I don’t believe free will is real. I’m not a deep physics person (and relatively bad at math), but with my undergrad understanding of chemistry, classical mechanics, and electromagnetism, it seems most rational that we are creatures entirely controlled by our environments and what we ingest and inhale.
I’m not deeply familiar with chaos theory, but at a high level understand it to be that there’s just too many variables for us to model, with current technology, today. To me that screams “god of the gaps” fallacy and implies that eventually we WILL have sufficiently powerful systems to accurately model at that scale…and there goes chaos theory.
So I’m asking you guys, fellow Lemmings, what are some arguments to causality / hard determinism, that are rooted entirely in physics and mechanics, that would give any credit to the idea that free will is real?
Please leave philosophical and religious arguments at the door.
I like this take, but it also makes me feel like I could do a better job describing the intent of my question in more scientific terms. I hope to do so, here.
If one were to have sufficiently advanced technology akin to future MRI machines that could image the state of the human brain at Planck time resolution, my argument is that the very process of “a decision” (act, choice, idea, etc.) could be quantified. And if that is the case, then there must be chemical triggers and causal events that could have predicted that state of the matter and energy. And if that’s the case, then we must really be products of our environment in an (currently) incomprehensibly large chemistry equation.
If any one decision could be quantized, reverse engineered, and then predicted through such means, then it stands to reason every decision can be. And if that’s the case, free will cannot exist.
I agree with the other poster that you need to define what you even mean when you say free will. IMO, strict determinism is not incompatible with free will. It only provides the mechanism. I posted this in another thread where this came up:
The implications of quantum mechanics just reframes what it means to not have free will.
In classical physics, given the exact same setup you make the exact same choice every time.
In Quantum mechanics, given the same exact setup, you make the same choice some percentage of the time.
One is you being an automaton while the other is you being a flipped coin. Neither of those really feel like free will.
Except.
We are looking at this through an implied assumption that the brain is some mechanism, separate from “us”, which we are forced to think “through”. That the mechanisms of the brain are somehow distorting or restricting what the underlying self can do.
But there is no deeper “self”. We are the brain. We are the chemical cascade bouncing around through the neurons. We are the kinetic billiard balls of classical physics and the probability curves of quantum mechanics. It doesn’t matter if the universe is deterministic and we would always have the same response to the same input or if it’s statistical and we just have a baked “likelihood” of that response.
The way we respond or the biases that inform that likelihood is still us making a choice, because we are that underlying mechanism. Whether it’s deterministic or not it’s just an implementation detail of free will, not a counterargument.
That was poetic and beautifully described.
Fascinating. 🖖
Well-put
Now here’s an interesting take.
In principle, one might be able to predict behavior based on this model.
But I would asset that it is not possible to achieve these conditions no matter what godlike technology one has.
Let’s go simpler. We don’t want to predict a human we want to predict the path of one electron.
Starting from initial conditions we should be able to predict the path of that electron right Wrong!
It’s wrong because it is impossible, in a way that cannot be overcome in this or any universe, to know those initial conditions.
And that may seem like a technicality, but that’s exactly where the chink in the armor is: no matter how precise your model, it’s impossible to determine the state of a closed system, because it’s closed, and it’s impossible to predict the behavior of an open system, because its evolution is determined by its interactions with its surroundings, and you can’t get all that information.
So the idea of using physics to predict things precisely is a Platonic ideal, not a thing which can manifest in reality.
But unpredictability is not the same as free will. Doesn’t free will imply a conscious decision being made?
But does it really matter if it’s possible for us to make such predictions? If a hypothetical omniscient observer (i.e. Laplace’s demon) could predict all your decisions, then that already shows that they’re deterministic. Us not being able to actually do the determination wouldn’t change the fact that there is a definitive state of the universe for any point in time.
The problem with your simplification is that it loses all predictability.
We can’t predict an electron on a miniscule scale. But we certainly can predict the rock it is a part of falling.
We can’t predict an electron. But we can determine and estimate with some probabilities. And on a higher scale the summation of individual behavior becomes quite predictable.
If we were to take only your electron argument, it implies we can not predict any material movement.
But the macroscopic universe responds to the subatomic universe because of the existence of chaotic systems which can amplify the tiniest difference. The prediction of the rock breaks down over time because it’s interacting with macroscopic inputs from chaotic systems around it.
I think this is my favorite answer so far.
Thanks, it’s mine as well.
The brain as far as we know works like nowadays “ai” it makes assumptions and tries to get the best and most fitting outcome for itself, this decision is influenced by a astronomical amount of data (thats the difference to nowadays ai) and (for the lack of better scientific measurements) emotions, meaning that theoretically it is possible to perfectly predict your choices, however, if you know about said prediction it will influence the system again.
Saying you have to pick between a Red and a Green Gummy Bear with the exact same taste, you will probably pick the red one because the subconscious associates red usually with food (red and yellow, that’s btw why many fast food chains use those colors) however, if you are aware of this, this will likely end up in picking the green one as rebellious act against nature, wich again is predictable because humans are self aware and don’t want “to be slave to their own instincts” now if you know about the prediction, the only way to “be unpredictable” would be to not chose a Gummy Bear thus “breaking” the test… Wich is predictable. This is of course a very simplistic experiment but gets the point across, you can’t be unpredictable unless you break the laws of physics. This does however not prove or disprove the “free will” inside the system you are in, you could chose things freely, you just don’t because its unnecessary and time consuming.
TLDR: we don’t know.
Thank you for a fun answer.
I’ll have to find some gummy bears.
I believe your scenario conflicts with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. As far as I know it’s one of the most ironclad laws of physics. As a quote I found in Wikipedia puts it,
Maybe? My layman understanding of that topic is that the act of observation collapses alternative waveforms down to a single observed state. And if that’s the case, why couldn’t you “observe” the whole brain?
I don’t know enough to give details but I’ve watched PBS Space Time enough to know the answer is no.