> At 01:52 PM 1/21/97 -0600, you wrote:
> >On Thu, 16 Jan 1997 jonesr@gatwick.geco-prakla.slb.com wrote:
> >
> >> zaimoni@ksu.edu wrote:
> >>
> >> > > What is an atomic event classed as? Is it something fairly major, or
> is it
> >> > > something as simple as decision making?
> >> >
> >> > It's fairly small-scale. Actually, some interpretations of Quantum
> >> > Mechanics seem to exclude decision-making from the domain of study.
> >>
> >> This is what I was wondering. A lot of Sci-Fi on this subject uses the
> >> idea that everytime a poerson (or any living being, I suppose) makes a
> decision
> >> then a new universe is created (sorry, comes into being) where the
> >> alternatives are played out. I was intrigued by the validity of this
> >> idea. Can, though, the reactions in the brain that cause a decision to
> >> be made, be thought of as atomic events?
> >
> >A subtle point. Your last sentence stops the analysis at the
> >physical/energy implementation of the decision. One divergence between
> >Many-Worlds and Copenhagen is this:
> >
> >Many-Worlds represents the arbitrariness of "free-will" as which
> >time-line one is in.
> >
> >Copenhagen represents the arbitrariness of "free-will" as an "agent" that
> >is explicitly NOT described by any axioms, except that it causes wave
> >function collapses.
> >
> >[my internal reference frame uses "spirit"; I use this when distinguishing
> >between mental and spiritual phenomena.]
> >
> >Once you are looking at the physical implementation of a decision, there
> >is no distinction between the two interpretations.
> >
> >There's some interesting psychophysics in the most recent Scientific
> >American theme issue on Consciousness. "Researcher tries to disbelieve
> >his own experiments, and *fails*."
>
> My understanding of the peer-reviewed literature on this subject (if I
> remember correctly), represents quantum interactions as completely
> predictable through computation, and therefore deterministic. Assuming
> any and all aspects of (our own particular instance of?) existence are
> determined by these interactions, then there is no such thing as "real"
> free will.
That is *not* my understanding of the literature.
What is completely predictable, in principle [to my best knowledge] is a
probabilistic tree. *That's* deterministic. The computation isn't
exactly numerically stable; some work is required.
I clipped your further comments. You do see the relative uselessness of
taking 1 year to emulate a few nanoseconds?
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
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