Comments by "Lepi Doptera" (@lepidoptera9337) on "You don't have free will, but don't worry." video.

Exactly. That's a good example for a free will algorithm that can not have a predetermined outcome that depends on our mind. Unless someone is a solipsist, of course. In that case the coin is just a figment of our imagination and it shows whatever side we have (unconsciously) chosen, already. Now we are in the deep end of human psyche, though.
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That free will as defined by philosophers is rubbish follows trivially from the definition. It's simply not consistent with reality. Free will requires that if you are being given the same choice multiple times then you can change it up. That's simply not possible because we can't replicate you and the environment perfectly, so neither "you" nor "the choice" are exactly the same every time we try to repeat such an experiment. Let's say I offer you the choice between chocolate and vanilla ice cream. The first time you don't know how either will taste, so you try either one of them. The second time you will be curious about the other, so your choice is already not free. Then you will develop a preference for one of the flavors and in the future you will be more likely to chose the one you like better over the other. Your choices are therefor never free. In the first iteration they are random, at best, since you lack criteria. In the second one it's more or less determined that you should switch and in all following ones it becomes memory dependent.
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Materialism in science died around 1900, with the discovery of quantum mechanics and special relativity. Some physicists didn't get the message, it seems, but I would argue that the overwhelming majority of us might agree to that observation if we are being pointed to it with well crafted arguments. Not sure Sabine is in that camp. Most physicists don't care. It's just not important to our daily work.
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To improve survival of the individual and therefor the species.
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@DylanSmith-vj7qo That means the universe is a novel and we are just characters in it. Welcome to hell, if you believe in such a thing.
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I don't agree with most of the things philosophers are saying, but Sabine's stance is neither representative for physicists in general nor does it agree with natural observations. Indeed, one of the prerequisites of doing science at all is that we can relatively freely choose what to observe, when, where and with what tools and techniques. We need the freedom to compare and discuss such observations amongst ourselves and we need the ability to change our minds if we encounter better arguments or data than our own. Take any of that away and science can't function.
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The universe is deterministic, it just choses not to tell you what it will do. :-)
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@scarlace Humor mostly is. :-)
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Physics hasn't been materialist and deterministic since the 1920s, latest. You basically missed a whole century of science. Please try to catch up. You sound like your great-grandpa. ;-)
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Science doesn't say anything about free will. Science made false statements about determinism in the 18th and 19th centuries. It corrected those statements in the early 20th century.
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I would argue that evolution proves that even insects and other "primitive" lifeforms (insects are actually highly evolved) can change make choices based on their environment. If they couldn't, then evolution would be left without direction because an individuum that has better adapted behavior would not have a higher probability of survival.
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The problem is that there are no "possible futures". Nature doesn't offer them on a menu that we can pick from. The future is, however, not determined, i.e. it is not cast in stone since the beginning of the universe. The philosophical approach with free will/determinism simply doesn't describe the actual facts well, starting with the fact that there are regions of spacetime that are simply beyond our control and other regions that can't control us. The past-present-future slicing of the universe is a false mental model that is a leftover from Newtonian physics. What you are experiencing should be called something other than "free will". Let's call it "agency". You can subjectively and objectively change your environment, to the better or the worse. That is part of the human experience and it is not contradicted by anything in modern science.
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So what happened to you in school? It must have been a horrible experience. ;-)
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Because in practice we all behave like as if we had free will. The arguments against free will from determinism are simply based on a false assumption, namely that the universe is deterministic. It isn't.
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@todd4956 The consequences are marginal, really. At most you will run around with a slightly strained mental model, the math stays the same. It is, of course, much easier to explain the universe in terms of property changes than in terms of material constituents, but to e.g. a solid state physicist the difference is esoteric, at best.
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@todd4956 The frequent repetitions of the word metaphysics without any substantial content tells me only one thing: a metaphysicist is begging a real physicist for attention. :-) I did look at the book you suggested. It's utter drivel. There is nothing useful in it. Why you would think that the most successful of all sciences needs such bullshit to function when it can do just fine without it is beyond me. It indicates, at most, the ideations of a narcissist. ;-)
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Yep, that's called "god mode" and it doesn't exist in nature. Nobody who takes empirical observations of nature seriously will argue that nature offers anything even remotely similar to "god mode".
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I can easily make an experiment in which I can't be manipulated, not even by myself. I throw dice. Even I go left, odd I go right. My "decisions" have nothing to do with my actions, but I have still subjected myself to the decision of the dice out of free will. A more practical example are algorithms. We let a computer make a decision for us based on some data that we may not even be aware of or that we chose not to look at ourselves.
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@Ma_X64 You don't have free will. All you have is agency. That's not the same. If the dice had "free will", then they could show 3.14159... on occasion instead of 3 or 4. That can't happen. They do have agency, though, which means that their outcome correlates with some particular future (the 1-future, 2-future... 6-future). In classical determinism this future depends entirely on the past, which makes the present asymmetric. In quantum mechanics, however, the present is symmetric. It depends just as much on the past as it depends on the future, i.e. no amount of navel-gazing about what came before us can tell us what will come after us. What causes this symmetry? Relativity. The energy that leaves "the present" on the forward lightcone moves at the speed of light, i.e. it can not be "caught" by any local physical mechanism. It disappears into the deep future in just the same way as some of the energy that drove the present came from the deep past. So while there is correlation (entanglement) between the past and the present, there is also correlation (entanglement) between the present and the future. That's why what we do here and now has consequences that are not just a function of the past alone.
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Please note that she keeps making these clickbait videos out of free will, just like Dr. Becky makes much higher quality science content by her own choice.
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@EldritchEntityWithASmartphone What is? That Dr. Becky is the much better science communicator? I bet she is also the much better scientist. ;-)
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@EldritchEntityWithASmartphone Yes, because she is not a troll and she talks about real science. Science is boring to those who are not in love with it. Sabine is only in love with herself. That's why she appeals to people with the same affliction. If you are the center of your life, then science can never be more than a peripheral event.
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