From: John K Clark (johnkc@well.com)
Date: Thu Feb 26 1998 - 10:28:12 MST
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>>Me:
>>A man, animal or machine has free will if it can not always predict
>>what it will do in the future even if the external environment is
>>constant. A third party might be able to make such predictions but
>>that's irrelevant, the important thing is that the person himself
>>can not know what he will do next until he actually does it.
>Hal Finney <hal@rain.org>
>by itself the definition is too simple. There has to be a
>specification of some minimum predictive ability, otherwise the
>definition is satisfied vacuously by systems simply because they
>can't predict at all. Cars, inclined planes, and knives all appear
>to have free will by this definition, because they can not predict
>what they will do in the future.
Exactly, and that's my point. Free will is not some exotic mysterious property
that only humans posses, it's a humdrum attribute everything has. Because
everything has it free will is not important (importance requires contrast)
and we can afford to forget about it.
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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