onetruth

I put a fresh bit of birch in and it went bang. Wood was fine, glass plate was fine, but the ceiling of the microwave looked like it had been punched. It growls a bit now when it's on. I also put a tool handle in once, forgetting it already had a ferrule on. That crackled a bit. That microwave has since died but I think it's unrelated. I was going to use it to make one of those Lichtenberg things, but while thinking about it I put my wet hand into a toaster, and decided high voltage probably wasn't for me.

thanks. I too quite like that chunky look, but I wasn't really going for it - just chickened out of going any further with it. it wasn't fresh cut when I did it, about half a year drying. no splitting at all on this one - its a few months since I turned it and it's been sat over a radiator for much of that time. I have already damaged the microwave by drying wood in it, but no one's noticed yet.

I just watched the Peterson interview. I hadn't heard of the guy before but he seems to talk a lot of sense. As for the interviewer (also unknown to me - is it channel 4?), it was clear that she just hadn't prepared for the interview. I got the impression that she was expecting a rather different interviewee and was unable to adjust her approach. It sounded like she wasn't really listening to the answers given. To be fair, he was an unusual interviewee - she's probably more used to interviewees who carefully craft their responses to sound good, whereas this guy was careful to be precise. She was desperate to get a statement of controversy. That said, 2 million views suggests she did her job well! I'll put my neck on the line in defence of Dianne Abbott, not that I particularly like her, but I think the criticism of her here is a bit distasteful. Fair enough: she has some extravagantly leftist policy ambitions, she certainly doesn't interview well, and she can on occasion seem a little bit fundamentalist. But she is, in my opinion, one of the more sincere politicians we have at the moment. And she has been pretty active (in terms of parliamentary work) throughout her time as an MP. I wouldn't want her running the exchequer, but I'm glad she's an MP. Most successful politicians are corrupt self-serving narcissists.

thanks! cherry.

Thoughts are always about something. That thing could be considered the cause.

I can't agree with this. Thoughts can't just be - they are always in reaction to something. You can't have an empty thought.

Very good. What I was trying to say in my last post, but much more clearly put.

Again, it seems you are trying to put Will into the cause and effect chain, and dismissing it because of the contradiction that (I agree) will inevitably arise. Think of Will as the thing that removes the randomness - perhaps as the cause of those things that are outside of the cause-and-effect chain (lovely way of putting it, btw!). I don't think Will is really like that, but if you allow for an interaction with that chain by things external to that chain, which you seem to, there must be the possibility of Will existing as one of these things.

Yes, I agree. Couldn't Will be more like quanta than it is like the brain? In terms of being independent from what-has-come-before, I mean.

You can use them as examples of how not everything is causal. This means you can not go on to dismiss free will simply because it does not fit in with your ideas of causality, not unless you reject QM and the big bang first (which you might want to - they are only theories).

You can ignore it! It isn't an argument proving free will, but it does limit free will to being outside of the realm of causality. Which it had to be anyway, if it exists.

For clarity, free will is (I think) dependant on cause-and-effect not being universal to everything, and the big-bang would be an example of how it isn't.

It doesn't, but it allows for things to be spontaneous and not dependant on their environment. It suggests there may be an opportunity for free will in some sense outside of that-which-is-determined, even though there is no direct connection.

That is certainly a huge problem. I think the best solution you could come up with is that anything limited by time is the result of cause and effect, which doesn't necessarily include (or exclude) will.

(1) Probably not, that would defy the causality that all temporal things seem to depend on. That does assume, however, that cause-and-effect is universal (or true at all). I don't think we can know that. In physics for instance, quanta and the big-bang don't function causally, but nor are they temporal in the way we/"things" are. The brain is, mind might be, consciousness (the way I see it) isn't. (2) That seems like a bizarre conclusion to me. If it could, which I doubt, I don't see that it could be considered automatic. Random, maybe (personally I don't really buy the idea of randomness). Or, perfectly reasonably, by Will.

This may be true, however there is another possibility: that you, having observed the automation within your mind, and become aware that so much of what you may have previously considered to be "you" is in fact just mechanical, you have fallen into the trap of assuming that all of it is automatic. That is not necessarily the case. It is correct to disassociate with body, sense, desire, thought, reason, will, etc. only if you are able to isolate that element from your identity. If you say "I was wrong about this, therefore I must be wrong about this", you make a very similar mistake to that which originally led you to identify with those aspects you now reject.

(1) Not necessarily: It was interesting -> Need to satisfy part of mind that seeks interesting things -> More inputs sought. Consider hunger: you were hungry so you sought to satisfy the hunger, you have no control over the desire to satisfy the hunger. Being interested in something could follow a similar pattern of desire followed by compulsion to try and satisfy the desire. (2) Good way of looking at it.

(1) I regret using the term "bug" and bringing up the computing analogy - I was making a point about brains having evolved by chance mutation, rather than in pursuit of a particular purpose for which they have been optimised. For clarity, I do not see myself as just a malfunctioning computer. That said, I think it is a wholly reasonable position to hold, just not one I happen to agree with. Nor did I mean to suggest that everyone suffers from addiction - I was using them as examples of how (some) people are unable to break trains of thought they know to be detrimental. More universal examples are things like anger, disappointment and regret, where the mind dwells in an unpleasant state and is unable (for some time at least) to snap out of it. Surely you've experienced the pointlessness of indulging these emotions when, for instance, you've been wronged or done something you're ashamed of? If you really had mastery of your will, you'd divert your thoughts the moment you realised that they weren't getting you anywhere. (2) The mind is powerful enough to have got us out of the caves, but it is still limited: it hasn't got us beyond the stars yet. (3) An input is chosen, but it is not clear how (or what) has "chosen" the input. It is entirely possible that it is the inevitable consequence of whatever state the input-choosing-thing is in. This isn't to deny free will, but it certainly makes it unnecessary. By input, I assume you mean things like sensory inputs. What else would you include? I think that we hear/read (some of?) our thoughts as we think them, and that monitoring should be considered another input. What about our desires - aren't they also inputs?

thanks very much, I am! only took me a day.

Here's my first attempt...

I agree that it seems that way, but that thing you are calling Will could just be the output of a previous state of mind - how can you be sure that you are changing topic because you have some power to make it happen, rather than it happening because (unbeknown to you) it is what your brain chemistry has determined must happen. If we could choose our thoughts, we would never become obsessed with things that we know are painful or unbeneficial to us. We wouldn't become addicted to things like self-harm, over-eating, gambling, pornography or cannabis. We wouldn't suffer chronic depression. We wouldn't become angry dwelling on wrongs that had been committed against us. We wouldn't bother with grief. We'd just "snap out of it" and think about something that made us happy instead. If we really had the power to choose our thoughts, why would we choose to make ourselves miserable?

Ah, I edited that out, fearing it may derail the thread. Back on topic (kind of): I was pleased to see a discussion of free will vs. fate in yesterday's episode of Vikings.

I'm not sure that's what WesD was saying. If I remember rightly (and it's a bit hard to follow when you can't read the quoted text in a quote), he suggested that when a train of thought is diverted to another line of thought, this was in obedience to (something). My point was to suggest that, as our brains structure is just what evolution happened to knock out (rather than being something carefully designed or optimised), it is quite reasonable to suggest that trains of thought could be derailed through "malfunctions" of the system. My clumsy use of quotation marks (both here and there) was more an acknowledgement that they are the way they are because of chance, rather than being something that is supposed to function a particular way. I am not certain that brains can entirely be reduced to "just automatic information processors", though it may well be the case. It is possible to design an AI that can design another AI to fulfil specific goals, but I don't think AIs can evaluate their own goals. Human minds certainly seem to be able to do that (as we are doing now, perhaps).

Ignore that, it's crap. What I was driving at was - although our brains can learn, if there are "bugs" in the system, no matter how much experience is gained, we can't learn the bugs away. Now I've typed it out, I'm not sure even I believe it! Bed-time, methinks...

I'd agree with that. On balance though, I think malfunctioning is more likely than obeying. Imagine a computer programme that has to add up until it reaches exactly 100, starting at 1, and going up by 2 at a time. It will go 1,3,5,7... ...97,99,101,103,105... No matter how much "experience" it accrues, it is never going to learn to slow down! If the brain is an imperfectly programmed computer - quite a reasonable description I think - it will continue to "malfunction".