Hello!


I found this thread very interesting and read that the people discussing did not reach an understanding. Maybe I did not either, but I felt that I could try to continue the discussion because I thought that I understood everyone.

I go through Count Timothy von Icarus argument about the game and the tutorial and 013zen example about the gun and with choosing numbers from 1-10. I try to understand how Echogem's idea works in these examples. In the end I talk that how in my opinion we can have free will and information.




1. Count Timothy von Icarus

Consider a universe of just one agent and a video game. At first, the agent has no freedom. They are in a tutorial mode during which they can only click on one bottom at a time as the game demonstrates how all the different buttons work. Through the tutorial, the agent gains true beliefs about what the buttons do. But they can't choose anything, they just watch.

Then the tutorial ends. Now they can push the buttons however they want, choosing which to use. In what sense have they not gained any new freedom? In what sense has the tutorial robbed them of their ability to choose which buttons to press? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I understand the tutorial example and see how you say that even though the person receives knowledge in the tutorial they still have free will on how to operate on them.

However, do you see that the player is still technically bound to this knowledge because everything they learn after them is affected by this knowledge? The information they gain in the game is influenced by the knowledge of the tutorial as the tutorial teaches them the basics. Sure they can uncover something that the tutorial did not teach but the claim is that they would always compare the new information to the old since their understanding is constructed from the old information. This way the image of the new knowledge is at least tiny bit affected by the tutorial.

Hence the player cannot be free from the knowledge from the tutorial and cannot have free will in the broadest sense.

If the knowledge the tutorial provides is thought to be of having "no information" then we can say that they have free will, but Echogem's idea was to point out that the tutorial is not the base level as there could be less or no information than provided in the tutorial.

And if a person with free will and without any information has the choice to go to the tutorial they have no reason to choose it since they have no reason to value having information over not having information.




2. 013zen

For 1, let’s imagine an entity that is definitely free. I put a gun to the entity’s head and tell it to pick a number between 1-10. Having no information about the number, what it means, if it will have any effect at all or otherwise, the entity still has 11 options (1 being to not answer at all). — 013zen

I understand your point here that the person has the 11 choices. Maybe to understand what Echogem is saying this example will help.

Example:
”If we pretend that the floor is lava and try to avoid it the rules are understood and the person who touches the floor "dies" and loses the game. In the same time a person who is not part of the game cannot ”die” or ”lose” by touching the floor since the rules don’t apply to them. So similarly if you choose to see the world differently you won’t die to the bullet of the gun because the rules don’t apply to you”

Thinking that dying is a part of a game which you choose to play might be difficult to accept since death seems an objective event regardless if the person chooses to play or not.

But I think this is what Echogem was saying. "Knowing" that death is "objective" and something that happens when you are shot can be though as a knowledge that limits your free will (as dying in the lava in the game "floor is lava"). If you are not given this information, have true free will, you don't consider death being objective and it doesn't have effect to you.


The premise with Echogem seems to be something that the world is something we choose to believe is true and then play by it rules. And not like that assumptions like "World is governed by laws that explain everything" is always true as this assumption is "just" something we choose to have faith.

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My opinion about having free will

To argue something more to this I would not see the issue with starting with true free will and then by accident or just by choosing with no reason at all to acquire some knowledge. After that you could build on that information and then similarly at some point by accident or with no reason at all to leave all that knowledge and go back on having no knowledge and maybe start it all again or not. So I could not see having free will an impossible thing as gaining or losing information could ”just happen” without any reason.