Archimedes
(Continued from Monsters)
UCLA's Institute For Pure And Applied Mathematics, Conference On Mathematics Of Social Learning, January 9, 2014
- Consider the so-called problem of free will. In scientific research, social convention keeps scientists to a path and sets the end. Following the path, however, each scientist can go at his own rate and make some deviations of direction. To that extent the scientist can be an individual while participating in the social project. An individual develops habits, and adapt his habit to the circumstances of the world as they change in response to the habits he chooses to practice. As an individual, the scientist does exactly what he wants to do. As a scientist, however, he sees it is possible, given exact knowledge of his habits and circumstances, to predict his every thought and action. He finds this possibility disturbing. How you ever wondered why?
- He's not free to do anything he wants if he has to do what we can predict he will do.
- But why would he want to do anything he doesn't want to do?
- That's an interesting question. Yet I for one, if I examine myself, do want to do, at least potentially, what I don't want to do. I want to be free to do anything, and then choose to do what I want.
- Unconstrained by dedication to individual path or to individually determined end? You see the implication? Wanting to be able to do what we don't want explains the appeal of the unreal models of evolution and supply-demand economy. The freedom to do what we don't want is precisely the freedom to accept the demands of social convention, to find out what other people want and then do it to obtain power over them.
