Of course, Conway was a serious mathematician who was slightly vexed that the thing he might be most remembered for is what he considered a cast-off game that he dabbled with in the late 1960s.
Conway talked about determinism (and free will) from a mathematical and scientific perspective in interviews and lectures. I found what he had to say very interesting - I don't know if he came up with all the ideas he talked about, but I had certainly never heard of many of them before I heard him talk about them.
>>Conway talked about determinism (and free will)...
>>>Based on your comment, I found these...
The math is over my head but this really piqued my curiosity.
I watched the first video yesterday and am looking forward to going through them all. He really is quite interesting.
I'm sure I'll take in one of his other lectures afterwards, but I generally have a hard time following those so maybe these will help ease me into that some. His opening bit about quantum physics might have of cracked open that door a little for me.
I was good at physics math in high school and was at a pretty hardcore STEM highschool, but we never got into quantum physics somehow. I went to economics studies.
So for me, my worldview pretty much stopped at the whole mechanistic worldview. Tbh any times I read something philosophical/spiritual mentioning quantum physics, I was dismissing it as quantum woo.
I also believed in the whole lack of free will thing and was believing it I guess till very recently. I have to say it made my life a lot worse in retrospect.
I guess this is one of the toxic memes that take away agency from people.
This is amazing. You can start with the last lecture if you are short on time (and probably like me more interested in implications and not strong in math to follow the rest).
Conway talked about determinism (and free will) from a mathematical and scientific perspective in interviews and lectures. I found what he had to say very interesting - I don't know if he came up with all the ideas he talked about, but I had certainly never heard of many of them before I heard him talk about them.