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And in what way, exactly, is a program which computes any given digit of pi in finite time not "complete knowledge of its numerical expansion"? What do you think "complete knowledge" means? Having pi written out on paper? So I can't know a number until I've written it down? I know that my cousin...

Of course it is for a specified event. We're talking about how quantum uncertainty could seep in to influence cognition somehow. I am saying that with your made up figure, such a specific event is catastrophically unlikely to have happened in the past or to ever happen in the history of...

There are 10^27 atoms in the human body. Let's say each of these atoms is emitting a quantum event every Planck time (5.39*10^-44 seconds) and that each of these events can trigger the change that we are talking about with probability 10^-167. Let's also assume that an average human lives 100...

But the small changes cannot be used to "steer" the system, the point of chaotic systems is that the effect of small changes is intractable, so you can hardly use it to your advantage. Also, a chaotic system, despite reacting to small changes, still reacts much more (or, anyway, at least as...

I would say that Wikipedia does a fair job of covering the various arguments for/against each theory and how the proponents of the theory respond to them. The references are useful too. Besides that, I enjoy the articles over at SEP: Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Stanford...

First, there does not seem to be any reason you could not encode the position of such a particle exactly using analog "bits" that can vary continuously between 0 and 1. Second, there is no reason to think that continuous positions actually carry infinite information. For example, the number pi...

There is absolutely nothing about quantum mechanics that is inherently nondeterministic. Quantum mechanics are provedly nonlocal, which as far as I can tell has eventually been twisted to mean something akin to nondeterminism in mainstream interpretations. But the fact is that there exists no...

I can: I ate it (argument from gluttony).

I challenge your ability to define "spiritual energy" meaningfully. At least there are pictures on the internet to help me imagine a flying spaghetti monster. But spiritual energy? What's that?

Why is that such a big deal anyway? That is not necessarily true. You are saying that if X knows Y well enough, then X can control Y's choices. But what if Y knows enough about X, couldn't he control X? The fact is that there's a sort of equilibrium going on there and that neither X nor Y...

Unless we are our genetic make up, in which case we do, at least in part. Any sensible definition of "self" has to include in a way or another some of the factors, such as the brain or genetic makeup, that make up our decisions. If it doesn't, you're working with a "self" that's basically empty...

We're certainly better at making things than we were a hundred years ago. Give us some time :) You lack imagination. The problem is that this is how operating systems work now. Our software, right now, is designed by humans, because computers are a new thing and we're using it to lever...

Well, I can see two other ways, maybe more if I thought harder. The first way is to conflate your choice with God's knowledge, making it so everyone is a part of God. That would lead to a form of pantheism. The second is to realize that knowledge is equivalent to guesswork for one particular...

Well, I think I know my stuff. The way we make intelligent machines is getting closer and closer to the way nature made intelligent organisms, and this means we now have techniques that solve problems without any need for an intelligent programmer. Eventually, there will come a point where...

Actually, it doesn't. Let's say I want to make a robot who can speak in english. One way to do it would be to give my robot a completely random program and ask him to speak to me. If what he says is intelligible english, I keep the program. If not, I erase the program and replace it by a new...

Tiphereth: how would you respond to the following arguments? God as an infinite improbability drive Let's say person X can choose to do A, B or C, all three sensible options. If, before X can choose, I speak up and say X will choose to do A, I have one chance out of three to be right. If I am...

Okay. What if I knew what you were going to choose. What if I could look at anyone in the world and know with absolute certainty all of their future choices. Could this happen if they had free will? I think it's easier to discuss this if we get God out of the picture. Also, when people say...

I'm not sure what you mean by programming. To me at least, it is very clear that it is impossible for us to manually program an AI of that caliber. That is why we're hard at work at engineering algorithms that automatically create programs that do what we want them to. In a nutshell, we're...

I guess not. In practice, it's not clear what the difference is, though. But even those two "ends" of the spectrum are interchangeable. Any finite use of randomness can be replaced by a finite tape of random data, which makes everything deterministic. On the other hand, any deterministic...

We could assume that our choices "always" existed as well ;) True. Everything can be interpreted to be a combination of randomness and determinism so that is... kinda vague :( They argue that totally random behavior and totally deterministic behavior both lead to a situation where the person...