Its a choice to you because you don’t have that power
I like to replace the concept of “free will” with that of “agency”.
The Britannica definition of free will is “the supposed power or capacity of humans to make decisions or perform actions independently of any prior event or state of the universe”. But it seems to me that any state where you temporarily cannot act or communicate would automatically rule out free will, at least while that condition persists. Do you lose free will every time you fall asleep? Are people who are aware but whose bodies are nonresponsive - people who are “locked in” - lacking free will? Certainly both conditions lack agency, but these are still inarguably people - yet free will is so tightly bound with the concept of personhood, that it’s supposed lack is often used to imply one is “less human”!
Frankly, free will seems like too broad and binary a concept to match what people actually do and deal with day to day. Agency comes in degrees, and can be gained and lost - which seems to me a much closer match to what people were trying to describe with the phrase “free will”.
I am reading “Thinking fast and slow” by Daniel Kahniman.
This seems to be way more true than I am comfortable admitting to myself.
Meh I wouldn’t call it that super
If such an intelligence existed, I would simply call it a nerd and spray whipped cream in its face
you fool it manipulated you into getting bukkaked
Pshh, how will my subconscious dictate my free will if it’s pushed into a locker?
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.
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
"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!”
But what about the 1.1% that determines innocence? You know, the minority in the report.
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 willEarly 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.
Did anyone here, including myself, post a comment because we had no choice?
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.
