Do you have free will?

[Savonarola]

 

Only Languish could discover the relationship between tachyons and the criminal justice system.

[crazy canuck]

We are just getting started my friend.  Once we fully integrate termites into our theory we will be ready to publish.

[Admiral Yi]

Sav: wouldn't the trigger man have to travel faster than light in order to see the effects of his tachyon ray in the past? 

[Savonarola]

Sav: wouldn't the trigger man have to travel faster than light in order to see the effects of his tachyon ray in the past? 

Yes, from my example with Alderaan above, Alderaan wouldn't be destroyed in my frame of reference for 11 years after I pulled the trigger (one year for the tachyon beam to reach there, 10 years for the information to come back to me.)  From the frame of reference from Alderaan they were destroyed 9 years before I pulled the trigger.  In relativity theory is both frames of reference are valid; from the reference frame of Alderaan I must pull the trigger.

[PDH]

In relativity theory is both frames of reference are valid; from the reference frame of Alderaan I must pull the trigger.

Maybe you were cleaning the tachyon gun and it just went off.

[Admiral Yi]

Yes, from my example with Alderaan above, Alderaan wouldn't be destroyed in my frame of reference for 11 years after I pulled the trigger (one year for the tachyon beam to reach there, 10 years for the information to come back to me.)  From the frame of reference from Alderaan they were destroyed 9 years before I pulled the trigger.  In relativity theory is both frames of reference are valid; from the reference frame of Alderaan I must pull the trigger.

Right, so it seems it's impossible for the trigger man to ever see the effect of his shot, thus free will is maintained. 

[Savonarola]

In relativity theory is both frames of reference are valid; from the reference frame of Alderaan I must pull the trigger.

Maybe you were cleaning the tachyon gun and it just went off.

Alderaan had it coming.   

[Savonarola]

Yes, from my example with Alderaan above, Alderaan wouldn't be destroyed in my frame of reference for 11 years after I pulled the trigger (one year for the tachyon beam to reach there, 10 years for the information to come back to me.)  From the frame of reference from Alderaan they were destroyed 9 years before I pulled the trigger.  In relativity theory is both frames of reference are valid; from the reference frame of Alderaan I must pull the trigger.

Right, so it seems it's impossible for the trigger man to ever see the effect of his shot, thus free will is maintained. 

I don't follow.  Why couldn't I detect the impact of my shot eleven years later?  Also the Alderaanians detected my shot, what difference does it make whether or not I could?

[Admiral Yi]

Never mind. 

[Maximus]

Not being a physicist, I was unaware of the tachyon problem. However the question has come up in the context of computer science. Konrad Zuse proposed that the universe was a cellular automaton, which means that both time and space are discretized at some level and the transition of every state of the universe to the following state is entirely deterministic. If this is the case, and I don't know that it has been disproven, then it would suggest that there is no such thing as free will.

Under quantum mechanics there are states that can't be predicted despite knowing as much as is possible to know about the system.  This is described pretty well by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, where the more precisely you know the position of a particle the less certain you are about its velocity and vice versa.

It doesn't exclude the possibility that the universe when viewed from outside of it is deterministic.  If QM holds true, from inside the universe it is impossible to perfectly describe the universe (or even a small portion of it).

This seems like a good argument and one that had occurred to me. I will admit that while I know (some of) what the uncertainty principle says in broad terms, I am not familiar with it in detail. Are you saying that if QM holds true, then the universe cannot be deterministic at the quantum level? It seems to me that saying something cannot be described is different than saying it is nondeterministic.

[crazy canuck]

In relativity theory is both frames of reference are valid; from the reference frame of Alderaan I must pull the trigger.

Maybe you were cleaning the tachyon gun and it just went off.

Things just dont go off.  They were always meant to go off.

[crazy canuck]

Not being a physicist, I was unaware of the tachyon problem. However the question has come up in the context of computer science. Konrad Zuse proposed that the universe was a cellular automaton, which means that both time and space are discretized at some level and the transition of every state of the universe to the following state is entirely deterministic. If this is the case, and I don't know that it has been disproven, then it would suggest that there is no such thing as free will.

Under quantum mechanics there are states that can't be predicted despite knowing as much as is possible to know about the system.  This is described pretty well by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, where the more precisely you know the position of a particle the less certain you are about its velocity and vice versa.

It doesn't exclude the possibility that the universe when viewed from outside of it is deterministic.  If QM holds true, from inside the universe it is impossible to perfectly describe the universe (or even a small portion of it).

This seems like a good argument and one that had occurred to me. I will admit that while I know (some of) what the uncertainty principle says in broad terms, I am not familiar with it in detail. Are you saying that if QM holds true, then the universe cannot be deterministic at the quantum level? It seems to me that saying something cannot be described is different than saying it is nondeterministic.

I think the answer is that all possibilities occur and so it doesnt make sense to talk in terms of one being determined.

[frunk]

This seems like a good argument and one that had occurred to me. I will admit that while I know (some of) what the uncertainty principle says in broad terms, I am not familiar with it in detail. Are you saying that if QM holds true, then the universe cannot be deterministic at the quantum level? It seems to me that saying something cannot be described is different than saying it is nondeterministic.

I'm saying that as participants in the universe (as everything in the universe is) we can't create or observe a system that is deterministic to the smallest detail in the way that Zuse is describing.

One of the requirements for Zuse's idea to work it to pin down the state of the system at a given point.  From there it is possible to determine the future states of the system.  Under QM you can't nail down the exact state of the system (knowing the precise position and velocity of all particles at time X) so the future states are equally unknowable.

At the quantum mechanical level it comes down to how you "observe" a particle.  In order to see where or how fast a particle is you need something to interact with it.  Photons (little bits of light) are used to gauge the position and velocity of a particle.   A weak burst of light can let the velocity be determined, but is poor at determining the position of the particle.  As the burst of light gets more energetic it can find the position of the particle with greater precision, but it also imparts energy to it.  Giving the particle energy means its velocity is now changed by an increasingly undetermined amount. *

So I'm saying that it is possible that the universe is deterministic, but that QM says we can't determine if it is.

* - This is the particle based interpretation.  There's also a wave based interpretation (where everything is a wave) that is equally valid, but is usually a lot more difficult to understand.

[Ideologue]

Eventually you get the message back, "Stop collapsing my waveform, jerk."

[crazy canuck]

Frunk,

If QM is correct and all outcomes are possible then how does it makes sense to speak of only one outcome being predetermined?