Trooper Dan, on 10 June 2014 - 09:39 AM, said:
I read your replies but I think my points still stand. I wish I had more time to try and explain, but unfortunately I don't. Instead, I'll try and different angle and then maybe you will see the problem. By your own admission, your parable is variation on the "butterfly effect" hypothesis.
Right.
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But notice that the butterfly effect applies just as much to inanimate objects. Variations on your parable could be repeated using pebbles, furniture, cans of beans, or used condoms. And then it would invite us to conclude that any object in the universe must be "respected".
Wrong. See how I specifically mention autonomous beings and illustrate the insignificance of a brain in a jar? Excluding external influence, which can only be A. caused by entropy or physical events (the weather blowing away a rock, the earth causing an earthquake knocking over furniture, the sun swallowing the earth with all the bean cans and rocks, etc. after it dies in 5 billion years, or B. Caused by an autonomous being (A human picking up a used condom and using it as bubble gum or a dog biting into a can of beans) the inanimate object may have influence on the world, but if the external influence on the object itself is just part of entropy or its physical properties the object itself falls into the standard entropy or physics model and becomes part of the entropy or physics, but (this is what I was hypothesizing) if an autonomous being is the influence, what happens to the inanimate object cannot be explained by standard entropy models (=free will is influencing it. If that exists, which I am guessing/hypothesizing does.).
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But of course, just as any object could potentially have a positive effect, any object could also potentially have a negative effect -- so the butterfly effect cancels itself out. We have no more reason to believe that interacting with some random object will have a large unexpected positive outcome than a negative one, and so the butterfly effect gives us no reason to change our behavior one way or another, towards any object, be it living or not.
You would be correct if you did not leave out the cause of the interaction. Quantum mechanics predict what protons and electrons will do, molecular physics what groups of atoms will do, cellular biology what cells will do, weather analytics what the weather will do (suppose we could simulate every single elementary particle on earth and model the entire planet on a super computer, we would know with 100% certainty what the weather would be in 3000 AD if we exclude every autonomous thing on the plant as if only plant life evolved.). But what an autonomous being is going to do (scaling the cellular example previously mentioned to a group of cells making up an autonomous being), is unpredictable. We could model an ant hill and know the ants wouldn't spread out more than 100 yards from the hill using a simulation consisting of the same virtual ant, but in real life one ant could have a neurological disorder causing it to be born without the ability to sense the path other ants take and wander off several miles. Or it could just be born with a nonchalant personality, and simply not care what the other ants are doing and go "screw this, I'm out of here". A can of beans is always a can of beans, influencing its environment only when there is an external influence and even the physics engines of the day can predict what a can of beans will do... Sit there unless the player decides to kick it around in any random direction. But to predict what an autonomous being will do is much harder. In the previous example I left out the gold: We could mathematically be able to simulate the weather in a super computer from t=0 to t=Omega for the planet only simulating plant life. But once we add animals and humans in the mix (=autonomous beings), causing methane exhaust, pollution, etc. we see the weather change (global warming) which a standard simulation cannot predict (if the Kyoto agreement was accepted by decision makers more universally, the weather would be different today than when they decided to not do so)) If you are an advocate of the "Deterministic Universe" theorem you basically say "Free will does not exist, everything can be calculated an predicted given enough resources". If you believe in the "Undeterministic Universe" theorem, you say "We can predict only the inanimate, but not autonomous behavior and free will". I'm one of the last advocates. Also, if you are religious, you cannot believe in divine intervention and a deterministic universe at the same time, as that would turn it into an undeterministic universe on the spot.