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elfsThis week, the Future of Humanity Institute is holding a conference and one of the topics was "whole brain emulation," the idea that a research team will be able to at least create a laboratory rendition of a working human brain in software.
Nicholas Carr objects to a line in the proposal document that "They deal with the problem of free will, or, as they term it, the possibility of a random or 'physically indeterministic element' in the working of the human brain, by declaring it a non-problem" and concludes, "The only way you can emulate a person with a computer is by first defining the person to be a machine. The Future of Humanity Institute would seem to be misnamed."
I really wanted to comment on Nick's blog, but Six Apart's typekey apparently doesn't like me so I'll tackle the two unwritten questions here:
Nick, what is 'free will'?
No, seriously. Lots of people throw that term around without really having any clue what it means. Let's tackle the two most common descriptions:
One: Free Will is the premise that, for any given decision in the past, you could have chosen differently. This is a very common definition; it's also tautologically true. Yes, you could have chosen differently. You didn't. Even more importantly, you can't go back and change the past. You can't choose differently now that you've chosen.
Two: Free Will is the premise that, for any given decision in the future, you can choose different from decisions made in the past. This is a silly, almost absurd definition, because it's apparently true. Any decision you make in the future will be informed by the consequences of decisions made in the past, as well as any changes in your environment– both external and internal– that have happened in the intervening time. Of course you will weigh the matter differently; you're a different person at a different place and time. You may well choose differently.
Why do you choose?
That's the question underlying every choice. Why do you choose? Think about your left hand. Touch your thumb to your pinky. Too late: even before you registered that you were thinking about touching your thumb to your pinky, signals were racing down the nerves in your spine and arm, telling the muscles to get ready for the action, performing the action, and telling your brain that the action had been performed. What we think of "consciousness" and "free will" is an after-effect of some meta-consciousness, some meta-free will, that manifests as interactions with our selves and each other only after the fact. The hundreds of mental modules that regulate us-- our hunger, our quest for success, our sex drive, our wish for sleep, our reactions to beauty or to filth-- compete for attention, each gaining or losing its voice in the chorus that makes up "you" and "me," depending upon underlying physical signals-- digestion, exhaustion, the presence of a loved one, the demands of work, the learned threat of retaliation.
For all the rationalization that might bubble to the surface of what we call "conscious free will," we might exhaust all alternative explanations for choosing one way or another, and we come down to tie breakers: simple, illogical, animal emotions. Want and fear. The things that turned Naked African Plains Ape into Homo sapiens, that made us incredible survivors and reproducers on the sveldt. We haven't graduated from that status just yet.
Nobody in this conversation has yet defined "free will," so let me throw out Daniel Dennett's: "Free will is when conscious agent A makes choices without the direct compulsion of another conscious agent." This is without regard to the underlying, non-conscious processes that cause choice-making to arise in agent A.
The WBE project meets that criteria: until we understand what even a successful WBE is doing, we won't be able to compel the will of a working WBE. If it's a successful emulation, its "consciousness" will have as much free will as the rest of us, and one hell of a better opportunity than you or I to introspect. After all, it'll have access to its own hardware. And that ought to frighten us.
Nicholas Carr objects to a line in the proposal document that "They deal with the problem of free will, or, as they term it, the possibility of a random or 'physically indeterministic element' in the working of the human brain, by declaring it a non-problem" and concludes, "The only way you can emulate a person with a computer is by first defining the person to be a machine. The Future of Humanity Institute would seem to be misnamed."
I really wanted to comment on Nick's blog, but Six Apart's typekey apparently doesn't like me so I'll tackle the two unwritten questions here:
Nick, what is 'free will'?
No, seriously. Lots of people throw that term around without really having any clue what it means. Let's tackle the two most common descriptions:
One: Free Will is the premise that, for any given decision in the past, you could have chosen differently. This is a very common definition; it's also tautologically true. Yes, you could have chosen differently. You didn't. Even more importantly, you can't go back and change the past. You can't choose differently now that you've chosen.
Two: Free Will is the premise that, for any given decision in the future, you can choose different from decisions made in the past. This is a silly, almost absurd definition, because it's apparently true. Any decision you make in the future will be informed by the consequences of decisions made in the past, as well as any changes in your environment– both external and internal– that have happened in the intervening time. Of course you will weigh the matter differently; you're a different person at a different place and time. You may well choose differently.
Why do you choose?
That's the question underlying every choice. Why do you choose? Think about your left hand. Touch your thumb to your pinky. Too late: even before you registered that you were thinking about touching your thumb to your pinky, signals were racing down the nerves in your spine and arm, telling the muscles to get ready for the action, performing the action, and telling your brain that the action had been performed. What we think of "consciousness" and "free will" is an after-effect of some meta-consciousness, some meta-free will, that manifests as interactions with our selves and each other only after the fact. The hundreds of mental modules that regulate us-- our hunger, our quest for success, our sex drive, our wish for sleep, our reactions to beauty or to filth-- compete for attention, each gaining or losing its voice in the chorus that makes up "you" and "me," depending upon underlying physical signals-- digestion, exhaustion, the presence of a loved one, the demands of work, the learned threat of retaliation.
For all the rationalization that might bubble to the surface of what we call "conscious free will," we might exhaust all alternative explanations for choosing one way or another, and we come down to tie breakers: simple, illogical, animal emotions. Want and fear. The things that turned Naked African Plains Ape into Homo sapiens, that made us incredible survivors and reproducers on the sveldt. We haven't graduated from that status just yet.
Nobody in this conversation has yet defined "free will," so let me throw out Daniel Dennett's: "Free will is when conscious agent A makes choices without the direct compulsion of another conscious agent." This is without regard to the underlying, non-conscious processes that cause choice-making to arise in agent A.
The WBE project meets that criteria: until we understand what even a successful WBE is doing, we won't be able to compel the will of a working WBE. If it's a successful emulation, its "consciousness" will have as much free will as the rest of us, and one hell of a better opportunity than you or I to introspect. After all, it'll have access to its own hardware. And that ought to frighten us.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-17 09:23 pm (UTC)I especially like Elf's last paragraph:
The WBE experiment is a stab in the dark, but it's better to take that stab and light that candle than live with ignorance. Carl Sagan once famously described those who believed in supernatural intervention as a living in a "Demon-Haunted World." The last demon in that haunetd world will be the humunculous that lives behind our own eyeballs.