Vsauce Got This WRONG

[00:00:00]Am I a determinist? Yeah, I guess so.

[00:00:11]>> Uh how do you respond to the case of um if we have two options in which the subject can choose but they have equal priors in the sense of like um there's equal like causal power in which they would choose like how would you determine which they would choose?

[00:00:28]What?

[00:00:30]>> If there's equal causal power in choosing option A versus option B, how do you know which one they would choose?

[00:00:37]>> I have no clue what you're trying to ask. Equal causal power in choosing two options. What the hell does that mean?

[00:00:46]>> Yeah. Like let's say if I wanted to choose a banana or an apple, like under determinism, you'd say, well, because there's prior causes um and reasonings why a subject would choose the apple over the banana, they would obviously choose the apple. Um but in this case, right, we're saying there's equal causal power in the sense of well there's good reasoning to choose both equally. But if that's the case, then it seems under determinism, we get a paralysis where they don't they it's they're unable to choose either. But >> because of what you seem to be describing, yeah, then the choice can be completely random. Now, I don't know if you think that randomness and determinism are incompatible, but they are.

[00:01:33]>> They're 100% compatible.

[00:01:35]>> Can you justify that?

[00:01:37]>> Yeah, there are there are things we know that are deterministic that have absolutely zero. Uh it's not that they don't have any antecedent causes although I think you could probably make the case that uh radioactive decay does follow that trajectory but there are other completely deterministic mechanisms that are uh incalculable. In other words, if you knew everything about all the prior conditions, you still can't predict uh future outcomes. So, for example, Conway's Game of Life is one of these things. Have you ever heard of it before?

[00:02:17]>> Yeah, I've played it a few times, so I don't know.

[00:02:20]>> So, you can't with the initial conditions, you can't know what's going to happen in the future unless you've already seen that iteration run through.

[00:02:29]So it is it is absolutely uh it it just it can't be calculated ahead of time but it always behaves in exactly the same way every time you run the sequence. So it's it's completely deterministic.

[00:02:48]>> What's the last part you said? Sorry.

[00:02:51]uh you cannot calculate what the conditions will be in the future, but it's still completely deterministic.

[00:03:00]>> So you'd say like the subjects would just randomly choose either A or B.

[00:03:05]>> I mean in this case, yeah. Um now I don't know if I mean maybe I'm saying random just because like you kind of gave a logical argument like it it's literally 50/50. So, we can't we can't uh even give a probabilistic case for why one will No way. I haven't talked to P star in years. This guy's a computer scientist, so he knows this kind of stuff extremely well.

[00:03:32]>> I I I want to actually get into what you were saying, but I don't know the whole context, so I'll be quiet for a second, but I did just want to point out I I have a quibble with your explanation of what you were trying to get at. Is that all right?

[00:03:45]>> I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Peter.

[00:03:47]Sorry. Um I uh my quibble is when you said it can't be calculated, it can be but as far as we know the only way to do it would be to run the game of life calculation.

[00:04:01]>> Like by definition running the calculation is itself computing the deterministic predictor. And because it's deterministic, if you were to simulate the initial state and then calculate it, it would get the same result.

[00:04:16]Yes. I what I said earlier was unless you've seen it run its course before then you can but I don't know how that works into like calculating it. You can know what it will do.

[00:04:29]>> What what I mean is like you don't have to have seen it before. If you handed me an initial state for Conway's game of life that I have never that neither of us have ever seen or I've never seen the end state and then you tell me P star what's going to be the end state after 10 trillion iterations I could go and program the rules into a computer let it go for 10 trillion iterations come back to you an answer and it would be the correct answer even though I never seen it before.

[00:05:03]I mean, but how is that not just peeking at the answer and then telling you what the answer is?

[00:05:09]>> What you said is it can't be computed, but it can be or you can't know it.

[00:05:13]>> You can you would just have to go simulate it. You'd have to go simulate the the computation yourself, but you could discover the answer like with a computation.

[00:05:23]>> I think what I said is it can't be calculated ahead of time.

[00:05:28]I guess maybe this is just the quibble that I have because to me doing the computation is the calculation. If what you meant is it can't be calculated other than by doing the calculation I guess I agree but that seems >> that's what I meant. Yeah.

[00:05:42]>> But that I mean I would agree with that but it's a weird thing to say.

[00:05:48]>> I mean it makes perfect sense to me but I'm I'm a guy that can only do algebra.

[00:05:54]So >> I would agree. I would agree I would agree with the with the revised statement that it can be calculated >> by doing like by doing the calculation and we don't know of any other way it could be calculated other than by doing the calculation.

[00:06:10]>> I agree with that.

[00:06:11]>> That's fine. Okay, I'll have to let you go. You have a lot of background noise, >> but thanks for coming up.

[00:06:19]>> Me up.

[00:06:20]Anyways, sorry Apostle, but um I value his opinion. So, are you still there?

[00:06:28]>> I like his explanation. Um >> yeah, >> so that was that was that was nice to listen to. But I think um I would actually like to hear your response on how like Birdian specifically cuz the reductio I gave was um specifically from uh Birdian. So the way he presents it is like >> never heard of whatever you're saying.

[00:06:47]>> Yeah, sorry. It it's a it's a reductio to uh it's like reductio paralysis for um for determinism. So like how Bian puts it is like we have a donkey and this donkey is equally starving and equally thirsty. Um, and then we'd have to ask like, well, um, if it's equally thirsty. Oh, by the way, there's like some guy who's like posting like pictures of, you know, >> uh, yeah, but on my end, I have the chat box extended. So, like the uh, it doesn't actually form that image. So, on my end, it doesn't actually come through. So, you guys are just wasting your time with that. They've done it before. So, >> okay. Yeah. So like he like the issue seems to be that well if they're equally thirsty and equally um like hungry then whether to choose water or hay seems to be um like they seem to be in an paralysis because it has like equal causal power from the priors. So I mean >> does paralysis mean that they can't choose or that we can't know what they'll choose?

[00:07:49]>> No it's like it's seemingly that they can't choose because they have equal prior see they're in like a state of paralysis.

[00:07:58]Well, uh, I mean, okay, but that just that that assumes that assumes that the only way an agent can make an action if it is if that agent is 100% internally driven.

[00:08:14]Well, that's just incredibly obviously false. Um, it's just Yeah. And my my problem with my problem with uh logical paradoxes or whatever like that is that uh the real world doesn't work like any of them. I actually don't think I don't actually think very many of them are even interesting. So like for example, I've been wanting to talk about this but I haven't had an opportunity to and it's a little bit of a subject change but not really. Have you ever heard of a super task?

[00:08:49]I've heard of the term, but I have no idea what it is.

[00:08:52]>> So, it's a it's a way of logically explaining how infinities lead to uh absurdities. So, you've heard of the grim reaper paradox before, right?

[00:09:05]>> I'm not steeped into uh philosophy and mathematics, so Oh, yeah. Sorry. So, the the grim reaper paradox is um there's a grim reaper that's going to kill you, but there's another grim reaper and and the grim reaper is going to kill you in one minute, but there's another grim reaper that's going to kill you uh he gets to you in half the time the first one gets to you. But then there's another grim reaper that gets to you half the time before that one does. So, he kills you in 15 seconds from now. But then there's another grim reaper that kills you 7 and a half seconds from now.

[00:09:39]And it goes on until infinity. So you're already dead before anything has before we can even ask the question. So it's like, oh, infinity, there can't be real infinities, at least as paradox. So that example is a little clunky. The the one I like better are the super tasks, which work kind of in the same way. So let's imagine we have a light bulb uh and the light bulb uh is off. In 30 seconds it turns on. In 15 seconds it turns back off. In 7 and 1/2 seconds it turns back on. And then so on and so forth, right? Um so after 1 minute is the light bulb on or off?

[00:10:20]So logically, mathematically, this is an unanswerable question because there's no limit to the number of divisions. Uh 1 minute of time does indeed pass, but we can't know if the light bulb is on or off logically, mathematically. Does that make sense? At least so far.

[00:10:42]>> Yeah.

[00:10:43]>> Okay. Here's why this is stupid. because the real world is governed by real limitations like uh plunk time and plunk lengths or whatever. So it is actually knowable because the the information can only go through whatever this apparatus is uh at the speed of light. So eventually whatever the distance that that the circuit needs to complete divided by the speed of light through it's going to be slightly less than the speed of light cuz it's traveling through material divided by whatever that is. Once you do the divi once you hit divided by two on your calculator enough times that you get to that number that's the actual answer. So these questions do have real an in do have answers in the real world.

[00:11:32]The real world is not an ideal mathematical construction. And I I don't know um I don't know why I've heard super tasks and stuff be discussed quite a number of times. I don't know why nobody ever brings up that the real world doesn't work that that way. Um, so yeah, I don't really have anything else to say about it, I guess, but there we go.

[00:12:00]>> That's cool. I think Well, I mean, like I think like people respond like that where it's just like, well, it wouldn't act like this in the real world. Often say like, well, the donkey often wouldn't have like a 50/50. Like often times it's either um more inclined to have hay or more inclined to have water.

[00:12:18]Um, and like if we were to like have this kind of situation, it might be even be like physically impossible for them to have a true 50/50 where they're equally thirsty and equally hungry or something like, "Oh, well, they prefer them equally instead of like preferring them based on like an internal biological bias or something."

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