A Short Conversation on Wandering Toward a Goal by Don Limuti

Hi Don,

your essay is a huge fun to read and sets the stage for all kinds of possible interpretations and answers to the quest of determinism / free will. The openness of your conversation reflects the openness of the question, although both persons in your essay (ha, ha) do believe to have the ultimate answer. But wait a minute, do they really believe, or are they forced to blieve due to determinism... (ha, ha). Believing to win the contest prize may be determined, while the actual result will not confirm it... (ha, ha)... due to determinism.... so you had a true belief about determinism but a false belief about its future results. Or maybe you belief in free will and are indeed right about it, but you've had a false belief in what it can achieve (namely winning the contest's prize, ha, ha)!

Your short essay is a perfect mirror of the unsolved questions and a projection field to possible answers. I like it because it's funny and it counteracts those views which pretend to know for sure what the answer is. Surely, my own answer is also only based on beliefs, but i think the main point, as always with fundamental questions, is how one rates certain probabilities for the truth of a certain answer. This i think depends on certain experiences one made during one's life, it also depends on proper logical thinking and most of all on the experience that there are no anomalies in nature observed, for example nothing does pop up suddenly from 'nothing' (what a word-game!). This is, i think, in contrast to the view that existence is just a brute fact which has its origins in absolutely 'nothing' (not even in a mathematically empty set). Since nothing has ever popped up out of nothing (what a word-game!), i feel myself forced to conclude that nature has indeed a highly lawful behaviour (because if it had been possible for something to suddenly pop up out of nothing, these events should have been captured by some creation myths delivered to us from the past [well, but only if these creation myths have not suddenly popped out of reality into nothing again...!... and therefore aren't available to us anymore.].

I rated your essay with the highest score and thank you very much for this enjoyable piece of paper!

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Don,

I highly estimate your desire for determinism. Perhaps my essay will complement your understanding of the determinism and causes of quantum processes. Your essay allowed to consider us like-minded.

Kind regards,

Vladimir

Hi Don,

In response to what you said about Math as a 'ring of power' on my essay page, I wrote the following.

Math is much abused by those who try to make it bend to their will. A good example of Math forged into a ring of power would be the Gaussian Copula Function, which was the basis for financial derivatives, and was itself based on formulas used in risk and failure analysis. But it was used fictitiously (as though predictable risk equals zero risk), and its broad mis-usage was one of the contributing factors of the market crash in 2008. Mandelbrot had warned us before then, but the finance gurus did not listen.

So pure Math had the answers, but nobody wanted to hear.

What I didn't say on my essay page is how this also exactly fits the tale from Revelations of the 'great whore of Babylon.' Babylon is often used as a symbol in the Bible for deception or lying. That is; 'Babylon' is falsehood, untruth, cheating, or fabrication. So no wonder we will hear a great wailing from the money changers when the deception is exposed - that Math was used as a tool, like a 'ring of power,' to subjugate and control others.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Please note..

The smooth curves of the Gaussian function lead us to copulation, or so the story goes (of the Gaussian Copula function). You can't make this stuff up. And David X. Li, who created the function, also tried to warn us. But human greed won out, and the deception worked like a charm. The real world is much more strange than any fantasy.

Regards,

Jonathan

The thing is..

The real deal actually exists, but isn't used much. I've commented how transactions in financial markets are much like interactions in quantum mechanics, and Hagen Kleinert even wrote a whole chapter in his book on Path Integrals devoted to their usage in Finance Math. So in general; the Math guys are the ones advocating to do things the right way, and recommend a more sophisticated approach, while the Finance community wants to hire people with minimal training and more narrow focus (who will do what they are told) rather than hiring Math literate folks who could improve the system substantially.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Don,

I think you hit the dilemmas head on. There may be little of value to say that you didn't write or infer.

Do you think we should perhaps consider ourselves in terms of an experiment on determinism; Whether there's an intelligent experimenter or not;.. "If these particles and elements are mixed together in this way, what will happen?"

If that's purely 'deterministic' then the outcome would need to have been known beforehand. Yet we ARE a mixture of 'stuff', and when we make choices they're limited as they're from a limited range of possibilities... Hmmm.

So the solution is really perhaps semantic. Our language and its definitions are inadequate to describe nature. Do we need a word for 'determining' a limited range of possible outcomes, yet with free will within certain limits?

Nicely thought out and written, and fun!.

Best

Peter

Hi Don,

It is nice to see you here in FQXi again. Despite it is very short, you realized a nice, intriguing and very original contribution. It has been a very pleasant reading for me, so, I am going to give you the highest score.

Good luck in the Contest, I hope that you will have a chance to read our Essay.

Cheers, Ch.

Don,

That was a fun short exercise that did what was designed to do. You made a point by showing, not telling (yes, I did once take a writing class) in a clear, interesting and unique way.

Best of luck,

Jeff

Hi Don - nicely encapsulated and convincing response to the essay question!

Thank you for your message on my essay page - I responded as follows:

Hi Don,glad you liked the paper. Way to go about gravity being a density of.. something! In my United Dipole Field paper of 1993 I showed how the electric field of a dipole behaves like a gradient-index gravity field. In Beautiful Universe Model I generalized the concept to the Universe as a whole and added the concept of twisting spin fields to create gravitational attraction. I see from your website that you have attacked the gravity concept more analytically, but isn't using the term graviton confusing because you see it differently than the Standard Model particle? I look forward to reading your paper requested from Research-Gate.

Best wishes, and good luck to us all.

Vladimir

Don and Wilhelmus,

I am also giving this essay a "6" because it is readable, creative and on topic, but there sould be more. I also think giving someone a one without comment just hurts the contest.

Jeff

Hey, this essay was fun! Short and written as a dialogue, what a pleasant surprise! Now that I think of it, I wish someone had posted a comic...

I am not sure of whether I follow your connection between free will and emotion. Do you mean free will is an emotion, among many others? Do you mean that free will derives from emotion? Or the other way round? As I see it, both the sensation of free will and emotion are emergent properties of some macroscopic systems. But are they causally connected? I get a bit lost here. For me, free will, and the subjective sensations, are more difficult than purposeness, that's why I focused on the latter...

I hope you win the contest.

ines.

Hi Ines,

1. Thanks for you review....much appreciated.

2. You say "I myself argue that there are no goals per se, but that we choose to see them. Not exactly because their existence makes us happier, but rather, because their detection allows us to make predictions, and thereby, to be more fit to pass on our genes."

Yea, Darwin and Dawkins have highly regarded points about how genes foster evolution and are selfish respectively. I will not argue with Darwin, however, Dawkins is wrong. Genes are both competitive and cooperative (see Yaneer Bar yam's work on complexity).

Instead of using the words goals I will substitute "choice" and rephrase your sentence: ""I (Don L) argue that there are no goals per se, but that we (humans but perhaps not all life) choose to see them. These choices are made because they satisfy us emotionally, (in healthy individuals they tend toward happiness), and thereby, to be more fit to pass on our genes."

About Choice and Emotions: I posted on one of mad max's minion's blogs "your emperor is totally nude (in Italian)". This minion was a determinist but his emotion (aka greed) caused him to delete my post (followed by my score plummeting). Was his choice determined by mathematics? This minion was much less fit to pass on their genes than someone like yourself.

In spite of my stated intention, ha ha. I hope you win this contest.

Don Limuti