sciencenews.org — Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably.
Aug 16, 2008 View in Crawl 4
notcliveAug 17, 2008
Computer software random functions aren't really random they are pseudorandom.
riskybeatsAug 17, 2008
Now with all this fuss going on with Watchmen, I want to read the original novels. I don't know how it escaped my radar for so long.
ymegAug 17, 2008
Go to a judge and tell him the killer had no control of his actions.
dozernotzAug 18, 2008
@YmegI wasn't talking about emotions, I was talking about abstractions. No matter how completely and accurately you measure reality, what it "means" is still an entirely arbitrary, non-scientific, statement of values. Giving itself meaning is beyond the bounds of what science can do. That's what all those other janky buildings on campus are for.@starmanjonesSpoken like a true zealot. Who decides what to measure? Who decides how to arrange the data? How do you apply it? Science has already established the secret to life, the universe, and everything. 42. Now what?
doodadAug 18, 2008
Hilarious. You are *debating* whether you have free will.By the way, is a basketball made of tiny subatomic basketballs?
dozernotzAug 20, 2008
@starmanjonesFirst of all, "peer review" is the process to submit to a journal, whereas "peer revue" would be a group of friends putting on a theatrical show.Secondly, do you honestly fail to see the contradictions in your response? You're agreeing that the "person doing the measuring" decides what to measure, how to measure, how to interpret the measurements, etc, etc. But how exactly do you think he does this? Coin flipping? The Big Book Of All Science? More measuring? When you say "what do you want to know?" you're asking for a value judgement, which is exactly not scientific. You can't answer the question "what do you want to know" within the framework of science itself. And yet the question must be answered.Maybe the issue here is that you're misunderstanding what the word "science" means. You seem to be confusing it with reality itself. Science is no less but no more than a way to make the most objective possible measurements of reality. Anything that might be considered "subjective" has nothing to do with science. But just because it's subjective doesn't mean it's irrelevant, or that subjectivity "doesn't exist." In fact, in any human action, some subjectivity is unavoidable. Scientists are well aware of this. That's why they are careful to reduce it as much as possible when testing, and are usually the first ones to object when experimental data gets used to support some subjective agenda. But subjectivity is still necessary, and because science can't tell you what to do, all of the subjective choices you outlined in your reply are specifically what science is unable to address.Not only that, but science itself, and basically human logic, is inherently limited in what it can and cannot measure. This is a seperate issue with nothing to do with subjectivity. It could be seen as "problems" with reality itself, or the human ability to think about it, at least. But don't take my word for it, read some actual science on the subject: start with Heisenberg, then Godel. If you still believe that anything that exists can be measured, then you need to read again, more carefully.
thecoolestguyAug 22, 2008
Do you have a link to this?
skinboatSep 5, 2008
Sorry to get all philosophical - and i'm not sure if anyone has already pointed this out, but the article in question involved mathematical concepts of determinism and indeterminism. Neither of which comprise whatever we generally understand as freewill - rather, they are both pretty much the opposite of it. Unless you are a compatibilist (along the lines of Daniel Dennett, A.J. Ayer or Harry Frankfurt)...anyway, rant over.
haqirsalhanMay 20, 2010
Hmmmmm. Like I am free to breath air ;)
haqirsalhanMay 20, 2010
...and statistics is just best possible approximation only.