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The answer should be NO, but, do you think this would work ?
Good scientists are not only able to uncover patterns in the things they study, but to use this information to predict the future. Meteorologists study atmospheric pressure and wind speed to predict the trajectories of future storms. A biologist may predict the growth of a tumor based on its current size and development. A financial analyst may try to predict the ups and downs of a stock based on things like market capitalization or cash flow.
Perhaps even more interesting than the above phenomena is that of predicting the behavior of human beings. Attempts to predict how people will behave have existed since the origins of humankind. Early humans had to trust their instincts. Today, marketers, politicians, trial lawyers and more make their living on predicting human behavior. Predicting human behavior, in all of its forms, is big business. So, how does mathematics do in predicting our own behavior in general? Despite advances in stock market analytics, economics, political polling and cognitive neuroscience – all of which ultimately endeavor to predict human behavior – science may never be able to do so with perfect certainty.
[...] As technology develops, scientists may find that we can predict human behavior rather well in one area, while still lacking in another. It's very difficult to give an overall sense of the limitations. For instance, facial recognition may be easier to emulate because vision is one of many human sensory processing systems, or because there are only so many ways faces can differ. On the other hand, predicting voting behavior, especially based on the 2016 presidential election, is quite another story. There are many complex and not yet understood reasons why humans do what they do.
Still others argue that, theoretically at least, that perfect prediction will someday be possible. Until then, with any luck, mathematics and statistics may help us increasingly account for what people, on average, will do next.
https://theconversation.com/can-math-predict-what-youll-do-next-78892
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @03:43PM (3 children)
Until Hari comes along, how about Marvin Minsky? In "Society of Mind" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind [wikipedia.org] Minsky discusses the tension between free will and determinism. His conclusion, (paraphrased, from memory) at the end of the book is: as time goes on the box containing free will is shrinking and the box for determinism is getting larger.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:06PM (2 children)
Determinism and free will are not contradictory. The question of free will is what determines your decisions: Internal parameters or external parameters? Free will means determination by internal parameters.
Note that the opposite of determinism is not free will, but randomness. If your decisions are completely random, you cannot influence them, and therefore you don't have free will.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:56PM (1 child)
Free will would need to be implemented or emerge using randomness. I don't think a random will shaped by physical constraints will be very different from what we call free will. The only difference is in the interpretation of quantum fluctuations. Random tout court vs. expression of another field subjected to other laws.
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(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:58PM
In other words, non random alias potentially predeterminable free will is no will at all according to my defs.
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