Mack Grenfell

Boethius has successfully shown that we have free will

Manhattan, New York October 15th 1996

The Five-Thirteen Club stands on the corner of 62nd and 3rd as a homage to a bygone era. Its opaque windows and dim, flickering lights indicate an untended neglect that has run amok through the decades. Whilst the Clubs founding had once upon a time marked a new lease of life for its owners, a modest Slovenian couple who had immigrated to the States only eighteen months prior, its demands had quickly soured their wishful conception of the American dream. What was the culmination of a shared lifetimes hard work soon crumbled under the weight of their frivolously optimistic expectations. Having become unintentionally embroiled in the East Sides criminal scene, the Five-Thirteen gradually acquired a veritably sordid clientele. It was the pursuing reputation which consigned the Club to what would turn out to be a history of hardship. Nowadays, the FiveThirteen plays host to the punters which no other bar will. Those who walk through its dilapidated doors do so not through their own choice, but through mere lack of an alternative in which to ebb the night away. * Benny, an inquisitive yet underachieving journalist of Italian descent, runs his hand along the faded blue felt of the Clubs one surviving pool table. Having walked over to the far side of the smoke-doused room, he reluctantly lines up his cue and puts to bed what has been yet another tedious game. He exchanges a knowing nod with Tom, an old high-school friend of his who hed by now beaten several times in a row. Fatigued in the manner that only inactivity can bring about, Benny rests his cue across the table and slumps back into a decrepit maroon armchair. Clutching his drink to his chest, his eyes wander desultorily onto the aged twenty-inch tube perched above the

bar. Too indifferent not to, he immerses himself unenthusiastically in the monotony of the ten oclock news; The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has today announced the recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics to be the French theoretician Lon Campserl Pairie, Hamiltonian professor of mathematics at Trinity College, Ireland. Pairie, whose selection has come as somewhat of a surprise in the physics community, received the award for his extensive work in the development of a computational framework known as Gemini. Gemini is described by Pairie as being an artificial interface capable of simulating and predicting future configurations of what physicists refer to as time-variant linear systems of particles. Gemini operates via a two-stage process. It first predicts how the system will evolve with time, based on a series of calculations concerning the initial conditions of the system, it then runs what is effectively a simulated universe centred largely on these calculations in order to demonstrate and confirm its prediction. Geminis ability to predict the specifics of various systems future states with arbitrary and unfaltering precision has proved invaluable to many fields of science over the past ten years. Whilst Pairies work has so far focused only on microscopic objects, there is hope that in the future it could be extended to macroscopic systems also. Damn, imagine playing pool in one of those machines, Tom remarks half-heartedly, attempting to inject but a modicum of humour into their evening. Say that a century from now they do scale it up, not just to pool tables but to humans too. Doesnt matter how well you think youre doing, the computer already knows who wins; why bother playing? What makes you say that? Benny responds, entertaining Toms thought momentarily. Say that were inside Gemini right now. Just because Gemini thinks that Im going to win every game doesnt mean that I have to. Whats more, just because it hasnt got anything wrong doesnt mean that it necessarily gets every prediction right. Even if I were in one of these simulated universes, theres nothing to stop me from throwing a game whenever I like.

But how could it be wrong about the simulation? The simulation isnt anything other than an expression of the program itself; how can Gemini be wrong about itself? If Gemini does its calculations and thinks that you, as a simulated pool player, are gonna win the next game, you can be damn sure that you will. What Im saying is that Gemini knows everything about the simulation before its even run. You think that you have some say in whether you win the next game, but you dont. Youre just a pawn in Geminis mind; a mind that knows what youre gonna do. Okay, fine. If Im a part of the simulation then I get that Gemini knows where Ill be and what Ill be doing a year or so from now. What I dont get, then, is why I dont have a choice in my actions. Even if Gemini thinks that Ill lose the next match, why does it then mean that I dont have a choice as to whether I do so or not? Lets take a step back, Benny. First things first, Gemini does its calculations. Based on these calculations it knows that you win the next match. Gemini runs the simulation; mio dio, you win. Inside of Gemini you dont have any choice in this action, nor any other action. To have choice, youd need to be capable of doing differently from what Gemini predicts. Theres a problem here though. You doing differently from what Gemini predicts means that the whole simulation turns out differently from what is predicted. In that sense, the prediction is wrong- And youre gonna tell me that it cant be wrong? Benny interrupts, now somewhat discomforted by what his friends words. Bingo! It being wrong means a disconnect between the calculations and the simulation, some sort of external agency is required which would mean that Gemini doesnt necessarily know whats going to happen. What about an internal agency, like the people inside of the simulation choosing what theyre gonna do on their own? You said it yourself Benny, inside of the simulation. If theyre inside, then the calculations will have that covered too. Theres no way that anything inside of the simulation can second-guess the computer, regardless of whether the simulations inhabitants are conscious or not. Being part of

the simulation, Gemini knows everything that there is to know about these inhabitants. The only way that Gemini could get something wrong is if something external to it caused the simulation to unfold differently to what had been calculated. Then again, a simulation that could be affected by that sort of stuff doesnt sound worthy of a Nobel Prize now does it? Trivialities aside, we can safely say that Gemini knows everything about everything within the simulations. Why? Well, not just because it created the simulation but because in a certain sense it is the simulation. Fine, I wont argue with that Benny replies, now treading cautiously. But I still dont see why I cant act freely, why I have no choice in my actions. Okay, what weve established so far is that what Gemini thinks, and by extension knows, about the simulation is necessarily true; what it think will happen is what happens. So, if Gemini thinks that youll win the next match, it follows that you will win the next match. Remember, you winning isnt a matter of contingency, its not like it could be otherwise but just happens to be so; its a matter of necessity. For you win the next game as the result of a free action, you hav e to be in some sense capable of losing too. It should be apparent that this is at odds with what Ive just said, and with the nature of Gemini running a simulation as a whole. Gemini knows that youll win, Benny, and it also knows that you wont do so freely. Damn, so what do you think that sort of world would be like? If we were a part of Gemini then wed have to change so much of what we think; justice, for starters. If Gemini stops us from acting freely then how could we praise or blame people? Sure, we can lock them up to protect ourselves but its not like we can say that theyre actually responsible. Let me stop you there, Tom interjects. Youre right in that we wouldnt be able to genuinely praise or blame people, but that itself supposes knowledge of the nature of Gemini. I cant for the life of me see how the Gemini simulation, viewed from the inside, would be any different from life as we know it. Ha, I bet wed think that were free as well! The important point is that nothing would seem to change if we all woke up as a part of Gemini one day. Sure, maybe right now were here at the Five-Thirteen because we chose to come, something we couldnt freely do if we

were inside of Gemini, but what practical difference does it make whether or not we came here out of our own will? Okay, I can understand that. What I cant get to grips with however is this whole idea of Gemini knowing the future. It just seems so odd, the way in which a computer can know all this stuff about what it creates; especially when this stuff that isnt really anything more than the computer itself in the first place. Equally though, Gemini seems so distinct from the simulations which it runs. For starters, by virtue of their being, the simulations obviously have a sense of time inside of them. Sure, Gemini is in time too but its not in the same sort of time. Hell, if somebody inside a simulation knew of the existence of Gemini, theyd probably think that it wasnt in time at all. But, if Gemini isnt in the same type of time as its inhabitant, a sort of problem arises when we try to ask how free we are. Benny takes a drawn-out sip of his drink, staring aimlessly into the foreground, pondering his next move. Lets say I do go ahead and win the next game. If somebody knew this before the game, and with real certainty, I mean not just some soon-to-be-justified true belief, then fine; I dont have a choice but to win. Alternatively, lets say that we go home, live our lives as usual, and at some point in the future somebody knows, with equal conviction, that I won the game. Somebody knowing that I won the game after it was played doesnt seem to have any impact on how free I was when playing the game. Isnt this obvious? Tom retorts, suspended in his own puzzlement at Bennys seemingly trite point. Sure, Tom. But what isnt so obvious, at least judging by what youve been saying, is that Geminis knowledge is only a problem for my freedom if it can be located in time. If Gemini knows that Ill win the next game before weve even racked up, then I cant help but admit that I dont have a say in the matter. Gemini isnt like that though and we both know it. Gemini doesnt exist in the time that its simulations run on. Why? Well, in a sense it is that time. Gemini is responsible for programming and running that time, so I dont think that it really makes sense to think of it as existing in it, alongside that which it simulates. If Gemini is outside of the flow of time of its

simulations, then you could sorta say that it knows everything all at once. Even that is a bit misleading though, as there isnt any at once in relation to the simulation. Nevertheless, the point still stands. Geminis knowledge of the simulations that it runs is so unimaginably different to the knowledge of those that it is simulating. Crucially, Gemini doesnt have foreknowledge, because its never before any of the events that it simulates. So what youre saying is that Geminis simulations can still feature free action even though Gemini knows everything about these simulations? Tom utters somewhat incredulously. Exactly! exclaims Benny. Theres nothing inconsistent about freedom of choice and the sort of timeless knowledge which Gemini has. Its not like Geminis knowledge is capable of fixing the future; for Gemini there is no future to fix. Gemini simply sees everything in a never-ending instant. Maybe thinking of it slightly differently will help. Say we leave the Five-Thirteen and look down 63rd. We see only a thin slice of New York. Gemini, on the other hand, may as well be up top the Rockefeller. Gemini sees everyone and everything, and in an entirely different way to us. Okay, says Tom, slowly coming to grips with Bennys novel approach, So this all means that Geminis knowledge doesnt have any real impact on what goes on in its simulations, right? Right. Thats the point Ive been getting at. I cant help but feel that the whole idea of having Geminis knowledge of its simulations being independent from the simulations itself is a bit sketchy. The way that youre trying to understand Gemini implies that Geminis knowledge depends on the simulations which it runs. However, if the simulations are, as I said earlier, just expressions of Gemini itself then we reach a bit of an impasse. How is it possible for Geminis knowledge to be dependent on what is nothing more than an extension of itself? The only way I can make sense of this is to say that Gemini isnt any more a single program. If it were a single program then it would be impossible for it not to know and understand its own code. This means that Gemini has to consist of multiple programs, each of which has only limited knowledge of the others. The part of Gemini which is responsible for creating simulated universes must be separate to the part which deals with memory.

Im happy to accept that, in fact I dont see why I shouldnt accept that. There doesnt seem to be anything wrong with Gemini being an umbrella term for a whole load of distinct computational processes does there? I mean, when you look at a computer you dont think its just one big happy program that does everything that you ask of it, now do you? Its obviously more complex than that.

I guess youre right, Tom yawned, But I cant help feeling that this French fella couldve designed a better program, one which didnt have any of these divisions; just one simple piece of software. I bet that program wouldve been more worthy of the Nobel. Dont worry, says Benny assuredly, Im sure that Gemini will change with time.