Increments - Episodes Tagged with “Free Will”

#61 - Debating Free Will: Frankenstein's Monster and a Filmstrip of the Universe (with Lucas Smalldon)

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 09:00:00 -0800

While you're reading this you're having a thought. Something like "wow, I love the Increments podcast", or "those hosts are some handsome" or "I really wish people would stop talking about free will." Do you have a choice in the matter? Are you free to choose what you're thinking in any given moment, or is it determined by your genetics, environment, and existing ideas? Is the universe determined, are we all Frankenstein's monster? How does one profitably think about that question? Today we have Lucas Smalldon on to help us think through these questions.

We reference Lucas's blog post titled reconciling-determinism-and-free-will. Because it's is barely more than a tweet, we've included the entire post here as well:

Reconciling Free Will with Determinism

Free will and determinism seem to conflict with each other. But the apparent conflict disappears when we understand that determinism and free will simply describe the world from radically different perspectives and at fundamentally different levels. Free will makes sense only within the context of the physical world, whereas determinism makes sense only from a perspective that is outside the physical world. Consider the determinist statement, “The future exists and has always existed”. It seems like a contradiction in terms, but only because our language forces us to express the idea misleadingly in terms of the past and future. If we assign special meanings to the temporal words in the statement—namely, if by the future we mean “objectively real events that from the perspective of our present have not yet happened”; and if by always we mean “transcending time itself” rather than the usual “existing across all time”—then the contradiction resolves. Assigning these special meanings allows us to express determinism as atemporal and objective: as a description of a physical reality of which time is an attribute. Conversely, free will, which is by far the more intuitive concept, is needed to explain certain kinds of events (i.e., choices) that occur within time, and thus within the physical world that determinism describes from the outside. Determinism and free will are compatible. We really do make choices. It’s just that, from an atemporal determinist perspective, these choices have “always” existed.

Follow Lucas on twitter or check out his blog.

We discuss

Levels of explanation regarding free will
The (in)compatibility of different levels of explanation
Why the lack of free will does not hinge on reductionism
Memetic arguments for the non-existence of free will
Whether we can have moral responsibility without free will
The universe as a filmstrip
Whether we're all just Frankenstein's monster

Socials

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How much do you want to want Frankenstein's monster? Send your answer down the tubes and over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Special Guest: Lucas Smalldon.

#30 - Let's all just have a good cry (w/ Christofer Lövgren)

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 09:00:00 -0700

Christofer Lövgren, host of the marvelous Do Explain podcast and world's most famous Swede (second perhaps only to that Alfred fellow with the peace prize), joins us on the pod to teach us how podcasting is really done. And how to pronounce his last name. When we're not all sobbing, we touch on:

Does Deutschian epistemology give us with Free Will?
Should one identify as a critical rationalist?
Does membership in a community, or identification with a label, affect our ability to give and receive criticism?
How has reading Deutsch and Popper changed our lives?
Can trauma get stored in the body?
How often do we cry?

Check out Chris on twitter (@ReachChristofer) and Do Subscribe to Do Explain.

References:

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
Behave by Robert Sapolsky
Lecture on Depression by Sapolsky
Do Explain episode with Chris and Matt Goldenberg on emotional processing
Temple Grandin discussing the "black-hat" horse.
Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Sir Peter Brian Medawar whom Richard Dawkins referred to as 'the wittiest of all scientific writers'.

Blow your nose, dry your eyes, and send us a tear-stained email at incrementspodcast@gmail.com. Special Guest: Christofer Lövgren.

#23 - Physics, Philosophy, and Free Will with Sam Kuypers

Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani — Mon, 03 May 2021 10:00:00 -0700

We are joined by the great Sam Kuypers for a conversation on physics, philosophy, and free will.

Vaden spends most of the episode preparing for a huge debate on free-will, and Ben spends it worried about what alternate versions of himself are up to in parallel universes. Still, we manage to touch on a few topics:

Realism and antirealist interpretations of quantum theory

The advisory styles of Dennis Sciama and John Wheeler and the standardization of education

Reconciling the Harris / Deutsch perspectives on Free Will

Restorative and Rehabilitative justice

A universe in which Ben spontaneously explodes into dust while speaking

Links:

Sam's recent paper with David Deutsch

From Micro to Macro, by Vlatko Vedral

Hayek's Constitution of Liberty

Sam Kuypers is a DPhil student at the University of Oxford, where he researches foundational issues in quantum theory. He's also one of the founders of the Oxford Karl Popper Society, an Oxford-based student society created to facilitate discussions about science and philosophy.

Follow him on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/crit_rat.

Send us an email or explode into dust - your choice: incrementspodcast@gmail.com.

Special Guest: Sam Kuypers.