Hi Stefan,

According to some of my relatives I should have been named Stefan, but my mother deviated from family custom and named me Donald. Perhaps this is why you can duplicate me so well :)

In my essay Don (even though he believes in choice) and Lexi (even though she believes in determinism), both act and speak using the concepts of choice AND deterministic logic, all the while exposing their respective beliefs.

I do believe that nature has very lawful behavior... and it is...how should I say...gloriously incomplete. I hope you find the ride as much fun as I do.

Thanks for your support,

Don Limuti

Hi Vladimir F.,

I am a fervent believer in determinism and a fanatic proponent of free choice. A good game requires skillful use of both.

I too am interested in causes, classical and quantum. I am in particular interested in gravity. Check out my website www.digitalwavetheory.com

Thanks for your essay,

Don Limtui

Hi Jonathan,

Those that believe in free choice come in two varieties 1. Those that believe that others have free choice 2. Those that believe that others have no free choice.

This creates a potential ethics problem: To what extent is it OK to go after the money.

Is it OK to take advantage of others..after all they are just machines.

Without a concept of ethics there is a tendency for master slave relationships to arise, where the master is the one with free choice and the slaves are the machines.

Who has the mathematical ring of power, Frodo or Gollum?

Frodo Lives!

Don Limuti

Hi Peter,

Super to be in another FOXi.org contest with you.

Yes, life is a mixture of freewill and determinism that is evolving. I do not know where it is going.... But my feeling about life is that somehow we were designed to enjoy the ride (and we are free to complain about it).

All the best,

Don Limuti

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.

    Hi Christian,

    Thanks for visiting. And I appreciate your kind words.

    Attention anybody reading this post go visit Christian Corda's blog:

    1. Read his essay.

    2. Vote it up.

    Don Limuti

    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 Jeff,

      I Appreciate your gracious review. This essay contest focuses on a very emotional issue... particularly for scientists, engineers and techies in general. And I also find that I get caught up in the issue. I may need to apologize to Max T. and a few others after the contest for my rudness.

      Thank you very much for you support,

      Don Limuti

      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

        Hi Vladimir, (I also put this post on your page)

        I downloaded your papers. The United Dipole 1093 looks very interesting to me at a scan. I will read in detail in a bit. We have similar concepts cloaked in different words. I too believe the space between stars looks a dielectric material (I would call it a prism with a gradient index of refraction). And my hijacked graviton looks very much like a dipole antenna!

        Yes, I hijacked the graviton from the standard model and gave it some new clothes..... The standard model was not putting it good use anyway :)

        I consider a single graviton to be a photon with a single hop (wavelength) that hops back and forth between chunks of mass (Planck masses). I call it a photon because it obeys the Planck Einstein equation, but it is not really a photon because of its spin (it hops back and forth). The big deal is that this action gives it a mass (like photons trapped between mirrors).

        I considered all this playing around kinda nuts, but I gave my new "hijacked" graviton a run at calculating the precession of Mercury....it worked! How can I say...the planet Vulcan lives!

        I believe this may be a small "crack in the cosmic egg" that can lead to useful science and technology. I also believe that this result is not a contradiction GR, but I cannot prove this. So, I am calling on FQXi.org cosmologists, to take a look at this and see if gravity can be made understandable.

        And your work Vladimir, was pioneering in this area.

        Thanks,

        Don Limuti

        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.

          • [deleted]

          • Post #44

          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

          Hi Everyone in this contest & the people at FQXi.org,

          As this contest is approaching the end I wanted to thank everyone for making it possible. I appreciate the opportunity to investigate, agree and disagree with the theories and ideas presented in the many essays. I have been particularly critical of the mathematical universe hypothesis and Max Tegmark for creating and promoting it. There is no doubt that I could be wrong in this criticism of a new theory that is creative and original. And FQXi is to commended for exposing it to public scrutiny. This extra bit of conflict has made this essay contest the best one yet (IMHO).

          Thanks,

          Don Limuti

          Dear Don Limuti

          You found an original way to draw the attention to the issue of determinism, surpassing the size limitation of the essays!! It is clever, not boring, bold, risky, and it works! Congratulations!

          About determinism, what seems to result from observations is that at a sufficient large scale, the evolution of systems is deterministic. Chaotic, random, etc, behaviors at small scale always disappear at a sufficient large scale. This is a very convenient approach because it preserves our free will: at our scale, as at the scale of a molecule of the atmosphere, the behavior can be anything, while the evolution of human society, as the one of the atmosphere, at enough long times-scale, is deterministic. However, I have more information that shows to me that things are not simple, far from that. A careful reading of my essay will show you that necessarily I know much more that I am saying there. And what I say in the essay is already quite ahead of present knowledge, and many will thing that it is just speculation. What I can say to you from what I know is that the answer to the question of the determinism is not "yes", or "no", or "depend on the scale".

          You asked my opinion on the role of global warming. In the paper in vixra that I mention in the essay, you can see in detail the past and future of Earth's climate and where the global warming stands. I can also say to you much more by email, if you are interested.

          I saw your DWT; I found it rather interesting; I will dedicate some time to analyze it.

          I voted your essay in accordance with what I say in the first paragraph of this comment.

          Thank you for having "knocked on my door"!

          Alfredo Gouveia Oliveira

          Hi Don,

          I think I would have enjoyed a much longer conversation between you and Lexi. The presentation format was very attractive and fun for me. I might try it for a future essay. I will have to side with Lexi on this one, in the sense that I do think free will and decision making is deterministic, that does not mean we have to do the same thing under the same conditions every single time. There is a variability there without having to invoke the other extreme of total randomness.

          If you have the time, kindly take a look at my essay. I present (sufficient) physical conditions under which goal oriented agency could rise in systems.

          Cheers

          Natesh

            Hi Natesh,

            In my essay I hoped to get across how convoluted the language of determinism and freewill is. Don and Lexi each took a side. However, each also used Unconsciously the other viewpoint during the conversation.

            Yes we have differing viewpoints about determinism and freewill. I will agree that the physical is definitely a part of us. And figuring it out is a lot of fun and sometimes an addiction. I personally like to dabble in gravity. Check out my webpage www.digitalwavetheory.com

            In five previous contests, two of them were dialogs. The dialogs were much more fun to create.

            I liked your essay because it "really" forced me to think.

            Don Limuti

            Hi Don,

            Thank you for your comment on my page.

            You have written a nice little conversation but in the end I am not sure what your conclusion is.

            And why did you write Dad and not Don towards the end, was that intentional ? Who made that choice ??

            Cheers,

            Patrick

              Hi Patrick,

              My abstract was a quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Basically it said that we have made no progress in the free will-determinism debate. I tried to make my dialog reflect that inconclusiveness. I guess I succeeded :)

              About the Dad at the end. It was just a typo. Initially the dialog was between Dad and Lexi. Then I wanted to make it between Don and Lexi, but I failed to see the last Dad. There is a certain amount of noise in any information system.

              Thanks for visiting,

              Don Limuti

              *****Note to anyone seeing this post: Check out the Patrick Tonin essay. It is a short piece of logic that will make you grin.*****

              Dear Don,

              Thank you for virtual support through the cyber space on the article there are no goals as such its all play, and i totally enjoyed your little conversation with Lexi, your virtual self i suppose :)

              PS : We are relatively real but absolutely virtual.

              Love,

              i.