John Conway: Free Will and Determinism (The Free Will Lectures, Princeton University, 2009)
Professor of Mathematics
This is the inaugural lecture in John Conway's 'Free Will Lectures' series, delivered at Princeton University. Conway introduces the philosophical and scientific problem of free will and determinism, laying the groundwork for his Free Will Theorem (co-developed with Simon Kochen) by outlining the foundational principles of SPIN, FIN, and TWIN.
Lecture 1 | Free Will Lecture Series | Meet John Conway; hear about Simon Kochen and how the theorem came about. Thoughts on senility. Free will and determinism in science and philosophy over the last two millennia; the implications of Newtonian and quantum mechanics. What Conway and Kochen mean by “free will.” What the theorem does, and doesn’t, imply about behavior. A brief introduction to the three underlying principles of the theorem: SPIN, FIN, and TWIN. The idea of talking to particles, and how it’s like playing 20 questions with your sisters.