Freedom Defined

It's always been one of those questions for me, that I thought I knew the answer to and then it turned out one silly question can offset me:

What is freedom?

It's a very general question - one that can erupt long-lasting and massive debates on various forums... Am I free? Are you free? Do we live in free countries? How much more free am I than someone in say, North Korea?

Upsetting question no. 1 - Investing of freedom: ~age of 12

Let's say I live in a country I love and where I'm free.. and suddenly a war breaks out and the my country is threatened by an enemy evil tyrant who wants to enslave us. The government decides that all able-bodied men (.. ages 12 and up in my case) must join the army and fight, because if not we will all become slaves.

Am I free? Do I live in a free country?

Well after some while I could come to the conclusion that I am essentially free - but I am required to give up some freedom to maintain my future freedom.
(Well this is sort of like saying I am essentially wealthy, but I am putting of making money now in order to study, so I can be wealthy in the future.)

Ok that seemed settled. But later I thought about it - if a government is allowed to decide about my investment of freedom instead of me - am I really free? Something still wasn't exactly in its place, but I let it be.

(By the way - I've never seen a book about investing your freedom.)

Upsetting question no. 2 - Social freedom: ~age 16

At this time in my life I felt free - living the cool high-schooler life. Of course it turns out it was only an illusion of total freedom, because:

Can I run around naked on the street?

Just to clarify - this question does not reflect my Freudian self, but it does bring forward a few theoretical questions -> Are my other "free" friends bounding my freedom? Not only because of the "your freedom may only reach an extent to where it does not interfere with others' freedom" golden rule of freedom. No, it's much more: my society's expectations are blocking my freedom because of social restraints!

Even if I break free of the initial social expectations - how long will it be until I am tossed back or until I lose my mind?

Intermediary declaration no. 1 - Jailed by systems ~age 18

Even the "free-est" person in the world is only free in the system he/she created.

• The statement above implies that one can never be really free - he/she can only have the illusion of freedom. You can only feel free if you have a system to be free in.
• I will talk about this later.. in another post maybe :) About systems and how to love and hate them.

Declaration no. 2 - Definition of Freedom ~somewhere between 16 and 18 I think

An individual is totally free if -at any given time- he/she makes the same decisions that he/she would make if he/she would have all the options in the world to choose from.

• This is a very very general definition of freedom - it actually says that you are not free in the following situation:
  You are given an offer of choosing between receiving $100000 and $200000 for free. If you, at this moment, feel like growing wings and flying, then you are not free, because growing wings and flying is not an option to you.
• It also unintentionally connects freedom with being content - if you are truly content with what is happening with you than you may feel totally free.
• This can be linked with the definition of being wealthy - if you have enough money to pay for anything you ever wanted, then you have reached the state of maximum of wealth. Even if you can not finance a trip to Mars - if you don't want to go to Mars then you don't really need the money to go to Mars.

Expanding the concept: The state of maximum freedom is very rare - I think we can only talk about how free someone is - between not free at all and maximally free.

The Limit of Human Knowledge

For all of you development- and advancement- freaks this may be quite sad, but the truth is:
Humanity's knowledge will not continue to develop more and more until the end of time. (Not even if the human race never dies out.)

This may seem impossible in the information age - accessing knowledge and information is easier than ever. Anyone, at any age, can search for something they don't know on the internet. The default time of a person's education lasts more than 12 years, and people have many opportunities to keep on learning and growing after high school, and even after college.

What's the problem?

Our knowledge in specific territories is becoming amazingly deep - so deep, that in some areas people need to keep learning 20-30 to fully understand their area of expertise. Only after such a period of time can they contribute to expanding the edge of knowledge.

Ok most times you don't have to completely understand your area of expertise to add value to the common knowledge database of Humanity, but you do need to get to a specific level... and as time passes, we need to learn more and more to reach that level.

What I'm saying is that it sooner or later people will have to dedicate their whole lives to learning and understanding one specific thing - for example in physics it is already quite complex to understand what string theory is exactly - and the farther we go, the more complex it becomes.

And if you dedicate your whole life to learning - you have no time left for creating something new! Our scientist are older and older! It's true - in the nineteenth century many lords in their 20s and 30s made great contributions to science - that's getting rarer and rarer!

So that's what I think will happen... unless we can enhance our learning. We can do this in one of two ways (or both): by making our lives longer (or our brains' lives longer) - this will give us more time to study and cultivate specific areas of humanity's knowledge.
Or by enhancing the learning and/or thinking procedure. This would mean developing a means of making humans learn quicker or making it possible for computers to think, to advance our understanding of the everything.

Anyways the whole thing is a long ways off... but I do find it freaky that maybe one day computers will have to do scientific research instead of us, because we are not smart enough.

A Simple Decision

Exactly two months ago, I wrote about the problem of the Wild Railroad Carriage, which was mostly about deciding whether or not to change a track switch if it meant 4 less people dying.

The problem was also varied a bit, so that the question became: should you kill someone in order to save 5 other people?

This IS a hard question!

So let me make it simpler:

You are next to a track switch, and if you change the course of the train, 0 people will die instead of 1.

Wow... much simpler!!! It's like.. who wouldn't switch the tracks, right?

You know what, I'll even guarantee that there will be no more people strapped to the tracks - this is the whole layout! No tricks - there aren't 1000 people tied to the tracks on the left - there aren't more people tied to the tracks on the right. No, that guy is not Hitler. No surprises, nothing special - just one simple guy tied to the tracks.

Yes, it's a very simple question... yet I have been thinking about this problem more than... more than just about anything. I've been thinking about this so much because I think it's one of the most essential questions of our lives here on Earth.

(To be continued...)

Clearing the Whole Probability Session

OK I did not think the so-called "Information-paradox" through... and I'm a bit ashamed.. :)

What I proposed as the information (not-really) paradox was nothing more than the rephrasing of the Monty Hall problem. I must clear this up a bit before posting anything else.

So we're playing the Monty Hall game, and I get to chose between three doors, and I chose one at random.

Monty Hall gives shows me one of the two remaining doors that has a goat behind it. I now have a 2/3 chance of winning if I switch doors.

What I said was that someone new should now come in; someone who has no idea what we were playing up to here. He is told that there are two doors, one has a goat behind it, the other a brand new car.

What confused me was that this person now has a 50% chance of hitting the jackpot.

What happens if now, we both choose one of the two doors at random? He will win 50% of the time, and so will I! Because 1/2 * 1/3 + 1/2 * 2/3 = 1/2 (because I chose the door with 1/3 chance half of the time and I choose the door with 2/3 chance the other half of the time).

If we both chose the same door all the time, say the left door, then we will win according to the 2/3 : 1/3 odds.

So simply put, that is just the Monty Hall problem rephrased... I sort of confused myself ... heh. Sorry about any unnecessary cluttering in your mind.

A cool little plus:
As mentioned before, we can play the Monty Hall game with 50 doors - in which case I will have a 49/50 chance of winning if I change to the other door. Now the cool part is that we can continue adding more and more doors. As we have more and more doors, my chances of winning because of changing grow!

While adding more and more doors, I can eventually get to an infinite amount of doors - I can even keep going until I get a continuously infinite amount of doors (or points), like on an axis.

Imagine trying to guess a number on a line - on an infinite amount of points. It's impossible to think of my number if I chose randomly. But after you choose, I reveal that the number I thought of is either the point you chose or one other point! Well it's basically for sure now that you have to switch. :)

The Information Paradox

When I first heard this problem, I said I should stay at the original door and not switch. And the reason was simple: Why would it matter? Before, each door held 1/3 chance of being the correct door, and now there are only two doors, and they hold 1/2 and 1/2 chance.

They told me I was wrong, and this was their argument: if I don't change doors, then it's just as if I wouldn't have been given the opportunity to change, so I still only have 1/3 chance of winning. Get it? If I don't change, then it's the same scenario as if Monty Hall would just start opening the doors in just a random order and I wouldn't have had the choice to change.

While essentially that argument holds true, it's this easy to stand against it: "Ok, I didn't change doors when I was offered the chance, but I rethought my choice, and I happened to choose my original door again; obviously that gives me the same chances as if I would've chosen the other door!"

So for months I went on thinking I was right, and all I have to do is just consider changing to the other door, but I don't actually have to change.

Well I was wrong!

Truth is, if you change your choice you have twice as much chance of winning than if you stay (2/3 to 1/3).

If originally you choose the door with the car (1/3 chance), then you lose if you switch.
If you originally choose a door with a goat (2/3 chance), then you win if you switch!

It's that simple!

Imagine it this way: same game, except with a deck of cards (52 cards) and the goal is to choose the ace of spades. Someone chooses a card, and you reveal 50 out of the remaining 51 cards. If you imagine it, then most of the time (51 times out of 52 tries) the person will NOT choose the ace of spades right away, and he/she should definitely switch to the card you left for him/her.

What's amazing about this problem?
-How it seems against my instincts that I will be more likely to win if I switch
-How information changes the whole problem!!! In an amazing and unbelievable extent!!!

The information (not-really) paradox:
Imagine that you're playing this Monty Hall game, you originally chose door A, and Monty Hall, the host, reveals that there is a goat behind door C (so now doors A and B are left). Now you have the chance to switch, but before you do so, another player comes in. Monty Hall tells him that behind one of the doors is a car, behind the other there's a goat. The player's default choice is set to door A.

He SHOULD HAVE a 50/50 (1:1) chance of winning!!! But he doesn't!!! He actually has 1:2 chances!! If he chooses to stay, then he will probably lose, and if he switches, he will probably win!

And the weird thing is, the more doors there were in the beginning, the more distorted his odds become! The history of the two doors isn't irrelevant! If there were 50 doors to start with, and 48 were revealed, then his chances per door are 1/50 and 49/50... and the poor guy just has to make the choice between two doors!

He can not have a 50% chance of winning, because if now we separate the room into two parts with a curtain, and you make a choice and he makes a choice, then door A will win 1/50 times and door B will win 49/50 times!!

Win a Goat!

You find yourself in an empty room, and in the adjacent room there are a bunch of people.
One person will come over from that room to your room. What is the chance that he/she's a female?


50%


Well now I tell you that in fact, there's a men's football (soccer) starter team and a women's basketball starter team in the other room. That gives you 11 men and 5 women. What's your chance of getting a woman now?


31.25%


Notice how nothing changed between the first and the second part - no one moved, no one exited, entered, teleported - nothing is physically different! Your odds changed from one moment to the other, simply because of the information you possessed.
The women's basketball team is actually a wheelchair basketball team, and they left their wheelchairs at home:


0%


Again. Same room, same people as before but your chances are so different!

A probability is only as good as the extent of information you have about the problem... and it changes over time! The more you know, the more it changes.

Check out this cool problem posed in 1975 (The Monty Hall problem):
You arrived to the final stage of a television game show. You have a choice between three doors: behind one is a brand new car, behind the other two there are goats. You get to take home whichever one you choose.

So you courageously choose one.

But here's the twist: Monty Hall, the host of the show, opens one of the two doors that you didn't pick (he opens one with a goat in it) AND he gives you a chance to change your choice to another door?

Now you can choose between two doors; one has a goat behind it and one has a brand new car. Do you switch to the other door?


I will post about the right choice in a few days... until then, think about it!


(By the way a really really cool commercial about wheelchair basketball: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwndLOKQTDs )