[PLUG-TALK] Re: Omniscience vs. Freewill

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Sat Apr 9 05:56:32 UTC 2005


Free Will:

For those of the agnostic/atheistic mindset, you can't do much better
than Daniel Dennett does in "Freedom Evolves".  Something to offend
narrow-minded meat-robot wannabees of both the left and the right.

But I'll talk about my so-called ideas instead.

Determinism:

... is mathematically bogus, even given classical, pre-quantum,
pre-Boltzmann, pre-chaos physics.  

The smallest possible representation of the universe that we can imagine
is the universe itself.  Determinism implies a rigid linkage between
past, present, and future.  Meaning three representations to be considered
at once.  No mind within the universe can possibly contain more than
one representation, hence the linkage is bogus, like saying 1 > 3.

Add the reality of quantum behavior, thermal/Boltzmann behavior, and
chaotic behavior (nonlinear amplification of initial states), and 
determinism disappears not only at the whole universe level, but all
the way down to the atomic level.  In other words, with a whole universe
full of computers running predictive models, I cannot say for sure
what one atom will do.  So it is nonsense on stilts to talk about
what a person will do.

God and Omnipotence and Omniscience:

I am a theist on even numbered days, an atheist on odd numbered days.
I refuse to miss out on half the fun available.  On even numbered days,
it is clear that God lives outside of time, since He created time 
along with everything else.  Sequentiality does not apply to God.

I am arguing with some Christians on another list, right now, about
freedom.  My premise is that God created this actual universe, with
quantum and thermal and chaotic effects, and created and manages
zillions of atoms to make one human being (as well as gigatons of
solar system mass per human to keep us alive).  Now if God goes to
all that enormous effort to make meat-puppet automata that could be
conceptually modelled with a few billion simple computing elements,
then God is an abysmally incompetent engineer.  Since I see evidence of
extreme subtlety and cleverness (on even days), the incompetence theory
is dubious.  Combine that with the absurdity that God would program
us, as robots, to do all these violently stupid things to ourselves
and each other, and the outside-imposed-determinism idea looks pretty
damned stupid.

God can still get what he wants through path design.  For example, the
design of Portland makes pretty much everyone use bridges, even my
friend who is bridge-phobic.  She never swims the Willamette to get
to work, and I doubt I will ever meet anyone who does.  Yet we are
all free to do so (and one of you ornery cusses just might do so
on reading this posting, and might not because of this sentence).
But you can choose which bridge to use.  Thus, we do not swim all
the rivers of possibility, but there are still a huge number of
paths to choose from.  

I don't think, even on the even days, that God designs every last
little bit, because this universe is not intended to be used that
way.  God likes to paint like Jackson Pollock sometimes.  And we
little drops of paint get to choose our path until we splatter on
the canvas.  Me, I'm aiming at one of the pretty parts.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



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