Paper tiger
response to Michael A.M. Lerner and Ethan Hill's post The New Nostradamus
WillSea - if free will 'exists' in any sense, it's unlikely that rational choice theory or its wider adoption could push our "chance to exercise it...out the window forever." Perhaps Bueno de Mesquita's predictions have a 97% level of accuracy because it would be generous to grant that people exercise (or have ever exercised) free will 3% of the time, in cases of "gamesmanship" or otherwise. Even Kant, champion of the autonomy of the will, would have conceded something like this.
So I agree that we should approach this 'tool' with caution--a political science bereft of regulative ethical principles might have trouble coherently justifying even its own 'objectivity'--but I'm not sure to what extent free will, if it's not an empirical matter, and if it doesn't seem to be exercised very often anyway (at least not by the criminals, mobs, or political actors most commonly analyzed in game theory), faces a new or newly apocalyptic threat here.
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No free will? I think his point has been missed.
From what I can gather from the article, this process does not limit our ability to exercise free will. In fact, it seems to me that free will is one of the foundations of the theory. In deciding the outcome of these problems, he is taking into consideration each individual's motivations; i.e. what would further someone's career or financial gain or, in the case of North Korea, what would keep him in his current state of power. One would make their 'free-will' choices based on the best outcome for their own personal fortune. Why would we exercise our free will to the advantage of others and the disadvantage to ourselves?
Posted on November 2, 2007 — by Lori_H
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