Is free-will an illusion?

I can't see a connection at all


The idea of an "agent" leaves me puzzled

That's the reason why I've always included biology, environment, culture, education, religion, family, language, friends, neighborhood, and everything else in between.

There are some things in life we cannot escape; I've tried to list those above.

...well there you have it, free will requires just that, an agent...whether we have just one agent or many agents in what we usually call the "self" ads yet another degree in complexity, nevertheless be it the case of one or more agents, all of them must be the cause of choosing and not chance for chance alone to even be able to start to make sense of the concept of willing...whether such willing can be said to be free, is yet another matter to consider, as it indeed seams to be requiring special pleading...for one willing requires in agency the acceptance of determinism, for another the concept of a will which is free of constrains try's to discard external elements that determinism necessarily imply s....

That is exactly what I have done. I have shown that as n approaches infinity, or becomes endlessly large, the function l(n) becomes endlessly large. And so I have shown that there is no finite number that exists to where the number of digits in a natural number will converge. So the length function l(n) has no finite limit. Not finite = infinite.

The function is said to diverge and so there is no limit to the number of digits it can contain. It is unending. Therefore natural numbers can be written as an unending sequences of digits.

Think about what you are saying "there is no largest number of digits." You are saying what I have done and you still disagree. You are amazing.



I do not claim large finite natural numbers have infinite numbers of digits. Only that there is no finite boundary to the natural numbers or to the number of digits that they can be composed of. In other words in the same sense that the set of natural numbers are said to be infinite so are the set of the number of digits that compose them.



Sure but on some conditions:

1) The thread will be only on the topic of the length of a string of natural numbers. And focus just on the validity the proof of the infinite length of the strings. That way I do not have to deal with people who are biased to Cantor's proof (Later after the proof of the number of digits in a natural number has been taken care of perhaps I will show them together.)

2) We will give no reference here to uncountable numbers or the length of strings or to any related matter until it has been settled in some reasonable amount of time.

If you agree. What forums do you suggest?

It's interesting Fil you should so specify. I see urges and constraints (determinants) piling up until the last five or ten milliseconds, when it's too late for the latest impression to interfere with the final decision

Sometimes the last one goes, "Oh what the hell, I'll go against myself just to demonstrate my freewill," but of course the determinist will reply that this determinant is also caused by prior states and thus inevitable

Sorry I missed your question. The magnify button on internet explorer is the symbol of a magnifying glass in the lower right hand corner of the internet explorer window.

Command-F is the same thing as the find on this page feature. I didn't see that before.

I am sure you can find any number of people who you can argue with about a sunny day, but it won’t be me.

I will just point out that I didn’t say I created game theory nor am I the one who determined what it was about. I also didn’t say I was particularly intelligent. I pointed you to where you could get information developed by people who are generally considered experts. Simply, I gave you some places to look at information that says something different than you are saying. Since you found my post, read it, and replied in 10 minutes it seems you didn’t feel it necessary to actually consider this point of view. OK.

But I don’t quite understand how my level of intelligence could negate what these people and this branch of math purports to demonstrate. But that seems to be the point of your reply.

I understand that the real experts post on A2K rather than in refereed journals or textbooks. Even I know that. So you are probably giving me credit for being dumber than I actual am; although that is understandable.

Thanks Tomr I'll look for it

I never said you were dumb. I only posed challenges to what your "experts" purport to conclude on this subject, so all I did was ask for evidence.

I'm not all that smart, but have literally have been around the world a few times.

I even know a rocket scientist, Bob Brodsky, who I call a personal friend.

BTW, I'm open to new information and knowledge. That's the reason I'm a regular participant on a2k. If presented with information that I can comprehend - at my level of comprehension, I may adjust my thinking on subjects such as this one.

There's even knowledge exchange even when participants agree to disagree.

lost in translation that bit there...meant exactly the opposite !
read as : a concept of will free of constrains...

This Bob Brodsky is my friend.

http://astronautics.usc.edu/faculty-staff/brodsky.htm

This is a really well known argument, it's been stated on this thread and appeals to its implications have been made several times. There really is no point in yet again explaining something to you, if you're not going to take it in. You have cried "wolf" a string of times, so this is your last chance. You don't have to read hundreds of posts, you just have to take things in and remember them, if you can't do that, then you can forget about me answering any more questions.
The so-called classical dilemma goes like this:
1) an agent has free will on any occasion on which that agent makes and enacts a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives
2) if the world is determined there are no realisable alternatives and thus no free will
3) if the world is not determined then everything is random thus agents have no control and there is no free will
4) the world either is or is not determined, in either case there is no free will, so, there is no free will.
One problem with this argument is premise 3, and there are at least two fatal problems with that premise.
1) the world is determined if and only if:
a) at all times the world has a definite global state, which can in principle be fully and exactly described
b) there are laws of nature which transform the states of the world and are the same in all times and places
c) given the state of the world at any time, the state of the world at all other times is exactly and globally fixed by the given state in conjunction with the laws of nature.
Notice that this is not the statement that the world is determined if anything is nonrandom, so if the world is not determined, there is no implication that everything is random.
2) given the definition of determinism above, in principle the evolution of the world can be fully described, which is to say, in principle the is a mathematical equation by which the state of the world, at any time, can be exactly and globally computed. So, the world is not determined if there is any mathematical randomness. For premise 3 to succeed, it would need to be the case that willed actions are impossible if there is any mathematical randomness. That is where my argument comes in.
By demonstration we can perform willed actions and by mapping those willed actions to binary digits, we can form the prefix of a real number. Notice that our actions don't entail that particular number and cannot be retrieved from the information in that number. It is a theorem of classical mathematics that the probability of the continued expansion of a real number being computable is zero. Whether it is computable or not is irrelevant, to hold either position to be the case would be to beg the question, what matters is the mathematical fact that we have the prefix of an uncomputable string, yet we can continue to expand it by mapping our further actions to it. As there is no logical reason that we cannot continue producing willed actions and mapping them to the expansion of this prefix, there is no logical impediment to willed actions in a nondetermined world. If objectors call for it, we can even "complete" the expansion as a supertask in our final moment of life.
In short, our willed actions are compatible with the randomness implied by a nondetermined world.

Your challenge to my argument is a claim that there are no uncomputable numbers, and your argument for this appeals to the claim that there are natural numbers (plural) which have infinite numbers of digits. So, if your claim that there are natural numbers with infinite numbers of digits is false, then your objection to my argument collapses. So, all that you need defend, for now, is your claim that there are natural numbers with infinite numbers of digits.If by "we" you're still speaking for the entire membership, then obviously I can't make any promises. If you mean you and I, then sure, I see no reason to discuss uncountable sets, etc, with you at this site.Sticking with fora of which I'm a member, I suggest this one: http://www.mymathforum.com/index.php?sid=0b86da09b73cd5984c0c41d548146a15
After that, if you want a second opinion, let's try: http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/index.php? Or to get the input of those with a science background: http://www.sciforums.com/forum.php?s=7d011ffe40787857737966e231ac9f24

That's easy, keep adding one to any string; it's endless and meaningless.

Translate this link for us that supports your thesis.

http://www.mymathforum.com/index.php?sid=0b86da09b73cd5984c0c41d548146a15

What's easy?

If you can't understand simple concepts, why are you discussing math?

What the **** are you talking about?

If you can't use the quote button and make it clear what you're responding to, why are you pretending to engage in dialogue?

Because it seems you're the only one who's trying so hard to explain something you have very limited knowledge about. It's not so much that the majority is always right, but in this case, you don't make any sense - to anyone.