• Ferk@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    To be honest when we can’t really predict an algorithm we do start talking about free will. Thats whats happening with the llm’s.

    But then this makes free will something relative to own limit of knowledge… meaning that if we were sufficiently stupid to be unable to predict the behavior of the much more simplistic Eliza bot we might think that this bot has free will too.

    It would also imply that a sufficiently random algorithm (ie. one that cannot be predicted) also has free will. If there was a random number generator (ie. a set of dice) that was fully random and unpredictable, would you say it has free will?

    it seems that the argument against free will is that if a mechanism for free will exists then its predicatable so then it can’t exist. I don’t think the how we get to decisions makes them any less relevant in making them.

    I think this is the same topic we were discussing in this other comment branch, so I’m gonna refer to that as to not repeat ourselves :)

    Thanks for the interesting conversation.

    • HubertManne@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      honestly merging the two may be a bit much but whay you said there sorta hits the nail on the head. I feel going way back to the argument in the video that free will would just be a function of randomness. I actually do think the stupider we are the more we would think things have free will. I mean many ancient religions viewed everything as being alive often with what would seem like free will. Then again we have often had beliefs with animals that they lack cognition or feeling when I think they have free will as well down to some point of lack of complexity. Its hard to say at one point it is emergent and there are cetainly levels.

      • Ferk@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Yes, there’s been societies in the past that would attribute “free will” to fill the gaps in their knowledge, but that’s an approach that consistently has been shown to be wrong as our knowledge of the world has expanded. So for that reason I don’t think it’s not a good approach to try and define things in relation to the limits of our knowledge.