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ctoph t1_j9g8tp1 wrote

I guess I see his use of atomic swerve as a generalization being made to justify his desired outcome, which is a universe, where humans have free will. So, I wouldn't see it as an insight based on intuition about the nature of the universe that ultimately proves to be precient. It looks to me like he starts from the assumption that humans have free will, and if he wants that to be true, it's gonna be a problem for humans to be made up of a bunch of billiard balls knocking around in a completely determined way. So his solution is just to say, but what if they don't do that. If the insight is pointing out, a discontinuity between deterministic cause and effect and free will, fair enough. Anything beyond that feels a stretch because if you don't want a deterministic universe without free will, and you don't want to ditch atoms entirely, you are only gonna be left with atoms that are not deterministic. So, the paradox kinda creates a problem for determinism that is partially explained by quantum mechanics (similar to plank lengths with xemos paradox). If that's the interesting part, fair enough.

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