I still have that note in my Obsidian graph (ported from TiddlyROAM). Here's the hypothetical mechanism I proposed:
• a mesh of parallel processes evolving in time • each process has a local branching structure for what might happen next • these branches (and the events that walk them) compose • that composition is monitored and remembered within some scope • that monitor/memory is used by a controller to edit the branching structures I suppose with AI, I could try to formalize it. But TBH, I'm so tired of "free will" and the purposefully obtuse vagaries surrounding it, I'm reluctant to ever use the phrase again. But if we put it in the concrete context of, say, Power of Attorney, it still makes some sense. Renee and I still don't have Wills or estate plans (kinda stupid for a cancer patient, I know). But during the conversation with the lawyer, it came up that someone Renee wanted to put into the chain of assignment (who gets the PoA if the first one can't do it), that person is an anti-vax, racist, Trumper, Christian. Part of the branching tree of possibilities is that were we to die together today, that whackjob might get control over my stuff ... my company, my social media accounts, etc. Ahhhhh!!!! No fscking way. So even though that's a bit of "virtual" regret, it still demonstrates the editing of the branching structure. I.e. put the Will in place and try to ensure that person never gets their hands on my stuff. I mean, an atheist friend of mine died just recently ... of cancer ... about the age I was when I was diagnosed: 48. We had ~100 conversations about death, what it means, how it might feel, temptations of suicide, etc. until he went into hospice. The best I might say is that he leaned Buddhist. But at the funeral service, they emphasized what a good Christian he was, played some Gospel, the obligated hymns, etc. [grrrr] If there is an afterlife and that whackjob played Christian music at my funeral, I would do my best to come back from the grave and eat their bowels as slowly as my zombie appetite allowed. Fscking Christians. On 9/30/26 2:08 PM, [email protected] wrote:
I am still analyzing the FRIAM archives using ChatGPT to improve the first chapter and found this beautiful quote from Glen about free will: "the memory of lost opportunities is what we call free will". And this quote from Nick: "I think one of the hardest things about having been an academic is that while we are paid to have ideas, nobody else is paid to respond to them. And so, academic writing is like dropping coins down an infinitely deep wishing well and listening for any evidence at all that the coin ever dropped". If academic writing is "like dropping coins down an infinitely deep wishing well and listening for any evidence at all that the coin ever dropped" I am quite good at it too. I mean in dropping coins down an infinitely deep wishing well.
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