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I don’t think it needs to convince you about anything. brains run on less energy than a friggin lightbulb seems like it would be pretty open to suggestions
Early into college I convinced a few people there isn’t free will because it contradicts everything we know about psychology. That said, I also explained it didn’t matter since there’s so much going on that it’s difficult to predict a person’s behavior with absolute certainty, even with a multitude of information about them.
To simplify, a coin flip is considered random even if all the forces are physical and deterministic. The angle and strength of the flip, the air resistance, gentle breezes, the precise gravity where it takes place given the pull from the earth and hell, even the moon… you can factor in so much and be right maybe 99.9% of the time with proper controls and yet there’s always something.
Human brains have magnitudes more going on, so even if some factors are strong predictors, there’s always an illusion of free will since there are so many other factors we haven’t even imagined.
If you can predict, but not controll what I’ll do, I still consider that free will.
Research and brain scans indicate that your choices are already made and decided in the decision making portion of your brain before you’re even consciously aware that you have a decision to make in the first place. The sum total of individual experienced reality is just your brain post-hoc rationalizing your sensory input and reactions.
Free always needs a qualifier… Free from what? Free from other people, for now… Free from physics? No.
I consider free will to be the concept that whenever you make a choice A/B you as in a subjective consciousness have the power to decide any way and are not bound by a deterministic system to always give one output for the same input.
For example if we were to decide the universe is deterministic except for the conscious beings that are humans it would mean the universe looks exactly like it does in all timelines after it’s start but those timelines diverge once free will enters, since the deterministic system gets random input from free will.
So free from physics
basically. well you see like you said you can define some higher order that could exert some control over your will and that could be physics or something metaphysical. in case of some religions that is a devine force, while others say devine forces relegate the power of free will to humans and in most cases they don’t interfere with the decision making processes of people. i would say if any sort of higher order retains perpetual control over your decision making process that calls the concept of free will into question. if you believe your brain is the sole source of your decisions and is bound by deterministic physical processes then that’s not free will in it’s purest form. you could say it’s free will in the sense that no other being of the same level can accurately predict or manipulate your choices but i would say that only grants the illusion of free will.
i personally believe that the source of consciousness and as such free will is metaphysical in nature and is not generally manipulated by any process, so it’s free will as per my definition.
edited in everything after ‘basically’ because i decided i had more to say
wait till you get one of those neuralink chips and you’re forced to like all of elon’s tweets
Your brain IS you. It’s the one choosing
Not technically…
Cutting edge (and relatively proven) theory is:
“You” is the quantum superposition that exists inside connected microtubules.
That’s why for anesthesia or just getting knocked unconscious, you don’t need to remove the brain, you just do something to break up the connection of microtubules and boom: the person is unconscious but their brain is still functioning which keeps the body alive. Eventually the microtubules reassemble and you’re able to be conscious again.
The brain is just another organ the “you” manipulates to interact with your surroundings.
It’s also the only way we could actually have free will.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12060853/
For bonus 80s coolness tho, it would mean that what is “us”, is a laser zooming around an incredibly tiny race track in our brains.
Quick edit:
Microtubules are basically biological nanites too, they’re in every cell of the body and to give you an ideal of their size, they’re what pulls DNA apart during cell replication. So these incredibly tiny little buggers link up to basically form a fiber optic cable which is how we can have quantum superposition in warm/wet environment like the brain.
Which if you know anything about how hard it is to sustain quantum superposition, well, anywhere, it explains why it considered a crazy theory for decades till we actually observed it just a couple years ago.
Holy shit that’s nanners. And this has been observed? I gotta read that paper.
there was a vsauce video about a machine that was trained on his brain and could then predict which button he would press before he did.
i can’t find the video rn but it was cool and creepy as fuck.
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that’s clear, I will choose free will"Now, your honor, as the jury will have read in this clinical, peer-acknowledged study, our superintelligent quantum AI regional supercluster determimes guilt accurately in over 98.9% of cases, in various scenarios, in thousands of simulations.
“With no margin of error, this system has determined the defendant would have acted within the next few days, perhaps even hours!”
If you don’t go full Minority Report on it, having something that could predict crimes with 98% certainty could be amazing.
Imagine if instead sending everyone to jail, you could use the predictions to just prevent the crime. For example, if someone was likely to commit murder as passion crime, maybe society could have a team of trained councillors to mediate the conflict before it happens.
But what about the 1.1% that determines innocence? You know, the minority in the report.
Not the old man with the white beard, noooo
… and usage of candles in fictional video, one of my pet peeves!
People who try to apply game theory to fictional super AIs and David Chalmers can both fuck off.
I wish I still believed in free will. It would make getting stuff done a lot easier. Feeling like you are fighting the universe to accomplish something you don’t want to do is much harder than feeling like you just don’t want to do something today. It’s the exact same situation either way, but the illusion of free will is, imho, valuable psychologically.
I just dont understand this admittantly common argument.
Free will seems like such a psychologically damaging lie. As if blaming yourself for the outcome of every sad movie you’ve watched is somehow motivational.
Since coming to accept that free will is farcically impossible, I feel free to just go about my actions with a sense of curious enthusiasm as to what will happen next, safe in the knowledge that que sera sera - whatever will be, will be.
I think if somebody truly understood this, they would just quit fighting. What would be the point?
Life, joy, friends, love, art, pleasure, dopamine, oxytocin, etc.
Anything we’re doing now can still be done without the concept of free will, because we’re already doing it without free will.
Life, joy, friends, love, art, pleasure, dopamine, oxytocin, etc.
I don’t get any of those things out of fighting the universe.
We all get those things regardless. The stories we tell ourselves about how the world works don’t affect how the world works.
Exactly the problem. It’s very easy to fall into doing nothing, and the question of whether that would be a problem if I actually still believed in free will, or at least didn’t actively disbelieve it, is a big one… that knowledge or belief is now part of my operating system, a core feature of who I am that impacts the choices I don’t think I actually get to make. One of the known variables that influences behavior.
I don’t think that “not fighting” is the same as doing nothing. Like I said, if somebody could truly understand this, there would be no reason to fight, not no reason to act. They would simply think and then act.
I’ve heard a kind of enlightenment described this way. Some people have claimed to attain it. It may not be possible in a pure state, but perhaps you can get close to it by degrees.
Did anyone here, including myself, post a comment because we had no choice?
Honor of Kings: The Way of All Things episode did a great take on this.
most people can’t stand the idea that they’re not in control, which is funny, because a lot of those people can’t even be bothered to try and take control of themselves
