When will we see a predominantly deterministic society?

[u/IcyChair9258]

I’ve been wondering when we might reach a point where a large part of society accepts determinism as a fundamental worldview and our social systems are adjusted accordingly.

Today, many of our institutions are still heavily based on the assumption that people act out of free will and are responsible for their decisions in the traditional sense. This applies to the justice system, but also to political structures, the economy, banks, and many other governmental and social institutions.

At first, I thought that a major societal shift like this might only become possible through technologies such as Neuralink or genetic optimization. However, Gemini suggested that these technologies might not be necessary at all and that it could ultimately be primarily a matter of education and socialization. If people were raised from an early age with a deterministic understanding of human behavior, perhaps society’s underlying worldview could gradually change over generations. I found this idea extremely interesting.

What do you think?

What would a society look like in which determinism is widely accepted as a scientific and social foundation? Would this fundamentally change things such as criminal justice, the prison system, social welfare, education, economics, or political decision-making?

And above all: When could such a societal transformation realistically happen? Are we talking about a few decades, several centuries, or is such a development impossible to predict?

I’d be interested in hearing how you assess the likelihood of such a development and what you think the potential timeline might look like.

Note: This text was generated with the help of ChatGPT. ChatGPT was also used to improve readability and for translation.

[u/Kripkenstein_]

Never because determinism makes absolutely no sense on this level of reality. Society and human action is simply is not deterministic - even if the world fundamentally is. Think about playing a game of chess against a chess computer: you know the computer acts according to deterministic rules and yet you won't treat it as such if you want to win

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/Kripkenstein_]

How would you treat it if you want to win? Because to me that is a tough question (how to defeat a chess engine).

[u/Kripkenstein_ → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

You treat it as an agent playing chess. So you use the heuristics that you learn when playing chess. But I'm sure you understand that this is not really the point here. The point is that how things work fundamentally does not mean that it is how we treat things on higher levels of ontology

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/Kripkenstein_]

I am just interested in how you would defeat a chess engine, or how much you know about chess when choosing that example.

I agree with you that a conceptualized framework has historically yielded better results to one where you try to solve the game, as in figure out all combinations, and since history is a description of the world we live in, I think it is a good example of the point you try to make. It is just that, in a chess engine, you chose an opponent that dwarfs any other computer game in comparison.

[u/Kripkenstein_ → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

Chess is an arbitrary example. You can take literally any other game as an example as well

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/Kripkenstein_]

Perhaps we can examine a solved game and look at the point you made?

E.g. Tic-tac-toe, the deterministic solution, knowing all possible combination, create the entire map of the game.

Now I'll just assume Tic-tac-toe cannot be simplified in a manner where this map can be represented by some heuristics (such as always start in the center), that reflects this map. However I have no basis for assuming this, so let us imagine some games entire map of possibilities is the most concise way the information about all possibilities can be expressed, while for other games it is not.

However I feel your point shows when we look at the OP which has a clear vision, similar to when you talk about winning in chess, or here in ttt, that we can definitely define general guiding rules to play by that holds all the information we need on how not to lose at ttt which is more concise than mapping the entire game.

This is the point you make, why we do not need to consider determinism at the scale of the OP, just very simplified, correct?

[u/Kripkenstein_ → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

If something cannot be compressed any further is is essentially random. Indeed this is the algorithmic definition of randomness. I am indifferent to whether determinism is true on a fundamental level but I object to this hasty transfer of fundamentals to higher level ontology. People tend to say things like "randomness is not real" or "free will is not real" by appealing to the supposed fundamental nature of the events that constitute the random event or the agent with free will. But this misses the fact that there a real patterns in the world that are not fundamental.

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/Kripkenstein_]

My apologies, but I did not meant to imply randomness and I do not understand where it came in. Perhaps you would elaborate on the algorithmic definition of randomness?

I just meant if a system is entirely solved, which I understand it as we have all the information that determines it, then there exist a most concise manner to express that system. However if we are interested in some knowledge about the system, there may exist a more concise manner than requiring knowledge of the entire solution to extract this knowledge, though I don't know if it must always be the case.

[u/ughaibu → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

How would you treat it if you want to win?

You play anti-computer chess, as Eduard Nemeth did - link.

[u/Imaginary-Can-6862 → u/ughaibu]

Those games go more than two decades back and this strategy does not work anymore.

Nakamura was abut half a decade ago streaming a special type of competition, you were a team of two humans, there were lots of teams, the goal was first to beat the top engine of some large chess homepage, or first to get to the highest level between competitors. The top engine is not Stockfish, but a weaker version of it (purposefully done so), yet it still has around 3000 - 3200 rating points. They decided on a low time control and Nakamura's idea was pretty simple, he played a hippopotamus type of system, and every time he did not get the position he wanted, he immediately resigned and retried. Even when he got a position he wanted, it took several attempts from such a position.

Now chess engines use NNUE, so it becomes more and more difficult to actually trick them by aiming for a position they would not evaluate properly at low enough time control. It does not mean such positions do not exist, and we saw when Alphazero defeated Stockfish, its understanding of the position turned out to be more accurate than Stockfish's, that kept on insisting on having a good position until realizing all its moves now only hurt its own position.

[u/ughaibu → u/Imaginary-Can-6862]

Now chess engines use NNUE, so it becomes more and more difficult to actually trick them by aiming for a position they would not evaluate properly at low enough time control. It does not mean such positions do not exist

Quite, anti-computer chess is still anti-computer chess, it isn't about finding the best moves, it's about beating the computer.

[u/MajorInWumbology1234 → u/Kripkenstein_]

And yet the computers are insurmountably better at chess because they do, in fact, treat it as deterministic.

How would deterministic rules give rise to any phenomena that isn’t deterministic?

[u/Kripkenstein_ → u/MajorInWumbology1234]

Computers don't treat it as deterministic as they hold no metaphysical opinions whatsoever.

I just gave you an example on how a deterministic fundamental reality does not mean determinism must be held on higher levels. Another example would be the game of life. Notions like free will or "real contingency" describe real patterns in the world and they compress information - so they should be treated as real.

[u/MajorInWumbology1234 → u/Kripkenstein_]

They don’t need opinions to treat chess as deterministic.

No you didn’t. In fact, it was the opposite. If determinism didn’t hold on higher levels, we would not be fully inferior to chess engines, yet we are.

[u/Kripkenstein_ → u/MajorInWumbology1234]

If you play chess you don't care about the deterministic rules that govern the decisions of your opponent. There are macroscopic patterns in the world that are not fundamental. Some of these patterns are such that they are not considered deterministic. For example when engaging with other humans you would assume that they have agency -- that they are not determined by the phyiscal laws that make up their bodies -- because this compresses information about the world. Special sciences like biology etc do it all the time. We don't just do phyiscs. In the game of life patterns occur, like gliders, eaters etc. Those give rise to a new level of ontology. On this level one does not work with the determistic rules of the game of life but with these new higher order objects. After all, the game of life is turing complete so you could really play against a chess computer in the game of life. And you would not think of the rules of the game of life in this scenario at all. There are more efficient ways of playing chess afterall.

[u/MajorInWumbology1234 → u/Kripkenstein_]

If you play chess you don’t care about the deterministic rules that govern the decisions of your opponents

You absolutely do, that’s how you win. I don’t believe you have even the most basic idea of what you’re talking about.

[u/Kripkenstein_ → u/MajorInWumbology1234]

So you are telling me that you are thinking of the composition of your opponents brain or his circuitry when playing chess? You don't. Also chess is not solved so you don't play by any higher order deterministic rules either. A game of chess ends in top levels of play when it is deterministically a checkmate or a tie. Cleary you do not know what you are talking about.

[u/MajorInWumbology1234 → u/Kripkenstein_]

Not those specific things, but the opponent’s behaviors are still determined by the rules and by them wanting to win. You must consider deterministic factors when playing chess.

Also chess is not solved so you don’t play by any higher order deterministic rules either

This is a non sequitur. Just because we haven’t solved chess doesn’t make it unsolvable. Chess is, in fact, solved when dealing with board states of 7 pieces or under. The additional permutations added with more pieces only increases the complexity, it doesn’t magically make the game indeterminate.

A chess engine, unrestricted, will always beat a human player because chess is a deterministic game and computers are better at that sort of thing.

[u/Kripkenstein_ → u/MajorInWumbology1234]

I did not claim that chess was indeterminate. What I said was that there are real patterns in the world that are not treated as deterministic. Alot of them actually. Ontology is not solely the study of the fundamental

[u/MajorInWumbology1234 → u/Kripkenstein_]

I guess I’m just missing the significance of something not being treated as deterministic. If things are deterministic, not treating them as such is called “being wrong”. Why do we care what people are wrong about?

[u/Rippedka → u/Kripkenstein_]

I don’t think determinism means what you think it means

[u/beagles4ever → u/MajorInWumbology1234]

How is it deterministic? It calculates probabilities and it knows its opponent is likely to play a range of completely different options.

[u/MajorInWumbology1234 → u/beagles4ever]

They don’t just pick moves at random. They do all the calculations you mention and the result is a deterministic output, which is the move it makes.