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.

  • @CookieJarObserverEnglish
    3•9 months ago

    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.