What is Information?

Matter, energy… knowledge: How to harness physics' demonic power

By Stephen Battersby

Published by New Scientist Magazine 14^th May 2016   Subscribe here

Running a brain-twisting thought experiment for real shows that information is a physical thing – so can we now harness the most elusive entity in the cosmos?

WE LIVE in the age of information. We are surrounded by it, and more of it year by year. It is the currency of human understanding, our indispensable guide to navigating a complex world. But what, actually, is information?

As we have wrestled with the question over the years, we have slowly begun to realise it is more than an abstraction, the intangible concept embodying anything that can be expressed in strings of 1s and 0s. Information is a real, physical thing that seems to play a part in everything from how machines work to how living creatures function.

Recently came the most startling demonstration yet: a tiny machine powered purely by information, which chilled metal through the power of its knowledge. This seemingly magical device could put us on the road to new, more efficient nanoscale machines, a better understanding of the workings of life, and a more complete picture of perhaps our most fundamental theory of the physical world.

For at its heart, information is a mystery bound up with thermodynamics. This set of iron rules explains how heat is converted to and from other forms of energy, and governs a huge variety of processes. Thermodynamics makes a vital distinction between heat – a melee of random motions of atoms and molecules – and work, energy directed towards a purpose, such as the action of an engine pushing a car along.

Perhaps the most cast-iron of the thermodynamic rules is the second law, which says that heat will not flow from a cool object to a warmer one unless you put in some work. Otherwise we could exploit this heat flow to do work and produce a perpetual motion machine.

But is it so cut and dried? The idea that there could be exceptions to the second law dates from 1867, when James Clerk Maxwell concocted a thought experiment. He imagined a "very intelligent and exceedingly quick" entity able to see the motions of air molecules. Given a box of hot air and another of cold air connected by a frictionless door, it could use this knowledge alone to allow fast moving molecules to pass one way and slower ones the other, making the hot box hotter and the cold box colder. Heat would flow without work being done – a brazen violation of the second law (see diagram).

This being soon came to be known as Maxwell's demon, an apt name because it presents us with a hellish problem. Thermodynamics is a monumentally robust theory, surviving intact even after many ideas were swept aside by quantum theory and relativity in the 20th century. Yet the demon demands an explanation thermodynamics can't supply. Something was missing.

A clue to what that might be came when physicist Leo Szilard imagined a pared-down version of the demon in 1929. In this scenario, a single molecule is trapped in a box, and the demon can see which end the molecule is in at any given moment. The demon slides a partition into the middle of the box and lets the bouncing molecule push it up to one end, against a little resistance. That means it is doing work. The demon's knowledge amounts to one bit of information, equivalent to a 0 or 1, and Szilard worked out how much work the demon can extract with its one bit. At room temperature it turns out to be about 3 x 10^-21joules of work, or enough to lift a bacterium about a nanometre. It was a hint that information might be the missing piece of thermodynamics.

Others realised that the demon's trick depends on its knowledge of the molecules but Szilard's breakthrough was to quantify the information the demon needed. In 1961, Rolf Landauer, a researcher at IBM in New York, took things further, showing that erasing a computer's memory requires work. His colleague Charles Bennett applied this result to the demon, reasoning its knowledge must be stored in some sort of finite memory that would sooner or later have to be erased for it to keep running. He calculated that the demon would have to expend at least as much work on this task as can be gained from the boxes of gas it is meddling with.

Accounting for the cost of deleting information restored some balance to the demon's thermodynamic world, but it was a little unsatisfactory. The demon still gets away with bending the second law for a while – until its head gets too full.

And there our understanding stuck, until a flurry of new insights emerged over the past decade. A crucial result came in 2008, from Takahiro Sagawa and Masahito Ueda at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. They worked out that you can salvage the second law by adding an extra term called mutual information (Physical Review Letters, vol 100, p 080403). This is a measure of how much the demon knows about whatever system it is looking at. "You can think of the measurement as a correlation between the system and an apparatus or memory," says Juan Parrondo, who studies the thermodynamics of information at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain.

Sagawa and Ueda's updated second law shows how much work you can extract from a system for a given amount of demonic knowledge. It doesn't hold only when memory is erased. "You can apply it to more general situations," says Parrondo. "The consequences are quite peculiar."

One consequence is that blank memory can be a kind of fuel, an idea described in 2012 by Chris Jarzynski and Dibyendu Mandal at the University of Maryland, College Park. If Maxwell's demon receives new empty memory, it can write information to it and do useful work as a consequence – Jarzynski and Mandal's example is lifting a weight. That blank memory could simply be a paper tape bearing a long string of zeros, although to do anything meaningful you would need a lot of them: 300 billion billion zeros allow the demon to lift an apple by 1 metre.

Such a bizarre idea demands proper testing. And that meant summoning a real demon, a feat that's proved difficult. Maxwell's original thought experiment involved a demon with a complex mind, with inner depths that are impossible to fathom. That is no good for a physics experiment. In 2010, Shoichi Toyabe then as at Chuo University in Tokyo and his colleagues built a working demon using a tinyplastic rotor, a camera and a computer. This was a step away from human-like intelligence, but it still involved large-scale paraphernalia, so it was impossible to show exactly what was happening inside the demon. Better would be a very small and simple demon – really more of an imp – in which the flows of heat, work and information could be clearly traced.

That's just what was conjured up in Finland last year. Jukka Pekola and his team at Aalto University in Espoo created a microscopic demon of chilling and powerful simplicity. Their set-up, originally suggested by Massimiliano Esposito at the University of Luxembourg and his colleagues, is based on two quantum dots, devices that can briefly trap single electrons. One is known as the system, the other is the demon. The demon usually holds an electron, loosely. When an electron reaches the system, it repels and ejects the demon's electron electrostatically. This process robs the system electron of some potential energy, which means that when it leaves the quantum dot it must use up some of its thermal energy to do so. The result is that it arrives in the wires cooler than when it left (see diagram).

Once unleashed, this unholy set-up works fast. Within a second millions of chilled electrons arrive in the wires, reducing their temperature by about one-thousandth of a kelvin. Meanwhile, the demon's temperature rises. "It is challenging to get everything to work," says Pekola. "But as soon as the demon is tuned to the right position you don't have to do anything: it is autonomous."

Crucially, the demon electron is on such a hair trigger that the electrostatic repulsion forcing it to leave is doing essentially no work, certainly not enough to lower the other electron's energy by the extent seen.

With no work being done, how can the system cool while the demon gets hotter? The feat seems impossible until we incorporate Sagawa and Ueda's mutual information. Pekola's team have shown that the cooling works exactly as predicted if mutual information is balancing the books. "It is exchanging information that results in a change in temperature," says Sebastian Deffner at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Energy catalyst

If information alone can have a physical effect, then it is a physical thing. So what kind of thing is it? There are two ways of looking at it. One is to consider information as a form of entropy, the quantity in thermodynamics that expresses disorder. In Maxwell's thought experiment, that equates to how mixed up the molecules are. The more disordered they are, the more information the demon must have to do its job.

Another way to think of information is as a kind of energy catalyst: it enables you to convert the chaotic energy of heat to the useful energy of work. So when people say information is power, they're not far wrong.

Yet this is hardly the last word on the nature of information. For one thing, although Pekola's demon involves single electrons, they are constrained to behave mostly like classical particles that don't exhibit the strangest features of the quantum world.

Quantum particles can show superposition, being in two places simultaneously. And two or more particles can be entangled, correlated with one another in such a way that measuring one affects the properties of the other. "In quantum systems the situation is much more complicated," says Deffner. "Some energy and some information is encoded in the correlations but we have to better understand where to put this in the equations."

Pekola plans to create a truly quantum demon, one that operates on qubits, the quantum mechanical equivalent of a bit, which can be both 0 and 1 simultaneously. The most likely option is to make one out of a superconducting electronic circuit, which would emit a single photon when it changes state. To peer into the mind of the quantum demon he will need a new type of single-photon detector, which several teams around the world are working towards.

But now we're arming ourselves with a firmer understanding of information, what does it all mean? Well, Pekola's demon is not going to bring us perpetual motion. It is still governed by the restrictions Landauer hit upon: it can create a temperature difference that could be used to do work, but only at the cost of repeatedly wiping its memory, which requires work.

But demons can still perform special tasks for us. "They could be useful to move heat somewhere that is not so critical in your circuit," says Pekola. In other words, demons could act as local refrigerators in nanoelectronics, especially important for the powerful quantum computers of the future.

Meet your demon

These ideas could also have implications for our understanding of biology. "Organisms sensing their environment have to expend energy, with fundamental limitations based on information," says Jordan Horowitz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And according to the mutual-information tweak of the second law, acquiring information requires a minimum energy outlay.

By studying how E. coli bacteria sense the concentration of certain chemicals, Horowitz and his colleagues worked out that they use only about twice the theoretical minimum. So maybe the fundamental cost of processing information is a significant burden cells have had to learn to cope with.

Like bacteria, humans are on one level information-processing machines, so did the fundamental cost of information processing shape us? Parrondo has analysed the proofreading process in DNA transcription, where enzymes pause, go back and cut out erroneously placed base pairs. He concluded that this activity is designed to optimise a three-way trade-off between speed, accuracy and energy use. The situation is more complex than Maxwell's demon, and the maths he used is different. So it's not yet clear whether the fundamental energy requirements of processing information really have affected the evolution of error-checking. "We would like to have the same framework for all types of problem. We don't have it yet," says Parrondo.

Some even think there may be demons within us. Kinesins are motor proteins that clamber around our cells, transporting other proteins and whatnot. According to Martin Bier at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, kinesins may use a form of position-sensing feedback, akin to Maxwell's demon, to move more efficiently. Parrondo is not convinced, however. "This is very speculative," he says.

There's more to learn about the role demons might play inside us or the computer minds of the future. But one of their kind has already opened the door of knowledge, just a crack, to reveal a glimpse of information's true nature.

This article appeared in print under the headline "The unseen agent"

Stephen Battersby is a consultant for New Scientist

Explaining the Balkans Conflict to an Apologist

A Christian Apologist tries to demonstrate that atheism is a bad thing by referring to the French and Russian revolutions and also to the Balkans, thereby demonstrating a very skewed and narrow view of history. The first two examples are dealt with here and here

The example of the Balkans is interesting because it is a classic example of conflict fuelled by religious tension. The apologist appears to be unaware of the atrocities committed in the Balkans during World War II by the Ustaša regime (a blend of fascism, Roman Catholicism and Croatian nationalism) where a million Serbs, Jews, Roma, Muslims, Communists and other non-Catholics were exterminated in an attempt to convert Croatia into a pure Croatian and Roman Catholic independent country. Hence President Tito was seen as the liberator of Yugoslavia from an evil regime using Christianity as its brand.

And now, the long version...

Here’s a quote from the liberal Catholic Theologians Hans Küng and Karl-Josef Kuschel in reference to Bosnia…

"...the peace negotiations between the Orthodox Christian Serbs, the Catholic Croats and the Muslim Bosnians had collapsed again. And there is no doubt that the religions that are so involved here had neglected in the period of more than forty years since the Second World War to engage in mourning, honestly confess the crimes which had been committed by all sides in the course of the centuries, and ask one another for mutual forgiveness....I think there can be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions!"

A good case study of Balkans Religious Conflict is Kosovo, which was a province of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The main players in its 1990s war were the government, army and militias of Yugoslavia, NATO, and the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army. The American Presbyterian Church described the situation like this…

“The main victims were the people of Kosovo who were murdered at a scale unknown in Europe since the end of World War II. These reports have become so numerous and so consistent that it is difficult not to give them credence...If, as it now appears, genocide is taking place in Kosovo, it must stop...No person in Kosovo or anywhere else should be forced to become a refugee merely because he or she belongs to one ethnic group or one religious tradition."

…and the conflict was a religious conflict at its core:

Religious identity has been present constantly in the antagonisms that have fragmented the Balkans for centuries - setting neighbor against neighbor, Muslims against Orthodox Christians, and Orthodox Christians against Western Christians.


Depending on which experts you talk to, you will hear about two conflicts now in the Balkans. In one view, the Kosovo war has historical and mythological roots in the long conflict between Ottoman Turks and southern Slavs, who are Orthodox Christians.


The other war is being fought in the air by NATO troops, who, by bombing the Serbs during the Orthodox Easter--just as the Nazis did in 1941--have played into a view held by some Serbs that NATO is a force of Western Christianity attempting to crush the Eastern Orthodox underdog.


"It really comes down to a war between Eastern and Western Christianity," said Father Alex Karloutsos, an Orthodox priest in New York.

Demographics of Religions in Kosovo

The religious alignment of the approximately 1.9 million residents of Kosovo consists of:

Muslims: 1.6  million

Serbian Orthodox: 150,000

Roma and Ashkali: These once numbered on the order of 150,000 people. However, many have been forced out of the country. Click here for a detailed account…

Roman Catholics: 60,000

There have been a series of conflicts in the 1990s as countries of the former Yugoslavia (originally established as an artificial kingdom after World War 1) fought for independence: 1990 in Slovenia; 1991 in Croatia; 1992 in Bosnia Herzegovina.  These are often described as “ethnic conflicts” but the fact is Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Muslims in those countries share a common Slavic ethnic origin. They view themselves today as distinct peoples because of their different religious heritages.

"In the Balkans, religious identification became part of national identity, as expressed through language and the communication of the national myth. Thus, being Orthodox is part of being Serbian."  

-        Peter Black, senior historian at the United States Holocaust Museum

Unlike the rest of the former Yugoslavia, the Kosovo conflict was both ethnic and religious. Before the 1990s ethnic cleansing, 90% of the population of Kosovo were ethnic Albanians - descendants of the ancient Illyrian tribes who had occupied the area for thousands of years and who are now mainly Muslim.

So, the Kosovo conflict was driven by: 

-        Ethnicity: between Serbs, of Slavic origin, and ethnic Albanians who are Illyrian in origin.

-        Religion: between Serbs, who are almost entirely Serbian Orthodox Christians, and non-Serbs, who are overwhelmingly Muslim and Roman Catholic, plus a minority of ethnic Albanians who are Albanian Orthodox Christians.

 So the war in Kosovo is largely a religious conflict between: 

-        Serbs who overwhelmingly belong to the Serbian Orthodox Church, 

-        Ethnic Albanians who are mainly Muslims, and

-        A Roman Catholic minority.

 Religious composition of the former Yugoslavia (in 1999):

 Republic of Slovenia:

Population: 1.97 million;

96% Roman Catholic, 1% Muslim, 3% other.

91% Slovene; 3% Croat

Republic of Croatia:

Population: 4.67 million

77% Roman Catholic; 11% Serbian Orthodox

78% Croat,12% Serbian

 

Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina:

Population: 3.36 million

40% Muslim, 31% Serbian Orthodox, 15% Roman Catholic

40% Serbian, 38% Muslim,  22% Croat

 

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (including Kosovo, and its refugees):

Population: 11.21 million

65% Serbian Orthodox, 19% Muslim, 4% Roman Catholic, 1% Protestant, 11% other

63% Serbian, 14% Albanian 6% Montenegrin, 4% Hungarian, 13% other

Kosovo:

Population: 1.89 million 

81% Muslims, 10% Serbian Orthodox, 9% Roman Catholics 

90% Albanians, 10% Serbs, 3% Roma (Gypsies), 1.5% Turks

Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM):

Population: 2.01 million

67% Eastern Orthodox, 30% Muslim

65% Macedonian, 22% Albanian

A brief recent history of Yugoslavia:

For hundreds of years, Yugoslavia included three faith groups: Islam, Orthodox Christianity, and Roman Catholicism.  Atrocities were committed during World War II by the Ustaša regime (a blend of fascism, Roman Catholicism and Croatian nationalism).   Up to a million Serbs, Jews, Roma, Muslims, Communists and other non-Catholics were exterminated by the state. The goal was to convert Croatia into a pure Croatian and Roman Catholic independent country. Memories of this genocide were a major cause of the recent violence.

President Tito was seen as the liberator of Yugoslavia and during his presidency after World War II, Tito angered the Serbs by granting autonomy to the province of Vojvodina and the southern province of Kosovo in 1974 and Yugoslavia started to disintegrate following his death. The country lost much of its territory and population during the 1990's as Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina achieved independence. By 1999, Yugoslavia consisted of only four provinces: Vojvodina, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. Montenegro had a large degree of independence.

A disorganised and poorly armed militia, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged in 1991, to fight for independence from the Yugoslavian government. They were considered by the Albanians in Kosovo to be freedom fighters; the Serbs considered them to be terrorists.

The battle was not simply between the Yugoslav army and Kosovo citizens in the KLA. Yugoslav militias were also active. Many of the KLA fighters are from the adjacent country of Albania. Some believe that soldiers have come from other countries as well:

According to Catholic World News, "most of the army's strength has come from abroad - primarily from Albania, but also from Yemen and Saudi Arabia."  Another source reports that some mercenaries from Russia had joined the Serb forces.

A "contact group,"  consisting of U.S. and many European countries, brokered the Rambouillet Peace Accord for Kosovo. It was unsatisfactory to both sides:

-        The Serbs objected to giving Kosovo autonomy, and to allowing NATO troops to enter the province and maintain peace.

-        The ethnic Albanians in Kosovo objected to the accord because it did not grant them full independence.

The representatives of the KLA signed the peace accord, after considerable pressure. The government of Yugoslavia refused to sign the agreement.

NATO bombing campaign

NATO attacked Yugoslavia with air power in an attempt to force the Yugoslav government to accept the agreement. By early 1999 NATO’s objective became the independence for Kosovo. Widespread assaults, ethnic cleansing, rapes and murders of ethnic Albanian civilians by the Serbian army and militia, which had started long before NATO bombing began, accelerated. Hundreds of thousands were forced to flee the province to prevent being exterminated. It became impossible for the Muslim population of Kosovo to accept any form of future association with the Yugoslavian government. Full independence was the only feasible ultimate option.

Following centuries of tradition in the area, the Government of Yugoslavia proposed a cease fire to during the Eastern Orthodox Easter celebration. A complete cessation was rejected by NATO. This decision had a profound psychological and spiritual impact on the Serbians. "...by bombing the Serbs during the Orthodox Easter--just as the Nazis did in 1941-- [NATO]... played into a view held by some Serbs that NATO is a force of Western Christianity attempting to crush the Eastern Orthodox underdog." As Father Alex Karloutsos, an Orthodox priest in New York, said: "It really comes down to a war between Eastern and Western Christianity."

NATO was ultimately successful in 1999 in reaching an agreement with the Yugoslav government to:

-        Withdraw its Serb troops, militias, police and secret police;

-        Allow a NATO-led peacekeeping force to enter Kosovo and

-        To allow the ethnic Albanians to return to their homeland.

This seems to have induced many among the small minority of Serbian residents in Kosovo to leave the province, out of fear for their lives.

The Serbian link with Kosovo

There is great, largely untapped, mineral wealth in Kosovo. But that is not the main motivation for the present conflict. Kosovo is "the crucible in which Serb nationalism was forged in a famous battle fought more than 600 years ago...its memory has been kept alive by Serb nationalists down the centuries." (see reference 3). Kosovo is akin to a “holy land.” Many historic Serbian Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries are located there. Kosovo is valued by the Serbs much as Jerusalem is by the Palestinians and Jews.

The Rev. Blastko Taraklis explains: "a Serbian Orthodox priest in Mission Viejo who keeps in close touch with the monks and nuns at the ancient Decani monastery in Kosovo" said "We cannot give up Kosovo, because it is the Serbian Jerusalem. The birthright of the Serbian Orthodox Church is in Kosovo and must remain there as part of Serbia."

Carl Raschke, a religious studies professor from the University of Denver, commented:

"Kosovo is the detonator for all the passions, paranoia, fears and fight-to-the-death romanticism that has been a force in the Serb consciousness for centuries." The Serbs looked upon the 1999 conflict over Kosovo as "a kind of final battle for their national identity...The Serbs are likely to let the country be destroyed before they give it up."

Following the occupation of Kosovo by NATO and a small number of Russian peacekeepers, popular opposition to the Milosevic regime in Serbia became organised and the CIA became involved in de-stabilizing the government of Yugoslavia. The regime was ultimately overthrown.

Did the Serbs commit genocide?

Civilian populations were increasingly being targeted during the civil wars. However, atrocities must match certain specific criteria before they are considered genocide. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as:

"... certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such. The proscribed acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, forcibly transferring its children to another group, or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part."  

Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia during the mid 1990s started as mass expulsions of civilians. It escalated to include internment in concentration camps, mass executions, rapes, etc. There was a clear policy by the Serbs "to exterminate Muslim Bosnians as a group..."

Their actions were generally considered to be genocide. There is a general consensus that widespread atrocities were also committed by the Muslims and the Croats (largely Roman Catholic). But the level of their war crimes did not reach genocidal proportions.

There have been allegations that the Serbs were also engaged in genocide in Kosovo before and during the NATO bombing. Media correspondents and human rights investigators conducted large-scale interviews of Kosovar refugees. The data collected show that the Geneva Conventions concerning civilians had been ignored and that extremely serious war crimes were perpetrated by the Yugoslavian army, police and militias. There appeared to be a consensus among human rights investigators that genocide had been committed by the Yugoslavian government against the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. This belief was confirmed as the NATO forces occupied Kosovo. Mass graves were located and were systematically examined by forensic specialists. Ethnic Albanians came out of hiding with horrendous stories to tell. In excess of 11,000 murders were reported to authorities.

Religious comments about the war in Kosovo:

Christians were divided over how to resolve the conflict. Some Evangelicals, Protestants and Roman Catholics supported the bombing as the only way to eventually bring peace. Many Orthodox Christian leaders supported the Serbian Orthodox church in asking for a cease fire. Many faith groups concentrated on the plight of the refugees, and did not take an active position on the war itself. During 1999...

-        Pax Christi is a Roman Catholic peace movement. Its Italian branch called for international action in Kosovo. "A temporary solution of one or two decades, would provide the immediate opportunity for increased economic cooperation with and political integration into the international community. It would enable the parties to build common ground for a final solution."  (see reference 15)

-        A number of Roman Catholic, Serbian Orthodox, and Muslim religious leaders met in Vienna in an attempt to forge a united stance against violence. Father Leonid Kishovsky was an Orthodox priest from New York who was present at the meeting. He reported "It was a very tense and challenging conversation that nearly broke down. But they did manage to walk through this very painful dialogue and came up with a common statement to step away from...violence and seek a democratic solution." (see reference 20)

-        The Albanian Encouragement Project (a group of about 70 foreign Evangelical Protestant agencies working with the local Albanian Evangelical Alliance) stated that the immediate solution was to bring NATO ground troops into Kosovo. They felt that the long range solution is more difficult. "We can set up borders, we can guard borders with UN troops and maintain a semblance of peace, but until hearts change and ethnic hatred ceases there is no long-term solution."   (See reference 14)

-        Charles Colson, head of the Prison Fellowship ministry in the U.S. criticised NATO's refusal to agree to a cease-fire requested by the Serb President, Slobodan Milosevic during the Orthodox Christian Easter. "NATO's actions show how completely tone-deaf Western governing elites have become on the subject of religion -- or at least Christianity." Colson contrasted the Kosovo situation with that of the 1998 decision to cease bombing in Iraq during Ramadan.

-        The Commission of the Orthodox Church predicted that further escalation of the war may have "unforeseeable, terrible consequences." They noted that both Evangelical and Roman Catholic leaders in Germany have supported the bombing in Kosovo.

-        Archbishop Spyridon, primate of the Greek Orthodox church in America said: "The further escalation of this conflict can only serve to exacerbate the human tragedy of violence, displacement and the inevitable hatreds that will be spawned by the forces of death and destruction."

-        The World Council of Churches, the Conference of European Churches, the Lutheran World Federation and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches called on Christians and Christian Churches to observe an international day of prayer for peace and reconciliation in the Balkans. These four groups had the opportunity to make a major positive contribution to religious tolerance by involving other than Protestant Christian groups in this day of prayer. Unfortunately, they decided to not involve the three main religious groups that are at least partly responsible for the terror and crisis in the Balkans: the Serbian Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church, and Islam.

-        Yugoslav President Slobodon Milosevic and four others were indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). This is the first time a sitting head of state had been formally accused of crimes against humanity.

-        An agreement was reached between NATO and Yugoslav military leaders. The bombing was suspended. This lead to the replacement of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo with international peacekeepers and the return of ethnic Albanian refugees. Two consequences of this were the departure into Serbia of many of the Serbs who had been living in Kosovo, and an unknown number of ethnic Albainian hostages taken by Yugoslav forces from Kosovo to Serbia.

-        CNN reported that there were about "860,000 refugees" who had fled Kosovo. "The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has estimated that at least 350,000 houses in Kosovo have been seriously damaged. The U.N. Children's Fund reported massive damage inflicted on hospitals, clinics and schools, and that doctors, nurses and teachers are in severely short supply."

-        Leaders of the Serbian Orthodox Church asked for the resignation of President Slobodan Milosevic and his government, as a means to find a new President and government that is acceptable to the world community.

-        By October 1999, 76 Serbian Orthodox shrines and churches had been destroyed or desecrated in Kosovo.  

In 2000, Milosevic suffered an electoral defeat . His regime was overthrown and a year later he was arrested and transported to The Hague to be tried as a war criminal.

In 2004, three Serbian children drowned accidentally in Kosovo. A false rumour spread that they had been chased into a river by four Albanian children.  In spite of a statement from the U.N. Mission that no Albanians were involved, tens of thousands of Albanians attacked Serbs and Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries. There are strong indications that the attack was carefully planned in advance. Fourteen religious structures were totally destroyed; some dated back to the 12th century. The National Review described it as "Kristallnacht in Kosovo"

In 2005 Slobodan Milosevic had a heart attack and dies in prison. The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) wrote that "....it is now more than ever crucial that the international community bring other indicted war criminals to justice in order to bring about a much-needed process of truth and reconciliation....The European Union has given the Serbian government until April to hand over Ratko Mladic, military leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the 1992-95 war, who is accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes for the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of thousands of Muslim men and boys around Srebrenica in July 1995. The Bosnian Serbs' wartime political leader, Radovan Karadic, also has yet to surrender to the Hague tribunal. Both men have been fugitives for more than 10 years. Capturing and trying Mladic and Karadic should be an immediate priority of the international community in order to deliver long overdue justice that is crucial in order to begin the heal the scars faced by those who witnessed the Balkan genocide firsthand."

The situation as of early 2006:

In 2006 Kosovo had been under United Nations administration since 1999, when NATO drove out Yugoslav troops. The United National Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) reported…

"Independence and autonomy are among options that have been mentioned for the province, where Albanians outnumber Serbs and others by 9 to 1. Serbia rejects independence. Kosovo’s Serbs have been boycotting the province’s provisional institutions."

"UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari confirmed that another meeting on decentralization would be held in the Austrian capital on 17 March, focusing on local financing and inter-municipal cooperation and relationships, adding that he was using 'a bottom-up approach,' in other words starting the process by dealing with practical and 'status-neutral' issues."

“Apart from decentralization, we will run parallel discussions on cultural and religious heritage, minority rights and economy'”, he said.

Kosovo in 2006 was a province of Serbia. However, with the area occupied by NATO peacekeepers, and administered by the United Nations, the term "province" is almost meaningless. There is strong support among the Muslim majority for complete independence.

"British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that Kosovo's movement towards independence is 'almost inevitable,' and said Serbia may have to accept that reality."

However, the Serbian Orthodox minority generally refuses to acknowledge independence as an option. Withdrawal of NATO troops, political independence for Kosovo, and long-term peace and stability may well take decades to accomplish.

Kosovo declares independence:

In 2008 Kosovo's parliament gave unanimous approval to a unilateral declaration of independence. Prime Minister Hashim Thaci declared Kosovo to be "proud, independent and free."  He described it also as "democratic, secular and multi-cultural." Serbia has instructed Serbs in Kosovo to reject succession, and has enacted countermeasures against the new state. The U.S., Canada, and most European countries are expected to recognize Kosovo's independence.

Russia opposed the development, probably for two reasons: it might motivate independence-minded movements in Russia to demand independence, plus Russia and Serbia are linked by a common Orthodox Christian faith.

Iran has announced its opposition, perhaps because Kosovo is a predominately Muslim state that intends to be secular.

Serbian Orthodox Bishop Artemije, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo called for violence. He said:

"Serbia should buy state-of-the-art weapons from Russia and other countries and call on Russia to send volunteers and establish a military presence in Serbia."

Kosovo Today

Kosovo is still a disputed territory. Serbia continues to claim it as a “province” but refuses to recognise it as a state. It is one of only two Muslim-majority territories on the European mainland (the other being Albania) and it continues to suffer significant poverty after the past conflicts.

Some Arguments for the Existence of Free Will by Bryan Caplan

Some Arguments for the Existence of Free Will by Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics. In this essay from The Libertarian argues against the assertion that free will is not real. 

Caplan appears to be arguing for the existence of free will. However, that’s not the issue. The argument is regarding the nature of free will, specifically the hypothesis that free will is an illusion.  Caplan’s essay is mainly a rehash of various philosophical arguments but is riddled with straw man arguments- created by Caplan so he can refute them. What a shame he didn't refer to actual arguments.

But the fundamental problem in Caplan’s approach is clear in his conclusion which asserts that free will is…

“a matter of “empirical fact. The most telling proof for the existence of free will is that we all observe it during our every waking moment.”

Caplan assumes that things we observe are what they seem. But of course, that’s not always the case. We observe rainbows and we observe the sun moving across the sky. Those things exist – they are phenomena.  But both of those phenomena are illusions and the fact is that we are standing on the surface of a globe that is spinning at 1,000 mph.  So observing free will does not tell us what’s actually happening. Observing free will does not address the issue that free will may be an illusion, that it may not be what it seems.  

Now let’s look at Caplan’s arguments in detail.

1. FREE WILL — WHAT IS IT?

Caplan says “a being has free will if given all other causal factors in the universe it nevertheless possesses the ability to choose more than one thing.”

The problem with this definition is that it is impossible to demonstrate that a choice is independent of all the causal factors in the universe.  (Try it).

2 THE OBJECTION FROM THE LAW OF CAUSALITY

Caplan presents a straw man: free will does not exist because it violates the law of causality.  He then refutes this by asserting that a free choice is not an effect, therefore it is not subject to the laws of causality (cause and effect).

Caplan begins his argument by assuming the existence of a “free choice” which he then uses to make an argument about the existence of a free choice.  (Begging the question). He then simply asserts that a choice has no cause.  Should someone suggest to Caplan that his choice did have a cause, his response is… “I simply deny that this is so.” Well, if that’s a valid argument then I simply deny the opposite!

3. THE QUANTUM CONFUSION

A somewhat confusing heading given that his argument here has nothing to do with quantum mechanics. Caplan then provides an argument using dice, where each side of the dice represents a possible action and he explains that the random outcome of a dice roll does not demonstrate free will.  

This is a straw man – he’s invented an argument that no one has made so that he can refute it. I’m not aware of anyone suggesting the brain makes decisions based on random numbers and there’s plenty of evidence to show it doesn’t.

4. CHOICES, ACTIONS, CAUSALITY

Caplan begins by stating that “causality is necessary for free will, because an essential part of free will is the idea that I cause my actions.” There are two problems in that sentence. The first half contradicts his previous assertion regarding causality. The second half asserts that free will requires him to cause his actions, but he doesn’t explain why and ignores the many examples of human actions that even he would agree are not caused by free will.

Then he asserts that “Actions are effects of a cause known as the free will.” That’s his opinion, but he hasn’t even tried to justify it.

5. WHAT WE CHOOSE

Caplan states that “we choose our beliefs.”  But we don’t.  Our beliefs are a subjective form of knowledge involving emotions as well as reason. We can be led to believe, we can come to believe, but we can’t choose to believe.

He then states that we choose our mental processes. He doesn’t explain how or why so again this is just an assertion. He even goes as far as to say that we choose “whether we will think” which completely ignores the fact the brain never stops thinking, even when we sleep or even when we are unconscious.  The brain has to be physically dead for it to stop thinking.  

He tries to give examples of actions that are voluntary and others that are involuntary, but demolishes his own argument by saying “sometimes thoughts spring into our minds involuntarily.” Well yes they do – but not sometimes. All the time. It is not possible to prevent a thought. (Try it).

6. FOUR ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF FREE WILL

A. The Argument from Observation

Again Caplan asserts that free will is real because he “observes that he chooses freely, at least sometimes.” But simply observing something is not enough to define its nature. Observing a rainbow does not explain why it’s an illusion. He then asserts that “There is no reason to assume that these observations are illusory any more than there is reason to assume that vision or hearing is illusory.”  The first part of the sentence ignores the evidence from neuroscience that free will is illusory. The second part of the sentence ignores the fact that vision and hearing are the result of processes in the brain, and the brain doesn’t always get it right. Perhaps Bryan Caplan has never seen a rainbow, or a mirage, or had a dream.

He then goes on to make a case for introspective evidence (our thoughts) being just as reliable as physical evidence. So if I think Bryan Caplan is a criminal, there’s no need for CCTV or DNA or any physical evidence, He’s guilty because my introspective evidence is just as valid as physical evidence.

B. The Reductio Ad Absurdum to Skepticism

He begins by asking how we can determine what’s correct when people disagree, and how can it possible to double check his views. But he’s answered his own question – we determine correctness by double checking. Or triple, quadruple… and so on.

He then creates another straw man – “we are pre-determined to believe whatever we happen to believe no matter what” so that he can refute it. Our beliefs are not predetermined in the same way that the weather is not predetermined.

He then claims that determinism leads to scepticism, but this is obviously untrue. There are plenty of religious apologists who eschew determinism but also claim to be sceptical. The two things do not go together at all.

He concludes by saying that determinism is false. I would argue that strict determinism is false (once again I use the analogy of the weather) but some things can be determined within certain ranges of probability. That’s why lotteries and casinos make a profit.

C. Moore’s Proof of the External World Extended

Caplan states that it is “not even coherent to argue against free will” and he does this by equating the existence of free will with the existence of a physical object, such as his hands. This is simply a repetition of his previous fallacy that thoughts are just as valid as physical evidence.  I can use the same argument about rainbows. You can see a rainbow and you can see my hand, therefore a rainbow is not an illusion because my hand is not an illusion.  This is a category error.

D. A Thought Experiment Showing the Freedom of the Will

This whole section is based on yet another straw man where “neurophysiologists come up with an equation that they claim will predict all of our behaviour.”  No such claim has ever been made except by Caplan, and he goes on to refute it.  This section also exposes Caplan’s inherent view that every argument about free will or the mind is black and white. It’s all or nothing, no shades of grey, 0% or 100% and of course it isn’t.

Again we can use the example of the weather. It can be predicted within a certain range of probability, and the shorter the timescale the more accurate the prediction is likely to be. So it is possible to predict if it will rain in a specific English village within the next 10 minutes, to a 99% level of confidence. But predicting the rainfall in that village at a specific time on a specific day two weeks into the future might only have a confidence level of 50% or less. We may as well just guess.  

So the weather is not strictly deterministic, it’s a bit deterministic sometimes. (I assume Caplan isn’t arguing that weather has free will).

The same is true of predicting someone’s behaviour. We can try to predict how someone will behave and the chances of our prediction being correct depends on how far into the future we make the prediction, the complexity of the behaviour, how much we know about human nature and how much we know about the person. The more we know and the shorter the timescale, the better the prediction.

So let’s use Caplan’s neurophysiologist example but turn it into real life. Using existing technology, with a person’s brain being scanned using fMRI,  the neurophysiologist would be able to predict that person’s action 200ms before they performed the action; he could detect the person’s decision to carry out the action 80ms before they became aware of the decision and he could detect the person’s intention starting to build 7s before the decision.

Caplan then argues that “Surely if human behavior were unfree, then science could in theory at least predict when I am going to raise my hand.” Well, science can predict that, but only by scanning the brain, and only a few milliseconds before it happens.  I assume if Caplan was to find out about the discoveries in neuroscience he would argue that such a prediction does not mean that human behaviour is “unfree”.

7. SOME OBJECTIONS TO AND MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL

A. Are some choices more difficult than others?

Caplan argues that an alcoholic chooses to drink alcohol because the choice to not drink alcohol is “too hard” for them to make. This demonstrates his ignorance regarding addiction and dependency. The brain of an alcoholic is in a specific state that has been caused by alcohol and in this state alcohol consumption becomes pleasurable and the right thing to do, leading to more alcohol consumption. The treatment is to re-programme the brain and there are several approaches: Forcible removal of alcohol to give the brain a chance to return to its pre-alcoholic state; rehabilitation to learn new coping skills and behaviours; counselling to address emotional problems that may have caused the initial drinking, support groups, medication and more.  So alcoholism tells us nothing about free will.


Caplan’s next example is “a button in front of you, the pressing of which would instantly exterminateall human life. You would not (I hope) want to press this button. But can you really say that you do not feel just as free to do so as you would to dial a phone number?”

Well, obviously I’m free to press the button but as Caplan points out, I don’t.  Suddenly he has become a predictor of human behaviour after he’s been arguing it can’t be predicted.

So Caplan gives example where choice is constrained as a means to demonstrate choice is free.

B. Is Choice Limited to a Select Few?

Yet another straw man argument – “Certain people have free will, but that the mass of people don’t because free will is a by-product of intelligence and education.” Caplan then goes on to refute this ridiculous argument that he’s invented.

The only sensible argument that is vaguely relevant is some brains are capable of making better decisions, and that is due to their nature and nurture. A damaged brain will have less ability to make decisions than a healthy brain (nature) and someone with experience of a situation is likely to make a better decision than someone with limited experience of the same situation because they are better informed (nurture).

This tells us nothing about free will.

C. The Objection from Regularity

Caplan uses examples here that tend to demolish his own arguments on free will. He explains “The typical criminal makes a long series of brutal choices over his life; there is a systematic pattern to his choices.” This is true and can be explained by psychology. The concept of “systematic choices” negates Caplan’s concept of free will.

D. The Objection from Inexplicability

Caplan introduces yet another straw man argument. This time he states that objectors to free will claim free will renders a person’s choices inexplicable. He then goes on to refute the argument that he’s invented.

Caplan then asserts that “a choice is necessarily, by definition, impervious to a causal explanation.” But of course it isn’t and Caplan has himself provided several examples which contradict his own assertion.

He states that “If there were a causal explanation, then the agent would have been determined to take his actions, and then they would not have been free.”  But a causal explanation does not mean determination to take actions. When a person takes an action, they are unaware of any causal explanation. Such an explanation can, obviously, only be provided after the event.

8. CONCLUSION

So finally, Caplan confirms that the proof for his view on free will is that he observes it.  

“The most telling proof for the existence of free will is that we all observe it during our every waking

moment.”

But he goes one step further which perhaps reveals his real motivation for his argument…

“The denial of our free will leads to the dehumanization of us all.”

Really? Why is that?