posted December 17, 1999 06:35 PM            

The objective experience: who knows? I think it's true we can't prove or disprove free will--at least not until someone actually builds a time machine (stop round at my place and I'll buy you a drink, we'll talk... you can get my meatspace address from me in the future).

Zephir: I've used the white flame myself several times now. The first time I really got it, it felt like one of those chills that runs up your spine--only ten times as intense. It left me doubled over and coughing, as if my "self" were having an adverse reaction, but it felt good, too. Centering.

As to the question of whether or not the past and future exist: good question. No answer, but hey. As for the possibility of time travel: every physicist I've met says the same thing. It's not just possible, it happens all the time at the quantum level, and quite possibly some of the time at the bigger levels we inhabit just as a natural process. I know of at least four time travel methodologies that work (on paper) without a hitch. They're all terribly impractical, but, c'est la realite.

posted December 18, 1999 08:14 PM            

Which would imply that action, at least on the macro level, is predetermined.

I wonder though, if will and action can be separated. Whether our decisions to do x, regardless of the outcome, make a difference on some other level.

Uhh... I guess I'm getting metaphysical.

posted December 19, 1999 10:01 AM            

Systems can and do go through chaotic responses to minor changes which lie outside the generality of observation based description. The term break boundary is applied to this. For example the effect of adding a sub electronic partical to an atom was fully understood for all circumstances until the combination of 'Uranium', a particular quantity, and other specific circumstance were applied. The rule book grew an extra chapter.

This doesn't mean the rules had changed, but that our capacity to predict the universe is limited.

Break boundaries occur in most system in both physical and social sciences; this does not mean that these systems are not determinant, just that we are unable to determine them. THerefore there may be no such thing as free will.

There is apparently freewill in non physical systems. Riots are always interesting. The last riot I was in thru up spontaeneous social rules one of which went like this:'only burn and loot premises that are owned by government or national organizations' A community worker I knew was apologized to because his motor was burned in error. In that one individual can alter the actions of a mob, and a mob can do quite dramatic things to the physical universe, there does seem to be room for a limited model of free will in the universe. That is an aspect of chaos theory.

Unless of course you believe in a detailed model of determinism, in which every action, each thought of every individual is predetermined in utter detail and that out sense of individual empowerment is completely bogus.

My personal belief is that we have limited ability to change our environment, and that that ability is of limited impact on the universe. For example the anti nuclear movement might have reduced the rate of decay of the universe (by slowing down the rate of destruction of atomic matter) by days or even weeks. Which is not much.

However in social as opposed to physical systems we can influence others.

I realize that this may still only be 'the universe moving through us' and that our sense of achievement in doing this may be entirely bogus.

This does not seem to conform with our physical understanding of the universe. Particals pop in and out of the universe randomly, usually for such short periods that they don't interact with other particals at all. But occasionally they do survive. There are cheats and spontanaetity in the universe.

Free will is probably like that. It can't do much often, and is far more significant in social systems:- stories do change people, than in physical ones but it does exist.

Although of course our sense of identity masy be entirely bogus. Free Will exists, but we (as we experience it) do not.

posted December 19, 1999 04:29 PM            

The concept of break boundaries applies to systems.

An individual particle can leap into existence or cease to exist for no apparent reason but the net aggregate (the system) remains stable in conformity to its own properties, until it hits a break boundary when it aquires new properties.

These ideas are not inconsistent.

I'm not arguing for either determinism or indeterminism. I would like an accurate map of possibilty.

posted December 19, 1999 08:26 PM            

The randomness we see at the quantum level is anything but. Uncertainty places limits on our ability to identify the root causes for subatomic phenomena, but one could hardly give a quark the attributes of free will or perversity: they act in certain ways determined by the laws that allow them to exist, and their behavior is based on probabilities--a little looser than your Newtonian types of determinism, but still based on iron rules.

It's my belief that the macro world--what we see and touch--is, as Grant Morrison put it so eloquently, "much simpler than we think". Fractals (which have always existed, we just didn't notice them until recently) are just equations, but it seems they are equations that can begin to describe the courses of rivers, the ramification of trees (branchiness) and the shapes of our own bodies, inside and out. We're beginning to find the force that makes the mighty oaks to grow. I believe that fractals and other emergent forces shape the whole of the physical universe--and since they also determine the structure of our brains, I think they influence our behavior as well. Does it not seem to you all that you keep meeting the same people, who are doing the same things, over and over?

Chaos physics is actually a method of describing the real world as anti-random. Yes, it says you can't predict certain events, but at the same time it suggests there are strange attractors at work behind the scenes. After the fact you can look at the seemingly random occurence of a given series of events and if you look closely enough you begin to see a shape forming on the graph--a pattern emerging from the chaos. The Lorenz Butterfly and the "dust" pattern of telephone line noise are the classic examples of this.