Just because something cannot be known or predicted doesn't mean free will is in action.

But, suppose all the information could be known and a man's actions predicted 100% accurately years in advance. Would that man still have free will?

An astronaut leaves for the nearest star. It takes him years to get there. But, once there, he discovers a shortcut home through a wormhole. He arrives back on Earth a month before he left. During his trip his every action was recorded.

Now, we have all we need to predict everything he'll do until he gets back again. Does he still have free will?

While I agree with your statement that unknown variable values do not necessarily imply the existence of free will, it is nonetheless true that freedom of choice MUST exist for free will to exist.

If all information can be known in principle, then free will cannot exist, since every action is determinable. This raises the usual moral issues, since if everyone's life is like a script written long before they were born, nobody can do anything other than what they do. Since they are "forced" into every action, they cannot be held morally responsible for them, therefore people like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. are morally innocent, since they had no choice but to do exactly what they did.

If the astronaut could possibly achieve the stepping back in time, it would not necessarily imply that the "future" already lived would be the one he'd be moving into going forward again. Consider the present as the trunk of a tree with branches for the possible futures and roots for the possible pasts. Moving backward in time may be just as uncertain as moving forward, so there is no guarantee (in fact I'd think it unlikely) that exiting the wormhole takes him into the past (root) he actually came from (but let's assume for the sake of argument that it did). While that past may be a new starting point (trunk), it still would have any number of futures it could branch into IMO. Based on this scenario, I'd say he still has free will.

I think we can agree that our astronaut has become at least limited in his choices because he can't do anything that would prevent his return. Yes?

If only one "branch" leads through the wormhole and back home then that is his only option and his free will has disappeared.

It's like watching an instant replay of a football game. Once an event has occurred, it cannot be changed. But, could it be changed before it occurs? This answer we do not know.

I suppose there are moral questions. But really, do they matter? If Hitler was born to do what he did it wouldn't change anything. He's still just as evil.

However, freewill is a good working theory.

Sorry…I can't agree the astronaut's choices are limited. I contend that travel into the past is as uncertain as travel into the future; however, even if he travelled back to the exact past he came from, the Heisenberg uncertainty principal ensures sufficient uncertainty of his new "future" to change it. In effect, while he may have the memories of it, he'll still be free to choose differently going forward and thus change his remembered future.


Going forward in time, once a superposition of wavefunctions collapses, the probability of that specific outcome hits 100%. In that sense it can't be changed, HOWEVER, going backward in time reverses the occurrance and puts it back into a superposition of probabilities. The wavefuncion can collapse going backward in time, but the uncertainty principle indicates that it will not necessarily collapse into the same state of the branch one comes from (this is why I say the past is as indeterminable as the future…essentailly, the past we come from is one possible past…There is no guarantee that going backward in time takes us to that particular past). So to answer the second part of your question, yes an event can be changed before it occurs.


Objectively, the moral questions matter. If we for instance know that the universe is deterministic, then good and evil "disappear" in the sense that nobody has a choice to act differently. There can be no moral value assigned to an action. In effect, Hitler would not be evil, and no more responsible for his actions than a ten ton boulder that falls on you might be. in a deterministic universe, there is not only no free will, but no will at all…everything becomes an inevitable event.

This is not sarcasm.

I am humbled by your greater knowledge. I am grateful you took the time to attempt to educate me. Although much of what you say is beyond my understanding. I am after all a dyslexic high school drop out.

Although I think Stephen Hawking's ideas are correct, I don't have the ability to articulate them in detail. Maybe I should read his books again.

Don't be too impressed...I still can't think myself out of the stupid situations I get myself into, so I ain't exactly as bright as I appear.


That is to your credit...The smartest people I know are drop-outs (they escaped the educational indoctrination that turns promising minds into mindless drones) Even your dyslexia worked in your favour, since it probably forced you to reason things more for yourself, instead of accepting an opinion simply because it appeared in print.


Just bear in mind that being brilliant doesn't necessarily mean always being right. Continue to be critical and analyze every opinion. (except mine of course LOL)

The place to start is taking a null hypothesis that choice exists as a property of some conscious beings.

Certain realizations about how brains create minds can help lead to taking this position and then being able to develop artificial means to simulate the same processes and by doing so working out the causal interactions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project

Great amount of theoretical physicist do not believe in free will including Einstein based on time travel. If we are able to travel the time zone which is quite possible theoretically then we have already made those steps in the future…. Haven’t we?

Which future?...(There are a nearly infinite number of them, as well as a nearly infinite number of pasts.)

So to answer your question, "yes and no", depending on the future chosen.

I'd say physical time travel (in reverse for people) is impossible. "you" would always be there to physically obstruct yourself (to "collide with") if you tried to reverse your direction. It might be possible to move your consciousness back in time, but your memories do that anyway (with the timeline you remember), so the net result of reverse time travel in that regard would probably just allow you to choose a different timeline both ways, and probably change all your memories of the experiences of your first timeline. (i.e., you would still have only one "life", albeit a different one.)

there is no reverse in time its all forward. So now Im bit confused at what you are getting at?

I misunderstood when you called the Einsteinian worldline a "time zone" and alluded to a future that "already happened". In that sense, time travel (forward) is a fact and not "theoretically possible"...The imprecision of expression made me think you were talking about time travel...My apologies. Please ignore my last paragraph of the prior post.

The prior ones stand as my answer to your question, since QT is clearly at odds with the Classical worldview of a single, well-defined worldline.

Einstein's belief in an undivided solid reality was clear to him, so much so that he completely rejected the separation we experience as the moment of now. He believed there is no true division between past and future, there is rather a single existence. His most descriptive testimony to this faith came when his lifelong friend Besso died. Einstein wrote a letter to Besso's family, saying that although Besso had preceded him in death it was of no consequence, "...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."

http://everythingforever.com/einstein.htm

If you leave this planet at the speed of light you would be travelling into the future but if you could return at the seed of light squared you would be returning into the past. Time travels forward, it is the speed by which you travel that determines if you will be visiting the past or the future.

He was of course referring to the existence of a worldline. It was another way of saying that to exist at all is to exist in eternity.

He also said that we are predetermined but we should also jail criminals dispite the fact

Your first sentence doesn't refer to what the time measurement might be relative to...presumably if the velocity is relative to earth's, you'd be "time travelling" into the future, since local time for you would stop altogether at light speed. In relativistic terms, your exceeding the speed of light is an impossibility, so you can't travel into the past on the return trip, therefore, you are still stuck with a unidirectional arrow of time and arrive back in the future.

Don’t forget time is the only thing that is not constant. At the speed of light there is line shortage between two points.

Yeah, but since they would not be morally responsible for their actions, they should not be punished, only incarcerated.

This is yet another view of Einsein's that arose from his classical physics upbringing. He swore up & down that God didn't play dice with the universe and looked unsuccesfully for a way to disprove the probabilistic nature of nature. In the end, his view lost out to experimental results that showed God indeed played dice.

I think you meant "time is NOT the only thing that isn't constant.", which is true...I haven't forgotten.

Nope that’s not what I meant at all. in Einstein’s theory of relativity, referring to spacetime , time is the only thing that is not constant in our universe so therefore it can be travelled