The ilusion of free will.

[jay123]

Say i was to take 10 identical universes(theoretically). Create them all in the exact same way, and trigger the same event in each, that caused a chain reaction, that resulted in life in the exact same way in each of the universes.

Then, in 10 billion years, i check on them. Wouldnt each one be the exact copy of the next? The same people, the same gene pool, the same exact movements in each of these universes.

Surely this means, that free will is an illusion, because it couldnt have gone any other way! Its like a form of accidental fate. there isn't free will, your just a consequence of an unstoppable chain reaction that invetibly led you to were you are today.

we could create this universe s1000 times and each one would be exactly like the previous one.

Even the thought im thinking now, couldnt be thought differently.

its a mind blowing thought, and its hurting my little mind. please someone say im wrong

[sumthingnice60]

This theory only works if you already believe in fate. If you believe in free will, then the theory will go something like this:

Take 10 hypothetical universes that are all the same and trigger the first "action" for each universes. For free will, people may now choose differently, so at the end of the period, the universes will all be different.

This theory only works if you already assume free will is an illusion. Otherwise, it's not a good example.

Edited July 1, 2008 by sumthingnice60

[TheLivingDead]

This theory only works if you already believe in fate. If you believe in free will, then the theory will go something like this:

Take 10 hypothetical universes that are all the same and trigger the first "action" for each universes. For free will, people may now choose differently, so at the end of the period, the universes will all be different.

This theory only works if you already assume free will is an illusion. Otherwise, it's not a good example.

I have to agree. If there is free will, then each universe would supposedly be different, seeing as how in each universe, at least one person would have chose to do something differently. Then again, who knows! Personally, I would also like to see the result of the 10 universes.

Edited July 1, 2008 by TheLivingDead

[jay123]

This theory only works if you already believe in fate. If you believe in free will, then the theory will go something like this:

Take 10 hypothetical universes that are all the same and trigger the first "action" for each universes. For free will, people may now choose differently, so at the end of the period, the universes will all be different.

This theory only works if you already assume free will is an illusion. Otherwise, it's not a good example.

I have to agree. If there is free will, then each universe would supposedly be different, seeing as how in each universe, at least one person would have chose to do something differently. Then again, who knows! Personally, I would also like to see the result of the 10 universes.

But if i were to make a choice, and my counter part were to make a choice in an alternate of my created universes, wed both choose the same sugestion, we have the exact same personalitys and the exact same choice choices

Put it this way, if i were to take an extremly powerfull computer back to the dawn of time, that knew everything there was to know about science, i bet i coud make an accurate estimate of exactly how the world is know, through knowing the consequeunce of an action.

Because we were all born with genes that make us act in a certain way, or were born into circumstances that moulds in certain ways, we really never had free will, were just a result of random events.

[PulsE]

free will is an illusion only if destiny is true

[Stormy777]

But if i were to make a choice, and my counter part were to make a choice in an alternate of my created universes, wed both choose the same sugestion, we have the exact same personalitys and the exact same choice choices

i bet i coud make an accurate estimate of exactly how the world is know, through knowing the consequeunce of an action.

Would that be predestination?

Maybe we only have free will to a certain extent.

Like what we eat for dinner,

you think?

[jay123]

free will is an illusion only if destiny is true

Its like destiny, but only not in a mystical way. Its not that you were meant to do a certain thing, it just that your consequences have brought you to do a certain thing.

Would that be predestination?

Maybe we only have free will to a certain extent.

Like what we eat for dinner,

you think?

Theres a degree of physical influences that brings a human being to a certain thought like what we want for dinner. Were much more predictable than you might think, i couldve presented that choice to you 100 times with same result every time

[Stormy777]

Theres a degree of physical influences that brings a human being to a certain thought like what we want for dinner. Were much more predictable than you might think, i couldve presented that choice to you 100 times with same result every time

Yes!?

Hmmmm, predictability, destiny, predestination, and free will, and the illusion.

So what is the illusion?

So I was predictably predestined by destiny, regardless of free will, to speak with you in my personal fantasy?

Don't ya love it when that happens?

Or is it a collective fantasy?

Edited July 1, 2008 by Stormy777

[Stormy777]

Say i was to take 10 identical universes(theoretically). Create them all in the exact same way, and trigger the same event in each, that caused a chain reaction, that resulted in life in the exact same way in each of the universes.

parallel universes coinciding with one another?

[jay123]

Yes!?

Hmmmm, predictability, destiny, predestination, and free will, and the illusion.

So what is the illusion?

So I was predictably predestined by destiny, regardless of free will, to speak with you in my personal fantasy?

Don't ya love it when that happens?

Or is it a collective fantasy?

The illusion itself is language, Because we developed a language were able to think things through, thus we think we arrived at a choice through the words.

Try to think somthing throught without actually using words, or any other form of language, itsimpossible.

So now that i think about it, its not just free will that an illusion, concousenes is too, an illusion brought about by language!

ahh, weird

[Stormy777]

Try to think somthing throught without actually using words, or any other form of language, itsimpossible.

This is tough jay,

But try and think a thought that has never been thought by another.

Or try not to think.

Every once in a while you get that glimpse of infinity, that dead Zone, or that time your brain seems to shut off while awake, when there is no sense of being, or time, or existence, it last but a second then poof you reawaken into thought, or the illusion,

Maybe the zone is reality and waking thought the program.

Edited July 1, 2008 by Stormy777

[Stormy777]

So now that i think about it, its not just free will that an illusion, concousenes is too, an illusion brought about by language!

Well of course.

In the beginning, the Word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Word became flesh

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.

See, since forever,man has pondered over the reason why?

[Purplos]

But if i were to make a choice, and my counter part were to make a choice in an alternate of my created universes, wed both choose the same sugestion

Yeah, but you're both still making choices. Just because there are two of the same being doesn't negate free will. It just means there is two beings using a collective free will, I guess.

I'm not sure why alternate-reality 'selfs' would have to make the same choices though. That would rather defeat the concept, wouldn't it?

[Nucular]

Say i was to take 10 identical universes(theoretically). Create them all in the exact same way, and trigger the same event in each, that caused a chain reaction, that resulted in life in the exact same way in each of the universes.

Then, in 10 billion years, i check on them. Wouldnt each one be the exact copy of the next? The same people, the same gene pool, the same exact movements in each of these universes.

Surely this means, that free will is an illusion, because it couldnt have gone any other way! Its like a form of accidental fate. there isn't free will, your just a consequence of an unstoppable chain reaction that invetibly led you to were you are today.

we could create this universe s1000 times and each one would be exactly like the previous one.

Even the thought im thinking now, couldnt be thought differently.

its a mind blowing thought, and its hurting my little mind. please someone say im wrong

Free will! Bizarre concept isn't it. I have problems with the idea personally, and do tend to think free will is illusory, but I'll come to that.

Your 10 identical universes for 10 billion years example, I think, forgets about random and acausal events which QM tells us happens on the level of the very, very small. Because of various aspects of the quantum world, after 10 billion years I'm fairly certain that those universes (or at least the configuration of all the particles inside them) would be fairly different from one another. Not necessarily because of free will, though.

To modify your example, maybe we could take 10 identical universes (here's some I made earlier), and press 'play' on them at exactly the same moment - a moment at which in each of them you're about to make a decision. Whether you would make identical decisions in each of the universes I think depends mostly on the nature of 'mind'. Assuming mind is a product of brain, then it also depends on the nature of 'brain'. Does the brain function on a quantum level? The short answer is that no-one knows, though some such as Roger Penrose (I seem to keep mentioning him just lately for some reason) argue that it does. If it doesn't, then there is no randomness involved in your mind, and you will take the same decision in each universe. If nondeterministic processes are involved in cognition, however, then mind and its decisions are probabilistic, which means you might find that one of those ten universes has you making a different decision.

My own problem with free will is simply that I can't make the concept make any sense.

The reason for this is that, as I see it, I can either make a decision according to my personality, or attempt to make a random decision in which my personality is not involved. The latter can be disregardded, as, even I was able to do this, it would be a decision in itself, and the resulting random decision wouldn't be a 'free will' one anyway.

So, the type of decision that I make according to my personality is the sort normally regarded as a 'free will' decision.

But I didn't choose my personality! 'I' can't have done, since my personality is me - if I chose it, then at the point I chose it I wouldn't have had that personality. So presumably I'd have had a different one, also not chosen by me. Problem of infinite regression?

There's simply no way 'I' could have chosen the criteria against which I make any decisions. Free will just seems to me to be a meaningless term.

Edited July 2, 2008 by Nucular

[eight bits]

But I didn't choose my personality! 'I' can't have done, since my personality is me - if I chose it, then at the point I chose it I wouldn't have had that personality. So presumably I'd have had a different one, also not chosen by me. Problem of infinite regression?

There's simply no way 'I' could have chosen the criteria against which I make any decisions. Free will just seems to me to be a meaningless term.

Ah, Nuke. We shall make a Zen master of you yet. Let us take our places on the floor, half-lotus will be fine.

There is no abiding self. I am the current state of a dynamic process. What I am puts on and casts off selves like clothing. There is some regularity to me, a Markov process rather than a succession of independent trials. But who wrote the words you are now reading is already somebody else.

He does get to spend my money, though. Only fair, then, that he's got to pay my bills, too.

"Free will" is an ill-defined thing at best. To the extent that it depends on an abiding self, it is a concept based on a false premise. When does that ever work out?

However, I believe that the essential point of a free will claim is not to assert that I choose so much as to deny that somebody else chooses for me. Not that that doesn't ever happen, but the possibility that nobody else chooses for me exists.

Or so most of the unnumbered states of what I am have believed.

[Nucular]

Ah, Nuke. We shall make a Zen master of you yet. Let us take our places on the floor, half-lotus will be fine.

Hi eight bits, I was secretly hoping you might pop up at some point in this thread I'm not sure I can even manage the half-lotus I'm afraid - how about I just lurk at the back with an air of tranquility?

There is no abiding self. I am the current state of a dynamic process. What I am puts on and casts off selves like clothing. There is some regularity to me, a Markov process rather than a succession of independent trials. But who wrote the words you are now reading is already somebody else.

I am actually comfortable with the idea of a transient, illusory or constantly redefined self - I have always had trouble trying to get across what I just tried to get across in that last post, but whatever it was I was trying to say wasn't supposed to include assumptions about the nature of selfhood - rather, simply that the notion of free will seems itself to have implicit assumptions about the nature of the self which don't make sense.

Still, abiding or Markovian self, neither has chosen its own nature at any given point, which means that any decisions it makes are not 'free'.

However, I believe that the essential point of a free will claim is not to assert that I choose so much as to deny that somebody else chooses for me. Not that that doesn't ever happen, but the possibility that nobody else chooses for me exists.

I'm not so sure that that's what most people mean by free will - I think there is an implication of agency in there. Nobody or nothing else choosing for me could be achieved through randomness, which still wouldn't be free will.

But more than that, if an entity makes a decision, and that decision is based on properties of that entity which were not chosen by the entity itself, then the decision was not made by that entity but ultimately by whatever it was that did choose those properties. Since this applies to any decision-making entity, the search for agency or ultimate responsibility for that decision is a (not infinite, but lengthy) regression until you come back to forces which don't have any agency to start with.

To put it another way (or perhaps the same way but in slightly different words), all decisions are made according to criteria not chosen by the decision-maker, which leaves no room for free will anywhere.

Putting it yet another way (because I'm trying to get across a fairly ill-formed thought that for some reason I think is true), there are only deterministic and random processes in the universe. The concept of free will seems to assume a third type of process - one which is neither deterministic nor random - but makes no suggestion as to what, or how.

I deny that I choose; and it's true that nobody else chooses for me; ultimately, no-one does. If no-one chooses, it's not free will.

Or, to put it another way still, you can't blame me for anything, especially the dumb stuff I've done.

[eight bits]

Tranquility is good .

Still, abiding or Markovian self, neither has chosen its own nature at any given point, which means that any decisions it makes are not 'free'.

The bar to choosing your own nature is stark self-referential contradiction. Nobody creates themselves. Not even God.

Doing so, then, could not possibly be a prerequisite for anything interesting.

Obviously, there is a great deal of accident and happenstance in the story of how I come to be. I even imagine, and accept, that were it not for the intervention of randomness in one way or another, then every action of mine would have been determined in the first few picoseconds after the Big Bang.

However, I do believe that randomness has intervened.

I am here now, am competent to function as an agent, and at least for some choices, nobody else is making the decision except me. That randomness is an essential part of how I come to be is a different claim from one that any current decision of mine is indistinguishable from consulting the output of a random number generator.

That is possible. There are formidable barriers to my knowing whether it is true or not. However, for me at least, the crucial question for free will is "What is my nature?" not "How did my nature get to be that way?" That was then, this is now, so to speak.

Or, to put it another way still, you can't blame me for anything, especially the dumb stuff I've done

Watch me .

[Celumnaz]

Reminds me of that theory of inevitability thread.

What do I want my nature to be?

I think those generalized and lumped together "quantum weirdnesses" would allow for each universe to be unique.

[Lt_Ripley]

free will is an illusion in the sense only if you believe in an all powerful all knowing being in charge of it all ( that doesn't mean active at the moment) or if you believe spiritually your own soul ( with or without God) chose the life your living in this universe.

there may be identical universes but that doesn't mean the fate has to be the same. each could explore another option. the universe would be the same , but man may not.

[Mr.Dot]

Say i was to take 10 identical universes(theoretically). Create them all in the exact same way, and trigger the same event in each, that caused a chain reaction, that resulted in life in the exact same way in each of the universes.

Then, in 10 billion years, i check on them. Wouldnt each one be the exact copy of the next? The same people, the same gene pool, the same exact movements in each of these universes.

Surely this means, that free will is an illusion, because it couldnt have gone any other way! Its like a form of accidental fate. there isn't free will, your just a consequence of an unstoppable chain reaction that invetibly led you to were you are today.

we could create this universe s1000 times and each one would be exactly like the previous one.

Even the thought im thinking now, couldnt be thought differently.

its a mind blowing thought, and its hurting my little mind. please someone say im wrong

I think they would probably be completely different to each others because theres something called chance, but chance is the opposite to free will.

[Aere Thalia]

Lt Ripley:

there may be identical universes but that doesn't mean the fate has to be the same. each could explore another option. the universe would be the same , but man may not.

I agree to an extent with you.

I just don't agree with some of the ideas that others imply.

What makes someone think that this universe is somehow related to the choices each individual makes? That the universe is going to wait for each person to make a choice? What if the universe functions only the way it is supposed to for a period of time, and what the real illusion is that the universe functions by the will of man. That somehow it isn't the choices we make by own creations from what we already know that influences our own lives.

eight bits:

There are formidable barriers to my knowing whether it is true or not. However, for me at least, the crucial question for free will is "What is my nature?" not "How did my nature get to be that way?" That was then, this is now, so to speak.

On the level of humanity, each person that lived in various times has had a hand in building society to the way it is now. So in a sense 'free will' is/has been shared, which in turn influences the person we become, and our nature. Each person has had to make choices that they already know and are capable of understanding. So perhaps "free will" has many other aspects to it. A person cannot truly choose something they don't acknowledge (nor are aware of) in some way because they don't see the possibilities in it. However, it isn't impossible that from what you already know and understand, you create your own choices by allowing yourself to see the possibilities there, and deriving to some sort of new understanding that changes everything. But the choice/possibility could have already existed by someone else's creation, and so on, which can either mean within certain perceptions that knowledge is the way to be more free, or there really isn't any 'free will' in the first place. Or there is no unique quality to anyone, or somehow each person will reach a point that will be in some parallel with another person. Or the perception can be a mixture of these sorts of thoughts. I'm just giving some ideas on the possibilities of various views I've come across before.

Edited August 7, 2008 by Risov Misa

[John from Lowell]

I think that knowledge is the path to awareness as it relates to free will. With our perceptions we create our reality. We can change our perceptions once we realize how empowered we have always been. It is the ignorance in reguard to the power of our minds and our perceptions that keeps most of us living in the dark as far as our own lives are concerned.

We have always created the live we have as a result of the choices we have made. It is hard for me to think any other way.

John

[Sthenno]

The thing is, this is all utterly hypothetical. I think that, yes, were we able to recreate everybody's genes and life experience then we might all reach the same decisions in simultaneous universes. But the point is that we can't, and won't be able to for the foreseeable future, so I can't see how this impinges on our perception of free will, unless we give the term a significance deeper than the ability to make our own decisions with the resources we have available to us.

[123er]

The illusion of freewill is only skin deep anyways, thats common knowledge boring stuff. It gets interesting when you start to look inside the self, and start to find out just how much you imersed yourself in the illusion for the sake of knowing what if. And further still, it becomes overwhelming when you start to look at the affect your illusion has on the higher self. You learn things nearly three times as fast on earth or u can, possibly faster. For example the emotions you feel the higher up you go the more dilluted with love they become, so it takes longer to implement, while knowing. Now on earth the connection to the higher self is nearly severed depending on the person. Meaning when you feel the emotions on earth the experince is amplified, you learn things in a much harsher way but you learn them fast, what you learn exactly is up to how limited you made it for yourself on this illusion we call life on earth. then again if thats true shouldn't it be possible to recollect these things at all times? Maybe that's part of the learning experince not knowing jack but passing it off as if we know in order to project ourselves in the way we chose fit, as I have done. But if this is true then it is only true for the stating, meaning me. So every other person on earth has laws which they themselves created in order to do whatever it is they need to do, Laws being limits, im very interested in others limits, for my own I can not see fully, without the help of others. Maybe that's why theres even others in the first place, in order to help each other progress. This would limit one from "getting ahead of themselves", but it is evident to me there are even exceptions to these rules as there are to any. Perhaps no two illusions are the same, O wouldn't that be interesting, for if it were true that would mean every single individual soul has it's own personal creation completly free of others. But the bible as well as other scripture limits these thoughts not in a bad way it just proves them wrong. Hmm only if one could know, then perhaps we all would, for God states we are all one sharing the same knowledge. If that is true and I did not chose to be one, then the freewill God promised has no meaning. I find more interesting if we all chose to be one instead of it being so. What do think? Haha the fact that I even state such things is only an illusion anyways so why not bend the illusion, to fit our desires, but that would be a sin. Man this God fella sure created a pretty paradox proof system. And the God from the bible, I speak of the go of love. For without love the illusion would not be possible, but that's my own OPINION!

[John from Lowell]

I find more interesting if we all chose to be one instead of it being so. What do think? Haha the fact that I even state such things is only an illusion anyways so why not bend the illusion, to fit our desires, but that would be a sin. Man this God fella sure created a pretty paradox proof system. And the God from the bible, I speak of the go of love. For without love the illusion would not be possible, but that's my own OPINION!

As I understand it, the higher-self works with our choices and continues to direct us towards our particular life plan. The illusions we create through our perceptions are part of that guiding energy from the higher-self. It is all about love but not in the way that most of us see love. The Key for any human who wants the most out of life is through their higher-self connection. That is my Opinion.

John