They've missed one very important point; one that Hobbes, Hume, and others realized long ago. The utterance "free will" is literally meaningless. What would that even mean and why would you even want that?
Here's the link to John Conway's lecture videos. It includes links to the Free Will Lectures, although it isn't currently working for me.<p><a href="http://www.math.princeton.edu/facultypapers/Conway/" rel="nofollow">http://www.math.princeton.edu/facultypapers/Conway/</a>
Their thesis is that if Humans have free will so do elementary particles (in a defined respect).<p>Anyone know much more on this? -- Does this relate to the theory that everything was predefined at the big bang - e.g. a big random number was generated and everything since then has simply been cause and effect? Or is it on another tack?
"if a human experimenter can make decisions independently of past events, then the particle can also make a free choice"<p>The article does not make clear how "free choice" is different from "random chance" -- at least not to me.
<i>They have packaged their arguments in an airtight mathematical theorem that rests on what they say are three unassailable axioms which happen to rhyme -- spin, fin and twin.</i><p>Aside from most discussions of "free will" arising from semantic confusion, I think pretty clearly points toward this being a bit of a joke...
If they prove we don't have free will and somebody gets upset, they can always say "Hey, it wasn't like we <i>choice</i> in what we studied. It just happened that way."
I think this article explains the idea much better: <a href="http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35391/title/Do_subatomic_particles_have_free_will%3F" rel="nofollow">http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35391/title/Do_su...</a>
Why do experts in one field (like math) often think they must be brilliant at other fields (like philosophy)?<p>They are trying to prove stuff about free will, but have no expertise on the question of what free will is.<p>If you disagree, please post a comment saying why. I'd like to hear it.