Free Will - Part II

We saw that free will is the power to chose whether we wish to follow our programming or not. While Part 1 were mostly Stephen's thoughts, Part 2 is my own extension of the concept.

The talk of only humans having free will got me thinking. Not only do animals not have this power to choose their programming, they are not even aware that this programming exists. So what changed so drastically from animals to humans? How did we evolve free will? Its obvios as to why we evolved it. Creatures with free will had infinitely larger capabilities than ones which didn't so naturally, selection favoured them. But I was more interested in knowing how this transition was made in the first place. What is fundamentally different in the programming of a human compared to an animal? More specifically, if I am to code a robot with free will, what would be the nature of that code? How do I program free will?

But wait a minute! What did I just say? Code free will into a robot? Program it? Can free will be a programmed thing? Can I program a robot to not follow its programming? This opens up a can of paradoxes, which can be philosohically very stimulating. Very similar to a sentence which proclaims itself to be false... a liar who calls himself a liar... a law saying that all laws are meant to be broken.

But these paradoxes apart, I feel it might just be possible to teach a robot free will, if not code it.

To be continued...

Free Will - Part I

Stephen R. Covey died on the 16th of this month. He was the writer of the famous personal management book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The news of his death was a small feature in the newspaper. Yet it caught my attention because coincidentally, I happen to be reading his book these past few weeks. I am still reading the introduction to the 7 Habits and am finding it very insightful already. In this introduction, one of the many things Stephen talks of is human nature and behavior, and the factors which determine it.

He lists what he calls the 3 determinsims of human nature:

• Genetic determinism, which says that I do something because its in my genes.
• Psychic determinism, which means that I do something because I have been raised to or taught to do it.
• Environmental determinism, which means that I do something because I have been forced or shaped to do so by my environment.

All of human behavior is a combination of these 3 factors. Stephen goes on to argue that these 3 factors exist in not just humans but even in animals and what separates us from animals is our ability to choose our response. We can choose what combination of these 3 factors will affect our response in a particular situation. This choice is what we call free will. This separates us from other animals.

Stephen compares this to the programming of a robot. These deterministic factors are like the programming which govern out behavior. But we are different from robots in the sense that we are aware of this programming and have the power to choose whether we want to follow it or not. This is what makes us more than animals or robots. This is what makes us human, with an infinite range of capabilities, able to perform concious actions and having the ability to own the responsibility for the same.

To be continued...


-TheDreamer

NO CHOICE BUT TO DO GOOD

Saw The Amazing Spiderman today. I had loved the 3 old Spidey movies and yet, I feel that this reboot of the franchise is a league apart from the older version and lives up to its title by truly being amazing. Beautiful cinematography and a realistic story-line take away the show, not to mention, a bolder, younger and more energetic Peter Parker who has the guts to tell his girlfriend how he spends his free time. Not like the old Spidey who took 2 complete movies to do that. The experience of the movie was only enhanced by the fact that I had for company, my class 10th buddys from Bangalore - Akash Pise and Shweta Kumari. I also got a chance to make two new friends in Manwinder Singh and Abhishek Saini. Thanks guys (and gal), for an enjoyable evening!

The movie is definitely worth a watch and all the more so if you watch it in 3D in a theatre. The film's storyline does depart from the older versions of the Spidey chronicles at many places. What interested me most was the key teaching of the movie. In the old movie, Ben Parker say to his nephew - "With great power, comes great responsibility." This statement very much defines Spiderman and his work as a superhero in the rest of the series. In The Amazing Spiderman, the teaching is similar in spirit but is worded differently. Uncle Ben says - "If you can do someone some good, you should do it. Because if you can, then it is no more a choice. It becomes a responsibility." It is not worded as poetically as the older version and yet, this wording hit me with a greater impact. I liked it a lot. What a nice thought, I said to myself. How simple a formula for being a good person! Yet in no way an easy task. It basically tells you to do all the good you can to this world.

I was also struck by the similarity of this thought with Asimov's First Law of Robotics: "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." Asimov himself suggested that these laws of robotics are in fact the laws of ideal human behavior. An ideal human would follow this law. He will never let any harm come to another human being, even through inaction. The inaction part is crucial. That is where most of us decent folks fail. As my Dad says, most people pass by a road-side aciident in their cars without stopping and only after going a distance, think back - maybe I should have stopped, maybe I could have helped the poor man. But by then its too late and they just whizz past in thier automobile. But the ones which stop, and that too in time, reflect a hope for our society, and show their realisation of their responsibilities and are the men and women who make the difference.

-TheDreamer

THE ARCHIE DILEMMA

I saw Cocktail today with my family. First things first, to quench your curiosity, let me tell you that it is an entertaining movie made for college crowds and not bad for a one-time watch. The problem is its plot is way too familiar for regular Hindi movie and television serial watchers. It presents the same old Archie's Dilemma- a guy confused between the 'rich bitch' and the sweet girl, leading to a predictable love triangle with no new solution presented in the movie. This same predicament is represented in many other popular stories in different forms, be it Archie Andrews or Elena Gilbert. It is a classic dilemma- the dilemma between listening to what you desire and what is best for you. Do you choose the girl who is a better girlfriend or the one who will be a better wife? Do you listen to your heart or your mind? Do you go after what you like or after what is best for you? To you take up a profession which you are passionate about or a profession which will pay better?
The solution to this dilemma isn't very simple (that's why its called a dilemma) and is very much situation and person dependent. A pragmatist would preach that what is required is a balance between the two- between the Veronicas and Bettys of this world. Marry a girl that is rich and intelligent as well as beautiful and caring. Get a job that is your passion as well as high-paying. Interestingly, a Zen master would give you a different solution. He would ask you to remove the root cause of the dilemma. He'll tell you that your desires and your interests should not conflict at all to begin with. He'll say, remove thy conflict and thy dilemma shall vanish.

What do you usually do? Do you listen to your heart or my mind? Which is the fun thing to do? Which is the right thing to follow? Archie Dilemmas are common, we experience them everywhere. Our everyday problems are Archie Dilemmas in disguise and we need to solve them. So, do we listen to the pragmatist or the Zen master? Settle for a compromise between the two extremes or remove the conflict which made you like two extremes in the first place? That, my friends, is a question that  only you can answer for yourselves because, as always, we have landed ourselves into an Archie Dilemma.

-TheDreamer

Order your Death

(This is an article inspired by a lecture in my Thermodynamics class by one of my favorite professors at IISER-K, Dr. Narayan Bannerjee. I have used the fundamental principle of entropy and have attempted to explore a bit of Philosophy with its aid.)

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe can only increase. It takes time getting used to the notion of Entropy, but a simple way to imagine it is as a degree of randomness or disorder of a system. The more disordered a system, the higher is its entropy. Thermodynamics allows us to calculate the entropy of various systems undergoing different processes, analytically. But a simpler way to analyse entropy is to simply talk of whether it increases or decreases in a given process. If a system absorbs heat, it molecules shake around more vigorously, making the system more randomized and thus increasing its entropy. If a system gives off heat, its entropy decreases.

Now that we’ve had the preliminaries out of the way, let’s get down to business. I was trying to figure out if entropy increases or decreases in the process of being born. But I was having difficulties deciding whether heat is absorbed or released during birth (wish I had been born with a thermometer in hand). So then I thought that it would be easier if I figured out the entropy change of death first.

We, being warm-blooded animals, maintain a constant body temperature throughout our life. But death puts a hold on our thermostat and a dead body cools down rapidly, finally achieving room temperature. For that matter, living things can be defined as machines which carry out molecular processes, taking in energy and utilizing it in order to prevent themselves from falling into equilibrium with their environment. So the body cools down and loses heat as it does so. I guess that is what they mean when they say that dying is “becoming one with the universe.” The body also starts decomposing after death, and that too releases heat. This release of heat can be seen as a decrease of entropy. So a dead body is more ordered than a living one! When a person dies, disorder decreases, and this can be seen as achieving peace and nirvana.

Coming back now to our original problem of entropy change in birth. I was still finding it difficult to put a finger on whether heat is, on the whole, absorbed or released in the nine month human gestation period. So I decided to simplify the problem a bit by considering not the entire pregnancy but only the Eureka moment. The Eureka moment for the child is its moment of formation, i.e. the moment when the two gametes fuse to form a single cell, the zygote. This process, called fertilisation, is easier to analyze than the entire nine months. When two cells combine to form one, the most considerable change in energy is the one in the surface energy. Free surfaces of cells, soap bubbles and similar stuff have an energy associated with them, known as surface energy. The larger the free surface, greater the surface energy of the object. It is to minimize this surface energy that things like bubbles, when left to themselves assume a spherical shape. Anyways, when two cells combine, the resulting surface area is lesser than the sum of their individual areas. So, the surface energy decreases in cell fusion. This decrease in surface energy is released in the form of heat during fertilisation. If heat is released then that means that entropy decreases when the gametes fuse and give rise to a new life. So birth involves a decrease in entropy and a corresponding increase in the order of the system. So being born is more ordered than being unborn.

Having established that, we also consume a lot of food on a daily basis, throughout our lifetimes. Where does all this energy go? We, being warm-blooded, use this energy for maintaining our body temperatures. Our surroundings are cooler than us and so, this energy, in the process of keeping us warm, is lost out to the environment as heat. So does this mean entropy is decreasing? Well, it doesn’t. The reason is that we are supposed to look at the net energy exchange. The net energy exchange is zero since our body temperatures are constant. All the food that we consume is thrown out as heat. So our entropy remains more or less a constant during our lifetimes. And finally, as we have already seen, death too causes a decrease in entropy.

So, we attain a greater order when we are born, then our “orderliness” remains unchanged in our lifetimes, and finally, it increases again when we die. So, we are at the peak of our orderliness after death. So is being born and then dying equivalent to never being born atall? It seems that the answer is no. You would be more disordered if you happen never to be born in this world.

But one may ask if being more ordered or disordered really matter. What difference does it make in the long run? I confess, I really cannot imagine any importance whatsoever that one’s orderliness might have in the afterlife. But one thing is for sure. In case it is preferred to be more ordered than disordered, then one question is bound to arise. We may ask that if during our lifetimes, our orderliness remains constant, and will increase only when we die, then what is the need to experience this agonizing life at all. Why not take a shortcut and move towards greater order? If order is all that we want, then why not, order your own death?

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