From: Brent Allsop (allsop@fc.hp.com)
Date: Wed Sep 06 2000 - 10:03:21 MDT
Eugene Leitl <eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de> responded:
> Jason Joel Thompson writes:
> > The question remains (and I'll rephrase for clarity:)
> >
> > Does truly superior intelligence require free will?
> Can you tell random from pseudorandom, without further knowledge
> about the generation source?
Good response! What do you mean, Jason, by "free will"?
To me, free will is the ability to do research to discover
that which is the best, and then set such as a goal and seek after it,
whatever it turns out to be. To the degree that you can reliably and
deterministically know and get what is truly the best the more you are
free. Anything, whether it be ignorance, inability, randomness or
some perverted "free will" that causes you to "do otherwise" or
whatever, that causes deviations from the absolute best destroys true
free will or ability to get that which you really want. To me, given
this definition, almost anything sufficiently intelligent, and able to
discover, change and adapt and improve, cannot help but have "free
will".
Even evolution has free will, because that which is more fit,
is better, and hence that is what it chooses.... If it discovers
that endo-skeletons are better (more fit) than exo-skeletons it starts
chosing that... No one can stop it and make it do otherwise, that's
what makes it absolutely and deterministically free.
We are all deterministically and reliably going towards that
which is the best for all, there is no possible way to "chose"
anything less for chosing such makes no logical sense, if one is truly
free. If you chose that which you don't really want, you are not
really free. Therefore, once we arrive at the best, we will finally
be perfectly free. And really, no one or nothing ever has any choice,
or ability to do otherwise right?
Brent Allsop
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