to this day, but because connections are so bleeding fast, and so much more reliable, no one ever really notices.

It’s simple. The device connects and starts pushing data through the pipe as fast as it is able to. Occasionally, something disrupts the flow of data, so the device slows itself temporarily until the disruption has passed. Disruptions in the connection are generally short lived, so this is all status quo. Once the disruption has passed, the device picks up the speed again, returning to its top speed after that. With SDS, just one part of that process fails: the device never picks back up. It drops its speed for the first disruption, and then again at the next disruption, over and over until it is operating at the slowest possible speed, which is very, very slow. I believe they would go down to about 300 baud, or 300 bits per second. This translates, roughly, to about 30 bytes per second, or to use modern equivalent terms, 0.03 Kbps or 0.00003 Mbps. Considering my current connection was just measured at 7 Mbps, that is very, very slow indeed.

Technical side note: Briefly, “bps” is “bytes per second” and “bips” or “baud” is “bits per second.” The standard for connections and throughput is to use bits per second, while for storage it is bytes or bytes per second as appropriate. Unfortunately, like so many things in our world, these details have often been lost to obscurity, and so most modern speed tests will give results in bits per second, but present the units “bps,” which just confuses everyone. It’s like how a kilobyte is actually 1024 bytes and not 1000 bytes, but again it depends on who you ask.

So why bring up this old, outdated term or problem? Well, it is not only digital connections that suffer from this problem. In my life currently, I am observing this effect occurring in many other places. In particular, if a person is trying to go about living their life without disruption, we might suggest they are operating at something like 100% of their capabilities. Something like top speed. But if something happens to them, disrupted by some outside influence or event, they will be forced to slow to accommodate the event. Their efficiency will drop below that 100% as they now have to deal with the disruption. Think about working your job and a co-worker comes along and wants to ask you a question. You were working hard, but now you need to practically stop in order to answer their question. You slow, briefly, to deal with the disruption, and then hopefully are able to get back to work once they leave, having had their question answered appropriately.

Thus, I am suggesting people go through a similar process. They do what they do, pursuing their projects as quickly as makes sense for them, and will periodically be disrupted during the course of their pursuit. And I think for most people, once those disruptions have passed, they will eventually return to their pursuit, operating as quickly as they did initially if they are lucky.

The clear issue one might immediately think about is how one deals with many more than one disruption. If one is disrupted and unable to recover from the disruption, then they may be forced to slow even more for the next disruption. And if there are many, many disruptions, then they may be stalled entirely until all disruptions are resolved. This is the sort of thing that happens to me in IT occasionally, where I come into work and never get any progress on any of my projects because there are “fires to put out,” to use the colloquial term that we often use. My entire day is simply dealing with disruptions, and so I get no work done on my main projects.

This is the nature of the situation I find myself in at present. For the past several months, I have been mostly unable to work on any of my own personal projects, as I have been inundated with disruption after disruption. In my personal life, I have been unable to recover because of the sheer magnitude of those disruptions. I will not go into detail, as I would like to avoid giving too much of my personal life information here, but I will say that each and every appliance in my home has required some sort of work or effort put into it (some a significant amount), and many other attempts at regular activity have been thwarted by the resurgence of the pandemic.

Technical side note: the pandemic has not ended. Contrary to how the people around me are behaving, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be an issue, with newer variants being discovered all the time. In fact, my partner and I received our most recent vaccinations just last week. And I am continuing to isolate at home, not going out nearly as much as I might like.

It does not really matter the precise reason for what is happening to me. The details are less important. What is important is that I am unable to refocus on my own personal projects at this time. As much as I want to do certain things, pursuing education and changing careers being rather high on my list, I am unable to really pursue them presently because I am inundated with countless other tasks and chores that require my attention.

For those who actually know me, I admit I am lying a little bit here. That is, I am about to engage in a pursuit of education despite the fact I ought not. I will be abandoning my partner in her time of need in order to take a class that I signed up for several months ago. It was not an inexpensive class either, and canceling my enrollment is not really a reasonable option. And so, I continue to prepare to go to this class, despite the fact I ought to be spending more time dealing with things at home.

So in truth, it is not I who has been inflicted with SDS at all. It is my partner. And that is the crux of my issue right now. She has been dealing with the brunt of all of this disruption, and she is the one who has been unable to recover. Every time she tries to pursue a project of her’s, she is the one who is thwarted. And she is the one who has pretty well ceased functioning at this point.

I don’t know why, or how, I am able to keep going right now. But I think it is because of her. It is that old passage from Aristotle that I continue to be unable to locate that I think describes the situation best. From his Politics, Book One, Part VII, translated into English: “…those who are in a position which places them above toil have stewards who attend to their households while they occupy themselves with philosophy or with politics…“

In other words, what he clearly believed was that, in order for some of us to do the things we want to do, others have to do the things we do not want to do. This is a reference to masters and slaves. The masters can only do the sorts of things masters do, such as pursuing philosophy, because the slaves are attending to the things they do not wish to do, such as cooking and cleaning. This is the description of wives to their husbands. And of most blue collar laborers to the owners of the companies they work for. Of the privileged and the oppressed.

Again, I will not dwell on the particulars of why our world has become as it has. But it has changed. And the progress that had been made over the past several decades, trying to give voices to those who did not have voices, is being eroded. Those who previously had choices are now finding those choices have disappeared. There are very few options remaining, and people are being forced to make do with things they never wanted to make do with.

Looking back at what I’ve written, it is clear to me that without those personal details to support my arguments, it sounds more like the ramblings of a mad man. And I am mad. And I am privileged. To be able to write all of this in the first place. To be able to take my class. To be able to continue as I have, despite those around me being unable to do so.

I think what I want most right now is to apologize to those who are not as privileged as I am. To apologize to those whose shoulders I am standing on, even now. I have tried as hard as I could to make her projects a priority. I’ve tried to leverage my privilege to her advantage. But it isn’t working any more. Maybe it never did. Maybe I’m about as useless as it appears.

Free Will, part 6

crimson

My last post may have not been as clear as I wanted it to be. This post, hopefully, will be better.

I have spoken much about love in previous posts. My view on what love is and how it operates is definitely not shared by many. In fact, my own partner doesn’t agree with my viewpoint. As she has stated to me recently, I tend to be rather serious and listening to me often gives her existential dread. For this, I sincerely apologize. Honestly, I wish I didn’t think as I did or know what I know.

I have also been watching the series Rick and Morty lately, and recently finished the season 2 finale. During the episode, brief snippets of Hurt, as performed by Nine Inch Nails play. Most people seem more familiar with Johnny Cash‘s cover of the song, but I have always preferred the original.

So much for being more clear. With this background, I will attempt to tie everything together now.

Faith, I believe, is a manifestation of free will. And, as I have stated before, love is a a choice, which is another way of saying it is an expression of free will. That is, I exercise my free will (assuming it exists) when I purport to love someone. I chose to be in love, in some sense. When I express this, I am also manifesting faith, specifically my faith in the fact that my feelings for my partner are genuine and true and sincere. I have no way of proving myself; there is no evidence that can be provided to prove whether I love or do not love someone. When I express my love, it will be up to me to convince those around me that my love is true and genuine. If I fail in this task, then others will suggest my love is not love at all, regardless of my own feelings on the matter. This can be particularly challenging with respect to my partner; if she does not believe that my love is true, then our relationship is likely to fail.

On the reality show Love Island, there are many characters who purport to love other characters. Is their love genuine? There is no way to be sure, because there is no evidence that can be provided to clarify such a claim. The best we (as the audience) can do is witness the character’s actions and choices to see if they are consistent with how we believe a person in love would behave. The immediate challenge you should be thinking about presently is that it entirely depends on the definition of love of the viewer, and you would be correct to express this concern.

In the episode of Rick and Morty I have described above, Rick repeatedly suggests to everyone that he does not love Morty, nor the rest of his family. However, his actions and behavior is inconsistent with what most viewers would consider to be evidence of love. As the song Hurt plays, Rick is performing self sacrificing acts, allowing himself to be apprehended by the Galactic Federation. Furthermore, he suggests that it is his son-in-law who is to be rewarded in his capture, suggesting that his family is to be protected and returned to Earth safely. It is interesting to me that the lines “and you could have it all, my empire of dirt” play in this situation, considering the fact that Earth is often referred to as a ball of dirt floating about the cosmos, and considering the fact that Rick is purported to be the most intelligent (and possibly most powerful) entity in all the multiverse. The lyrics seem to be suggesting that Rick is willing to sacrifice absolutely everything to save his family. The lyrics also seem to suggest his reasons for doing so are with his realization that he has been causing great harm and pain upon those he loves (“I will let you down, I will make you hurt”).

Back on Love Island, most of the characters suggest their entire reason for being at the resort is to find true love. Yet they spend their time holding back from throwing themselves into their respective relationships. It is true that throwing one’s self into a relationship where their partner does not reciprocate their feelings can end in a great deal of pain, however, holding back can (and seems to often) result in just as much pain. Stringing someone along, in hopes that it will somehow work out, generally created even more drama and pain than if those same people simply made a commitment to each other and were honest with their feelings, both with their partners but also with themselves.

The characters of Love Island do NOT have faith in themselves, nor in their relationships. They choose not to exercise their free will nor choose their partners. It seems to me that they prefer to place their hopes and dreams in some “higher power” to magically create that perfect relationship that they wish they could have. They have the power to make themselves (and their partners) happy, but instead choose not to exercise their power.

I am reminded of discussions in my Philosophy of Science class from over a year ago. How some philosophers and scientists believe that the world exists and most things must be discovered in it. That the purpose of science is discovery. However, there are those, like myself, who believe that these things are not out there to be discovered. We create them. We create everything. The world is a reflection of our collective will and our collective actions. And I am not restricting this to just human will or human action; I am suggesting all will and all action, including the will and action of my pet rabbit Jasper, or even of the mosquitoes that annoy us during the summer.

Simone de Beauvoir and the other Existentialists suggested that there was no inherent meaning or purpose in the world. Any meaning or purpose had to be given by a will. A will demonstrates meaning or purpose through action. By making choices, and acting in accordance to those choices, we all generate the meaning and purpose in all the world. And this is why I say that the world is simply a reflection of us all.

Rick’s greatest power in his world may simply be his willingness to act and make choices at all times. He decides for himself, at all times, and his actions tell a story far and beyond the words he may speak. The characters in Love Island, it seems to me, follow a similar pattern, though those characters seem to do the opposite of Rick, rendering them impotent and unsatisfied. Rick has faith. The characters of Love Island do not.

Free Will, part 5 – Love Island

crimson

My partner refers to the television reality show “Love Island” as a guilty pleasure. She recognizes that the show is likely fabricated and entirely ridiculous. However, she finds it entertaining and enjoys watching it none the less. She pointed out to me recently that her desire to watch this show is similar to my desire to watch Marvel movies, which are equally ridiculous and pointless. I think she is right about this.

Having said all of that, I think Love Island can demonstrate some interesting ideas, just as Marvel movies do as well. I made reference to the Loki television series and how it related to my topic of free will, and now I will do the same with Love Island.

Love Island is purported to be a show where its participants stay in a resort with other participants with the ultimate goal of developing deep, meaningful relationships with each other. It is classified as a reality show because the participants are supposed to be real people, who are simply recorded in their unscripted interactions with the other people in the resort. It is meant to be a true and honest reflection of reality. However, it has been my experience that very, very few reality shows are remotely related to reality. I believe Love Island, for example, is quite scripted and that the participants are simply performers fulfilling the desires of the show’s producers. As such, everything I am about to describe is from the perspective of recognizing that the participants are simply characters in a story that is loosely scripted (significantly improvised), and that the story is intended to take place in a reality that is virtually identical to our own. So much so, in fact, that one could search out these characters by the names they are given in the story, and will be able to find them in our reality. Of course, upon find those people in our reality, one may be surprised to find that they are not exactly as presented in the Love Island story.

The participants are brought to “The Villa,” a resort where all their needs are met. They have food provided to them, and likely often prepared for them. They have accommodations, including washrooms, beds, and even shelter from the rain. They bring their own clothing and personal items, though it would not surprise me if some of those items happen to be provided by the show as well, similar to a spa providing a robe and slippers for a client’s stay. The resort is a seeming paradise, where the characters have no actual responsibilities beyond propelling the storyline.

Propelling the storyline is done by developing relationships with the other characters. The intended goal, as establish earlier, is to develop deep, meaningful relationships. As the title suggests, the characters are there to “find love.” To go about this, the characters have to “couple up” with each other in heterogeneous partnerships, and about once a week, they are given the opportunity to alter their partnerships in order to better satisfy the goal of developing those deep, meaningful relationships. If a character is unable to “couple up” during these opportunities, they are removed from the resort. There are also other “twists” to the story that can sometime add more characters to the story, or remove them.

One of the first things I would like to comment on with regard to this setup is that it is not outright established that the couples need to be heterogeneous. It is assumed. I have said on a number of occasions that it would be a very interesting twist in the story if a girl were to choose to couple up with another girl, or a boy with another boy. However, a friend pointed out to me that in a previous season of this show, a character was quietly removed from the show when it came to light that he might be bisexual. This might suggest that the producers of the show are against relationships that are not heterogeneous. This, by itself, is a disturbing feature of the show. It would be far more realistic if the possibility existed for couplings that were other than heterogeneous. This comment is a bit of a tangent, but I feel significant enough to point out. It also is suggestive of a deterministic structure in the story. That is, this is one example of where the characters are restricted in their choices, removing an element of free will from them during the story.

The heart of my discussion regarding Love Island is the nature of how the characters are observed to attempt establishment of deep, meaningful relationships. Clearly, despite being coupled up, the characters are often freely encouraged to interact with other characters outside their coupling in order to see if those other characters might make more suitable partnerships. Some of the characters take this opportunity further than others. In fact, most of the characters suffer from a perspective regarding love that I refer to as the Bigger Better Deal (BBD). That is, the characters are trying to find other characters that will afford them the opportunity to develop the best possible relationship, and if it turns out that a newer character might possibly seem to provide that better opportunity, they may decide to terminate their existing coupling to create a new one with the perceivably better character.

It is this viewpoint that I believe is the greatest weakness in the storyline, and in the characters. It is also this viewpoint that I think most closely reflects the idea of faith. It is a very complicated and confusing example of faith, but I will argue it is faith, none the less.

The characters use various information regarding other characters to help them decide who potentially will make the best possible partnership. They clearly use physical appearance as the most important feature to help them in their decision making, supplementing other information they gain through their varied interactions in the resort. Some of the characters seem to be happy to pursue other characters, but once having establish their coupling, they quickly lose interest and begin pursuing other characters immediately. Some characters restrain themselves from developing their relationships with those they are coupled with, on the possibility that another character might produce a better connection. In many cases, the characters will restrain themselves indefinitely, on the chance that a new character that has yet to be added to the story might possibly be a better match. This is the heart of the BBD.

By following the BBD, the characters are always on the look out for a better possible partnership. Never satisfied with any existing partnerships they may find themselves in, their eyes and senses are constantly searching out other relationships with other characters, including characters they have not yet met because they have not yet been added to the story. In following this perspective, the characters are doomed to never find their ideal match, as they are never spending sufficient time and attention on their current partnership. Their eyes wander, and in wandering, their potentially best possible relationship will never be achieved.

The simple solution to this dilemma would be for the characters to adopt a different perspective. Instead of believing in a situation that will happen to them where another character will simply and spontaneously present themselves as the best possible candidate for an ideal partnership (sometimes referred to as “love at first sight,” or “true love”), it would likely be of benefit for the characters to adopt a perspective where they recognized that relationships with other people are developed through spending time together and focusing on their existing partners. If the characters had faith in their existing partners, and focused on them at the exclusion of other possible BBDs, they might be able to turn their existing relationships into the best possible relationships they could become, developing those deep connections the story suggests is what the characters are aiming for.

In this way, faith becomes a significant part of the story, as does free will. The characters are (allegedly) not being unduly influenced by the producers of the show in their attempts to find deep, meaningful relationships; that is, the characters are permitted to exercise their free will to make choices in order to develop their best possible relationships with other characters. By the characters following a perspective of the BBD, they are presenting a significant lack of faith in the characters they are interacting with; that is, they do not believe that any of the characters presented to them will produce the best possible partnership because there is always the looming possibility that another character could be introduced into the storyline that might possible produce a superior partnership opportunity.

It is also at this point that I would like to acknowledge that there may possibly be a few characters who have recognized the alternative viewpoint. Characters who have decided that their existing partnership is the best possible partnership they are going to be able to produce. These characters are seen periodically talking to themselves, reiterating this claim repeatedly, likely trying to convince themselves that this is the case. While I would like to believe that they are being authentic when they do this, evidence demonstrated by these characters throughout the storyline seems to suggest otherwise. It is always possible I am mistaken regarding this.

Ultimately, as I identified at the beginning of this post, I believe that the entire show is scripted and unduly influenced by the producers. As with the example regarding a seemingly heterogeneous coupling requirement, I believe that the producers of the show have various designs that they utilize throughout the storyline. They imagine how best to present their story, and they provide influence and even basic scripting to the performers to fulfill their designs. I could even discuss the fact that the show is assembled in such a fashion, including with the use of musical scores, to present the performers in certain very specific ways to tell the producers’ story in a very particular way. However, that simple idea could become its own post entirely.

Thus, I believe Love Island is simply a scripted story based on a group of real life people. The scripting is light, but still there, and the real people are the basis of the characters, but the characters clearly deviate from their real sources pretty much immediately. I would very much like to meet one of these reality stars in person someday, simply to establish whether or not the performers believed they were the same as the characters they had portrayed. It would disturb me greatly if they did.

In my next post, I will try to be more focused on the topic of free will and faith. For now, I wanted to take a brief tangent to discuss another aspect of faith that seems to me to exist in a simple television show.

Free Will, part 4 – Faith

crimson

As a child, I had the opportunity to participate in many different activities which in turn allowed me many opportunities to explore my world. For a time, I was part of a Christian youth group. My parents were not what one might call religious, and so there was no formal spirituality discussed in my home growing up. As such, my time with the youth group was quite significant to me. I had never formally encountered a main stream religion up to this point.

What I did not understand for a long time, up to and beyond the time I was with the youth group, is that most people are quite spiritual in nature, and arguably most follow some sort of main stream religion to a greater or lesser degree. In other words, I had been deeply embedded in spiritual and religious beliefs my entire life; I simply did not recognize this fact until much, much later. This all said, the youth group was, for me, my first real interaction with spirituality in a manner I recognized as being spiritual.

The group suggested that one need not be a Christian to participate in the group, however, they did encourage exposure. For me, I was quite enthusiastic to learn more about this as I was unfamiliar with it. The people in the group seemed so happy and excited to be alive, and I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to be happy and excited to be alive.

I join various reading groups and bible study groups. I read scripture and discussed the passages at length. I was quite interested in Genesis and Revelations in particular, likely because they represented the beginning and the end of things. But I also found the New Testament interesting as well, discussing this strange individual Jesus who claimed to be the son of God. It was all so surreal to me. Unfortunately, I had something it seems like most of the others did not have going into these discussions: critical thinking. This is not to say that the other people didn’t reason or follow logical arguments and such. This was something else.

I said my parents were not religious. They were not. However, as I figured out much later, they were very spiritual. Even more important was the fact that they had a lot of beliefs. However, especially my father, did not consider their beliefs as beliefs. For him, his beliefs were simply facts. Truths about the world we inhabited. For him, these truths were not simply his truths, they were everyone’s truths. When I figured this out, I started referring to his beliefs as “absolute truths.”

The people in my youth group had different beliefs than my father in many areas. However, what they had which was very much like my father was this almost stubborn passion with their beliefs. Like my father, for them their beliefs were more than just beliefs for them, but they called their beliefs “faith” instead of “truth.”

It has been a long time since those days. When I think about my father’s “absolute truth” and the youth group’s “faith,” I realize that they are virtually identical things. In both cases, there is something that they all hold as a belief (a typically passionate and stubborn belief), and at the same time, this something is suggested to apply to everyone. Furthermore, in many cases, these beliefs could not be confirmed nor denied.

In the case of the youth group, their belief in God and their belief that the bible was without error are both ideas that cannot be confirmed nor denied. The existence of God is suggested in the bible, and the bible is without error because it was written by God (in a fashion, it is the word of God that generates the bible, and the word as manifested through people is how it is written down physically). But this is certainly a circular argument. If God is required to prove that the bible is without error, then the bible cannot be used to prove the existence of God. Similarly, if the bible is required to prove the existence of God, then God cannot be used to prove that the bible is without error. To achieve a belief of these two things, something beyond reason or evidence is required. Hence faith.

I am unable to provide a similar example of my father’s beliefs. For my father, he simply knew when something was true, and there was no talking him out of it. When my sisters and I were loudly conversing in the basement one day, my father yelled down at us to stop fighting. My sisters and I all shouted back up at my father simultaneously that we were not fighting, to which he responded in an even louder voice that we should cease fighting. For my father, in this particular circumstance, he was convinced we were fighting which would have explained our loud discussion, but my sisters and I were simply discussing something and we all have very loud voices. There were no conflicts nor problems at the time. We were all very amenable in this particular circumstance. Of course, this sort of situation was a rarity for us, as conflicts were frequent, so it is understandable that my father might believe we were fighting. But in this very specific instance, we were not, and nothing was going to change my father’s mind on the matter. For him, it did not matter what we said, he simply knew the truth, and acted accordingly.

I suspect that example is less than convincing. It is hard for me to explain my father. Growing up, I thought he was simply correct at all times. Whenever I needed some piece of accurate information, I would always ask my father, and I trusted he would never make an error. Inevitably, once I was older, I discovered many errors. And, unfortunately for me, once my eyes were open, I was able to reflect on past events and realize just how often these errors took place.

This isn’t the worst of it, however. I think most people discover something like this about their parents at some point. Or about someone in their lives that they trusted for a very long time. Not that it needs to be malicious. Often, it culminates in what my parents described to me as being “white lies,” such as the perpetuated belief in Santa Claus. When I was much older, and an uncle to a niece, I was instructed by my parents to continue the false belief in Santa Claus to my niece, which I refused to do. In arguing with my parents regarding this, they suggested that perhaps I might be mistaken, and that Santa Claus might still exist. Or perhaps that Santa Claus exists because he isn’t a physical person like you or I, but instead he is an idea or hope for young children. For me, to this day, I simply consider Santa Claus as a fabrication used by adults to assist in their control over small children. I believe this in part because I KNOW that most of the small children I encounter are far more intelligent and insightful than most adults give them credit. Even my niece knew Santa did not exist before I had to say anything. She came to me and asked, and then suggested she already knew and simply wanted confirmation. And then she proceeded to ask me not to tell her grandparents, so as not to dismantle the magic for them. It is a very strange situation when the child is asking for you to perpetuate the “white lie” to the adults, for fear that the adults dreams might be diminished.

I admit, I’m on a bit of a tangent now. This post is starting to get pretty long. Ultimately the point I wish to make is that there have been some extremely rigid beliefs that my father held that he considered to be “absolutely true,” and that no amount of arguing and discussion on my part would change his mind. It seemed to me that evidence or reason did not play a role in the generation of, nor the continuance of, these beliefs my father held. Like the youth group, it seemed as though he simply had “faith” that he was correct. And also like the youth group, my father made decisions and pursued his projects as though those beliefs were in fact true.

Using both cases, I think I can made something of a definition for faith. Faith is a form of belief; it is something someone considers to be true, and that person will act as though the thing is true under all circumstances. Faith is unprovable; it is something that cannot be confirmed, nor denied, regardless how much evidence, reason, or logic is used. To put this second point another way, no amount of information will completely satisfy conditions in order to elucidate the truth value of faith. If evidence comes to light that is able to confirm or deny a faith claim, then the claim can no longer count as faith; if the evidence confirms the faith, then it becomes a reasonable belief; if the evidence denies the faith, then it becomes a sort of delusion or self-denial. (This is, of course, assuming that the individual continues to hold onto the belief, regardless of what the evidence does to the belief).

In my previous post, I suggested that perhaps faith was something like True Belief, but I would like to correct myself. Part of the nature of faith is that we cannot know whether it is true or not, thus, faith is left as being simply Belief, with some other caveats, as I have laid out above. A faith claim cannot be proven true, nor false; that is part of why it requires the individual to simply believe it. This all also requires that one believes it is possible for individuals to hold beliefs without reasons. In my next post, I will continue exploring this idea of faith, and start tying it to free will.

Free Will, part 3

crimson

When I have conversations with people about free will, and I tend to have a lot of these conversations, those I talk to seem to have a very specific idea in mind: unpredictability. This is to suggest that free will is in some way unpredictable. No matter how much I know about a person, their personal history, their genetics, their environment, or anything else, I will NEVER be able to predict or determine (with perfect accuracy) what decisions or choices they will make. This, people tell me, is because free will prevents such a possibility. This third alternative understanding of free will is what I will discuss today.

In order for free will to be unpredictable under all circumstances, it has to fall outside the causal chains of determinism. That is to say that no amount of information regarding a being will be sufficient to accurately predict their choices. While it is true that I, being human, have my limits, this description goes beyond those limits I have. Of course I cannot predict a being’s choices, as my own limitations would definitely prevent me from acquiring enough information to be able to calculate a choice perfectly. I cannot even hold a small fraction of all the information that comes to me in my own life. I cannot even truly predict my own behavior, let alone the behavior of others.

This is my limitation, and a limitation that I believe virtually all humans have. In fact, I might argue that it is just this limitation that allows people to believe in the possibility of a free will of the sort I am describing in this post. As Alastair Reynolds suggests in his short story “Zima Blue,” the fallibility of memory is a significant part of what allows for beings to, in some sense, go beyond their normal limitations. (It should be noted here that the short story covers these ideas much better than the Netflix’s version that was released in “Love, Death & Robots.”) In this post, the sort of free will I am describing would still remain unpredictable, even if somehow a being were able to overcome these limitations.

It is true that delving into this realm of idea is entirely impractical. If no being could truly overcome such limitations, then no being ever could truly predict with perfect accuracy the decisions of other beings, no matter what flavour of free will we might be describing. However, I argue that it is still important to consider, because there is a world of difference between a deterministic process, confined to the realm of causality, and a process that exists beyond causality entirely. Perhaps not entirely though.

Even our best science could never detect or uncover such a process. Science itself starts with the assumption of determinism. To determine if a peer’s theory may be correct, one must repeat their procedure and see if the results remain the same. If every time I drop a stone from 3 feet off the ground, it always accelerates downward, toward the center of the Earth, and if all of my peers observe the exact same behaviour when they follow my same procedure, then we can all suggest, with a reasonable amount of confidence, that something like gravity exists. But it is the fact that we all perform this same procedure repeatedly, and observe the same observations repeatedly, that allows us this confidence. Whenever we create the conditions of the cause, we seem to always observe the same effect. If in some instance, for one of us, the stone instead remains stationary or accelerates in some other direction, we generally wouldn’t suggest that some other process is taking place that breaks from the deterministic structure we have assumed exists. Instead, we would suggest that some part of the experiment was conducted incorrectly, or perhaps we might suggest that gravity itself is not what we think it is.

The point I am making here is that science cannot help us in our endeavor with free will, especially the sort I am describing in this post. This sort of free will is outside the deterministic structures we seem to observe in our world. This description of free will is unmeasurable. This free will, at least in part, falls outside determinism. I say in part because there is clearly a part that does touch determinism. Free will may itself not be caused, in the sense we understand cause and effect, but it certainly causes effects to take place. After all, if it did not do this, then free will would be performing no observable work whatsoever.

I often refer to this sort of free will as an “uncaused cause,” a term that is often understood as Aristotle’s “unmoved mover.” Whereas for Aristotle (and others), the uncaused cause would be the initial thing that began ALL causal chains in existence (essentially the thing that began the universe as we know it), a version of free will as I am describing it would be constantly occurring to perpetually introduce some amount of seeming randomness into an otherwise causally connected world. Free will, of this sort, would introduce significant error into our calculations rooted in determinism over time. The more free will is expressed, the greater the error would be. I am starting to sound like the Architect from The Matrix Reloaded.

It is for all these reasons that I have significant doubts as to the existence of this version of free will. If free will of this sort exists, and if we assume that all humans possess it, then I would expect there to be significant problems with all of our scientific claims and formulas. That is, any formula that we have created and have significant confidence with, would always be found to be in error a portion of the time, as a result of the influence of free will altering the deterministic outcomes of the events being measured. As we seem to find many of our formulas and theories seem to work most of the time without too many problems, it seems unlikely that free will exists.

Of course the strongest support for there being some thing beyond our deterministic universe is the same argument Aristotle (and others) proposed above. If everything is deterministic in nature, and all actions are caused by previous actions, how does one resolve there being a first action, a first uncaused cause, an unmoved mover? One might argue that there is no first, and it simply leads infinitely backward, but that is similarly difficult to explain.

Having given all of this much thought, I have a suggestion as to one possible manifestation of free will of this sort: faith. The sort of faith that religious zealots express as support for their particular flavour of deity. Faith, it seems to me, is an example of an uncaused cause. Or perhaps more accurately, a belief held by an individual that cannot have any sort of evidence or reason supporting it. If it does have evidence or reason supporting it, then it is no longer faith, it is a supported belief. To be faith, it must be unsupportable.

Putting this another way, in philosophy, knowledge is sometimes referred to as being Justified, True Belief (JTL). That is, for something to count as knowledge, it must be true of the world, it must be supported by evidence, and the individual must actually believe it. Suppose faith is similar to knowledge, but without the justified element. Just that it is somehow true of the world and that the individual believes it. How would we differentiate it from random lucky guesses? This, it seems to me, should be the topic for my next post.

Free Will, part 2

crimson

The next version of free will that Alfred Mele suggests is a bit peculiar. At least, I think it is peculiar. It suggests that the extra element free will possesses beyond what determinism suggests, is akin to randomness. That is to say, after all information has been accounted for leading up to a particular person’s exercising of their free will, a probability matrix is established regarding the likelihood of that person making specific choices. To continue my example in the ice cream shop, perhaps I am likely to select chocolate, but there is a lesser probability that I might choose vanilla. Perhaps it could be described as a 75% chance of me selecting chocolate, and a 25% chance of selecting vanilla. Given the circumstances, my final decision may not be predicable in an exact sense, but there is a better chance I will be selecting chocolate than vanilla.

This sort of reasoning seems supported by scientific studies of the very small: Quantum Physics. The current models of the atom suggest not that the electron is orbiting the nucleus, as the moon orbits the Earth, or the Earth orbits the sun. Instead, it is suggested that where the electron could be found at any given moment is a function of probability, with certain energy levels being much more likely for the electron to be found. I admit, my understanding of Quantum Physics is in its infancy, so here is an article to better describe this theory.

In other words, when the time comes for a choice to be made, while we will be unable to know what decision will be made, we can at least have an idea of the likelihood of certain decisions being made. As Mele suggests, if after the decision is made, we were able to rewind time and allow the decision to be made again, the same sort of probabilistic process happens again, allowing another possible outcome to occur. If we were to repeat the event over and over, theoretically, we should observe that about 75% of the time, I would have chosen chocolate, while about 25% of the time I would have chosen vanilla.

Of course we don’t have the ability to rewind time to witness events repeatedly occurring, and so we are unable to confirm this sort of process. As far as we know, time only moves in one direction. However, there is another variation on this idea that has become quite popular recently, especially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: the idea that ALL choices are made simultaneously, with each choice producing its own unique timeline or universe as a result.

This would be to suggest that when faced with the choice of ice cream I would like to get, I actually chose both chocolate and vanilla. In this timeline or universe, I happened to pick chocolate, but there is another extremely similar universe out there where I had chosen vanilla. The timelines are identical in every way up to this event, but after the event, two timelines emerged. This is very humorously presented in the television series Community, in the episode entitled “Remedial Chaos Theory.” Each possible outcome from rolling a six sided die produces its own unique timeline, where each of the characters becomes an independent entity from the version in the “canonical timeline.”

A theory of free will like this, while possibly accurate, produces an extremely uncomfortable side-effect. With each passing moment of each day, hundreds, thousands, even millions of individuals exercise their free will in making decisions, choosing from often more than simply two possible outcomes. In this theory of free will, multitudes of parallel universes would be produced every moment, and the production of these branching timelines would be exponential, as each independent timeline would itself produce a multitude of additional timelines. The multiverse would be well populated in mere moments, and at this time, one should expect there to be a virtually infinite number of them. There would be billions upon billions of slightly different versions of me passing time in the countless universes that exist.

A way to deal with this insanity might be to suggest that we don’t exercise our free will each and every time a choice must be made. Perhaps we only actually exercise free will occasionally, even rarely, for very important events. The rest of the time, simply following the deterministic chains of cause and effect as we go about our everyday lives. It is this idea that I think Marvel has decided to follow in their latest television series Loki.

In Loki, it is suggested that there is a “sacred timeline,” a timeline or universe that is considered to be the main or proper universe. Occasionally, certain special events occur, referred to as “nexus events,” where suddenly another timeline begins to branch off of this main timeline. If this new branched timeline is left unchecked for long enough, it will become its own independent timeline. In order to prevent this from happening, the Time Variance Authority (TVA) uses their advanced technology to go to the event, shortly after it has occurred, specifically to the branched timeline, in order to “prune” it back. By pruning, the story suggests that the TVA arrests the culprit of the nexus event (the individual who has exercised their free will, but made the choice the TVA considers to be inappropriate), and then somehow eliminates the branched timeline. This whole process is a logistical nightmare when considered at length, as I will of course do.

Firstly, the individual who exercised their free will is the same in both timelines, simply that the one in the branch happened to be on the wrong side of probability. To select the individual who happened to be on the wrong side of a decision seems a bit biased; that is, whomever has decided what constitutes the “sacred timeline,” does so arbitrarily, and so punishing individuals from alternate universes seems incredibly unethical. Furthermore, why would one abduct the individual from the alternative timeline before eliminating any traces of that branched timeline. All other individuals who are not removed from the new timeline before it is eliminated are themselves eliminated. To put this another way, the individual who has now been abducted for some unspecified crime of being a part of a now none-existent timeline would have had no way to produce further problems had they been eliminated with the rogue timeline. Abducting them, it seems to me, simply provides further opportunity for such a criminal to perpetrate further crimes.

Furthermore, as the character Loki himself suggests in the first episode, it seems like the TVA is selectively removing free will in the process they are following. That is, when an individual exercises free will, the TVA removes all other possible outcomes/choices from the menu, leaving the “correct” choice which is for the individual to have done precisely what the TVA deemed the correct action. This all amounts to a strong desire to remove free will entirely, at least from those within the “sacred timeline.”

Loki is a very interesting series, which some very thought provoking themes and ideas, so I do recommend watching it when you have a chance. However, the point that I think is most interesting is the idea that only these infrequent “nexus events” will produce the branching timelines. It seems to suggest that free will, on the whole, is not exercised that much, if at all. That is, considering there are nearly nine billion humans on Earth at this time, and considering that each of those humans has a free will, and then considering that in the Marvel Cinematic Universe there are billions of other worlds like Earth, each with their own billions of beings who themselves also have a free will, it seems incredibly strange that these “nexus events” don’t occur much, much more frequently. During the course of the series, it seems like the TVA is spending most of their time waiting for these events to occur. The largest surge of such events that causes the TVA to have to send virtually all of its agents away to “repair” the “sacred timeline” is actually orchestrated by one single individual, not by a group or larger number of individuals. I will not go into any further detail regarding this, for fear of generating more spoilers than I have already done.

Ultimately, what I’m suggesting by this observation is that in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what is likely being suggested is that either: there are a whole lot of beings with free will in the universe, but free will is not exercised except in extremely rare circumstances; or that beings that actually have free will is itself extremely rare. I have not finished watching the series, as it is still airing, but I am beginning to think they may be suggesting that Loki is unique in the universe as one of the very rare beings with an actual free will. Alternatively, perhaps the entire TVA was created exclusively for him, and the “sacred timeline” is simple the best possible timeline to “harvest” as many free will Lokis as one might like, in order to create a community of beings with free wills. Suggestion for the Big Bang anyone?

I hope all this discussion has made one thing very clear regarding this version of free will: it seems unlikely to be how it works. While I have no solid evidence to make such a claim, as we just don’t have sufficient technology nor scientific knowledge to test such things, were this to be how free will worked, the consequences and outcomes produced would be exponentially nauseating. Perhaps this is the source of Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the universe? But it might also be unsatisfying to think that our free will is simply a random chance as well.

In my next post, I will discuss a third option for how free will might be viewed. It is by far the hardest to grasp, but is also the version I believe most people have in mind when they utter the term “free will.”

Free Will, part 1

crimson

I make no promises regarding the frequency or reliability of the following posts. But I need to say something, and this is what is on my mind.

I’ve been having a lot of discussions regarding free will recently. These discussions are challenging most of the time because, I think, what all participants think of when they utter “free will” is slightly different. Sometimes, not so slightly.

Alfred Mele, in his book A Dialogue on Free Will and Science, suggests several ways to interpret free will. The simplest, as I think most would agree, is the view of free will known as Compatibilism. In this view, free will is not some mystical, spiritual thing that is unmeasurable or unknowable. As I will describe it, it is simply the suggestion that individuals have more than one live option.

A live option, on my account, is the idea that when faced with a choice or decision, there is an option that is feasible or available that one could select. For example, if I am at the counter in an ice cream shop about to tell the proprietor which flavour of ice cream I would like to be served, my live options would include those flavours of ice cream the proprietor has available. If vanilla is available for me to select, then vanilla is a live option. However, if he happens to be out of a particular flavour, say chocolate, then selecting chocolate is not a live option. Even if I were to tell the proprietor that I would like to select chocolate, he would be unable to satisfy that request. No amount of coersion or brute force will suddenly produce the desired flavour of ice cream.

The significance of a live option is simple: if I could reasonably expect to make the choice and produce the desired outcome, then it is a live option. In cases where I am unable to produce the desired outcome, there is no live option. There is also no live option when I am unable to select that option either. For example, if in the above example my friend stands beside me and is telling the proprietor what flavour of ice cream I will receive, and if that friend has decided I shall have vanilla, regardless of anything I might say to change his mind, then I am left with no choice regarding the flavour of ice cream I will receive. My friend has removed my choice, which leaves me with virtually no live options. It could be argued that the vanilla my friend selects is a live option, despite there being no other obvious options, however, then my only real other option would be to decline the ice cream altogether. And if I really want ice cream, perhaps the declining of ice cream isn’t really an option for me.

In the above example, it may seem a bit silly to speak of things in this way. After all, ice cream and whether I can consume it or not is pretty trivial. However, it is simply an example. In my life, there are many situations I encounter where others make decisions for me, removing my options and taking this version of my free will away from me. This version of free will is not considering other aspects that many might want to include in the idea of free will, such as the idea of predictability.

For most of the people I talk to, this idea of predictability is very important to them. They want to tell me that free will is unpredictable. However, Compatibilism does not take predictability into account. In fact, because Compatibilism is compatible with determinism (the idea that everything is related through cause-effect relationships), determinism will suggest to us that this version of free will is predictable. That is, as all things are related by causes and effects, then which flavour of ice cream I select will be related to an incredibly complex matrix of my personal history, past experiences, genetics, and the environment. If I had vanilla ice cream last time I had ice cream, I may want something different this time. If I have a craving for chocolate, I may lean toward chocolate. If I am allergic to strawberries, I may not select strawberry ice cream.

It may not be easy or even feasible for me to acquire all the knowledge and information required for me to determine your selection, however, I argue that if I somehow were able to acquire sufficient information, I could predict the choice you will make. In fact, this is precisely what modern advertising tries to do, through the use of various artificial intelligences that we have generated in this modern world of ours. It is true, there is also a significant amount of advertising that works to make choices for us as well, influencing our decision making process, however, the influencing of decisions is also a part of the prediction process. Many large companies are banking on the idea that this version of free will is what we possess, and nothing more.

I think many people (outside these large companies), would prefer to believe that we humans possess something more. A free will of an unpredictable nature. This is what many around me try to argue. That no matter how much information I acquire about them, I will still be unable to predict their decisions. For this to be true, there would need to be something more to free will, something incompatible with determinism. After all, if determinism is all that exists in our world, then everything that happens is caused by preceding events, including our very decisions. In my next post, I will discuss alternative views of free will.