In this post I will draw on a proof from Roger Penrose’s book Shadows of the mind that I think is important to the free will issue. The proof goes like this.
Consider an algorithm that takes a single positive integer as an input. Depending on the input and the algorithm itself, either the algorithm terminates [...]
Filed under: Concepts | Tagged: Mind, Physics, Free will, Determinism, Computability, Penrose, Algorithms | 2 Comments »
From Chapter 5 of Mises’ Theory and History,
Man chooses between modes of action incompatible with one another. Such decisions, says the free-will doctrine, are basically undetermined and uncaused; they are not the inevitable outcome of antecedent conditions. They are rather the display of man’s inmost disposition, the manifestation of his indelible moral freedom. This moral [...]
Filed under: Book Reviews, Concepts | Tagged: Causality, Choice, Determinism, Ethics, Free will, Justice, Mises, Morality, Science | 6 Comments »
From the latest post in Rico Mariani’s series on the history of Visual Studio
Debt is a great way to think about trade-offs: every time you make a choice that isn’t right in the long term, any short-cut, accumulates some debt. Any bug you choose to defer, that’s debt. Some debt you should write-off, that fix [...]
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I chanced upon Fooled by Randomness – The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb at a friend’s place and took the time to read it. Having a bit of a financial background – I work in a company that did some financial modeling before I joined it [...]
Filed under: Book Reviews | Tagged: Bacon, Chance, Emotions, Finance, Hume, Markets, Modeling, Popper, Probability, Randomness, Rationality, Reason, Stoicism, Taleb, Trading | 2 Comments »
I ended my last post with the statement that sceptics cannot take ideas – particularly moral ideas seriously. Here is an excerpt from the book Fooled by Randomness – The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that serves as an illustration of my point.
Current thinking presents the two following [...]
Filed under: Book Reviews, Concepts | Tagged: Randomness, Rationalism, Rationality, Reason, Scepticism, Taleb, Utopia | 3 Comments »
In an email exchange regarding an article in The Hindu regarding secularization and modernization, a friend (call him X) commented: “As far as the article goes ….. I didn’t like it as much. More like the author already has some conclusions and wants to write something to highlight those conclusions.”
Indeed the author already has some conclusions [...]
Filed under: Concepts, Conversations | Tagged: Abstractions, History, Interpretation, Religion, Scepticism, Secularism, Software | Leave a Comment »
