STRIP FOR May 30, 1993

@xfacex: Apropos "If we don't have free will, that must mean we are a deterministic (finite state) machine": I see a leap in logic here - absence of free will doesn't necessarily imply that we are deterministic, for there is the possibility that, even given complete knowledge of initial conditions, it is not possible to know future states (one of the precepts of pop chaos theory).

The other bit "and we cannot be accounted for our actions" is really independent of the free will problem. Crime and punishment are entirely cultural. In some (all?) parts of the world, these things depend upon gender, sexuality, access to liquidity, religion, race, tradition, age etc. etc.

dear xfacex. The fact that we can't predict erratic behavior doesn't mean we aren't determined, it just means that we're not intelligent or knowledgeable enough to predict erratic behavior, even though we might seriously want to. Which reminds me of an old Dave Gardner joke: Two cavemen were sitting around pounding rocks together when one turns to the other and says, "Man, we ain't never gonna have radio." And here we are chatting on the internet. Keep the faith!

Hum...let me try to tackle this one...
If we don't have free will, that must mean we are a deterministic (finite state) machine and we cannot be accounted for our actions.
If we are a deterministic machine, then we should be able to predict our "erratic" behaviors , and possibly "program" people into behaving correctly.
We are not willing/not capable of programming people into following rules (proof: crime exists).
Then the only possible conclusions are either:
- We are unable to predict erratic behaviors and prevent them/correct them/punish them => We are not deterministic, hence, we have free will.
- We _choose_ not to make such a programming/correct those behaviors => we have free will.

Hence, humans have free will.

The one thing I can never agree with Scott on is free will. I think the idea of free will being nonexistent may make sense to people of certain personalities (i.e., those with cold and calculating brains like robots), but to those who - like myself - analyze their every action to death before making a decision, it seems preposterous to think we aren't really in control. If the human brain has the capacity to come up with multiple courses of action that are equally feasible and then choose between the two, who can say for sure that it would inherently choose the same one every time? Without the ability to "restart" by erasing the previous action from a person's memory and giving them a chance to choose again, we can never know if they might choose a different action each time based entirely on the ability of random choice via free will.

As for the weather, I seem to recall reading abou this thing called chaos that keeps us from predicting the weather perfectly every time. And as for criminal justice and punishment... if we assume that free will is a lie, then the criminal's mind must be inherently inclined to commit criminal actions every single time, making reform impossible. And if criminals can't reform, the only answer is the death sentence or some kind of bizarre brain surgery for all criminals, to get rid of their nasty criminal minds. But then, maybe that's what you meant...

But then, I would say that the "free will part of the brain" is called the soul and IS exempt from the laws of physics, so I'm sure that voids my argument automatically in the eyes of many high-and-mighty "sceintific minds." A determinist might say that some people's brains just lack the ability to acknowledge that something may exist outside of what we can detect with our senses and/or technology... in which case I guess it's silly for them to argue about it. Hm.

Aaanyway... back to the funnier and less preachy comics.