Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Determinstic free will, now on the right blog

  Deterministic free will is the idea that we have choices, but the choices are limited. These choices can come from genetics, socioeconomically standing or race. They can be a end point of a Markov nightmare chain, where every decision is runway train of wrong. We can look at our choices like a decision tree, where each answer brings us a grouping of choices. It's an infinite tree with infinite choices, but each local grouping of choices is finite.

 

 A person can be represented as a vector with a magnitude of time. We start with V<sub>0</sub> equaling Birth and V<sub>n+1</sub> equaling death, with n being the number of events, or "choices" in a person's life. A person becomes a set of events like marriage, celebrations, traffic accidents, and first attempts at kinky sex stuff.

As we approach V<sub>n+1</sub> and look backwards, each choice flows into the other in a deterministic way. Things just lined up and happened to fit that things just seemed meant to be. But we are aware that if we weren't at the bus station that day the cute little sex addict showed up, we might have never had the chance at a handy on the Philly to Boston line. Do we have full free will, and each vector is a beautiful, unique combinations of our choices that disappear when we die, or do we live in fear of what a great decider chose for us, a life determined by genetics, bad spawn points, and the all powerful effects of astrology?

A choice in hindsight can appear deterministic due to it's recursive nature. V<sub>1</sub> affects the chances of what V<sub>2</sub> could be as well as the possibility of it's success. Someone who decides that their studies aren't important in high school might find the next event in life and it's choice limiting if they want to go to college. It doesn't limit the chance of making a six figure salary, but it sure as hell doesn't make it easier. While the choice "Sell all of my possessions and live in the woods" always exists, if the chooser has never taken a wild risk and feels uncomfortable for long periods in the woods, it has a low chance of being chosen. They are more likely to be using their skill set of "15 years of hiding my stress in a deep place" and continuing to die inside until they are an empty husk going through the motions until death.

It is a logistical nightmare to sit here and try to run analysis on each possibility that exists in the midgame of life. Like in chess, the number reaches high enough that it might as well be considered infinite. So, let's continue this idea and look at the question of free will through chess.

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