The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating
Abstract
Does moral behavior draw on a belief in free will? Two experiments examined whether inducing participants to believe that human behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating. In Experiment 1, participants read either text that encouraged a belief in determinism (i.e., that portrayed behavior as the consequence of environmental and genetic factors) or neutral text. Exposure to the deterministic message increased cheating on a task in which participants could passively allow a flawed computer program to reveal answers to mathematical problems that they had been instructed to solve themselves. Moreover, increased cheating behavior was mediated by decreased belief in free will. In Experiment 2, participants who read deterministic statements cheated by overpaying themselves for performance on a cognitive task; participants who read statements endorsing free will did not. These findings suggest that the debate over free will has societal, as well as scientific and theoretical, implications.
Sure, because you just defined “decision” in such a way that only conscious beings can make them.
Apart from us being conscious of making them, what distinguishes a decision made by a human from that made by a program? Can you articulate that?
For the unbiased, the interesting part of the delayed choice quantum eraser video is at the 8 min mark where one of the entangled photons seems to know in advance where the other will go even though it involves randomness…
Unless of course future events can effect the past…😉
No? What do you support then?
Your arguments seem to rest of some kind of interpretation of quantum mechanics… though contradictory..
Nonlin,
So you claim. Yet you’ve offered no evidence that life involves anything beyond determinism and randomness.
The supposed non-determinism of QM is not established by experiment. It’s a function of the interpretation you use.
Nonlin,
If that were truly the case, you wouldn’t favor “single world” over “many worlds”. Favoring “single world” is exactly what you’re doing when you insist that QM is non-deterministic.
Nonlin,
If you’re right about decisions, then at least one of the following must be oxymoronic:
1. We deterministically lay out the alternatives.
2. We deterministically evaluate the alternatives against a set of criteria.
3. We deterministically compare the alternatives based on those criteria.
4. We deterministically pick the alternative that best satisfies the criteria.
Which one(s), and why specifically?
J-Mac,
Neither of those is necessary to explain the experiment. The MWI handles it without the need for any retrocausality.
That may also be true of interpretations that invoke wave function collapse. I haven’t thought it through for those.
Really? How so?
You probably haven’t because that would be a contradiction of your earlier statement…
J-Mac,
What earlier statement?
keiths:
J-Mac:
Basically, D0’s position when it detects a photon determines the future probability of the corresponding entangled photon’s arrival at D1, D2, D3, or D4.
Watch the video again!
It’s not probability. It “knows”each time the which path…
Nonlin.org,
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/free-will-is-real/
Linking should not be construed as endorsement, but I will say that I think List is a good philosopher. I even nominated him for some APA prize once. In any case, his book is def something that nonlin should cease blathering and read instead of continuing to spout fallacies about free will and pretty much everything else he writes about. Here’s an ally who actually knows what he’s talking about.
J-Mac,
Don’t forget, the pattern at D0 is not an interference pattern, nor is it a clumpy pattern. It’s a combination of both.
The only thing that allows the two to be teased apart is the information from detectors D1, D2, D3 and D4, and that information is available only after the photon reaches one of the detectors and the measurement is made.
walto,
I glanced at a couple of List’s papers. He seems to be arguing that while determinism is true at the physical level of description, it is false at the agent level. The indeterminism at the agent level is what allows for free will, which he takes to be a purely agent-level phenomenon.
He says all this despite believing that the agent level supervenes on the physical.
His position thus ends up being a hybrid of compatibilism and incompatibilism. In summary, he’s a compatibilist with regard to physical-level determinism but not with regard to agent-level determinism. Since he denies agent-level determinism, he thinks that free will, which is an agent-level phenomenon, is real.
I’m skeptical that he can cleanly divorce the agential from the physical to the extent he needs, but I’ll withhold judgment until I’ve taken a closer look at the papers.
Once that happens, I may do an OP on this.
keiths,
I am not sure which papers you are referring to, but this one is the only way where I have seen in make an attempt to defend indeterminism in psychology (section 7 of the paper).
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46931/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_List,%20C_Free%20will_List_Free%20will_2015.pdf
He also has a 2015 addressing the Consequence Argument if you want the full philosophical experience. His book expand on these ideas; I have not read it. There is also a YouTube video and an interview on the book on the Skeptical Salon podcast for those who want more variety in their media.
I think Jenna Ismael’s “How Physics Makes Us Free” is a richer and more interesting attempt. Here is a link to a NDPR review to get an overview of it. I also have a link to recent draft paper of hers and causation which speaks to related issues:
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/how-physics-makes-us-free/
http://www.jenanni.com/papers/Causation-anoverviewofouremergingunderstanding.pdf
Like I said, a program does not decide. It just executes instructions. The word “decide” precedes computers, and rocks do not decide.
No interpretation. Just measurements.
Do quantum particles decide?
Of course I did. It’s the difference between the living and the inert. Anyone can confirm that.
All experiments disprove determinism. NM and QM included. Absolutely no test result is repeatable once you look at the micro level. Everyone knows, but some pretend otherwise.
I also “favor” horses over unicorns. And there’s a very good reason for that.
All that contain “deterministically”. Experimentally, there’s no such thing (when understood as 100% determinism).
Schrödinger equation doesn’t tell you anything about determinism one way of the other just as Newton’s equations do not tell you either. Experimentally, we KNOW that a system driven by the Schrödinger equation is nondeterministic.
Here’s a thought experiment that disproves determinism:
We have a double slit experiment with single photon emissions and the target area separated in 10 different sections labeled 0 to 9. Once a section is hit, it stays on (cannot detect multiple hits) Determine the output sequence? Is it 012…9? Is it 8754219036? What is it? Even if you have “many worlds”, the output is still not determined in either of those worlds.
Determinism is dead. Time to bury the stinking corpse!
Let me ask them… They said “no”… might be lying.
Bruce,
Those are the same two papers I’m reading.
I’ll look for those.
Thanks. I’ve heard of that book. The title gave me the impression that it was about how determinism is essential to free will and how indeterminism undercuts it. Does it actually promote the idea of indeterminism at the agent level?
Thanks for all of that.
Nonlin:
The differences between the living and the inert are apparent. What you haven’t shown is that any of them are due to something beyond determinism and randomness.
keiths:
Nonlin:
Sure it does. Given an initial state, it shows the one (and only one) future evolution of the system. That’s determinism.
No, we don’t. And systems aren’t “driven” by the Schrödinger equation. The SE describes how they evolve.
In the MWI, reality includes all of the possible worlds. Every possible sequence occurs somewhere in reality, which is perfectly deterministic as predicted by the SE.
Determinism replies:
Corneel, to Nonlin:
Nonlin:
Programs routinely evaluate multiple alternatives and select from among them. Self-driving cars are an example of that. Apart from the lack of consciousness, how do the decisions of a self-driving car fail to qualify as actual decisions?
You miss the point: in this particular world you cannot determine. Neither can you determine the outcome in any other world (can’t believe I’m even considering this “many worlds” craziness for which there’s absolutely no basis).
What the heck does this even mean? Pure crazy talk. Cite an experiment if any.
At least you’re not disputing these “apparent” differences. Now it’s your task to demonstrate “apparent”.
Nope. The decision is ALWAYS taken by the person that writes the code. Here’s a random flowchart illustrating: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/sfbserver/media/6a2d15e6-2846-433f-b449-2f511a13c234.png
Exactly a year ago last week IIRC. Again, i don’t see why you should have to be the one to have to publicize this, but i know everybody ought to be grateful for your doing so!
It’s just so obvious, so i guess it must be the fake news media or the Dems that are keeping this under wraps. Maybe the Chinese!
Nonlin:
walto:
Thanks, Obama.
keiths:
Nonlin:
Come on, Nonlin. The programmer doesn’t decide whether to go right or left around that pothole in Modoc, Indiana. The car does.
The programmer tells it how to make the decision, but the decision itself is made by the car. The programmer isn’t there in Modoc. The car is.
keiths:
Nonlin:
Your question indicates that you don’t grasp the MWI. There is no single future for “this world”. All possible sequences will occur. It’s just that at the end of the sequence, the history will be different for different “copies” of you.
Lacking free will, I guess the particles non-determinism must be determined by their nature.
One of the reasons I like her ideas is that I find them challenging and I don’t fully understand them. But as best I can tell, she does not promote indeterminism at agent level . (I don’t like that bit of List either).
Here’s my best current take, based on my partial understanding:
Because she is a Humean about laws, she rejects metaphysical necessity at the global level. Instead, laws are simply regularities we recognize (and sometimes mistakenly reify). The full regularities are only available at the God’s eye view of all of spacetime at once. From such a view, we as agents make “pivotal choices” which are part of the unfolding regularity.
Causality is not part of that unfolding pattern if the pattern is viewed at the Laplacean demon, microstate level since microstate physics (ignoring QM) is time reversible and causation is time asymmetric. Causation requires macrostates and 2LT.
Our choices are causal because causation is best understood using the interventionist account. It is that view of causation that brings in modality through its account of manipulating possibilities in causal models. That local modality explains/metaphysically grounds the patterns we systematize as global laws.
If that sounds vague and hand-wavy, that is an accurate characterization of my understanding of her ideas, not her ideas themselves. I cannot defend them in detail but I would be interested in anyone’s thoughts based on reading her stuff to help me understand the ideas better.
I don’t know how much you want to read, but here is a paper where she explains her ideas on global laws:
http://www.jenanni.com/papers/6AgainstGlobalismAboutLaws1.pdf
By the way, both List and Ismael acknowledge their debt to Dennett, especially his stuff on possibility and causality in the papers with Taylor (at his site) or the related chapter of “Freedom Evolves”. Dennett is, as usual, vague on the metaphysics (at least to me), but, given that limitation, you can see most of List in those papers, excepting the bit about determinism at the psychology level of theorizing. IIRC, List says at much in the YT video.
Not just to you. Almost everyone thinks he’s vague on the metaphysics. He has only one paper devoted to metaphysics — his “Real Patterns” — and there are many different ways of reading it.
Right, just what I had in mind.
I just finished listening to Nick Shea discuss his latest book on NBN: at one point, he said Dennett’s intentional stance was instrumentalist, but later he mentioned the Real Patterns as a case where Dennett seemed to hedge his bets. So that view of Dennett is common, as you way, even among those who consider him a philosophical inspiration for their work.
Andy Clark has a recent interview in Edge in case you have not seen it.
https://www.edge.org/conversation/andy_clark-perception-as-controlled-hallucination
Granny does a taxidermy job on her pet determinism to “keep it alive”. That only fools granny and no one else.
Seeing the experimental results, it is clear that determinism is the one apparent.
Apparently you know nothing about programming. If you had seen – better yet worked on – a flowchart, you would know who decides (hint: the designer). And that’s why Tesla, Boeing, etc. can’t get away with blaming AI for their design flaws.
Listening at the moment. But he is still infatuated with AI and Bayesianism. Understanding perception and understanding consciousness have almost nothing to do with AI and almost nothing to do with Bayesian reasoning.
So that is not determinism. If you roll a fair die, “a number from 1 to 6 will be obtained” and that’s the extent of Determinism. What number will be obtained is Random. If one gets 4 or 2, etc, no one in their right mind would say “that was predetermined” …this aside from “many worlds” being a totally retard fantasy to begin with… and a fantasy that doesn’t even help your case. So funny 🙂
That’s just it. People are not “making a case” as you seem to think.
So, you admit that your designer predetermined all your “decisions” in advance?
You are designed, right? Therefore everything you decide is not you, it’s your designer deciding.
How does it feel to be a puppet?
Nonlin,
Sure it is. The wave function evolves from one state at t0, before the experiment is performed, to another state at t1, after the experiment is finished. As determined by the Schrödinger equation.
Only one state is possible at t1.
keiths:
Nonlin:
That’s funny — I was just thinking the same about you.
The programmer decides what the flowchart and the code will look like. The code decides how to get around the Modoc pothole.
This should be obvious. The programmer is not there in Modoc to make the decision, and they can’t anticipate every single situation the car will face. The car has to make decisions on its own.
The programmer probably doesn’t even know that Modoc exists, much less where its potholes are.
Is this experiment above your head, keiths?
Or, are you pretending it to be, so that you can continue to torture nonling?
I think it is pretty clear that the photon at D0 registers either a clump or an interference pattern PRIOR to its entangled twin registering either
at D1, D2 = interference pattern
D3, D4 = clump pattern
Whatever the photon registers at D0 always correlates with what its entangled twin will do which implies that the twin photon “knows” where it will end up, or there is no such thing as time on subatomic level…
Again, the measurement itself is does not collapse the wave function!
The knowledge of the which path of the photon does, get it?
Write it down!
Good question!
No
Bruce,
Thanks for the summary.
Ismael’s ideas sound interesting. They might be a good follow-on topic after we’re done with List.
I only read the interview, so I don’t know if there is more in the video.
I read him as saying that the passive AI that Dennett and Chalmers discuss was flawed because it failed to incorporate action. I would have guessed you’d be somewhat sympathetic to that concern.
As for the Bayesian stuff, my prior distribution on convincing you of anything on that topic is degenerate.
But I’m glad you found it worth listening to. Sean C’s latest Mindscape has Patricia Churchland in latest episode, so that may be worth your time if you are looking for philosophy to opine on.
I thought about a TSZ OP, but I figured the NPDR review was better than any OP that I could do. Plus, at least for me, her stuff requires a lot of time to work through and involves a lot of philosophical thinking, and, well, I will leave it at that.
On the indeterminism at the agent level: she is much more subtle than List about it, but as best I can tell her story does include unpredictability from the outside of agents engaging in the process of reflective thought.
I know unpredictability is not the same as indeterminism, but I thought that was worth mentioning.
Speaking of unpredictability, Aaronson has a fun paper on unpredictability that applies in this context: From the abstract:
” I [Scott A] unwisely set out some thoughts about one of Turing’s obsessions throughout his life, the question of physics and free will. I focus relatively narrowly on a notion that I call “Knightian freedom” — a certain kind of in-principle physical unpredictability that goes beyond probabilistic unpredictability. Other, more metaphysical aspects of free will I regard as possibly outside the scope of science.”
https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159
That’s a dumb extrapolation. There’s an obvious difference between designers of life and designers of “AI”. Let’s talk again when you get that abiogenesis going.
Anyway, the important thing is that determinism is dead and stinking.