To add to my above comment, I decided to click through to the article and check the video itself. To Google's credit, they do explain a few things in a link in the video description. They also apparently responded to criticism with "The video illustrates what the multimodal user experiences built with Gemini could look like. We made it to inspire developers."

If they had named the video something like "here's what we hope Gemini will eventually do", that would have been perfectly fine. But they didn't. They named it "hands-on", and in the comment the only reservation they make is that they removed some pauses and shortened some responses. Clicking through to their more detailed link, that's clearly not the case.

If the summary is correct, then this wasn't just a case of "it crashes a lot so we made a video that's spliced together from multiple takes". That would be something like what you're talking about, in my view. That would be an actual demonstration of a capability that exists, even if not stable enough to dare show live.

This was more like "let's show a video of us feeding live video and audio to an AI, with the AI narrating what it sees and responding to verbal conversation about what's going on in the video, but what we actually did was drag individual images into a browser and type prompts". Calling that video hands-on, is just outright lying to misrepresent the capabilities. (Again, assuming the allegation is true.)

"But what is consciousness and what does it do?"

There's a Nobel prize waiting for the one who can answer that, I suspect.

"If its simply a deterministic process of the brain then it can't do much - which is why countering determinism is foundational to any argument for it."

I don't think I agree on that point. Just because it's deterministic doesn't mean it has any less of an effect than any other bits of the brain. It could well be part of the brain's way of evaluating outcomes and reinforcing behavior, or something along those lines. It could also be nothing but a byproduct that happens in brains once they reach a level of complexity. Either way, it's rather remarkable that it's there, pondering what it is and why it's even there.

" I do think there are unknown physics yet to be unravelled and big questions yet to be answered"

You'll get no argument from me there. I don't think anyone would reasonably argue otherwise. If nothing else, we know that our physics break down inside black holes.

" And chief among them relates to consciousness and the effect of an observer on the universe."

It has occurred to me that the name "observer effect" was a poor choice on the part of whomever coined the term. Quite a few people have decided that it involves consciousness. As I understand it, it's really a measurement effect. There is no way to measure something without affecting it somehow. The obvious example is that in order to see, we need something to throw photons at what we want to see. More subtle examples, like using a clamp around a wire to measure amps, interacts with that electromagnetic field. There is so far no evidence supporting the lack or presence of a consciousness having any impact on these measurement outcomes, but it's become a darling of Chopra and the likes nevertheless. I guess misusing terms found in science lends an air of credibility to the woowoo.

I do have a fondness for the philosophical notion that, since we are products of the same hydrogen as everything else in the universe, not only are we literally made of the remnants of stars, but we could also be said to be the universe trying to understand itself.

" Perhaps our brains have something along that line going on too."

Sure, anything is possible. But that would still only give you randomness. And there's no good reason to believe this to be the case. So the rational stance, based on current evidence, is that there's nothing inherently special about consciousness, it's just another process of the brain.

"Free will to me, is the notion that we can come up with an idea non-deterministically and then act on it"

Based on your subsequent examples, that seems just like inputting randomness into a deterministic brain. Whether the input is random or not doesn't make any difference in that case, the brain would still do the only thing it could do, based on the input.

For me, I'd have to add that it would not be enough to make my brain non-deterministic, it would also have to be non-random and in place of any randomness would have to be my consciousness. I just don't see any way for that to be the case, given current knowledge.

"Just an unlucky bastard who drew the short straw, right? Too bad there's nothing that can be done for him."

I mentioned elsewhere that I had a rough couple of years before I grew accustomed to this new perception of reality. It was, at times, quite exhausting. And there is something that can be done for your hypothetical him: feed him new input. Have a conversation. To me, it doesn't matter that I did not technically choose to write that, and you'd not technically have any choice in whether my words would sway you to talk to the guy, and his reactions would be whatever they always would have to be in response to such a conversation. Just like we don't spend every moment thinking about reality as quantum mechanical, which it is, we don't have to think about the lack of free will all the time either. We are simply not evolved to be doing that, and it's a small miracle that we can even grasp at these concepts. There's so much going on that, for all practical purposes, we can live our lives and feel every moment is unpredictable, because the number of variables are so vast we have no chance whatsoever at distinguishing between that and real non-determinism.

"I'm being a touch facetious here at the end and mean no offence"

No worries. I barely even considered it facetious, because that's pretty much how it is. The monsters of this world had no more of a choice than any of the rest of us, they're just the endpoint of a long process over which they had no say. But, again, that doesn't mean "it is what it is and nothing can change that". Changing society to minimize the occurrence of such broken humans, is absolutely something we can do, for example. It's just the detail that we'll only feel like we're making those choices, when we're not really, but the outcome is the same.

I think of it a bit like climate change. It doesn't matter if you believe it's caused by humans or not, we can all agree that we'd prefer clean air so trying to burn less coal is probably a good idea regardless. Whether you think a prison system focused on punishment should be reformed because it has poor outcomes, or because you think it makes no sense to punish people who had no actual choice, equally doesn't matter.

Good talk. Coincidentally, I have a friend who has called me Mr. Frodo for the past few decades, so you were in the ballpark with your Bilbo analogies.

"But if we agree what will happen in the book is unchangeable, and what will happen tomorrow in our own lives is equally unchangeable, then there is no point to it."

That sounds to me a lot like "what is the meaning of it all?" The answer depends on whom you ask. There's no overarching "point" or "meaning" to anything, in principle. You need a mind for that, which means we are the ones imbuing the universe with meaning.

"Why talk of what might happen? we can't learn something new from it, we can't change it, we are just along for the ride."

I don't know about you, but I learn something new every day. We may only be along for the ride, but that doesn't mean we're not here, or that we can't enjoy conversations as we go along. That a hypothetical omniscience would always have known how it would turn out, doesn't change that.

" Our script has been pre-written,"

In a sense, but also, no. No one sat down and wrote a story. That the laws of physics dictates that everything that happens is, at the extreme end, a consequence of a bunch of hydrogen and a lot of time, is just how it the universe happened to work out.

"Science so far has reduced it to probability not predictability."

Technically true, but there was a reason I had a "in the way that" in there. We use quantum mechanics in our technology all the time, and do so reliably.

"While the possibility for randomness does not imply free will, its sufficient to dislodge strict determinism,"

Possibly, yes. It's really hard to say. If Feynman's stance was that "if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics," I certainly won't claim to have the vaguest idea. I did watch a video with Lawrence Krauss a day or two ago, where he mentions how hard it is to do experiments on quantum mechanical effects, because the moment you allow the particles to interact with the world around them (in effect, I suppose, becoming a part of the classical world), the weird behavior disappears. So even though the underlying reality of our world is quantum mechanical, the classical world we inhabit hides its whims. That greatly limits what that randomness can actually impact at classical scales, as far as I can tell. As I mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, if randomness due to quantum mechanics was a significant factor in our brains, for example, it's hard to see how they'd function reliably. But, I agree, there is at least the possibility it throws some randomness into the works even in the classical world, at least if we're talking at cosmic time scales. This is all my "very much not a physicist" take on things, to be clear. And, as you say, for the topic of free will, it doesn't make any difference.

"I don't see why consciousness need only be a passive observer, or why it's "output" would not be fed back into the brain future decision making, thus affecting the future."

I remember watching a Sam Harris talk, back at the very start of my journey down this rabbit hole, where he makes examples of how you make all kinds of decisions without you having any apparent conscious impact on them, and my response was nearly word for word what you just wrote. And I dismissed the idea of no free will, until encountering it again years later.

The problem is that it makes no difference. If deterministic effects creates consciousness, then its thoughts and subsequent feedback back into other parts of the brain is just another link in the deterministic chain. There's no free will involved. For consciousness to be able to affect the brain's processes in a non-deterministic way, it would have to exist within unknown physics.

" setting into motion a butterfly effect of cascading macro impacts"

Sure, that kind of randomness could be a thing. But it doesn't grant free will.

" I "choose" to think we do have some control over our destiny too."

And I don't spend every moment of my day reminding myself that I don't believe we have any control, in much the same way I don't spend every moment thinking of the fact that my eyes only see parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. To do otherwise would just be exhausting. I expect our different approaches have much the same practical effect. We both go through our days feeling like we make decisions and that they matter. I think that's the right approach, by whichever way we get there, because regardless of how the decisions are made, they do matter to those around us and to our own sense of wellbeing.

"If its true it changes *nothing*, and nothing can be changed. So what's the point?"

That circles back to the top. Everything or nothing at all, or anywhere in between, depending on the brain you pose the question to and its view on what "the point" entails.

I've found the acceptance of a lack of free will to change my outlook on several areas of life. It has granted me a renewed sense of humility for my good fortunes in life, and increased empathy for the lesser fortunate. To me, that's a valuable outcome. To someone else, who has been beating themselves up their entire lives for making poor choices and suffering the consequences, it might be a life changing turning point to realize they were screwed from the start due to childhood experiences, and that they have no reason to feel bad about having made those choices, and they finally go on to make better ones. To yet someone else, they might lapse into a state of "nothing really matters" and wither away.

Whatever the outcome, that it was pre-determined doesn't change the fact that people are affected. I hold that it matters. That it has a point.

Meh, that's just one a week for about 20 years worth. With 80 years worth of life expectancy, it doesn't even take a huge ice cream afficionado to exhaust that supply.

"The point remains however, is that i have no agency over that change. My mind is changed as a deterministic response to its previous state and the external stimuli."

Yes, that is the very core of the argument.

"It is as meaningless to ponder what if Bilbo chose not to leave the shire with the dwarves. Bilbo has no agency. The book is written"

I see what you're getting at, but it makes no sense for us to speak like that. Our access to the book is limited to whatever page represents our current time frame. We don't know what will happen, even if we were to agree that what will happen is unchangeable. So it makes perfect sense for us to speak of possibilities (with IFs), because from our perspective all possibilities are still open, we have to wait to see how things turn out.

"Nothing I've seen convinces me free will can't exist."

To me, a more appropriate approach is to see if you can you convince yourself that it _can_ exist. Take the stance that free will is something that must be proven to exist, and the first step in that would be to show that it even can. That's what I tried to do, and failed.

"I don't think the universe is deterministic."

What do you base this on? Because all of our technology is built on the premise that everything down to elementary particles behave predictably. Even quantum mechanics, in its way, is predictable in that we can reliably take it into account in our technology. And our technology keeps on working. It's a very strong indicator that we've got it right when we formulated laws of physics that indicate that the universe is deterministic. What have you found to be more convincing?

"I do recognize that the experience of consciousness and memory has latency, and I am persuaded from the science you mentioned that we experience the 'present' at least slightly behind reality, but that doesn't convince that we can't consciously affect the future by way of free will."

The big takeaway, for me, is that consciousness is always the last to know. While we all identify with our consciousness, and feel that we are making decisions with our consciousness, the science points to that being a misconception. That our consciousness is really just building a narrative of how decisions were made, but with no actual access to that information.

I don't remember if I already mentioned it in this thread or not, but for me the science was the final nail in the coffin. Once I considered what we know of particle physics, and that our brains are made of the same particles that we keep seeing behave entirely predictably, it was only a matter of time before I came to terms with it. It did take quite some time, though. The sense that I, as a consciousness, am in control, is just so fundamental.

I don't know that it's obvious that there's a strong correlation between increase in happiness leading to accumulating fewer possessions (or ones that fulfill whatever extra criteria required to be things they "actually want" as opposed to "don't actually want"), but I suppose that might be true. I suspect that marketing would be strong enough to "trick" even happy people into buying crap they don't need, though. Anyway, I don't really have the knowledge to base much of an opinion on here, nor the interest to do the research. It feels like an entirely different topic to me.

You wrote three sentences, I responded to the part of one that I had a response to worth the writing. But, since you insist.

"Yes, unfortunately all the money is in providing unhelpful and/or inadequate services"

It hardly seemed worth pointing out that "all" seems at least a slight exaggeration. Even in the US there's likely the odd prison that's not run exclusively by greed. It felt it was pointless to respond to this part of the sentence then, and I'd say it still was now.

"Not only will you reduce recidivism"

That aligns with what I wrote in the previous response.

" but you'll also reduce the amount of meaningless crap that people buy to self-soothe in a world where acquisition of goods is equated with success."

Not really sure what your point here is, which is why I did not respond to it. A better prison system does not lower the income level across a society, and if you're thinking of only prison employees then them being too poor to buy stuff doesn't seem likely to solve anything. It did not seem a relevant point to belabor when the crux of the issue was the inadequacy of the prison system.

"Except by your argument, I don't have the agency to "stop viewing crime as something that people choose" any more than the criminal had agency in committing the crime."

This is not the same as you being unable to have your mind changed as a consequence of exposure to other people's ideas, or events in your life. The same concept applies to all the other arguments in your response.

You should try to stop being pedantic with regards to the language used. It would get exhausting if we were to write every sentence as if we're lawyers trying to avoid any potential "you used a word that is not compatible with the lack of free will!" nitpick. Instead of "if you stop viewing crime" I'd have to write something like "if you are exposed to ideas that makes your brain's processes result in changing its view on crime". It would get exhausting and serves no purpose unless you are genuinely confused by the use of colloquial language.

I do understand your stance. I shared a similar one. For years after I heard the first Sam Harris presentation on the absence of free will, my first encounter with a scientific take on the topic, I discounted it as hogwash. I didn't even bother reading his book on the subject, because I couldn't imagine it being of any interest to me. Needless to say, over some years I was chased from corner to corner as I hunted for a mechanism by which free will could in fact exist. Eventually, I had to admit defeat. As much as it feels wrong to not think it's real, there's no escaping the current state of the evidence.

"makes it less likely that you will be able to get profit from them later"

That only seems to hold true if you have a for-profit prison system with poor regulation. Take that away, and you're left with the win of a helped person returning to society and paying taxes. Government is happy, society is happy.

You must either have found an inexhaustible supply of flavors, or don't eat as much ice cream as I do. :)

I'm not sure what point you're getting at. The premise here is that you at no time made an actual conscious choice, even if it feels like you did, including for previous ice cream picks. It was all decided by past events. Your next pick will be no different. To claim free will you should be able to explain how you make that choice by appealing to something other than past events or external factors like having the staff pick or flipping a coin.

That would be the philosophical approach. For the physics approach, what would be the mechanism by which our consciousness is able to transcend and modify the physical processes in our brains in order to change the outcome that would be dictated by physics given the state of our brain and the input it received? How is it not, in principle, entirely predictable what your choice would be?

The physics of it is what really has me stumped. We'd need our consciousness to exist outside of the laws of physics that everything else is subject to, while also having the ability to override those laws inside our brains in order to change outcomes. Basically, in order for me to go back to believing in free will, we'll need to make new discoveries in physics that supports a potential mechanism for this.

"But cars and humans are unresolvably different."

In this sense, no. That's the whole point. They're objects of different complexity, but adhering to the same physical laws.

"LOL, which only proves that the entire exercise is philosophical masturbation. Brains ARE programmable, there IS accountability, there IS agency, people DO have choice. Better outcomes prove that prevention CAN work. All this contradicts the idea that human behavior is beyond control."

You appear to have a fundamentally different view of what lack of free will means in this context. It does not mean that human behavior is beyond control, it means that the control is entirely determined by previous/external causes. The notion of "I chose to do this" is an illusion, likewise is "I could have chosen to do something else." But "if my mother had shown me more affection I wouldn't have ended up a drug addict," might well be entirely true.

To me, it's a scientific question, not a philosophical one. Given what we know of the laws of physics, where could free will exist? What is the mechanism by which our consciousness affects the physical reactions of the particles in our brains into a different result than what we know should happen based on the laws of physics? I have not been able to find anyone that can point to such a mechanism. The only ones who try, end up in philosophy.

It's all the same brain, no argument there. The question is whether what we perceive as us, our consciousness, holds any decision making powers. The evidence points to the answer being no.

In principle, you're not completely off track, facetious or not. But, we do view humans as a bit special, don't we.

So, if don't want to genetically engineer people to behave as we'd like, or just kill anyone that does something wrong, what are our options? The obvious one is how we treat each other. In a grander sense, how society treats its inhabitants. If you have an area of town with a lot of young criminals, you look at why. In some cases, adding activities for youths can make a huge difference. If you make your society supportive and high in equity, it seems the odds are good it will fare well. If your society is filled with class systems, high income disparity, poverty, discrimination etc., odds are it will not do too well.

In car terms, we do everything. We improve the materials, the car factory procedures, the quality control, the maintenance schedule. We also improve the roads, the signage, driver education. The few cars that still turn out bad enough to be dangerous, and we're unable to fix, we keep off the roads. It's a holistic approach, with long term effects, as opposed to the flimsy plaster that is "add more cops and increase prison terms".

Free will doesn't even come into the argument, as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't really matter if criminals make those choices based on free will or not, the solution is the same, you change the equation so that when the time to decide comes, they choose differently. Whether you believe that's just cause and effect, or because you made happier people that make better choices, doesn't make much of a difference.