When I say I am the Driver and Passenger, I am talking about Determinism and Free Will. Clearly, a pure deterministic or free will approach does not seem appropriate when studying human behavior . People do have a choice, but their behavior is always subject to some form of biological or environmental pressure. So, this it what I mean by Driver and Passenger at the same time, and finding balance, and when I say, it is all connected. But, its all much more complex that just that...isnt it? Stephen Wolframs thoughts on this issue quite interesting. He shows that - from a mathematical standpoint - even the simplest systems can have behavior so complex, you need to simulate the system in its entirety to predict its state in the future. he calls this computational irreducibility, roughly meaning every little piece of the system contributes to changes over time. leaving out any part (for instance for a simulation) will yield wrong results. Put all of this together you end up with a very interesting situation, where all of a sudden you can have a deterministic world view with no ability to predict anything (unless of course you wait and see). it is, in a way, a third option to the two mentioned at the very beginning: deterministic, but unpredictable.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 03:34:01 +0000
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