Who is free?: Seth Lloyd at TEDxUWCCR

Seth Lloyd is a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT from the United States. He has a P.H.D in physics from Rockfeller University and a bachelor's degree from Harvard College. Dr. Lloyd has performed seminal work in the fields of quantum computation and quantum communications.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

[williamsando]

Seth Lloyds laugh is just the best :-)

[markwilliamson]

My Mother was a computer at a bank in 1943. She calculated interest on bank balances in pounds, shillings and pence in her head. She was my idol and I went into maths because of her. Thanks for acknowledging women!

[Optinix-gzqg]

Best speaker, love your work. I have really enjoyed his book called Programming the Universe.

[KipIngram]

It is absolutely clear to me that my dog and cats are conscious and have free will.

[Jesterish]

Ah, the 'halting problem', brilliant, thankyou very much.

[roland]

Thank god for that. The idea that every thing I ever do is just a consequence of nothing exploding 13 billion years ago is more than I can deal with lol

[KipIngram]

7:51 - There is absolutely no requirement that the outcome of each quantum event be *truly* random. That's just what we see when we do our experiments because we're experimenting on dead inanimate matter. We've adopted the habit of referring to these outcomes as "random." But if our free will caused a 50/50 quantum decision to go one way instead of the other, the laws of physics have absolutely no problem with that. The only requirement is that if we repeat identical events that the right statistics emerge - but every event in our brains is a one-off. It can equally well go either way, and there's no reason to suppose we're not influencing that via our free will.

I honestly don't understand why people argue over this so. OF COURSE we have free will - it's entirely evident. Even in the 1600s and 1700s they should have realized that sooner or later a crack in the determinism would have to appear, just as it did in the 20th century.

[sparhopper]

Bare with me, but, the coin flip is predetermined by the motion your thumb makes, which is predetermined by every previous choice you have ever made in your life (or those choices that were made for you by others with their own predetermined past), and the motion of every molecule that you are made of, down to what the gravity was like, where and when you were born, which was predetermined by the motion of each quark of each Planet that was formed from the Star that exploded, at a certain moment in time, that created the motion of every quark / molecule etc that created the material from which our solar system formed, which was predetermined by the very condition of the initial point of the quantum fluctuation that began the unfolding of inflation itself. Your decision to stay seated reading, after clicking on : 'Read More...', instead of not, goes all the way back to the big bang itself, from a series of 'caused' events within the substance of the unfolding spacetime, I would think, . The case for WMAP was that all the substance in the image, coalesced Galaxies and voids etc, were all 'predetermined' by the 'initial conditions'. No?

[billdrumming]

The decision is all predetermined. The coin flip and the result is also predetermined by the initial conditions !!

[KipIngram]

The world is NOT deterministic - that's the whole point of quantum theory.

[KipIngram]

2:40 - They were women because it was considered menial work, and that's the cruddy way women were treated in those days.

[zatoichiable]

Deterministic. does that mean conditioned?

[luckyyuri]

this is so making me question the very positive image i have of sell lloyd. clearly a very gifted thinker, but he has very poor understanding of cognitive sciences and the notion of free will