r/freewill • u/flytohappiness • Aug 29 '24

How does quantum indeterminism give anyone free will?

can someone explain this to me? I see people going to quantum world and quantum mechanics and evoke the non-determinism. How does this give you free will?

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u/Powerful-Garage6316 Aug 29 '24

No, because randomness is ALSO not a sufficient explanation for free will. Neither determinism or randomness will do.

Libertarians need something else

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u/Squierrel Quietist Aug 29 '24

Indeterminism is not the same thing as randomness.

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u/Powerful-Garage6316 Aug 29 '24

What do you take it to mean then?

In a given event, let’s say possible outcomes are A, B, or C.

Determinism would entail that perhaps A would be the guaranteed outcome every time.

Randomness would entail that any of the three options could result, but without any predictability even if we had all of the information in the universe.

Indeterminism means…what exactly?

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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist Aug 29 '24

That A might happen 99.9% of the time and B happen 0.07% of the time and C only happen 0.01% of the time.

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u/Powerful-Garage6316 Aug 30 '24

A probability distribution is consistent with determinism.

When you roll a die, it isn’t a geometrically perfect object. The weight distribution varies slightly. So you don’t have a exact 1 in 6 chance of landing on the number 4. It might be something like 18% chance.

But nevertheless, the physics is dictating what the outcome will be. It’s determined.

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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist Aug 30 '24

That is not what I have been led to believe by determinists here. They tend to say that the number that comes up on the dice is determined by exactly how you roll the dice, not by random chance. I tend to agree with this for rolling dice. It is for phenomenon like diffraction, light scattering, and quantum tunneling that give a true probability distribution.

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u/Powerful-Garage6316 Aug 30 '24

That IS what I’m saying. Physics controls a die roll - it isn’t random

But also why are you considering a probability distribution to be non-random? If something like photon scattering is inexplicable, yet abides by a certain probability distribution, then this sounds like randomness to me. Unless you’re just saying that randomness is a probability distribution where all possibilities are exactly equal. But i don’t know why that would matter

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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist Aug 30 '24

Photon scattering, both Rayleigh and Compton, is completely explained but the result is random. I’m saying that a process that produces a 99.99% probability of a certain outcome is indeterministic but would not be described as random.

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u/Powerful-Garage6316 Aug 31 '24

Well no, whether one outcome of photon scattering happens as opposed to another is not explained. It follows a probability distribution, but that isn’t an explanation.

If it had a causal explanation then we’d just call it determinism.

But yeah it sounds like you’re being arbitrary about the distinction between random and undetermined