Can a computer have free will?

[whatta]

that's merely the special case of 2nd option.

 

[HeavenTornApart]

you can't discount special cases they do crop up now and then, if there is a million in one chance that something will happen then it will happen but only rarely!

anyway what's so special about having the ability to choose whether or not to break the rules, we have laws but we sometimes break them, is it not possiable that this works only on a larger scale

 

[whatta]

physical law is the way things are set up. political law is the way politicians want things to be set up. that's a huge difference. 1st are found, 2nd are invented. you can't have a vote to cancel 2nd Newton law in US senate.

 

[HeavenTornApart]

humm could be interesting if it did work that way,

but anyway I am still happy with choosing to believe that i have freewill and can make my own decisions. i choose which morals i live by and which i don't live by.

by the way things like the 2nd Newton law can probably be proven by scientific facts and experiments therefore no we can't choose to make non-applicable that's absurd, however you cannot prove that everything i do is pre-determined by a set of behavourial rules that cannot be broken therefore you have to accept that freewill may exist

 

[rahuldandekar]

Free will is ok if there is some entity making the decisions, but I don't think there can be a "consciousness" making our decisions. We are the product of random chance, our upbringing and environment, and our genes. Sure, the decisions made by us are not predictable, but that doesn't make them any less random. How do we know if "we" made some decision?

The casual connections are important. If I decide not to cross as street just like that, it may be because I felt like making a random decision, which was probably due to some other quirky person i might have noticed. Or maybe there were some unconscious factors which made me subconsciously not cross the street. Or it just may be a quantum fluctuation, or such, in my brain.

But then, did "I" make that decision? What is "I" in that case, to which you trace this decision of mine? My brain? It goes farther back, to the quantum fluctuation which caused this thought. But won't casual laws fail there? And is there really an "entity" which made the decision?

My head hurts. Note to self: Don't be too much of a reductionist.

 

[whatta]

Free will is ok if there is some entity making the decisions

That's what I'm sayin, bro, that's what I've been sayin all along.

 

[rahuldandekar]

That's what I'm sayin, bro, that's what I've been sayin all along.

Cool, so we agree. But I really wanted to say that, because it's been swirling around in my head since before I found this thread. :)

 

[David Burke]

I would say that once a range is set then a descision can be made. For example, choose an infinite number. Can't do that so you can't make a descision so you don't have free will?. Entropy gives us a range so we can then make a descision so we have free will?.

You can make a descision just by throwing a ball at a bunch of objects. If it hits one then that object was your descision, if it doesn't hit one then that non hit was your descision. You had no choice other than the choice to throw the ball, or not to throw the ball. When you asked the computer to choose a random number it's the same as throwing the ball, the computer is just the same and will spit out a descision if you give it a range. The entire universe appears to function in this manner as I have never thrown a ball at an object and had any other result than to hit or miss.

So the calculator definitely doesn't have free will. I would then say that it is probable that our brains act accordingly with external sensory data acting as a triggering mechanism for the act of throwing the ball (making the descision).

 

[David Burke]

Here's a question that may stimulate some heated debate! If a baby was born with no visual, audio, oldfactory, or sensation of touch etc (and lived) would that baby be capable of making a descision? I say no, because it has no input information (no range) and therefore cannot choose an answer! It's a human mind but cannot deside. If we have some indescribable skill that is not expressed in any other part of the universe then the child should still be able to descide (express free will).

 

[sid1138]

So you only need some physical noise generator attached to COM port, and voila - you now can write a program with unpredictable outcomes. Yay, I guess AI problem has just been solved!

So what is "we"? What is entity breaking the rules? A spirit? A soul?

A random noise generator attached to the COM port, PCI bus, or other input is a random input, but does not produce unpredictable outcomes. The reason being is that given input X, the program will execute instruction Y. While it may not be possible to determine ahead of time what X will be, it is possible to determine ahead of time the complete X to Y mapping, and therefore completely determine what the computer will do under all possible inputs.

Now, if instead of the noise generator being attached to some input, it was attached to an instruction generator so that at random times, random instructions were created, then I would start to agree with you that we would have an indeterministic system. But, I would argue that this was neither intelligence nor free will, but this is will take more thought on my part.

As an aside, a person did that very experiment. An FPGA is an electronic device that is kind of a cross between hardware and software. It is a hardware device, but it is possible to write software to configure that hardware. (For example an FPGA can have 100,000 hardware "gates". These gates can be wired up in a huge number of ways. In some respects these gates can be considered brain cells, but that is another story.)

Anyway, this person hooked up a random number generator to program the FPGA. He then had a set of inputs and desired outputs (the function the FPGA was to perform). After the random generator was run, the program was checked to ensure it functioned correctly. Any results that were not correct were reprogramed. The system had a means to "learn what was correct and what was incorrect and adjust accordingly.

The result was the ultimate program was about 20% smaller than what would have been done by hand. The program also ran faster than expected. However, no two devices produced the exact same program, and the program ended up using features of a particular device. For example, when integrated circuits are made, each transistor may be slightly bigger or smaller than average. This results is slight differences in speed - only a nanosecond or less - between one device and the next. When you program the FPGA, you do not know the exact differences between speeds, so you always program to the specification (which is the slowest the transistor will work). However, the random programmer does not care about the specification, it cares about the device itself.

Therefore, there is a level of indeterminacy in this system. It does not quite reach the level of free will, but it is an step in that direction.

- Sid1138