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Recent content by FrumiousBandersnatch

  1. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Is Morphic Resonance Real

    The Harvard Water Maze Experiment has been heavily criticised for poor controls, statistically weak data, being vulnerable to experimenter bias, and unblinded scoring. Somewhat understandable, as many modern control & blinding regimens weren't used at the time. The major difficulty with the...
  2. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Ukraine agrees to demilitarized economic zone in Donbas to advance Trump’s peace plan

    Yes, the FSB (previously KGB) are deeply involved in the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy - in fact, the current head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, worked for the KGB while living in Switzerland in the 1970s. His mission included influencing the World Council of Churches in...
  3. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Help about light and productivity.

    You can buy 'daylight' bulbs and strips that approximate the spectrum of sunlight, if that's what you're after...
  4. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Biden goes back on his word.

    I wonder how much there is to find after James Comer's Oversight Committee just spent more than a year investigating the Bidens with intent to indict - with no result.
  5. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Biden goes back on his word.

    That is just poor lawyering. The case can't be dismissed as the defendant has already been tried and found guilty; it's no longer a Grand Jury indictment or a prosecution, it's a conviction. They can file a motion to have the sentence vacated on some equitable grounds in the interests of...
  6. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Free will and determinism

    I didn't intend it to mean Aristotelian teleology; it's usually associated with things we view as autonomous agents, i.e. that have internal goals. But where you draw the line is an interesting philosophical & semantic question - if it's a 'need', it could apply to all living things; if it's a...
  7. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Free will and determinism

    Ah, OK. When you said, "The autonomous car does not have free will because, with humans, "will" indicates desire", I took that to suggest that desire was necessary for free will. I'm not sure how else to parse it... If a door was selected, then either it was prompted by some preference or it...
  8. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Free will and determinism

    Apologies for the late reply. OK, so there's more to free will than the "possibility of choosing differently between at least 2 options". 'Desires' are necessary too. I would suggest that (in this context) a desire is a felt need for some future outcome and, for actionable outcomes, we could...
  9. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Free will and determinism

    A particular event in spacetime is unique. You can refer to it more than once, but it only occurs once.
  10. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Free will and determinism

    There's no 'may' about it. Similar circumstances can occur again, but not exactly the same circumstances (because, for example, that means occurring at the same point in spacetime). Not for biological organisms.
  11. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Free will and determinism

    I agree, with the caveat that the exact circumstances can only happen once, so it's kind of tautological...
  12. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Free will and determinism

    No, I don't think so - I think everything humans do is the result of prior events (including probabilistic quantum events which are themselves the result of prior events). To say it's determined by prior events is not to say that everything humans do is potentially predictable - because, true...
  13. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Free will and determinism

    I guess it comes down to what is meant by free will. Compatibilists typically define it in terms of an action not being coerced or constrained, i.e. the agent is free from outside interference. This seems like a reasonable view, although it does raise questions of what counts as coercion or...
  14. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Free will and determinism

    Apologies for the delay in replying. I'll try to keep it short. 1. Suppose an autonomous vehicle at a T-junction can either turn left towards a nearby recharge point, or right towards its next passenger pick-up point. It is physically capable of either action. It uses a learning algorithm, with...
  15. FrumiousBandersnatch

    Free will and determinism

    Apologies for not replying earlier, but I've been very busy out in the real world. I'm not sure what more I can add to what I've already said in terms of effective determinism, but to cut a long story short, the universe appears to be stochastic at the quantum level, but over the multiple...
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