X-Message-Number: 17935 Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 00:15:31 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Ventureville, CT, Free will Congratulations to Dave Pizer for breaking ground on his resort. The Ventureville project seems a worthwhile one, and I hope to take part in it. Mike Donahue says: >I'm also thinking about the whole body scan, and putting aside monies every >month to pay for scans on a regular basis. As it happens, in spare time I'm now working on a CT scan algorithm that could lower the cost if successful. No guarantees, of course, but it seemed worth mentioning. Finally, Mike Riskin offers some thoughts on free will and notes that, if it exists, it means your behavior is unpredictable to a degree. The converse, that unpredictable behavior guarantees free will, I don't think anyone would accept. In any case, being a determinist, I don't believe in free will, at any deep level. But I do accept what is called compatibilism, in which there is something very like free will and can be assumed to equal it for ordinary purposes, though determinism still holds. (I discuss this in my book.) It is also interesting that many-worlds allows for determinism yet happenings that, to the observer, are unpredictable. If you think about it (an observer splitting into copies, each of which sees a different outcome) you can see how this could be so. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17935