After-Orts #109
I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. ... Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being. …
I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human being, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to an invisible tune, intoned in the distance by a mysterious player.
I believe in intuitions and inspirations. ... I am enough of an artist to draw freely from the imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
-- all, Albert Einstein, in an interview in the Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/einstein.pdf
see also https://mailchi.mp/themarginalian/hopelessness-free-will-ai
(scroll down to second article)
more Einstein, from the same interview:
- Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking,...
- The ordinary human being does not live long enough to draw any substantial benefit from his own experience. And no one, it seems, can benefit from the experience of others. Being both a father and teacher, I know we can teach our children nothing. We can transmit to them neither our knowledge of mathematics nor of life.
- [in response to the question, Do you look upon yourself as a German, or as a Jew?] It is quite possible to be both. I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.