Related papers: A Turing test for free will
Incomputability as a mathematical notion arose from work of Alan Turing and Alonzo Church in the 1930s. Like Turing himself, it attracted less attention than it deserved beyond the confines of mathematics. Today our experiences in computer…
We revisit the vexed question of how unpredictability can arise in a deterministic universe, focusing on unitary quantum theory. We discuss why quantum unpredictability is irrelevant for the possibility of what some people call `free-will',…
In 1950, Alan Turing proposed replacing the question "Can machines think?" with a behavioral test: if a machine's outputs are indistinguishable from those of a thinking being, the question of whether it truly thinks can be set aside. This…
Manin, Feynman, and Deutsch have viewed quantum computing as a kind of universal physical simulation procedure. Much of the writing about quantum logic circuits and quantum Turing machines has shown how these machines can simulate an…
The impression of free will is the feeling according to which our choices are neither imposed from our inside nor from outside. It is the sense we are the ultimate cause of our acts. In direct opposition with the universal determinism, the…
We consider the paradoxical concept of free will from the perspective of Theoretical Computer Science (TCS), a branch of mathematics concerned with understanding the underlying principles of computation and complexity, including the…
Deutsch, Feynman, and Manin viewed quantum computing as a kind of universal physical simulation procedure. Much of the writing about quantum Turing machines has shown how these machines can simulate an arbitrary unitary transformation on a…
Not only did Turing help found one of the most exciting areas of modern science (computer science), but it may be that his contribution to our understanding of our physical reality is greater than we had hitherto supposed. Here I explore…
The origin of the uncertainty inherent in quantum measurements has been discussed since quantum theory's inception, but to date the source of the indeterminacy of measurements performed at an angle with respect to a quantum state's…
Both deterministic and indeterministic physical laws are incompatible with control by genuine (non-illusory) free will. We propose that an indeterministic dynamics can be $weakly$ compatible with free will (FW), whereby the latter acts by…
Conway and Kochen's Free Will Theory is examined as an important foundational element in a new area of activity in computer science - developing protocols for quantum computing
In quantum gravity there is no notion of absolute time. Like all other quantities in the theory, the notion of time has to be introduced "relationally", by studying the behavior of some physical quantities in terms of others chosen as a…
The predictions that quantum theory makes about the outcomes of measurements are generally probabilistic. This has raised the question whether quantum theory can be considered complete, or whether there could exist alternative theories that…
According to the widely accepted opinion, classical (statistical) physics does not support objective indeterminism, since the statistical laws of classical physics allow a deterministic hidden background, while --- as Arthur Fine writes…
It is proposed to define "quantumness" of a system (micro or macroscopic, physical, biological, social, political) by starting with understanding that quantum mechanics is a statistical theory. It says us only about probability…
Free will is an old philosophical enigma that has been recently revived by neuropsychology. We restrict ourselves to the problem that determinism seems to allow only an illusion of freedom but random decissions do not contain any freedom…
What does it mean to claim that a physical or natural system computes? One answer, endorsed here, is that computing is about programming a system to behave in different ways. This paper offers an account of what it means for a physical…
The "easy" problem of cognitive science is explaining how and why we can do what we can do. The "hard" problem is explaining how and why we feel. Turing's methodology for cognitive science (the Turing Test) is based on doing: Design a model…
Computation plays a major role in decision making. Even if an agent is willing to ascribe a probability to all states and a utility to all outcomes, and maximize expected utility, doing so might present serious computational problems.…
In this article, we propose to use the formalism of quantum mechanics to describe and explain the so-called "abnormal" behaviour of agents in certain decision or choice contexts. The basic idea is to postulate that the preferences of these…