Free agent cannot be created

By us I mean agent who are in charge of controlling a human body. And yes, we as agents are eternal. We however need to show that something which cannot be created cannot be destructed. It then follows that we are eternal. I will open a new thread on the second topic shortly.

No. Knowledge is not encrypted in DNA. That’s maybe a nice caption on some nice notepaper. Information is encrypted, if you will, in DNA. That does mean that the organism that the DNA is in has the information. Information is an event.

That’s hurtful. Just sayin’.

As soon as i figure out what it means, I’m stealing that line.

You’re correct in that causation is always and only about God. Regular people live life the way Nietzsche described it. Unfortunately, once people realize this, they usually try to live in a way that’s impossible for them. Everything lies along a spectrum. Some things are more caused than others. There should be nothing strange about this notion. Only when you overthink it does it become strange at all.

Faust, never accuse someone that overthinking things is bad, it’s a great way to make enemies.

I think this whole argument hinges on whether so can be made free agents. The first step would be cyborgs, and then self autonomous free agents.

Cause means a number things, including final cause and first mover. Final cause means that human life has a better and worse way to play out, just as a seed might produce brilliant pink magnolia blossoms, or be blown away into the sea. Causation in the sense Hume discredited is the conditioned response sort of causality. He said we might just be used to a “this, then that” situation. “No glue” is the catchphrase, between the first this, then that. For Aristotle that was a relatively unimportant issue, a sub answer to one of the main answer to the question “why?”, instrumental cause, a things pushes another thing, directed by an agent with knowledge. So, the issue is an accurate description of experience, and how experience differs from simple sensing. Such a distinction has never been adequately made.

How do you understand Nietzsche’s “description”?

Don’t humans vigorously challenge each other with words instinctualy and ordinarily? We call this life in a city. Ergo, the necessity to think has a basis in human life at the lowest level. Humans aren’t turnips or dirt clods, for those things such problems don’t arise. Thinking through such things has led to technology, and technology has become a requirement for life in the contest for mere survival against the other human groups. Modern physics, mathematical physics, has its basis in the move from causal thinking to thinking in terms of mathematical function (which allows for suspending the question in favor of the “working hypothesis” and the mere “it works” or it don’t. Ergo, the flight from science into mere technology.)

Is the question, rather, if it can be proved, to students of reason, that they can be made? If they existed, they might be so powerful that they would despise the need to prove their free agency. Or, is that our own situation?

I think Aristotle was a bit ify here too, on the issue of the psuke or form of the human being (or, its highest part) and its destructibility. The medieval thinkers tried to uncrumple this difficult mountain gorge for many centuries.

For those not as sharp as guide on this, autocorrect turned “ai” (artificial intelligence) into the word “so”.

To answer guide, hypothetically, being a “meathead” rather than pure spirit, could actually be a form of ai!

Well. I can buy that that is information that is encrypted in DNA. This information however is structured otherwise a thing like tree can never give rise from a seed. Can we agree up to here. That is basically premises (1) and (2). What is the your next challenge?

Structure does not imply intelligence. Humans like the Intelligent Design argument because we design things. And we have intelligence. God supposedly looks like a human, and even was one, once.

Because we designed him.

Any caused thing is structured? So the “unstructured” things are not caused? What does “structured” even mean if everything is structured? Who is “one?” Free from what, exactly, by the way. What is it we’re supposed to be so free from?

All this epistemology is essentially religious. There’s very little thinking to do in Christianity, anymore. That ship has sailed.

So, is this about AI?

That’s what I was thinking he or she was doing. Something like

since we must control the product through how we design it, it will be only following our designs and hence cannot be free.

Of course we might create learning systems and I am pretty sure most AI work now is in doing that. Though one could argue that still there will be embedded meta heuristics and still the things will not be free.

Then one might ask: do you consider us free?

If not, well, no real surprise that we can’t make free agents, except perhaps by accident (were it possible).

But then if the answer is ‘yes, we are free agents’, Then how did evolution manage to create us. Or even a deity.

All of which circling around free will and determinsm.

I think a definition of ‘free’ is in order from the OP.

We’re free from some things and not from others. Some individuals are more free or less free, from more or fewer constraints. Once you try to make all-encompassing, absolute statements, you’re no longer describing life as we live it - you’re talking about shadows on the wall of a cave. You’re talking metaphysics. People have been trying, forever, to justify religion on rationalist grounds. Trying to sneak it in.

Be a man, I say, and admit what you’re doing from the start. Although, for all i know, the OP is just trying to allay our fears that the robots we create will eat us, some day. I await clarification on that point.

Yes. This is the result of first and second premise.

True.

It means that a thing is made of other things. Things are however are connected in a specific manner.

What do you mean?

Free from determinism. A free agent can freely choose between two available options.

It is about us who could not be created. It is also about our inability to build free AI.

Yes. Even a learning system cannot be free.

Yes.

We as a agent were not created or evolved. Our body could be created or evolved.

Free from determinism. Our past experiences together with a situation build a mental state which we call it realization of options. We might be interested in one option more than another one due to our past experiences. This is a bias which obviously deterministic. A free agent can disregard this bias and choose option s/he wants.

You are talking about freedom of action in here. Freedom of action simply is about availability of an act. We are very aware of freedom of action through experience. As you said some people are more free than others due to social or economical advantages. Here we are talking about free will though which means that we have freedom of action, we are aware of available options, but we might be biased to choose one option more than other, yet we can freely choose an option disregarding the bias.

Robot cannot eat us because we cannot make them free.

Ah, someone else who isn’t demonstrably insane.

And would not a combination of our past experiences and our nature determine what we want?

Our past experiences and our nature is the bias.

bahman, a robot could eat you. Or me. Freedom got nothing to do with it.

“free from determinism” makes no literal sense. The idea of free will vs. determinism makes no real sense. It’s just one of those things that philosophers get all fucked about. It’s allowed when we try to parse the world into exactly two flavors, which, for dramatic effect, are fiercely opposed to each other. Paired opposites are like crack to a rationalist. No one really believes in determinism. No one feels life that way, save perhaps for dreamy schoolgirls who cast cards.

Jus sayin’. Hope the thread goes well.

True, if you program it to do so.

Thanks for you wishes.