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Free will & food

By razib on October 5, 2006.

Radio Open Source had a show on about "free will" with a foody focus inspired by Clay Shirky's Edge response, "Free will is going away. Time to redesign society to take that into account." Megan McAardle offers a good skeptical and rational rebuttal to the emotive talking points spouted by some of the guests, nevertheless, I do think that libertarians (and I still consider myself one) must face up to the reality that advances in the science of the mind inevitably lead to "applications" which manipulate our mental architecture with greater precision and prediction than anything imagined by John Stuart Mill. I think in this case formally rigorous and empirically grounded models must cede ultimate ground to the common values espoused by a society. Shit, the libertarian SS will have their long knives out just for the last sentence. Oh, and they quote me 3/4 of the way into the show, just so you know.

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Free will has always been a trickier question than most people realizes, so much so that any clear statement either of the principle or its opposite tends to lead to dilemmas.