From: Joe Jenkins (joe_jenkins@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Mar 03 1999 - 09:22:55 MST
---ASpidle@aol.com wrote:
> With regards to the starving children, I'm afraid that's the price
we pay > for
> free will. A God who fed all children would have to take away our
free > > will.
> Which would you rather have?
>
> Free will comes with a heavy price.
>
> Adrian
If we assume our mind is an information processor, and we further
assume that it is a Turing equivalent machine, even given excessive
use of pseudo-random number generators, any sequence of events could
be exactly duplicated given the same sensor and effector data starting
from the same initial state of the machine. Free will is thus a
delusion that makes us all feel really warm and fuzzy. Turing
equivalent machines can never have free will.
Even if we concede to Penroses poorly argued quantum mind, I'm not so
sure that what we call free will would amount to anything more than
truly random number generators. Thats not really anything to write
home about. I think the whole concept of free will is meaningless.
Our evolved minds seem to have a weakness for this meaningless concept.
Joe Jenkins
joe_jenkins@yahoo.com
"With a megabyte or so per genome, the digital storage capacity of the
millions of bacteria in the dirt on a typical computer far exceeds
that of the advertised components. While we spend billions of dollars
on dense digital storage systems, nature places far denser systems in
the same boxes free of charge, but unintended and unusable." K. Eric
Drexler, PhD.
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