> I really think this, along with much philosophical musing about free will, is entirely missing the point.
Exactly! We don't hold babies or the insane responsible for their choices precisely because they don't make choices for well-founded reasons, they simply act somewhat randomly and so clearly don't have a well-founded, deterministic decision procedure. Holding people responsible is how we refine the deterministic decision procedure of a functional brain.
I think it's important people understand that the term "free will" as used in physics simply isn't the "free will" used in law, philosophy or by lay people. They're talking about a type of freedom which lets them set parameters of an experiment independently of the system they're measuring.
Exactly! We don't hold babies or the insane responsible for their choices precisely because they don't make choices for well-founded reasons, they simply act somewhat randomly and so clearly don't have a well-founded, deterministic decision procedure. Holding people responsible is how we refine the deterministic decision procedure of a functional brain.
I think it's important people understand that the term "free will" as used in physics simply isn't the "free will" used in law, philosophy or by lay people. They're talking about a type of freedom which lets them set parameters of an experiment independently of the system they're measuring.