In the fifth Office Hours video in this module, Dr. Weiss tells the story of how he came up with the core idea behind LIGO. He did not, in fact, conceive of LIGO as part of his research, but as a thought experiment, he found helpful when teaching general relativity, a subject he admits he did not understand well at the time. Do you find that teaching a topic to someone else helps you to better understand it yourself? Have you ever been inspired with a great idea by trying to teach someone else? Explain your answers.

I think so, teaching or talking to someone else often make us think about the stuffs we are teaching or talking about a bit more, and it often leads to a realization, we may end up noticing the things we missed, like simple details that will improve our understanding regarding that matter significantly.

In many of the other courses you’ve heard theorists describe how they try to understand our natural world. In this course, you’ve learned a bit about how an experimentalist goes about the same task. Which do you find yourself more inclined to, the theoretical side, thinking up new science to explain phenomena, or the experimental side, being hands-on and trying to discover incredible evidence? Why?

I honestly find myself more inclined to the theoretical side because I find it more interesting, the idea of someone being able to think up various science to explain various phenomena on the back of an envelope sounds really cool to me. I also think the facts that there are theorists in this world, tells a lot about the capability of human’s mind.

But I also think that experiment is very important, because what’s the use of a theory if it doesn’t agree with experimental result? So theory and experiment, both are just as important because they’re complimentary to one another, but if I have to choose to work as a theorist or experimentalist, I choose theorist any day.

What would it take for you to consider an artificial intelligence conscious and capable of receiving human rights? Do you believe that computers can ever be conscious? Do you think we will be able to create artificial consciousness without understanding the physical basis of our own consciousness? Explain your answers.

I’m honestly not against the possibility of AI being conscious, but in order for me to reach a safe level of certainty, we will need a method that will allow us to measure its ability of having a causal influence on itself accurately. It is too early to tell if computers can be conscious or not, I believe that we have to be able to understand the basis of our own consciousness first before we go to that direction, after we understand the basis of our own consciousness, then maybe we can think of a way to create its artificial version.

Dr. Koch lays out all of the mental processes that are not consciousness. How do you personally define consciousness? Does your definition include emotion, learning, or other mental functions that have been apparently ruled out as part of consciousness?

To me consciousness is one’s state of being aware of one’s surroundings, and it definitely doesn’t include emotion, learning, and other mental functions. I think mental functions are product of consciousness, and they also eventually give rise to self-awareness which is a higher degree of consciousness. If you think about it, the brain can still process data from the outside world regardless of you being aware of it, you might not feel anything, but the fact that you’re still able to process the infromation you get from the outside world tells us something about your possession of consciousness.

In this course you’ve learned a staggering concept: roughly 95% of our entire universe is in a form that is essentially unknown to us. Given that science has certainly taken profound strides in understanding the universe over the past few centuries, how does this realization affect your view of our state of knowledge?

I would say that this realization tells us that we’re going in the right direction. If you think about it, as we tackle so many questions in science, upon finding out the answers, we also realize that we’ve found even more questions, the questions that we weren’t even aware of. So, I think, the fact that we realize how ignorant we really are, tells a lot about how good our understanding of science is.

One of Einstein’s great contributions to astrophysics was the idea of a cosmological constant—but he formulated his ideas in the context of long-held assumptions about the universe, which turned out to be false. Technology, in his time, was holding back deeper truths about the universe. Do you think the same can be said today? Will we upend some of our fundamental beliefs in science once technology advances significantly?

Yes I think so, I see technology as the extention of our very limited senses, so their advancement will surely advances our understanding about the universe as well. I think we’re now facing the same problem as Einstein did back then, we have some mathematically consistent theories about the universe, but unfortunately we can’t test them now because we simply don’t have the tools to do that yet.

Should neuroscientists move toward more complex, realistic stimuli for neuropsychological experiments? How would you design a realistic experiment to examine free will?

Yes they should, but the problem is even now we don’t really understand how our brains work yet. I think the first step that they need to focus on now is achieving a higher degree of understanding about the workings of our brain, after that, we can then start focus on creating a better experiment to examine free will.

Free will can be defined as the ability to do something that isn’t necessarily caused by anything that happens before it. Instead, it is the result of non-physical events – specifically, our own thoughts – that originates right at some point. To me personally, I find it really difficult to find an argument for the existence of free will, because if you think about it, the existence of free will means we have the ability to affect the causal chain of the universe. We can make stuff happen on our own. But, I honestly find this idea untenable. Where would these free decisions, the ones that launch entirely new causal chains, come from? Are they simply random? What would compel one person to make one decision, and not another? And if I can answer those questions – if I can explain what would cause an agent to act – Then I’ve just reinforced the position that actions are caused, rather than free.

I also believe that we’re not special, in the sense of, we all are parts of the universe, and fundamentally we’re also made of the same stuffs as say, a rock, the moon, etc. So, if those objects are “not free” then why would we assume that we are? What would make us so special? We all are bags of particles governed by the law of physics, just like everything else in the universe, the fact that we’re aware of our own desires says nothing about our possession of free will. I understand that when you see your mind as being capable of making free decisions, you think that what goes on in your head when you make a choice is not at all like, say, the moon orbiting the earth. But, well, mental states are brain states, or at least they’re tied directly to your brain. And brain states are biological. And biological states are physical states. And the physical world, is governed by a set of rules that we have no control over. So, in this picture, I don’t think there is any place for free will.

The picture of the world without free can honestly be chaotic, just as what we’ve learned, we know that those who don’t believe in the existence of free will show more sign of aggression, because they also believe that they can’t be hold accountable for their actions. I, however, despite of not believing in free will, still believe that we have responsibilities over our actions, regardless of their freeness. Because as social animals, we can’t help but to hold people – including ourselves – accountable, and assign either praise or blame for their and our actions. But it also makes sense to think about how much, or how little, someone is in control of their actions, when assigning praise or blame. After all, some actions are beyond our control, like sneezing. So I won’t blame you for sneezing, because you can’t really control that. But I definitely will blame you for sneezing on my face because you do have control over where and how you sneeze. So, I think “Am I free?” is not the best question – because it’s pretty obvious that I’m not. Instead, we should be asking, “How much control do I have?” And the more control we have, the more responsibility we also have. I think his view lets us keep what we know about our nature, while also making sense of our subjective feeling of freedom. Other than that, I think accepting the fact that we have no control over what happens can help us to live more genuinely, I honestly feel a lot better after letting the delusion that I can control everything go, to me, this very thought is able to prevent me from flying too close to the sun when things go right, and from falling into the abyss if desperation when things don’t.