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It involves symbolic manipulation, but it’s more than that. Math is the science of method. Science requires reason.

If one were to say computers do math, they would be saying computers reason. Reason requires free will. Only man can reason; machines cannot reason. (For a full explanation of the relationship between free will and reason, see the book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology).

Man does math, then creates a machine as a tool to manipulate symbols.




You make some interesting points. There was a time I was intrigued by Objectivism but ultimately it fell flat for me. I sort of had similar ideas before encountering it in the literature, but these days I'm mostly captivated by what I learned from "Sapiens" to be known as inter-subjective reality, which I also mostly arrived at through my own questioning of Objectivism. I'm not sure we can conceive of any objective reality completely divorced from our own perceptive abilities.

> Reason requires free will

isn't it still kind of an open question whether humans have free will, or what free will even is? How can we be sure our own brains are not simply very complex (hah, sorry, oxymoron) machines that don't "reason" so much as react to or interpret series of inputs, and transform, associate and store information?

I find the answer to this question often moves into metaphysical, mystical or straight up religious territory. I'm interested to know some more philosophical approaches to this.


Your comment reminds me of the first line from Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR): “Philosophy is not a bauble of the intellect, but a power from which no man can abstain.” There are many intellectual exercises that feel interesting, but do they provide you with the means—the conceptual tools—to live the best life?

If objective reality doesn’t exist, we can’t even have this conversation. How can you reason—that is, use logic—in relation to the non-objective? That would be a contradiction. Sense perception is our means of grasping (not just barely scratching or touching) reality (that which exists). If a man does not accept objective reality, then further discussion is impossible and improper.

Any system which rejects objective reality cannot be the foundation of a good life. It leaves man subject to the whim of an unknown and unknowable world.

For a full validation of free will, I would refer you to Chapter 2 of OPAR. That man has free will is knowable through direct experience. Science has nothing to say about whether you have free will—free will is a priori required for science to be a valid concept. If you don’t have free will, again this entire conversation is moot. What would it mean to make an argument or convince someone? If I give you evidence and reason, I am relying on your faculty of free will to consider my argument and judge it—that is, to decide about it. You might decide on it, you might decide to drift and not consider it, you might even decide to shut your mind to it on purpose. But you do decide.


Last idea, stated up front: sorry for the wall of text that follows!

It's not that I reject the idea of objective reality–far from it. However I do not accept that we can 1) perfectly understand it as individuals, and 2) perfectly communicate any understanding, perfect or otherwise, to other individuals. Intersubjectivity is a dynamical system with an ever-shifting set of equilibria, but it's the only place we can talk about objective reality–we're forever confined to it. I see objective reality as the precursor to subjective reality: matter must exist in order to be arranged into brains that may have differences of opinion, but matter itself cannot form opinions or conjectures.

I'll assume that book or other studies of objectivity lay out the case for some of the statements you make, but as far as I can tell, you are arguing for objectivity from purely subjective stances: "good life", "improper discussion"... and you're relying on the subjective judgement of others regarding your points on objectivity. Of course, I'm working from the assumption that the products of our minds exist purely in the subjective realm... if we were all objective, why would so much disagreement exist? Is it really just terminological? I'm not sure. Maybe.

Some other statements strike me as non-sequiturs or circular reasoning, like "That man has free will is knowable through direct experience". Is this basically "I think, therefore I am?" But how do you know what you think is _what you think_? How do you know those ideas were not implanted via others' thoughts/advertisements/etc, via e.g. cryptomnesia? Or are we really in a simulation? Then it becomes something like "I think what others thought, therefore I am them," which, translated back to your wording, sounds to me something like "that man has a free will modulo others' free will, is knowable through shared experience." What is free will then?

"free will is a priori required for science to be a valid concept" sounds like affirming the consequent, because as far as we know, the best way to "prove" to each other that free will exists is via scientific methods. Following your quote in my previous paragraph, it sounds like you're saying "science validates free will validates science [validates free will... ad infinitum]." "A implies B implies A", which, unless I'm falling prey to a syllogistic fallacy, reduces to "A implies A," (or "B implies B") which sounds tautological, or at least not convincing (to me).

I apologize if my responses are rife with mistakes or misinterpretations of your statements or logical laws, and I'm happy to have them pointed out to me. I think philosophical understanding of reality is a hard problem that I don't think humanity has solved, and again I question whether it's solvable/decidable. I think reality is like the real number line, we can keep splitting atoms and things we find inside them forever and never arrive at a truly basic unit: we'll never get to zero by subdividing unity, and even if we could, we'd have zero–nothing, nada, nihil. I am skeptical of people who think they have it all figured out. Even then, it all comes back to "if a tree falls..." What difference does it make if you know the truth, if nobody will listen? Maybe the truth has been discovered over and over again, but... we are mortal, we die, and eventually, so do even the memories of us or our ideas. But, I don't think people have ever figured it all out, except for maybe the Socratic notion that after much learning, you might know one thing: that you know nothing.

Maybe humanity is doing something as described in God's Debris by Scott Adams: assembling itself into a higher order being, where instead of individual free will or knowledge, there is a shared version? That again sounds like intersubjectivity. All our argumentation is maybe just that being's self doubt, and we'll gain more confidence as time goes on, or it'll experience an epiphany. I still don't think it could arrive at a "true" "truth", but at least it could think [it's "correct"], and therefore be ["correct"]. Insofar as it'll be stuck in a local minimum of doubt with nobody left to provide an annealing stimulus.

I will definitely check out that book though, thanks for the recommendation and for your thoughts. I did not expect this conversation going into a post about Git, ha. In the very very end (I promise we're almost at the end of this post) I love learning more while I'm here!


One problem is that, at least for certain actions, you can measure that motor neurons fire (somewhere in the order of 100ms) before the part of your brain that thinks it makes executive decisions.

At least for certain actions and situations, the "direct experience" of free will is measurably incorrect.

Doesn't mean free will doesn't exist (or myabe it does), but it's been established that that feeling of "I'm willing these actions to happen" often times happens well after the action has been set into motion already.


Starting at 1:12:35 in this video, there is a discussion of those experiments with an academic neuroscientist. He explains why he believes they do not disprove free will.

https://youtu.be/X6VtwHpZ1BM


Oh, thank you for this :) Because I won't deny, a friend originally came to me with this theory and it has been bugging me :)


There is a lot here. For now, I will simply assert that morality, which means that which helps or harms man’s survival, is objective and knowable.

I’ve enjoyed this discussion. It has been civil beyond what I normally expect from HN. From our limited interaction, I believe you are grappling with these subjects in earnest.

This is a difficult forum to have an extended discussion. If you like, reach out (email is in my profile) and we can discuss the issues further. I’m not a philosopher or expert, but I’d be happy to share what I know and I enjoy the challenge because it helps clarify my own thinking.


Yeah, I expect we're nearing the reply depth limit. Thanks for the thought provoking discussion! Sent you an email. My email should be in my profile, too, if anyone wants to use that method.




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