Gormech said:
In truth, we are all slaves to the existing laws of physics.
Chance and luck exist only as the lack of adequate information to calculate an event.
So, let's think about this as a program being fed data to be sent into an endless string of IF/THEN/OR statements.
If we were able to know the initial data before the program was run, then all chance/free will would cease to exist.
As time continues, the ability to retrieve that data grows more and more corrupted or should I say, encrypted to the point where it reaches closer and closer to infinite obscurity. There's an algebraic thing that shows if something is infinintely close to something, that it can be taken as such. Like 0.999... = 1 or .000...1 = 0. I believe that this is not an error in our way of understanding physics but rather that it is mathmatical evidence that with infinite fuel working at with rather an infinite amount of speed or time in which to work, an infinitely small output greater than the input can be made. That output, throughout time, probability, and in the existance of known barriers in the medium that we exist, is your free will.
Let us examine this. If I am not mistaken, what you are proposing is as follows:
1. We need data on initial starting conditions to make predictions.
2. Any such data on initial starting conditions becomes obscured over time.
3. According to a law of algebra (we will take this for granted), if something is infinitely close to something, it counts as it*.
[Hidden premise]. Sufficient time has passed for data to have become infinitely close to being totally obscured.
Therefore
4.Data on initial starting condition is infinitely obscured.
Therefore
C. We have freewill
Now I will begin with my formal criticism, though it has already begun by me formulating your argument into a logical sequence, because the flaw should have become clear.
Premises 1 and 2, we can find no immediate flaw with, only in relation to the premises that follow. So I will begin by attacking premise 3.
I believe that this is not an error in our way of understanding physics
There is an inherent problem with this truth, because it is actually something that we derive from the logic of Pure Mathematics. Physics does not entirely adhere to Pure mathematics most notably in that it abhors infinity. Infinity is not something that is taken to exist in nature, and any equation resulting in it is taken to be in error and requires rebalancing. However, where premise 3 sound it would still not be logically followed by premise 4, where it not aided by the hidden premise:
(H.P). Sufficient time has passed for data to have become infinitely close to being totally obscured.
We know this can't be the case because we do have data on the starting conditions of the universe, albeit little data. But we shall proceed none the less. Where the links between premise 3 to 4 correct we still have made a fatal deductive leap to our conclusion. This of course is because the flow of the argument can only establish premise 4 as:
4.Data on initial starting condition is infinitely
obscured
Obscured, even where it infinitely so, is in no way the same as meaning that there was no data for the initial starting conditions, it only means that it is beyond our reach to obtain. I suspect however that your confusion over premise 4 is that you believed that it naturally followed so that:
4.There is no initial starting conditions.
Perhaps not though, as no one can believe this. Your confusion might actually be(most likely so I imagine) in premise 1:
1. We need data on initial starting conditions to make
predictions.
You see, from this very starting premise we can not in any way arrive at our conclusion that there is no free will. If we where to reformulate the argument to work, It should look like this:
1. We need sufficient data on initial starting conditions to make predictions.
2. Any such data on initial starting conditions becomes obscured over time.
3. Sufficient time has passed for data to have become too obscured to make predications on human life.
Therefore
C. We can make no predications of human life.
You see the inability to make any predictions about human life does not equate in anyway to human life not being determined. We could imagine for example a super intelligence that eclipses anything we could achieve in this universe, that in fact pre-dates the universe, witnessed the big bang, and could predict the entire life span of that universe right down to how human beings on a planet called earth behaved.
*so 9.999999 recurring = 10.