How do you convince people god exists?

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

In which regard though? Experiments proving the negative? Why should we even be expected to prove the negative? Should it not be for people who say free will DOES exist to evidence that claim? Not the other way around?

I find this a strange answer given what I asked.

I was just wondering about the literature or recent studies. Scientific investigation can start out neutral and actually find out whether one or the other is true. Not every time one asks a question are they making some kind of assumption, it can just be a question.

It could be the case that there is strong evidence against it or strong evidence for it. If somebody asked is there evidence against a fifth force I would just actually show that there is, rather than just saying it's "up to people claiming it to show that there is". You can actually demonstrate negatives in a scientific fashion. We can just say what the literature shows rather than dividing it into a burden on various parties.

From my previous reading of this question there seemed to be some evidence showing there is and some evidence showing there wasn't and I wondered had that changed.

Genuinely I think you respond to scientific questions in an overly philosophical way that's too geared toward taking down religion or just conventional thought rather than just dealing with science itself neutrally. Instantly launching into meta-concerns of "proving negatives" (something science often does) rather than just talking about recent studies is odd to me.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

You are in the area of theoretical physics though right? I think one of your peers over here in Germany is known to speak on the issue of Free Will occasionally. One Sabine Hossenfelder. Perhaps you can contact her for more dialog on the issue I believe she is quite active in answering queries and emails and comments on her website.

I've read what she thinks. It's just the usual silliness about there either being "randomness" or "determinism". Which (a) isn't on the kind of lack of "will" usually discussed in neurology and (b) she's treating randomness in a way we no longer really do in quantum theory anymore.

Fourier wrote: »

I find this a strange answer given what I asked.

Probably because it was not an answer. If you observe closely it was a question. A request for clarification on what it was you were actually asking me. So the strangeness likely comes from you treating as an answer, something that was not in fact an answer

As for literature on it, as I said I do not know. That was what I was asking the user I was responding to. I am aware the topic of free will is a contentious enough issue at present so I was asking the user had he any further information on this, since I do not. I notice he did not deign to respond either.

I am fully on page with evidence for and against a contention of course. Like your 5th force. However the moment someone starts using the 5th force as a claim supporting some OTHER claim, this has implications for then burden of proof and proving negatives. I am happy to operate as if Free Will exists, and under the assumption it does. Without any evidence. However the moment Free Will becomes an attribute in an argument for something else, like the existence of a god, I think it right to question that user on whether they have any evidence for Free Will before they use it in this fashion. Otherwise we risk thinking we have evidence for a god that in fact, we do not.

So I am not sure your meta concerns on my approach are all that well founded to be honest. I genuinely do not see anything I am doing wrong.

Fourier wrote: »

I've read what she thinks. It's just the usual silliness about there either being "randomness" or "determinism". Which (a) isn't on the kind of lack of "will" usually discussed in neurology and (b) she's treating randomness in a way we no longer really do in quantum theory anymore.

I look forward to your comments on her blogs then, which as I said she seems to respond to quite openly and with some vigour. It seems a conversation could develop there between both of you that does not develop between her and many of her other readers. Have at it and let me know when there is something there I can go read

Fourier wrote: »

How far does this rabbit hole go? It was a simple question, I was wondering if there was any more recent evidence against free will.

What rabbit hole? People ask me questions all the time. Sometimes I answer. Sometimes I ask them clarifying questions before I answer if I feel any potential I might not be answering what the person actually asked.

I thought this was 100% normal to adult human conversation? I can not recall in my 40 years on this planet anyone taking issue with it before. Let alone calling it a rabbit hole.

Fourier wrote: »

Not everything is a battleground in the "crusade".

Nor would I suggest, imply, or even act like it is. However when I reply to a single user on a thread I ALWAYS try to do so in two contexts. The direct context of the user I am replying to AND the context of the thread topic itself as a whole, and how we got to here from there. The context of this thread is about convincing people a god exists. I simply did therefore what I always did.... attempted to reply to your post directly AND keep my reply in the context of the thread topic. So again I am not seeing meta concerns about my general approach to discourse being problematic here.

Fourier wrote: »

You've said in previous posts there is evidence against free will. Couldn't you have just mentioned that?

No what I said in the previous post to which you replied was "Do you have any evidence Free Will actually does exist though? It is quite the contentious claim these days. It is certainly by no means a given.". Nothing more. If you mean posts PREVIOUS to that, or perhaps even previous to this thread then I can not really speak to anything but the positions and claims I hold and espouse currently. I had a user recently go back to posts I wrote ten YEARS ago on a thread for example and suggested I have been rebutted because I use a word today that I did not use 10 years ago. Not sure I can see what his thinking was on THAT score to be honest

My CURRENT position is just that the claim we have free will is one that is quite contentious at the moment and is by no means a given fact.

Fourier wrote: »

Given you are interested in neurology I was wondering if you knew anything more.

Not much, which is the answer I already gave in the previous post. To go back to it a little bit though.... under the context of the thread for the reasons I just explained above.....

Fourier wrote: »

I've read what she thinks. It's just the usual silliness about there either being "randomness" or "determinism".

..... I just did a speed read on some stuff, and some stuff written about her stuff, and I am not getting this "either or" dynamic from it at all. Rather I am getting that she finds nothing in Determinism that allows for free will and the "out" people sometimes think things like randomness might give to that, does not actually seem to do so either.

I myself plead complete ignorance on how "randomness" is treated in the "current theory", or what you feel she is doing wrong with it. But I have a weird feeling any attempts of yours to explain it to me will fail (a comment about me there, not you, in case that unintentionally comes across wrong or somehow insulting).

But I am not getting why randomness itself in any form would facilitate free will in the first place, regardless of what we mean by it, or not, in QM these days.

Surely if the claim is we have no free will.... hence no real control..... then introducing something we have even LESS control over, like randomness, is not going to do anything but suggest Free Will even less likely to be a real thing?

Put another way I am not seeing why systems showing less possibility for control, are being used by proponents of free will to suggest we have more of it? Or what am I missing? Why does any kind of randomness, real or imagined, work with Free Will to over come the objections some people have to it?

As I said though I am entirely agnostic on the subject of free will. I simply do not know either way. And as I said I do not know of much literature of use on the matter any more than you seem to. You mentioned for example the experiments suggesting our decisions are made at the level of the brain a period of time before we have any conscious awareness of making them.

There is some literature I would have to look up again too, as I can not remember where it was, that show the illusion of agency can be removed by stimulating or hampering certain parts of the brain. You still operate as normal, if I recall the literature correctly, but with all feeling of agency removed. Which kinda supports the suggestion the brain is only giving us the illusion of agency, without any actual agency. Though of course the brain could be doing both, not one or the other, so that literature is not conclusive evidence either!

There is also some great literature on how patients confabulate free will based explanations for things they have no control over. Which I think is really fun and interesting to read. The kind of thing being the stimulation of a part of the brain that suddenly causes the patient to do something with their arm. You then ask the patient WHY they waved.... knowing full well the reason why was because you caused it to happen..... but the patient will confabulate an explanation. He was.... oh I dunno.... waving to the nurse over at the other side of the room to ask her a question or something. The patient will concoct a narrative to explain why they did what they did of their own volition, even though the action in question was patently NOT of their volition.

But I am happy to make assumptions about any given X in my life until such time as someone uses X to imply Y.... at which point I merely ask how safe we are too assume X in that context? I am good with free will in other words, up to the point where someone is using it as an argument to support something they have zero other arguments for.... like the existence of a god. Then I feel I must question their assumptions. Is that so wrong?

Free will is something I wish I could spend more time reading into and learning about to be honest, but it is down my list at the moment. I certainly enjoy the more philosophical questions on the matter. Such as what implication does it have for morality and our justice system if no free will exists (very little would be my first impression, except on issues of sentencing and rehabilitation)..... what implications does it have on our well being if none exists (it can be quite a lot actually if worked with correctly I believe)........ what implications does it have for why we value other human lives and individuals (I am open on this one, I can see arguments both ways on that).......... or even why would evolution have produced an illusion of free will in the first place if in fact there is no free will at all, what is the benefit of this in natural selection (Jerry Coyne has given a lot of answers to this one for example in the past, but I have yet to hear him give the two I would likely postulate..... which kinda surprises me).

I repeat I am good with free will and assuming we have it.... or at least operating under the rubric that we have it.... but in a thread about god existing I think it valid to question that assumption both in myself AND others in that context. But as I said, the user in question did not deign to bother replying. Alas this tends to be his wont.

Fourier wrote: »

Why would I? As I said she has an odd view of quantum mechanics that's counter to its common use in theoretical physics

I think the answer to the Why would I (as in me myself, not you as I can not presume to know you or your mind) is in the sentence after it. I get the impression her blog is written for a lay audience, not peers. Hence I do not know if her views are "odd" or just dumbed down for people like myself.

So a conversation developing between peers on the matter could be massively informative. And if she is spreading her words to a large audience based on errors, there is potential for such a conversation not to just affect her.... but anyone and everyone who follows her too.

So I guess "Why would I" is better asked "Why MIGHT you" because of course I can not assume the above are motivations for you as they would be for me in an analogous situation with me and my peers. If they are not motivators for you, then of course you would have no interest in such a dialog.

Whats a "maverick" in this context anyway? Scientists that do not agree with you? Scientists that write for Pop-science? Scientists that publish or have been peer reviewed? What makes someone a maverick... like her.... and someone else not.... like yourself? It's a word I do not think I use much or ever, so I am not sure I am in a position to parse it right, or know how you intend it. The definitions the dictionary offer me are ones that would make me more, not less, inclined towards discourse with someone.

Deleted User wrote: »

This one is interesting. I am not a believer in gods, but would ask

What would you regard as acceptable proof?

That is a question I tend to refuse to answer myself for a few reasons.

The first is kinda obvious, but basically I am of the position that a person making a claim should present their evidence that THEY think is evidence. Not what I or WE think is. For example if you were in a court of law would you as the prosecution say "I believe the accused did it, now would you kind people of the jury each tell me what would convince YOU?".

The second is similar but a little less obvious. My fear if I pre-define what I think the evidence should be or might be..... is that this makes me slightly more close minded. Because the risk is that I will ignore, reject, or simply miss the ACTUAL evidence when it arrives. I do not want to take that risk. I want to ALWAYS start from the position that the evidence someone claims is evidence, might actually be evidence. So by not pre-defining what I will accept, I will not risk that starting position.

That said though, we can offer constraints on what we will accept as evidence I am sure. For example we are not likely to accept, at least I am not, anything that violates the known list of fallacies. I will also not accept evidence for god that only becomes evidence for god if you presuppose there is a god. That is.... if the evidence for a conclusion is only evidence for the conclusion if you pre-suppose the conclusion to be true... there is a problem there. That is in fact how I often define the word "faith".

Dean Broad Mound wrote: »

Generally any NDE of interest, would have to contain messages or information retreived, that would otherwise not be known.

That is a useful standard for sure, but a very difficult one to do with any useful methodology. How can you know the data could otherwise not be known? You would have to control for that somehow!

I am aware of books with lists of such testimonies. However aside from the ASSERTION the data could not have been known, there was ZERO controls showing this to actually be the case. We just have the assurances of the people involved that they could not have known it.

Worse, there is also the problem of interviewer bias. Sometimes while interviewing someone you can ask questions in such a way as to make them remember.... or at least think they remember..... things they actually don't. Like this is a tongue in cheek extreme example, but just to give you the idea of what I mean I will invent this dialog:

Patient 1: I am sure I heard you and the Doctor talking!
Nurse: Not possibly you were clinically dead!
Patient 1: No I really did!
Nurse: Wow, well I asked the doctor out on a date did you here that?
Patient 1: Oh yes! That is exactly what I heard!
Nurse: Oh wow! And there is no way you could possibly have known that!!!!

Ok comical extreme example, but you get the idea. Depending on how you ask the questions you can implant the memory that you then later are convinced the patient could not have had!

SOME studies of NDE and OBE have been done with such controls in place however! And guess what? All of the ones I am aware of so far showed zero results. Not low results or poor results, but literally no results.

One example is Sam Parnia who studied OBE by, in a double blind controlled way, placed unmissable totally incongruant objects in places you would only see them during OBE.

Guess how many OBE patients interviewed spotted one of the items? ZERO that I have seen reported, unless Sam has published something I am not aware of.

Dean Broad Mound wrote: »

Not sure that applies to this case, the lady became conscious and thus actively scribbled the note (she also asked for pen and something to write on), no motive to perform a party trick.

No no that's why I wrote "barely related note". I realise it does not apply in this case. In this case she just woke up and scrawled something, likely with some intentional goal as to what she wanted to write.

But it just put me in the mind of what happens when you get people to scrawl with no intentions, and even while distracted. You can get some funny results.

Fourier wrote: »

What was the question? What was the follow up question you were trying to ask here:

So I have to keep up with the conversation for you? And I am meant to be the one on the wind up? Fair enough I guess. You asked: "Is there more recent evidence beyond Libet's experiments (and variants) in this regard?".

At which point I wanted to clarify in WHAT regard exactly. For Free Will? Against it (proving the negative)? Either or? Both? Or maybe something else entirely I am not considering?

It was an attempt to clarify, before answering, that I understood exactly what you were asking.

Fourier wrote: »

If an external agent cannot predict you it doesn't mean you lack control

Which external agent do we mean however? If I am thinking of me and only me, and I am sitting here trying to ascertain if I have free will or not, and I look at all the texts related to determinism and I find nothing there that suggests I do........ how does my introducing the topic of randomness give me a useful caveat here? What can I learn from QM or randomness that is going to help me in this regard?

Can I be viewed as the external agent also in that dynamic? Am I both the external observer and the observed in the dynamic you construct here? Or do you mean it another way?

Fourier wrote: »

Having something like "somebody who disagrees with me" in a list of options seems pointed to me.

Fair enough, then I can do little more than assure you the only relevant words in that sentence that I can find are the last two and say no more about it because as I said, if we are getting into the general area of accusing someone of trolling (or wind up as you put it) then I am out of that area of the conversation. I shall entertain it no further, and you can take it up with the mods if you genuinely believe this way. Aside from two users I can think of who genuinely seem to hate me on a rather consistent basis accusations of being a bad faith communicator on this site are somewhere between rare and none. The only accusation I tend to ever get, with some consistency alas, is I write too much But I usually tell such people that if they genuinely think that.... they should try to have a conversation with the user OldrnWisr sometime If I am merely verbose.... he is at minimum a god.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

So I have to keep up with the conversation for you? And I am meant to be the one on the wind up? Fair enough I guess. You asked: "Is there more recent evidence beyond Libet's experiments (and variants) in this regard?".

At which point I wanted to clarify in WHAT regard exactly. For Free Will? Against it (proving the negative)? Either or? Both? Or maybe something else entirely I am not considering?

It's not so much that I need you to keep track of it, but more I still think the original response would naturally seem odd. Half of it does do what you said and if it had just been that I wouldn't have thought it odd. The rest of it however about the "Burden of Proof" and "Why should you prove a negative?" doesn't really read that way to me as it has little to do with experimental science. I know now that wasn't your intent, but I still don't think it's that unusual for me to have read it that way. Similarly with the "Disagree with me" point from the list, I think many would see it that way even it's not your intent.

Basically I think you write in an unusually precise way (I mean this in a positive sense, it is a good way to write) and I misread it because most of the time when people write certain aspects of your post they are on the wind up, though I now see you are not. Being overly technical this is my prior being wrong rather than my sampling, in relation to "confirmation bias" you mentioned. Confirmation bias relates to sampling. (Though I am generally skeptical about these biases as often referenced as they can always be recast as alternate priors or utility functions rather than biases) Less technically I'm not misjudging your post by cherry picking aspects of it, I'm misjudging it from past experience. Which I don't think is a form of confirmation bias.

However I don't think I was being particular emotional in response, incorrectly suspicious more so. That said I was wrong in my suspicions.

For a proper answer to the maverick thing, it's in quotes to indicate I don't agree with her. She often presents herself as an outsider who holds unaccepted views or as opposing the consensus. This would be an actual maverick say. However most often she's just uninformed or plain wrong, not presenting an consistent though unorthodox view. A very plain example of being flat out wrong is this:

But we have countless experiments that document humans are made of particles, and that these particles obey our equations

Quantum Field Theory, supported by tests at CERN, says particles don't exist so it is hard to see how this is documented or how humans are made of particles. This is present throughout her blog where she displays almost 19th century physical ideas.

Let us discuss Free Will itself now.

Which external agent do we mean however? If I am thinking of me and only me, and I am sitting here trying to ascertain if I have free will or not, and I look at all the texts related to determinism and I find nothing there that suggests I do........ how does my introducing the topic of randomness give me a useful caveat here? What can I learn from QM or randomness that is going to help me in this regard?

This is on a different level to neurological discussions of Free Will.

In neurology experiments they usually try to determine if your actions are part of the conscious or unconscious parts of your brain. Loosely did "you" perform the action or did subconscious processes. This is a separate issue to whether the "you" component of your brain is neuronally determined.

So determinism in the absolute physical sense might be true without it being true in the typical neuological sense, i.e. my actions might be predetermined but it's still me doing it not my unconscious mind.

However to answer your original question:

Can I be viewed as the external agent also in that dynamic? Am I both the external observer and the observed in the dynamic you construct here? Or do you mean it another way?

You don't model yourself in probability theory, only others do. You can't be an external agent to yourself (in probability theory, I don't mean it in the tautological way). So your actions being random means that other agents cannot predict what you might do. Basically an "agent" is an unanalysed primitive in probability theory.

What QM might add to this is that this unpredictability is not ignorance of an underlying mechanism, unlike in regular probability. So agents are not able to predict your actions because they are not being achieved via some mechanical or algorithmic means. You'll see this kind of tension in things like the "Free Will" theorem.

So the randomness other agents encounter in modelling you does not represent some "force" outside of your control but their epistemic position regarding you.

Earthsnotflat wrote: »

I wander why would anyone try to convince someone about existence of God

I think there are MANY answers to that which are possible. I will give but a few random examples that careen into consciousness:

1) Some religions make it a point of order, that righteousness and holyness and so forth lie in the conversion of others. They are pretty much ordered to do so by their religion, the purveyors of that religion, followers of that religion, or all of the above.

2) We are a meme machine as humans. We genuinely want to make others think like us and act like us quite often. Not just in religion. When you watch a show on Netflix you absolutely loved like Breaking Bad..... you can feel strongly compelled to go tell others about it and get them to watch it too.

3) If you genuinely believe the claims of some religions you would be motivated by your mere humanity to want to convince others of it. For example if you genuinely believed people of other religions were going to suffer eternal torment in hell...... how could you NOT want to save them from that? I can barely help myself from saving humans in the here and now from mild discomfort if I see the chance to do so. But ETERNAL and ongoing TORMENT????

Dean Broad Mound wrote: »

(NDE) Story doing the rounds this week:

Woman scrawled ‘it’s real’ in eerie message after she ‘died for 27 minutes and said she saw heaven’.

Tina Hines suffered a heart attack in February 2018 and 'died' for 27 minutes - but when she woke she managed to scrawl 'it's real' after she claims to have seen heaven
She later claimed she saw the figure of Jesus standing in front of the pearly gates with a bright light behind him.

Her Neice even got the tattoo of the scrawling:

One technicality is that she may not have been dead for full entire 27mins if she resuscitated took place x6 (in that duration).
Still interesting story all the same, plenty more similar. Also an unusual 1st thing to do, on final resus.

I died twice - once in 1983 after being queer bashed by 5 young men wielding nunchucks (died on a London street that time) and once in 2009 after doing something very stupid following surgery (died in an ambulance in Cork on the way to the South Infirmary hospital). Full on emergency in both cases with paramedics, ambulances, actual consultants in attendance in the A&E.
In each case there was a great deal of pain. Then absolutely nothing until I "came back" to bright lights in the ceiling, the sound of machines that go ping and the general hubbub of very professional people doing their job.
I was officially dead but I got better.
I can remember the seconds before dying and after I was resuscitated.
The bit between the two is a void.
No Jesus.
No lights.
Nothing.

It was pain. Nothing. More pain.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

If you say so, seeking clarification for questions before answering them has served me very well for over 20 years now. I am not about to change it now due to one unfortunate break down in communication.

To be clear the issue is not with seeking clarification for questions. I don't think anybody would have a problem with that. It was more that half of the questions seemed out of place. Specifically the ones about the burden of proof.
A simple example is this part of your response to Dean Broad Mound:

Dean Broad Mound wrote:

Sorry, but clutching at straws now.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote:

No problem, I forgive you. Especially as you are honest about doing so. Most people would not be.

Most people I think would read this as a smartass response, not to say that it is. For future discussions, did you actually think Dean Broad Mound was referring to themselves here?

But I know my limits and when a teacher on an internet forum is telling me established and known names like Krauss and Hossenfelder are communicating out of an orifice not normally associated with communication (hehe I love that phrase) I am not in a position.... though this is as much due to time constraints as it is education) to evaluate that.

It's unfortunate, but some who write pop science use it to push their own ideas which don't have as much standing academically as they claim. There are many popularizers of physics not like this. Lee Smolin is a good example. If you ever want to verify it I can provide quotes from multiple textbooks contradicting both of their claims.

Hell I can not even really at this time evaluate your claim that some of what Deepak Chopra says makes sense

Well I don't want to sell him too much. Some of what he says is correct, though not in the way he puts it altogether. For example QM does have the observer as crucially important aspect and none of the variables are "real" without the observer's intervention. However this is not for the mystical reasons he claims.

Though I do intend to do this as it happens as there is a book on my list you might know of. Some theoretical physicist called Leonard Mlodinow conforonted Chopra for his wanton misuse of Physics Terminology at a talk once. Chopra insisted they meet afterwards. Suddenly, not long later, they wrote a book together where Leonard Mlodinow was MUCH more sympathetic to Chopras views and positions.

Some of what Chopra writes is a mystified version of the standard view of QM, I think he came to appreciate that its a mystic view of QM rather than utterly wrong QM if I remember right. Though as I said the mystical reading is wrong.

I am dying to read the book to see if it contains any reasons why. After all a Guru so rich he puts diamonds in his glasses suddenly changing the public opinion of a relatively underpaid scientist is wont to arouse all levels of suspicions. So I am genuinely curious what the book in question contains. Is Leonard Mlodinow, like Hossenfelder, a name you have already heard before? He wrote books with Hawking and son on, so I am assuming you have.

I've heard of him, but not much. This is the problem. Often times a person's standing or renown as a public scientist is detached from their standing as a scientist academically. For example Robert Spekkens, Chris Fuchs and Lucien Hardy are the world experts on the meaning of quantum theory, but I think Fuchs has only appeared for a minute in one documentary.

I think, and a multi country study seems to confirm this, that most people discussing free will are discussing the concept that you genuinely could, given the universe in the exact state it was in at the time, have done other than you did

That is what I thought, I just asked to be sure. But that still leaves the philosophical side of the question as it was. How does an individual such as myself, sitting here in a chair asking "Do I have free will" go about answering that question? The way you are framing it seems to suggest, though perhaps not intentionally, that it is a question that by definition can never be answered really.

That's funny the studies I read suggested the opposite. That people mean they act without external coercion. I'll have to look into it.
It's hard to answer because of what determinism and randomness mean in modern scientific conception. In modern physics there is no such thing as "the state of the universe" so it's very hard to phrase that way.

In probability theory one simply has an agent's epistemic position. This actually ties into biases of agent's in an interesting way and is related to why it is hard to established if anybody is actually biased to a certain degree.

Fourier wrote: »

To be clear the issue is not with seeking clarification for questions.

As I said it benefits from no further discussion. You seem more interested in talking about me and HOW I write, than WHAT I write. And as I said you would be best dealing with that in private with me or, if you feel it warranted, the mods. It is not helping the thread. But if you are asking me do I occasionally intentionally put the occasional barb in my prose? I certainly do when I think it warranted. I have not, to my recollection, done so with you however.

Fourier wrote: »

However this is not for the mystical reasons he claims.

Yea I think it hard for most people, even people with some education that might be relevant, to parse out claims like "The moon is only there if a consciousness is actually looking at it, otherwise it only exists as a fuzzy superposition of probabilities".

It sells him books though, and gets him Glasses to wear that cost more than some peoples family car

Fourier wrote: »

That's funny the studies I read suggested the opposite. That people mean they act without external coercion.

Equally funny for me as I think that is actually the first time I have heard it defined that way myself. Must also look into it myself I will try and find the study to which I refer. I know the podcast where I first heard it cited, and I went to read the study then myself. But alas the podcast was three hours long so I will have to listen to the whole thing to find the citation again. I will let you know if and when I find it.

But both definitions are compatible. I can have the feeling I could have done otherwise..... or I can admit I see no reason why I could have done otherwise..... but both of those positions are congruent with the definition of no external coercion. I guess that depends where the delimiter between external and internal is being placed though.

But when I discuss free will it is often on the former definition. Look at the nearest object to you. Decide right now if you want to pick it up or not and then follow through on that. Now ask yourself could you genuinely have acted otherwise? Were you actually the author of the decision you made in that moment, or a witness to it?

And as I said in the longer post from yesterday.... there are studies showing we can influence the brain to simply remove that feeling of agency entirely or.... more interestingly I find..... if we actually remove agency the brain fabricates a narrative of agency. Two interesting pieces of evidence that.... whether free will is an illusion or not..... the brain seems at times to function under the assumption it is illusory.

The more interesting questions for me then...... since I am into evolution science more than physics ...... is why the hell Natural Selection would want to bother evolving an illusionary sense of free will. There are many hypotheses out there (I mentioned Coyne who has a few) and I have a couple of my own. Especially as it turns out in quite a few studies that choice actually makes us quite miserable, or even renders us entirely ineffectual, as a species.