Oh, cold new world, that has such pagers in it

[flexagon]

I have to carry a pager for work this week for the first time, and my first algorithms test is tomorrow, and I can't seem to warm up. I studied for the quiz pretty much all weekend, and in the end it's only 20% of my grade, so I'm not too nervous... I'm basically just hoping I don't get paged in the night, so I'll be rested.

I had a fun bull session about free will with heisenbug last night. I really like those... just free-wheeling half-serious discussions where you can argue points just to try them out. I proposed that a lot of what we call free will is an observation of unpredictability. If I'm trying to decide something and I can't predict what I'll actually do, that's evidence leading me to think I have free will.

Naturally, I know and you know that I'll be in class at 11AM tomorrow, taking that test, proving that I know binary search trees from a squirrel's ass. I might say I could choose not to go, but it would take a pretty dire emergency to "force" that choice (I've even gotten someone else to take the pager). The probability that I'm going to act predictably is high. So would it be true to say that I have less free will when it comes to taking the test than I do with, oh, say, whether I'll finish this and post it before getting up to find my floss?* I think so. If we have free will, and I do believe we have something close enough to it to make no practical difference, maybe it's a fuzzy logic thing.

*Curious? Probably not, but let's just say my teeth feel silky now.

Comments

[a-kosmos.livejournal.com]

Were you bad? Is that why they made you take the pager home?

[flexagon]

I may or may not have been bad.... <shifty eyes /> ...but it's unrelated.

The pager just rotates around through the engineers on the team; everyone takes it for a week when it's their turn. This is my first turn.

[bluechromis.livejournal.com]

So how'd the test go?