Estrellita

    This means 'little star' in Spanish.

    It was around 2 am on Friday. During summer, in Barcelona, there are folk parties every week, each one in a different neighborhood. We were hanging out in a plaza near my house, drinking beer in one of those fiestas. Kids stay awake until very late and an orchestra plays the usual 80s, 90s, 00s... and the latest Enrique Iglesias lame hit. Those four kids where playing hide and seek and needed to raffle off, so they formed a ring and one little girl pointed at herself as she said "es-tre-lli-ta", while she advanced her pointing finger one person at a time with each new syllable. The kid eventually aimed at left the circle and "es-tre-lli-ta" again. She eliminated herself and "es-tre-lli-ta" one more time between the two contestants left. The last survivor was it and started counting backwards from 20 or so while the gang got scattered among the grown-ups dancing Extremoduro's Stand by.

    I read it first in Dennett's masterpiece Darwin's Dangerous Idea. I haven't read Freedom Evolves yet, but from his many conferences and online lectures I guess he still has the same opinion. I'm talking about Dennett's argument for free will as a social construct. It was clear to me already: "Why do you want pure randomness unless you're gambling your entry in heaven against god?" If you're just betting against other moist robots like yourself, wouldn't a less stringent version of randomness suffice for most issues? One upon which everybody agrees, i.e. a device of which nobody can tell the outcome, even if it can be computed in principle. That's enough to create a working social randomness when needed -- if needed.

    This logic, I said, was clear to me; but never before did I grasp it so deeply as when I saw those four lovely little machines, all geared up with their tender bag of algorithms, ruffling off to start the most important game of their lives.