Before Alan Turing made his crucial contributions to the theory of computation, he studied the question of whether quantum mechanics could throw light on the nature of free will. This article investigates the roles of quantum mechanics and computation in free will. Although quantum mechanics implies that events are intrinsically unpredictable, the `pure stochasticity' of quantum mechanics adds only randomness to decision making processes, not freedom.
I disagree with the assertion of the unpredictability of Quantum Mechanics except for the timing of the outcome of individual events. The appearance of what is called randomness does follow predictable patterns therefore we have the science of Quantum Mechanics.
The maths suggests the reality we get from quantum probabilities is random, but there might be some hidden determinism at play – or perhaps the present can influence the past
www.newscientist.com
Is quantum theory really as random as it seems?
The maths suggests the reality we get from quantum probabilities is random, but there might be some hidden determinism at play – or perhaps the present can influence the past
By
Miriam Frankel
25 August 2021
Skizzomat
THE quantum realm of atoms and particles has randomness at its core. At least that’s what the maths of probabilistic quantum wave functions implies. Our knowledge of the quantum world is rather like a die throw – in the air it takes many values at once, before landing on one. Until then, the result is unknowable. Or is it?
Quantum randomness is “just odd”, says
Sabine Hossenfelder, a theorist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany, contradicting our intuitive understanding of
cause and effect. Unlike most of her peers, she’s not convinced the quantum world is an incorrigible gambler. “I don’t think one should give up trying to find an explanation,” she says.
She favours an idea known as
superdeterminism, that what we ultimately see on measuring a quantum object is somehow predetermined by factors we can’t observe. The idea has been around for a while, but has remained pretty unloved, partly because it seems to undermine the notion of scientific experiment: if undetectable initial conditions somehow predetermine outcomes so that experimenters cannot use their free will, how can we trust science? Many also argue that superdeterminism is “fine-tuned” to an absurd extent: to make any sense of the data we collect in the physical world, we need to know about the initial conditions from which the world arose.
By contrast, the theory of computation implies that even when our decisions arise from a completely deterministic decision-making process, the outcomes of that process can be intrinsically unpredictable, even to -- especially to -- ourselves. I argue that this intrinsic computational unpredictability of the decision making process is what give rise to our impression that we possess free will. Finally, I propose a `Turing test' for free will: a decision maker who passes this test will tend to believe that he, she, or it possesses free will, whether the world is deterministic or not.
Even though, true randomness does not exist in nature even in Quantum Mechanics, it does not detract from the possible contribution of the Turing Test. I do believe it is an over statement of the assertion that the Turing Test determines Free Will does not entirely exist though any consideration of Libertarian Free Will is impossible,
