Zeno effect is produced under careful manipulated conditions by humans. People used the knowledge about quantum physics to create a situation where this effect manifests. The measurements are performed in a manner where they are not how they occur in nature. This can only possible through agency (humans). That’s why even though this effect is proven to exist, it doesn’t exist in nature on its own.

It’s like satellites don’t exist on their own in nature but yet our outer space is filled with them aiding in gps navigation among other things because we put them there.

It will not be in the grips of zeno effect because zeno effect is produced under certain conditions which are not the abundant conditions in nature.

My understanding is that it’s not the measurement. It’s misleading. It’s the interaction. When particle interacts with other particle or environment then superposition is reduced to decoherence and particle takes specific state with certain value of spin and position. Since measurement is a form of interaction, it seems to is as if measurement (or observation) caused it.

Due to cosmic microwave background throughout the universe we have radiation particles everywhere which interact with quantum systems (particles, objects, matter that ends up making up our stars, planets, every thing) so even when there is no observer or measurement, the interaction is continuously happening.

Evolutionary psychologist have theorized it to be a byproduct our our brain's cognitive ability to see patterns in nature and theory of mind (empathy), along with ability excellence in the ability to pass information/knowledge next generations.

Pattern seeking brains allows us to see design in nature (recognition of paw of a lion saves life by avoiding a path in Savanah, so does recognition of a fruit by providing food). Theory of mind allows sees intent in nature. It explains away causal relationship between events and things. It creates that other entity who designed the nature and has an intent for our survival. It warns us through floods or thunderstorms etc. Since our brain uses short cuts to survive, believing there is a higher entity with agency monitoring our every move was useful evolutionary byproduct.

In post agriculture revolution era, more organized religious beliefs were born out of it to help governing the exploding population that now had to live closer together and engage in trade etc.

The brain changes every time it encounters information through senses—just reading your post changed my brain. So no. A copy of you is not you. Because the very second onwards it became a copy of you it started changing in its unique way.

Hahaha — some humans even evolve regressively.

It's not just the philosophers. :sad:

History of quantum physics is full of misleading thought-experiment expressions that historians decided to keep on in describing various aspects of QM which ends up confusing laymen - e.g. Einstein's Does moon not exist if we don't look at it? Spooky action at a distance, Schrodinger's cat dead and alive at the same time. Neumann-Wigner interpretation of observer induced reality, so on and so forth.

There are certain behaviors of particle that we it's difficult for us to associate them with waves because we don't observe those behaviors in our daily lives in common waves (water etc) - e.g. spin, anti-particle like electron/positron pair, charge, which further causes more concrete structure to be born (atom) with more unique characteristics. So in my view this has more to do with how particle like behavior these excitations in underlying quantum fields manifest that our brain is more easily able to process and make use of that helps to think of them that way.

In reality there is no wave-particle duality. It's just "waves" (which is actually another abstraction because they are not really waves but at the very fundamental level the phenomenon manifests itself as wave and wave properties).

Sure. Plants are living beings and they have agency and can use that agency to act in free will sort of way. The premise of my argument is that living beings have free will. The notion is applicable only to living beings and not inanimate objects like rock.

One can argue that when we mix sodium with water then there some sort of chemical reaction which is not inanimate. But underneath it's simple the chemical reaction born out of electron bonding and has to do with their charge and energy so yes, you're right in assuming that I'm speaking of free will in terms of presence of "consciousness".

I was more concerned with the conditions to make free will possible, which I was arguing is just fundamentally indeterminism. — Paul S

Free will by its very virtue is a phenomenon of a living agent. It's tied to the notion of choice. This element of choice is the one that creates indeterministic outcomes when the agent interacts with his/her environment for survival. I do not think we can speak of free will in case of non-living things. However, we can certainly speak of indeterminism in case of both living and non-living things.

Paul,

Atomic decay is certainly a good example of randomness. And no doubt randomness exists elsewhere. My argument in favor of existence of free will is in line with it. However, I think there are few pieces to this picture.

Let's first consider, what for the sake of this conversation, we can call the big picture - The big picture says that entropy will keep increasing to the point that we will have heat death of universe. This is a deterministic behavior of the system. No matter what we do, how many suns explode into supernovas, it's destined to happen.

However, within the span (scope) of the time where we exist, and within our lives, we act and behave in a manner that is not deterministic but is probable. This localized behavior of our agency is probabilistic in nature and is what we call free will.

Now let's take example of nuclear fusion going on in the sun which basically responsible of pretty much everything we are able to do. There is certainly a deterministic cause and effect relationship between sun rays and us. It provides food for us and sustains life. It also causes skin cancer. Now imagine rays from sun shining on a rock vs shining on a human being. The behavior of the rock and the human being are going to be very different. Rock won't but human being will certainly have a reaction. Within human beings, some humans will actually move to come under the sun to bask under it and other will find shade to avoid it. That's a free will behavior that you don't see in objects like rock who always have same consistent behavior all the times to the rays of the sun.

My point is that this behavior exists within local scope. It further has indeterministic OR cause & effect relationship in its surrounding or areas (spacetime) within which it can yield influence but that influence still is impermanent in grand schema of things (the big picture) - So in my view when we talk about free will, we are restricted to the contextual level where that free will is relevant and not at all levels.

From an indeterministic viewpoint, it can still be argued that this process still inevitably emerges from the very origin of the universe in an unbreakable chain of deterministic events and that each atom's decay is inevitable. But if so, why do these radioactive atoms bleed off their energy in such an unstable way? — Paul S

Paul,

Could it be that indeterministic nature of a phenomenon (decay in this case) is limited in scope to its temporal locality and occurrence? I believe that when we talk of free will or indeterministic behavior, we are merely talking about a limited scope of such activity within which this behavior is probable and not some continuous chain of event that are somehow connected in a causal relationship.

For example, while entropy of the universe will continue to increase, regardless of what we humans do, and that in itself can be termed as determinism of our universe (heat death of universe), within the scope of our lives, our acts and interactions may "move molecules" in less predictable ways compared if we did not exist. So this less predictability is scoped within the span of human (or sentient beings) existence.

Particle is a useful abstraction for us humans. We can think of them as quantum field excitations as well. But that doesn't tell us whole a lot. Thinking in terms of particle allows us to further identify their properties like mass, position, interaction, constituent sub-particles & their charges etc.

Part of thinking about particles as particles is historic & empirical. When started breaking down matter to its lowest indivisible unit, we encountered "particles" and not waves. Then came sub-particles, and finally quantum fields. So this progression of discovery also contributes to it.

I am a materialist/phycalist myself and believe that everything reduces to material reality (atoms, sub-particles)—going even deeper takes us to quantum fields which is the best we ca do at this point.

Laws of nature that govern over reality (planets, solar system) are completely understood and for anything to exist within our reality it must be able interact with standard model particles and known forces (electromegnatism, weak force, gravity etc).

The emergent phenomenon, while has its own properties, still borns out of these basic blocks of our reality. Some of the emergent properties are not physical but rather a device or illusion of our brain to operate at that emergent lev (eg consciousness) since our brain does not have the resources or the capacity to operate at very atomic and precise level. It approximates and categorizes to make do.

Hello, new here as well.

I think Free Will exists. Even when taking Libet's experiments into account, one can argue that a lot of decisions we make in life are not instantaneous. Sometimes they take days, weeks, or even years. For example, if I decide to go to college to improve my chances of employability in the future and make more money, it's a decision that is not instantaneous. It would have formed by quite a bit of information, weighing various options, planning etc. Such decisions do not follow short span that Libet's experiments follow.

Now the question of determinism. At its very elementary level (quantum level) universe seems to be probabilistic. The very building blocks of atoms of our universe are probabilistic in their nature: You can only know either the position of such building block (ie, sub-particles. e.g. Electron, quarks, photon) or their spin (momentum) but never the both at the same time. This behavior is different at classical mechanics level (atoms, molecules, trees, birds, planets, solar system, galaxy, etc). You can know velocity and position at the same moment which allows determinism at their level. Using thought experiments like Laplace's demon, we can conclude that given the ability of knowing velocity and position of every single atom in the universe we can determine how things will turn out to be. The molecules of cosmos already in motion and moving towards a deterministic end though well predictable path of classical mechanics.

How then free will comes into play? Free will becomes relevant at the level of agency of living organisms. Living organisms through their agency disrupt the course of the molecules within the temporal scope of their environment. This agency of living organism is an emergent phenomenon. As we move from very basic level (sub-particle level) of our universe to more granular (atom, molecules), and then further even more complex level (living organisms), certain emergent properties begin to appear that may not directly map to any properties at the previous level but yet have their own reality.

Free will, in my view, is one such phenomenon, or emergent property of reality at our (human, living agent) level. It does not exist at the level where objects of the universe do not have agency but it does exist when an agent comes into picture. So the question of free will exists at a level that determinism does not appear to be a relevant factor since we act in approximation and deterministically as part of the cosmic machine. Our agency does not have full control over the outcomes and hence our efforts (actions) are always approximate. Since we know this nature of approximation of our actions, we are left with trying out variable choices to optimize that approximation for most desirable outcome. This variability in choices gives us free will.