🚀 go-pugleaf

Jeff...Relf wrote:
> Hi  Russian_Fools and  Stephen,
>
> Einstein postulated that the future is just as immutable as the past.
> See Block_Time  WikiPedia.ORG/wiki/Block_time
> The means randomness can only come from a failure to measure some causality.


Einstein's antipathy to the inherent randomness of nature is well know
("God doesn't play dice with the Universe"). He thought there were
hidden variables that would explain away this randomness.

We now empirically know that there aren't - Bell's Theorem has been
experimentally verified, and we know that no physical theory of local
hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum
mechanics.


> Einstein's ability to find once-hidden causalities decades before
> they were empirically proven exemplified
> his faith in the sober-minded metaphysics mentioned here.
>
> For example, his General Relativity explained exactly how
> a clock with  10 ^ -16  second accuracy ticks faster
> with a minute increase in altitude... decades before it was empirically proven.
>   See: Time Too Good to Be True,
>   PhysicsToday.ORG/vol-59/iss-3/p10.html
>
> Consequently, he postulated that
> physical processes determined absolutely everything, including man's desires,
> see WikiPedia.ORG/wiki/Physicalism.


This is entirely obvious. Of course physical processes determine
everything.


> For example, he once said:
>
>   I do not believe in freedom of the will.  Schopenhauer's words:
>
>     " Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills "
>
>   accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with
>   the actions of others even if they are rather painful to me.
>
>   This awareness of the lack of freedom of will preserves me from
>   taking too seriously myself and my fellow men as acting and
>   deciding individuals and from losing my temper.
>     EinsteinAndReligion.COM/credo.html

We obviously don't have absolute freedom of will, because we don't have
absolute control over external reality.

Now, do we have any freedom of will? If the Universe was entirely
deterministic, then no, of course we wouldn't. The Universe isn't
entirely deterministic.

There is genuine randomness (although we can calculate the probabilites
with pin-point accuracy).

The HUP applies to everything. Does this mean we have any freedom of
will? In my view, no it doesn't - determinism and randomness both rob
us of this, but in very different ways.