An Overview of Free Will themes and solutions

There's so many things associated with "Free Will", usually muddled up.

Here's a list we'll briefly talk about:

1. The "hard problem of consciousness", aka qualia, subjective experience etc.
2. "Consciousness" as in ability to identify oneself, and one's own thought processes
3. "Agency" as in freedom to make decisions without oppression or duress
4. "Free will" as in making decisions that, before the decision was made, you did not know which option you will choose.

# Consciousness

The hard problem of consciousness is actually "easy" in the sense that as long as you accept that it is a "gift" from the cosmos, and that you accept the perspective that the subjective experience is fundamental (as opposed to objective materialism), then it's much less of a weird problem. Still, even if we allow ourselves to become the center of the universe (as part of my personal subjective experience), the fact that "I" am alive here, is still compelling evidence that "miracles" exist.

Note that there's no objective way to prove conclusively that anyone else has a "consciousness" under this meaning, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie . The idea that other humans are also "conscious beings" is just a social convention that can sometimes be broken (at least, historically this has happened). I personally choose to believe that all animals are definitely conscious in some form, and that most plants and living things are "conscious" but only in ways we cannot imagine.

In 2023, we now know that drawing the line on intelligence can be flawed because (1) society is very prone to moving goalposts about what intelligence means (you'll see that if you follow the discussion around AI), and (2) in a couple years when artificial intelligence becomes undeniably human-like in level (not necessarily super-human), it will be untenable to claim that AI models might have a consciousness in the way humans do. (I do think sufficiently complex AIs can channel aspects of the cosmic consciousness though.)

# Self

The concept of "self" seems to be quite important in discussions such as these. The concept of "self" vs "not-self" is a recurring theme that we will see quite often. We are socially conditioned to believe that our "self" is strictly our body, and extends only to the limit of our skin. It is a convenient approximation as far as our biochemistry goes, but in terms of physics and metaphysics, the skin does not have to be the only border between the "self" and "not self". As Alan Watts famously said, "If I am my foot, I am the Sun".

Since we are not purely a biological entity, the various other aspects of "self" requires different boundaries. For example, my possessions are an extension of my "self". My reputation can be considered my "self". As are my social rights, my online persona, or even close friends and family.

In my circle we have a saying, "It is very hard to define 'self'".

There's no "correct" way to define oneself. Most people don't even really identify with the biological body. People often have different aspects of self, and they fight each other. This internal strife brings confusion, angst, and suffering. On the other hand, some people are more in tune with their environment, and conceptually meld into the environment as one. This can bring tranquil and peace, but at the cost of losing some aspects of the human identity, and of fine grained "control".

# Agency

Agency is a deceptively difficult question.

John Doe signs an employment contract to work for Big Corp at minimal wage. Does he do this out of his own "free will", or is he under duress?

Generally the law says as long as there's no overt illegal threat, the contract is presumed to be made under "free will" of both parties. But the truth is much more nuanced. For example, in a society with systematic poverty and capitalist exploitation, it can be reasonably argued that John Doe was "forced" into a bad deal because he had no alternatives.

At least that's the social justice perspective (which, when not philosophizing, I generally adopt). From a philosophical perspective though, when philosophers ponder questions like the value of life, whether we should seek death, etc., things are different. Without settling the basic philosophical questions, we can't even say the threat of death is duress, because "choosing to die" seems to be a tentatively valid option. The "mere" threat of poverty and starvation might not have much philosophical significance, since everybody is just in a sense playing with cards they are dealt. There may be an obvious, default, rational, optimal path, but in a way the true test of agency is whether one is capable of choosing the path less chosen. The rich and affluent may not have more agency than John Doe even if they are richer -- while they may have more choices that would not lead to poverty and hunger, as long as they keep only making rational, optimal, socially acceptable choices, they utilize no more agency than the poverty stricken John.

In every situation where it seems there is no choice, the only possible reason is that the choice was already made, by you yourself. Often implicitly and unknowingly. Unironically, making "conscious" decisions (even when they may seem like a no-brainer) may increase the sense of agency.

# Free Will

The debate of free will and determinism is an old tradition, but I believe there is a clear solution. In a classical, objective, Newtonian world, determinism is the rule, and free will does not exist. We already know that the Newtonian model is inaccurate, which is why we have quantum physics. However, even though quantum physics forces onto us a subjective world, most people have chosen to ignore it, or at least ignore the philosophical questions.

In my view, it is not that we are obliged to infer a world of subjective reality from the rules of quantum physics, but rather, that the universe behaves in a subjective manner should have enticed us to consider whether, the "classical" world of ordinary macro objects should also be viewed from an inherently subjective perspective.

When we fully embrace subjective reality, free will is simply the fact that before "I" make a decision, "I" don't know what the decision will be. And because the subjective reality from "me" is the fundamental truth, nothing else matters. And thus, all the so called paradoxes of free will vs determinism vanishes. It does not matter if there is another machine that can predict your decisions with 99.99% accuracy (which even in a world of quantum physics I believe is quite possible).  If the machine tells you its prediction before you make the final decision, you can change the decision based on that information; If the machine does not tell you its prediction, then it is simply that when you go to inspect the machine, you will see that it had already correctly predicted your decisions. The fact that an outside observer may see the machine making decisions before "you" does not matter either. Everyone is given their own bubble of reality, that's why it is subjective.

The only spooky thing about this fully subjective reality is that it seems to imply you can decide what the machine was predicting, without knowing its inner workings. This is in fact, an important "feature" of subjective reality, where every person has the ability, through their "decisions", to decide or at least discover which reality they are in. Yes, that implies you can "change" the whole world with a thought -- where "change" can be used interchangeably with "decide" or "discover". Imagine a "many worlds" scenario, only that "you" can, through your decisions, discover which reality you are actually in. (If this seems like gibberish, here's a paper that I discovered incidentally after I solved this riddle: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1093/bjps/axw004 - the conclusion seems stunning because I was worrying how to derive the Borne rule with my non-existent math and physics knowledge. I still haven't gotten around to understand the maths there.)

Ideological objections settled (hopefully), I'll briefly address the practical objection that perhaps some people are, sometimes, so simple that a crude model can predict 99% of their actions, and they could themselves also predict it as well. For example a person playing to win (or not lose) Tic-Tac-Toe has predictable moves. Here, it is quite fair to say that the person has not exercised free will at all, or at least have not truly made a decision while playing the game, since they themselves also know what comes next. The spooky process of "deciding/discovering which world you are in" only applies to truly "free" decisions in which you truly do not know which path you will take.

For people not used to exercising their "free will" (or "agency"), this subjective reality is truly a scary world full of uncertainties. Angel and demons lurk just behind the corner. 

+But every conscious choice, especially those that seem apparently irrational, are inevitably made from pure love. And that, I think, is of utmost importance.

Subjective Subjective Probabilities - the Probabilities of Miraculous Healing

Bayes Rule

A refresher for the Bayes rule:

         P(B|A) * P(A)
P(A|B) = -------------
             P(B)

        P(B) * P(A|B)
P(A) = --------------
           P(B|A)

Now, suppose:

• A: "I" get cured of a supposedly incurable disease
• B: miracles exist

Also, assume that P(A) is mostly low, but empirically not zero. Sometimes people do suddenly get cured without a good reason.

Let us investigate the subjective probabilities of:

1. The devout believer,
2. the denialist, and
3. the "rational experimentalist"

The Devout Believer

Obviously, P(B) ~= 1

          1 * P(A|B) <- [Jesus factor, or am I worthy of salvation?]
P(A) ~= --------------
          P(B|A) ~= P(B) =~ 1

Basically the subjective probability of A depends on whether you think you will be saved. "Jesus" helps quite a bit in boosting the probability here. For those who object to the subjective probability here, don't fret -- a subjective probability of 99.999% still doesn't mean anything in the frequentist world. It just means they have messed up priors.

However, for those who believe not only in subjective truth but also in subjective probability, this might ring a bell.

The Denialist

The denialist just pretends B isn't a thing. So,

• P(B) is very low
• P(B|A) is very low (won't believe the evidence even if something apparently miraculous happened)
• P(A) ~= P(A|B) -- basically, B is not a real thing, P(A|B) is just P(A) because B is irrelevant.

The Rational Experimentalist

"I'll believe it when I see it" -- your local Rational Experimentalist

• P(B) is very low (denote it as 'e')
• P(B|A) is very high, i.e. "I will believe in miracles if I get cured"

So,

        e * P(A|B)       e
P(A) = -------------- < --- ~= 0
            0.99        .99

Here, the math is straightforward, but the interpretation is funny. On the surface, the rational experimentalist is just tautologically applying the formula, since in order to be able to say "I will believe in miracles if I get cured" given a low P(B) prior, P(A) must have had been very very low (i.e. virtually no possibility of a non-miraculous cure). Then the math is just as expected.

But if we take a subjective reality world view, that whatever we do not know is truly not yet settled, then "discovering" or "deciding" that P(B|A) is high is logically the same act as "discovering" or "deciding" that P(A) is low.

i.e. **If** you have a rational choice to decide that P(B|A) is high, in making that choice you have also decided that P(A) is very very low. (It gets even lower if you believe you're not worthy).

Conclusions

I wanted to say "that's why frequentist approaches to miracle finding doesn't work", but I suppose that doesn't really follow. I guess what really follows is that even if you think you "keep an open mind" and are "willing to change your stance" given extraordinary evidence, the fact that you are willing to change your stance implies you subjectively believe the chance of this extraordinary evidence is slim -- because (duh) it is extraordinary. In a subjective interpretation of reality, you'll probably discover the world being quite ordinary.

In a world with a low rate of miracles, the only way to increase your chances of seeing it is to believe it. Note that I didn't say that if you believe you will see.

Also, suppose we fixate a value to P(A) in a frequentist context, we can actually imply something about the ratio of devout believers and rational experimentalists. There's enough wriggle room to make everything look consistent especially with the "Jesus factor". I suppose we don't want to use this to deduce the number of "Jesus" equivalents we can have... But then, we could hypothetize that the math works out that in order to efficiently map each person's subjective probabilities to the frequentist rates, it seems that the universe could just assign miracles to those whose P(A) is high, and refrain from giving miracles to those whose P(A) is low. Then everybody's observations matches their probabilities.

Further Reading

https://github.com/hnfong/public-crap/blob/main/writings/2022/09-Subjective_Truth.md 

我先唔想扮經濟學家

呢幾個月我學得最多嘅新嘢係美元經濟體系點運作。

由三月 SVB 爆煲開始，我已經不斷學習聯儲局（同埋一般嘅央行）係咩嚟，「加息」係咩嚟，銀行點樣運作 (按：已經唔係 fractional reserve banking [1])。學識咗 MBS 係咩嚟同埋點解美國買樓可以鎖定息律（直至還完錢），而香港基本上係冇呢件事 。

作為一個中國香港無產階級，手頭上啲閒錢搵掟泊有太多選擇。可以買被美國制製嘅中國國企，又可以走資到歐美諸國，甚至買美國國債收息。選擇多煩惱就多，正如我早幾日好仆街咁同塔巴所講：「樓價跌唔緊要，最緊要係蟹吖嘛。蟹咗就冇煩惱。」

如果我早早聽話成副身家走去買咗層樓就唔會晚晚喺度研究究竟美國印咗咁多銀紙點解仲未通漲爆煲，反而係咁咦加下息就將通漲壓到 4% 以下，然後美國經濟望落去貌似冇事，失業率勁低，企業請唔到人，工會強勢，股市日創新高。

望住美國政府赤字，同埋聯儲局嘅資產負債表規模，同 COVID 前相比，我只能夠講，唔撚係呀？

印咗咁多錢出嚟 （望落去貌似 ~ $3T），而家所謂通漲 3.x%，學啲後生仔講：認真咩？

然後就好自然開始懷疑，究竟美元所謂通漲 3.x% 究竟係咩一回事。雖則話印銀紙同通漲冇直接關係，但事實上印得咁多，總會有唔止少少影響。2022 年美國通漲去到 9%，算係反映咗原來印銀紙真係會引發通漲。

但就咁望落去，對照返上面同下面啲圖，個通漲 trend 似係「就快」落返 COVID 前嘅水平，但印咗嘅錢仲未收返，究竟條數係點計呢？就算個 Fed Balance sheet 都要除返~20%通漲，咁應該起碼仲差 1T半T印多咗嘅錢仲喺出面 diu diu fing，究竟漲咗去邊度呢？呢個就係我好急切想知嘅問題。

因為如果其實美國仲要通漲，咁即係美元仲會繼續貶值，咁啲所謂吸引嘅債息其實只係得個樣。講真之前美債十年升到 4% 我都覺得好危險，就係太多呢類不確定性。（長期美債最近仲多咗人諗 default risk 呢個可能性）

講起通漲，其實所謂通漲都只係計日常使費嘅價錢，正如美國勞工統計局上圖表示[3]，美國通漲主要都係計關於「衣食住行」嘅消費。想像下喺 COVID lockdown 期間，作為平民，你收到一堆 stimulus check，你會攞嚟做乜？ 如果你係衣不蔽體食不果腹嘅話，咁梗係去消費糧食買衫。但如果你係（或以為自己係）一個中產，本身都夠錢食飯，唔會特登買幾倉米擺屋企。所以米價其實係唔會點升。同時你又唔會搬屋，又去唔到旅行，所以「衣食住行」其實唔會即刻因為多咗錢而上升好多。所以派錢對 CPI 嘅影響係「相對溫和」。

咁多咗啲錢會攞嚟做乜？

買車都係後話，因為 lockdown 緊正常人唔會諗住買車。望落去美國買車貴主要都係2022年後來居上，spike 得最勁都係啲 meme assets (NFT, BTC, GME, etc.)。

另一堆錢就去咗啲相對冇咁 meme/fad 嘅投資項目嗰度，例如科技公司。雖則話熱錢湧入科技項目唔係 2020 年開始，事實上今日嘅 Big Tech 科技霸權都係 2010 以嚟嘅低息環境造就，但 2020~2021 年科技相關嘅錢係多到使唔晒咁滯。Crypto 係咁升都有啲關係，但主要都係投資者嘅錢冇掟擺，大家都寄望科技股繼續創造增長奇績。事實上 COVID lockdown 期間大家被迫用各種科技產品 (Zoom, Amazon, Netflix etc.) 好多科技公司呢兩年業績都係好亮麗嘅。

所以某程度上 BTC 同 Big Tech 升咗幾多，就係「印銀紙通漲」嘅真正效果。從某個角度嚟講，睇住 BTC.USD 嘅價位，大概就係「真．通漲」嘅水平。而大家有眼所見，起碼喺 2020~2022 年美元世界水浸呢個效果都係好顯著嘅。

最艱深嘅問題嚟喇。而家啲meme stock同crypto熱潮退咗，BTC回落；聯儲局仲有起碼 1T 仲未收返，如果要收返嘅話，仲有啲咩會縮水呢？如果唔收返嘅話，有啲咩會開始漲呢？定係唔會漲？

呢啲問題都唔係最緊要，最緊要係，究竟啲錢泊喺邊度好？

某程度上選擇困難真係唔止「十字路口」咁簡單。美國嗰邊講話就嚟 recession，雖然的確係有少少狼來了嘅感覺，但實際上如果我上面嘅分析係正確，佢而家狀態只不過係啲水仲未收返晒返嚟，如果唔繼續收水啲仍然腫脹嘅水份遲早會滲返去影響 CPI，所以仍然需要繼續收水。收收下就有機會 recession。喺咁嘅情況下，啲 Big Tech 嘅 30+ PE 講緊冇增長嘅話最多得 3% 回報，仲低過所謂 zero risk 嘅美國國債，咁嘅價錢究竟係咩意思，我到而家仍然睇唔透。話就話 AI 乜乜柒柒，但你問我嘅話，AI ⋯ 所以我個人睇法係，聯儲局再收水，啲科技股就會開始受壓。

咁個市場唔一定聽你支笛嘅，所以而家科技股仍然少少硬淨，咁係咩受壓呢？竟然係長期美債。原來聯儲局嘅錢都可以覆水難收，市場寧願博新科技再創經濟奇跡，都唔願意相信Sam叔叔嘅承諾，都唔知係咪對美國不斷提升個 debt ceiling 同埋個 debt to GDP ratio 太高有啲擔心 （利申：我係）。

另一邊廂，中國喺疫情過後仍然冇乜起色，出口同失業數字十分嚇人，樓價又不斷插水，令到啲所謂「支爆」論者眉飛色舞，一副「本老師又中」嘅款。

從表徵嚟睇中國經濟尤其年輕人失業數字同埋外間嘅觀感，係有少少失控嘅感覺，但事實上中央政府一直都冇大動作，似係刻意為之，起碼壓低樓市唔係一種「經濟差」嘅表現，而係由最高層指示嘅政治任務嚟。本身恒大開始出事嗰陣，已經講緊係因為「三條紅線」，所以某程度上單嘢係政府帶頭引爆。個問題係，有冇方法壓低樓價嘅同時唔影響民生？有冇方法壓低樓價而唔搞個金蝕海潚出嚟？喺習近平嘅共同富裕願景之下，犧牲富人嘅資產去扶貧係可以做並且應該做嘅嘢嚟，不過西方喺評論員眼中，政府望住啲經濟數字咁差都好似冇乜反應咁，就好似就有種就爆炸嘅感覺。

究竟個 ground truth 係咩呢？就咁望住啲數字點睇都係得個吉。啲人講中國經濟最後都係講政治，連我自己都係咁。

但真係講到錢嘅話，望住中國嘅股市一片頹勢，我自己係好難忍得住「超市執就過期平貨」嘅誘惑。望住各式各樣 PE < 10 、 PB < 0.3 嘅股，心諗除非真係堅係爆冇渣都冇㗎啫，否則大部份風險都已經 priced in，價錢比美股平一半，仲要唔使向美國政府交嗰 30% dividend tax，有咩理由唔做個愛國愛黨嘅中國人買返幾手？

去到呢個位就要諗 currency risk，呢幾日人民銀行減息，人仔開始跌，咁我就真係開始疑惑喇，乜唔係美金應該貶值㗎咩，點解而家反而係人民貶？ 當然，最搞笑嘅嘢係中國揸住咁多美債，美息又升得咁急，其實呢年嚟應該係蝕到阿媽都唔認得。但影唔影響大環境呢？又好似應該影響唔大。

所以最近我最鍾意半夜同 ChatGPT 傾計，向佢請教下啲央行嘅運作，貨幣政策點樣執行，國債點管理，呢啲嘢同經濟、通漲嘅關係，諸如此類。

暫時好籠統嘅感覺就係，美國所謂嘅「經濟強勁」其實係啲水未收晒，不過因為 CPI 入面啲嘢嘅 demand 封咗頂，supply 回緩，所以望落去冇通漲，但實際上望住 BTC 同 Big Tech 嘅水位都見到啲水其實仲未收夠喉，同時啲國債冇人要搞到息口爆升，最後佢哋仍然係要受到 stagflation 嘅考驗。最後結果係點仍然係好大變數。

另外我唱淡 tech 唱咗十鳩幾個月，而家仲未應驗，已經算係好遲，本老師又唔撚中，真係激死我。我相信等到 TSMC 嘅新 process 開始好似 Intel 咁不斷 delay，基本上就玩完㗎喇。META 同 GOOG 作為「收租股」仍然係有啲潛質，始終你肯擘面好似咸網咁不斷轟炸廣告，係會提升收入少少嘅，再炒多幾萬個冗員，利潤升多一兩倍都未必唔得。不過咁樣啱啱好解釋咗佢哋而家嘅 30x PE，冇乜 upside。

反而中國就似係「在下一盤很大的棋」，下一輪嘅中國特色社會主義路線究竟搞唔搞得掂，就好睇中國政府係咪真係可以將樓市䧏溫嘅同時，盡量減低對經濟民生嘅collateral damage。呢啲非資本主義嘅高階操作，冇先例可循，唔單止係「摸著石頭過河」，簡直係「掐著荊棘除草」。喺資本主義嘅世界觀底下，中共呢兩年內主動隊冧國內嘅科技、地產、出口、教育、娛樂行業，真係一件幾痴線嘅事。呢一年恒指一直被壓喺兩萬點以下，就係市場大佬大家一齊除定褲食花生等睇戲，睇下究竟波及幾多嘢，最後會唔會變咗攬炒。

我見好多慣咗美國資本主義嗰套嘅人斷言呢啲係習近平個人專政嘅弊端，但我開始明白點解某國內朋友讚許習上台之後一改胡溫「不作為」嘅風格。如果話中國自改革開放到 201X 年嘅經濟政策係總結咗歐美蘇嘅經驗而制定，咁中國呢幾年嘅經濟政策，就係真正嘅自闢蹊徑，冇任何現成嘅理論或經驗可以參考。如果人有少少懶諗嘢，真係會覺得美國嗰套極端資本主義有種理論上嘅純潔美感，大家只要不斷諗屎橋賺錢就夠，邊有咁多社會責任去平衡。所以中國特色社會主義路線搞唔搞得掂，真係好睇歷史運氣，押上整個世界嘅賭注，真係唔係咁多人夠膽去博。

[1] "As announced on March 15, 2020, the Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26, 2020.  This action eliminated reserve requirements for all depository institutions." - https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm
[2] https://www.hkmc.com.hk/eng/investor_relations/securitisation.html - 嗱唔係真係冇，不過「搞緊」。我估 SVB 爆咗之後大家都有少少 dur 皮⋯
[3] 感謝黨，感謝國家，不過最緊要都係多謝林鄭老母。

History in a nutshell

The shaman class got supplanted by the warrior class;
The warrior class got supplanted by the administrator class;
The administrator class got supplanted by the merchant class.

How to break the Laws of Nature without getting caught

When scientists talk about "Laws of Nature", or "Laws of Physics", they're not really talking about "laws" at all. To the legal positivist, laws are rules made up by humans and enforced by the force of state. Laws can be broken. But when scientists refer to "laws of nature", there is an implicit assumption that they cannot be broken, i.e. you physically cannot commit a crime, and there is no cosmic police enforcing the rules, because the rules enforce themselves. As such, the "Laws of Nature" is not so much as a decree to behave as a statement of fact.

No, Laws don't work that way.

In the quest to explain the alleged violations of the Laws, I have encountered this puzzle: If the Laws are so universally obeyed, how does somebody or something violate them? Why don't we have hard evidence? If scientists have discovered consistent, reproducible Laws of Nature, how can they be broken?

In this post, I will show you the loopholes of the Laws, and how they may be broken, and how the evidence is hidden.

----

# Hiding in the past

Let bygones be bygones?

The past is a great place to hide in. Because nobody from the present can reach it. Time machines can't exist. If one tries to "travel back in time", how would they know that they have gone back to the exact same world in the past, and not a similar parallel universe?

The past is truly gone, and there's no way to get back there. What is gone does not exist. The past only exists in our memories and imaginations.

If any violation of Laws did happen, it happened in the past. There might be evidence it happened... but did it really? Are you so sure? Did you misinterpret the records, or perhaps there was just some silly mistake that made it look like a violation happened?

The distant past is an even better place to hide. The records are extremely fuzzy. Any hard evidence has likely faded away. Anything you dig up can be interpreted in many ways, and at least one explanation must be consistent with non-violation.

As long as we give them the "benefit of doubt", we won't really find a lot of violations of the Laws in the past. As long as you strongly believe that "Laws can never be violated even if you wanted to", there is  always some way to explain away inconsistencies that happened in the past, even if the explanations are vague and disingenuous.

# When we're not looking

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

If nobody is around, it doesn't matter if the sound is made or not. It doesn't even matter if the Laws are broken a bit. Nobody has evidence.

But if the happenings in the unobserved parts of the world are inconsequential to us, why would we know the Laws are broken in the first place?

Let's use actual crimes as an example. Let's say a thief steals $100 from somebody's wallet. The fact that the original owner has $100 less money to spend is a consequence. And if the owner actually kept meticulous records of the amount of money in his wallet, then the theft *might* be discovered. But it is perfectly possible that they don't realize $100 is missing, if they didn't remember how much money was supposed to be there.

And the owner may think they misremembered. (See "hiding in the past" above.) Thieves don't mind one or two witnesses as long as the witnesses get discredited. Often, witnesses are so entrenched in the idea that "the Laws cannot be broken" that they doubt their own eyes as well, and rather attribute what they saw to misunderstanding or error than to accept that they saw a violation of the Laws.

Occasionally criminals slip up, and accidentally show themselves committing a violation of the Laws to a large crowd. Ooops. Oh no. According to traditional legends, that is actually against Cosmic Law. I''m don't know what the cosmic police would supposedly do to those serious offenders though.

# Coincidence

"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous" (apparently misattributed to Albert Einstein)

Coincidence is when something meaningful happens under "possible" yet "implausible" circumstances where there is no clear chain of "causation".

A coincidence must be "meaningful" in some way. Bumping into a stranger on the street is not a coincidence, but bumping into a long-lost friend would be.  We believe it is in theory possible to explain what caused such an event through first principles of modern physics, but in practice we give up because even if we accounted for the movement of every molecule, we don't have a way to translate quantum mechanics to the subjective meaning of seeing an old friend. So we wave our hands and say "hi, what a coincidence!"

But even if you had all the tools of modern physics, could you actually *disprove* the idea that some divine will (as opposed to pure chance) led to these coincidences? You may think that you could in theory backtrack the state of the universe and show that these coincidences were bound to occur because of "determinism", that there is no room for any divine intervention since everything works according to physical laws.

But given that we're talking about violations of Laws, it begs the question whether physical laws were actually "obeyed" here. As we have shown above, the past never really existed before. What people would refer to "the past" is merely a reconstruction, a function of the present. Postulating that a past state of the world inevitably deterministically led to the present state is not helpful here, because it is a tautology. The only valid question one could ask is "why does the present exist?"

This is, of course, a subjective question. One could quite logically categorically reject the idea that we are here in the present state because of some meaningful reason, and hence call this situation which is devoid of meaning "coincidence" (but note that coincidence inherently implies meaning per the definition above).  Some people take it to the other extreme and see so much "meaning" in things that their world view becomes inconsistent and arbitrary. But do we actually have evidence either way? I don't think so.

# Randomness

"God does not play dice" (Albert Einstein)

People talk about "randomness" as if it means something. If you want to get fancy, you could even use the term "stochastic". But essentially, randomness is just a measure of our ignorance.

I don't know whether it is truly impossible to get rid of so called "randomness". Quantum mechanics suggest that the universe is fundamentally "random", but my personal interpretation is that our knowledge is fundamentally limited and we are fundamentally ignorant to an extent. Some people see "random" behavior, and conclude that because we can't understand them, the universe itself is playing dice.

This is ironically a very subjective position to take. We have no evidence whether randomness is "fundamental" to the universe, or just looks random to us because we are fundamentally ignorant.

Now, due to such randomness in quantum mechanics, many of the Laws are statistical in nature. So, in many cases, violations are actually permitted as long as they are sufficiently rare. Occam's razor asks us to presume that such violations are meaningless and intentionless, but if you are looking for ways in which the Laws can fundamentally be violated, this is a possibility that cannot be lightly pruned and dismissed.

In fact, one other way to look at things is that the "randomness" of quantum mechanics is a quiet admission that the Laws are just for reference only, and in fact there are no actual consequences if you violate them, as long as you don't always keep doing it.

# Complexity

If computer scientists had been physicists, we’d simply have declared P  ̸= NP to be an observed law of Nature, analogous to the laws of thermodynamics. A Nobel Prize would even be given for the discovery of that law. (And in the unlikely event that someone later proved P = NP, a second Nobel Prize would be awarded for the law’s overthrow.) - Scott Aaronson

Complexity is the twin of randomness, and they are similar in nature. Complexity can be used to generate randomness in the form of "Cryptographically Secure Pseudo-Random Generators" (CSPRNG). Here, the randomness is not fundamental ignorance, but "merely" practical ignorance in the sense that we can not afford the time and resources to figure out what is supposed to be happening.

In general, complexity here means that the system is fundamentally deterministic, but due to limited resources we mere mortals have no capacity to predict or reason about the system.

It is in such complex systems that we see so called "emergent" behavior. In this context, "emergent behavior" might as well be called "magic".  These days, the behavior of large language models are described as "emergent".

In face of complexity, the reductionist believes they are in theory able to explain all the interactions as complying with the Laws -- but there is absolutely no proof whatsoever, because we cannot properly reason about the system.

We are given a dubious proof for the conformity of complex systems to the Laws, namely that everything else sufficiently simple follow the Laws (allegedly), so why would a complex system misbehave simply because we can't reason about them? It doesn't make sense from the objective, mechanical view of the universe.

But if your goal is to violate the Laws without anyone noticing, hiding behind complexity seems like a good idea to me. (Side note: the universe is the most complex system there is within the Law's jurisdiction) 

# Trust me bro

Trust me, bro -- Science

And last but not least, dogma.

Few people have the integrity and commitment to truth necessary to admit that they don't have all the answers when it comes to explaining every phenomena in the world. They are open to the possibility that our current understanding of the laws of nature might be incomplete or missing something crucial.

The rest are generally dogmatic. They refer to the High Priests of Science living in the Ivory Towers, who in their infinite wisdom *must* (a priori) have an explanation. When pressed to give an explanation, they employ every trick in the book of the defense lawyer in a criminal trial to evade an accusation that nature has committed a violation of the Laws. They resort to intimidating the witnesses, questioning their credibility, their sanity, and their intentions. They also ask the witnesses to reenact the violation in public - of course, this usually does not work (see above). Even if the violation was caught red handed, they stubbornly insist that there "must be a scientific explanation". Not that I disagree with that line in a literally sense, but in many cases they forget that the Laws are merely generalizations from past observed phenomena, and should be open to revision given new observations.

(That said, if subjective truth fundamentally diverges from objective truth too greatly, perhaps the idea of a shared foundation of science is flawed anyway.  😞)

# But why?

But why go to such great lengths to uncover possible loopholes in the Laws? (Are you going to exploit them?)

The honest answer is, if you've actually experienced violations of the Laws, and you have an obsessive compulsion to ensure internal consistency of your beliefs, you'll have to find some way to rebuild the system to make modern science work within it. Also, some working hypotheses about when violations of the Law can happen is useful.

Often when people think you could "do magic", they presume you want to show it (or even "prove" it - why somebody would want to be burnt at the stake to prove a point I have no idea) to everyone, but to be honest I'm more concerned with keeping my "magic" affinity sufficiently low. As such, figuring out when and where such "violations of the Law" may happen is actually useful information for me.

And if you've never personally experienced (or noticed) violations of the Laws... yes, Occam's Razor would rightly have you avoid going down this rabbit hole. I would not have you believe anything on my word alone.

But is it taboo to find loopholes? All I have described is that *if* there had been violations, here's how they might have been done, without postulating a total collapse of the established Laws. The alternative is really, arbitrary levels of woowoo, anywhere, everywhere. And I can tell you honestly, the people who've witnessed violations of the Laws are more than you'd imagine. Not all of them are as obsessive with philosophy and belief systems as I am.

Joscha Bach

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhSlYfVtgww

Joscha Bach basically lecturing two confused people about why Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem implies that the language of mathematics is too permissive that it led to such paradoxes; why we should adopt a stateful computational model of mathematics; why infinities don't exist, why real numbers don't exist.

I mean, I knew real numbers aren't real 20 years ago. It's surprising that the host and the other guest seemed baffled by it. This is almost 100 year old stuff...