I don't understand this, all the programs I've ever written make decisions based on some factors.
Are you talking about free will? If so, what is free will?
> Weizenbaum makes the crucial distinction between deciding and choosing. Deciding is a computational activity, something that can ultimately be programmed. It is the capacity to choose that ultimately makes one a human being. Choice, however, is the product of judgment, not calculation. Comprehensive human judgment is able to include non-mathematical factors such as emotions. Judgment can compare apples and oranges, and can do so without quantifying each fruit type and then reductively quantifying each to factors necessary for mathematical comparison.
Okay, so what is judgement? I haven't read that particular book and I don't quite remember his argument from interviews and lectures I saw, so this might be wrong, but I'd say it's for example saying "this is fair" when you measure the slices of pie you cut a cake into. That is, calculating that they're of equal size is pure computation; but there is no way to compute that when sharing cake with your friends, the slices should be equal.
Just like you can compute how much clean drinking water an average or specific person needs a day, with at least some accuracy, but when it comes to the question "should there be life in the universe" or "should people die of thirst", no computation could answer it. You could choose to write a program that decides it based on a random seed or a super complex algorithm taking a billion factors into account, but and then that program would decide the question, but it's essentially still something you did / chose.
It's little more than arguing for a "soul" with no evidence for any effect that can't be explained by cause and effect.
You say this as if we are even close to understanding much less reproducing the human brain completely, which probably would have to include the web of relations with all sorts of other living things that also go into the judgements we make, and the emotions we have while making them. Until you actually do draw the rest of the owl, it's not exactly "religious" to say there's no owl.
Just because it feels as though I do things because I can doesn’t mean that is actually true.
Choice stems from uncertainty, partial knowledge. It might be an illusion for an observer outside of the system, but as far as a participant within the system is concerned, there is choice, then there is free will.
I am writing this because I ca n but I don't need to do it. I have futures where I don't do that and do something more rewarding instead and still. As long as I am aware of the choices, then I have free will.
Now, a program which is objective driven and can infer from new inputs might be something else.
Just like humans try to maximize the stability of their structures via a reward system. (it got slighty complex, faulty at times, or the tradeoff between work vs reward is not always in favor of work because we do not control every variable, hence procrastination for example, or addiction which is not a conscious process but neuro-chemically induced).
A computer can do all the calculations to decide on if it's a good idea. Given the inputs of the time they have spent together, the number of glances that are passed between then in the halls between classes, if he doesn't have a date yet or not, etc. The probability adds up to ask.
So the machine decides to ask.
The girl feels it. Has all the time they've spent together has made her feel a certain way? Maybe a weird tingle each time their arms touch. Is that glance in the hall this morning not just an accident, but him going a little out of his way for her to notice? She's asked around and knows that no one else has asked him, but doe he really not have a date yet? Can she overcome the bit of anxiety about asking a boy to the dance? Will she be able to accept the risk of rejection knowing that the chances may be high he says yes?
Only she can choose.
The determining factors driving a computer program can be fully quanitified; the sets of inputs and conditions is finite, can be reasoned over, and described fully.
That's basically the fundamental description of computing, in fact, and what makes a Turing machine.
The determining factors "IRL" are effectively infinite, a causal "chain" of infinite (or near infinite) complexity that expands backwards to the Big Bang, (or whatever) and sideways around the planet and beyond. There is no catalog you could make of all the "causes" that could isolate things enough to truly reason over and describe them all.
And so, yeah, to say it's all just "little programs" is the most ridiculous reductionism, that basically purposefully neglects to see the complexity and depth of the world around us.
I personally take a strongly determinist, materialist philosophical position. But I would never ever express that in terms of "programs" or anything similar.
"Does Quantum Mechanics Rule Out Free Will?" - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-quantum-mech...
