Asklemmy

Local causality doesn't imply unbroken universal causality. In fact, the idea everything is a purely deterministic projection of some initial state is far weirder than the idea that stochastic actions can influence a partially deterministic state.

I believe that we should treat most people as if they have free will but I don't exactly believe in the idealistic notion of free will. I believe we can make choices, but I believe our choices are limited and shaped by our experiences.

You have free will, but you also have chains that bound you.

Starting from the social order, you need money and other social relations (friends, family, bosses) to literally survive in the modern world - you're not omnipotent.

Then you have the cognitive chains - stuff you know and understand, as well stuff you can invent (or reinvent) from your current knowledge - you are not omnipresent.

Then, as a consequence, without these two, you cannot be (omni)benevolent - you'll always fuck something up (and even if you didn't, most actions positive towards something will have a negative impact towards something else).

All these are pretty much categorically impossible to exist - you're not some god-damn deity.

But does this mean free will doesn't exist?

Hardly. It's just not as ultimate a power or virtue as some may put it. Flies or pigs also have free will - they're free to roll in mud or lick a turd - except for when they're not because they do it to survive (cool themselves or eat respectively).

We humans similarily eat and shit, and we go to work so we have something to eat and someplace to shit. Otherwise you die without the former or get fined without the latter.

So that's what free will is - the ability of an organism to guide what it's doing, how, when (and, to some extent, even why) it's doing it, according to its senses and sensibilities. It's the process with which we put our own, unique spin on the things in our lives.

Being an omnipotent, omnipresent and (omni)benevolent would in fact remove the essence of what free will (with all its limits) is, because our actions wouldn't have any meaningful consequences. It'd all just be an effective (what I'll call negative) chaos - a mishmush of everything only understandable to the diety.

So in fact, the essence of "free" will is that it's free within some bounds - some we've set ourselves, some we're forced with (disabilities, cognitive abilities, physical limits, etc.). Percisely in the alternative scenario would "free" will cease to be free - because someone already knows it all - past, present future, local and global, from each atom on up. There's perfect causality - as perfect as a movie. You can't change it meaningfully - any changes become a remix or remaster - they lose their originality.

With the limits on our thinking which cause us to be less-than-perfect, they cause a kind of positive chaos, one where one tries to do their best with what they have on their disposal - as they say, you get to know people best at their lowest. Similarily, everyone gets corrupted at a high enough power level - some just do it sooner than others. So surely, at an infinite power level, not even someone omnipotent, omnipresent and (omni)benevolent all at once would be able to curb this flaw.

I want to, but Determinism sounds pretty reasonable. Everything is just going with the flow from the big bang, including what happens in our consciousness. Do I think this because of my own will, or because of events set into motion billions of years ago? 🤔

It is an impossible concept invented by humans. Free from what? Literally everything you do is because of things beyond your control. It isn't predestined, it just isn't up to you. The question is, at the end of the day, were you kind?

honestly, i've never seen or heard a single coherent definition of what we even mean by 'free will'. until the question makes sense, i can't really answer it, and don't see any point in discussing it.

anyways, who here believes in blabblesnork? that is a word that refers to something, i promise, but no, i won't tell you what it means.

Every decision you make and everything that happens is based on conditions, and nothing exists outside of conditions.

In the ultimate sense there's no such thing as free will, because everything has a conditioned existence.

In a deterministic reality, where all things are due and subject to causation, there can be no free will. If we did not live in a causal reality, we'd never be able to make accurate predictions or models.

"Randomness" is not free will either. If you're not in complete control of your influences, then you can not be said to have free will. Randomness does nothing to help the argument for free will.

With that said. Regardless of the existence of free will, what does exists is your awareness of what it's like to be you. To be in the circumstances that currently govern your life. And in that awareness exists the boundless capacity for compassion. Once you understand that no one is in control of their lives, that all things are causal, it allows you to be less judgmental.

"If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his own skiff, he will not become angry. He will simply guide his boat around it.

But if he sees a person in the boat, he will shout at the other to steer clear. If the shout is not heard, and the boats collide, he will curse the other person.

Yet, if the boat were empty, he would not be angry."

— Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi)

I wrote a simple explanation of determinism in a blog post earlier this year (there's an audio version available as well.) https://mrfunkedude.wordpress.com/2024/12/03/following-the-strings/

well atoms themselves are inherently random you can't even perceive them without them blowing the fuck away

Free will is based on the concept of the individual, a concept bounded by a separation already as arbitrary and illusory as a nation's border. It's pragmatic to pretend these things exist in your day to day life, but they don't mean anything to the universe.

Get in the car and go until the scenery looks different. Be somewhere you don't belong and you'll feel more in charge of your choices and decisions. Every single person has the ability to be a wild card and go off script if they choose it. That's free will. Embrace the wild.

If it looks like free will and quacks like free will, then it probably is free will.

What explanation do people envision, after which they would both understand the mechanism of free will and are convinced it exists? That understanding just seems contradictory to me, so either it doesn't exist or we can't define it.

We are particles governed by physical laws, so no

You gave an argument against free will based on Determinism, but there are other good and even better arguments IMO. Like the science-centrist arguments of Neuroscience , Psychological and the Evolutionary Arguments. Then there are the philosophical Arguments from Divine Predestination or Fate. There are still more but the fun is on the discovery.

You have as much free will as a leaf or a fish.

We have free will, but the majority are not free to exercise it because of material conditions and/or circumstance.

To add to this, I've noticed not only here but anywhere I ask this question there is a camp of people who immediately become defensive and say the question is pointless. In person it can lead to people getting very angry sometimes at the idea and that is odd to me. I don't really see how the question is pointless, and instead it seems to me like some people feel intimidated by it

Does that even mater? Either stance can't be proved.

Even if the universe is nondeterministic like quantum physics suggests you still don't have free will because your thoughts and feelings are still ruled by physical processes even when they are random.

But you don't need physics to dispute free will. Schopenhauer already said that you may do what you want. But you cannot will what you want. Einstein used that realisation to not take everything too seriously even when people act infuriating.

If there is an unbroken chain of causality, that means that history has been written start to finish already, and my consciousness is just along for the ride. The thing is, my consciousness is locked to right now, which is a single point in this 4-D space, as are all the consciousnesses that I interact with because that’s exactly what right now is.

Until the day I interact with a consciousness that is experiencing a different point in 4-D space other than right now, it does not matter if free will truly exists because from my perspective and from all of my scientific testing so far (like deciding to pick my nose as I just did), evidence suggests that my consciousness is capable of making decisions. Even if those decisions are all a result of a deterministic path, my consciousness felt like it made them so it might as well have.

As I hear it described, it doesn't even make logical sense. A thing is either random, or deterministic. People talk about decisions being motivated by something, but also somehow independent of all exterior things.

People will come back that that lets you off the hook for your misdeeds, but that's only the case if you believe in retribution for it's own sake. A version of incapacitation and rehabilitation could make sense against something as devoid of "free will" as a bridge or building, and deterrence only needs the target to be capable of strategy.

To answer the question a slightly different way, in light of the post text: How random the universe is will come down to fundamental physics. The simplest way of interpreting the current state of the art is that the universe is deterministic but branching.

There is only one choice: feeling or rationality.

When you feel, you do what feels best.

When you think, you do what is the most valuable.

So no free will but that choice.

If free will was truly non-existent, it would mean that a theoretical entity with access to perfect information would be able to perfectly predict your actions. I don't believe that is possible; I think that human beings are too irrational. Consider a very simple decision: what am I going to have for dinner? You could know the restaurants I have access to, what food is in my home, what I have discussed in a given day, and even what my current mood is, but it can ultimately come down to a whim. I could choose something I've never had before, for no reason, and seek it out.

I believe that we are individual actors in a very complex system that introduces lots of constraints to our decision-making process. We may not even be consciously aware of some of the constraints; however, we are always the ones ultimately making the decisions. You always have the option of a whim.

The circumstances that led you to any particular decision are pre-determined at the time you're making that decision, simply through the fact that those circumstances have already happened prior to the current decision at hand; but that doesn't mean you don't have the free will to make that decision in the moment.

To extend on that a little: if you were able to make the same person face the same decision multiple times under identical circumstances, I don't believe you'd get identical results every time. It may not be an even distribution between the possible choices; but it wouldn't be a consistent answer either. The Human element introduces too much chaos for that kind of uniformity.