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Comment by caaqil

17 days ago

> it's not so much that it can't make a decision, but that whoever allowed it to make decisions

If one needs to be "allowed" to make a decision, does that even qualify as a decision?

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caaqil

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OtherShrezzing  17 days ago

Yes. You can have some free will without having absolute free will.

For example, I can decide which cereal to purchase at the supermarket. But I cannot decide which cereals are offered to me at the supermarket. The supermarket has allowed/enabled to make a constrained decision.

  • caaqil  17 days ago

    > You can have some free will without having absolute free will.

    So does it follow then that the agents in question do have "some" free* will? I'm not sure you realize what conclusion naturally follows from this, and how it contradicts the point made in the article and the top-level comment I replied to.

    (*) My earlier question wasn't explicitly about free will but we'll go with it.

    • OtherShrezzing  17 days ago

      Personally I don’t agree with the article that computers cannot make decisions (or at least, I don’t think the article made any case why I should agree with the statement).

      While I agree that computers cannot currently be held accountable for decisions (because I do not think they have free will), I think it’s transparently clear that computers make decisions all the time, and have done since they were first implemented.

  • Obscurity4340  17 days ago

    I wonder if theres an approach to getting an arbitrary grocery store or even like an arbitrary pizza chain to offer your favorite dressing/dip, id love to see my fave become more popular/normalized