Free Will — The Function Nobody Can Find in the Code

Free will, the function nobody can find in the code.

Intro, calm music, slightly unsettling ambient sound.

Imagine that someone gives you a piece of paper this morning.

On the paper it says, at 2.37pm you will choose coffee instead of tea.

You look at the clock, it's 2.36pm.

You think to yourself, alright, then I'll deliberately choose tea.

A minute passes, you reach for the tea, and then you turn the paper over.

On the back, at 2.36pm you will read this paper, get annoyed, and that is exactly why at 2.37pm you will choose tea.

And damn, did you just make a free decision?

Or did you simply act out exactly what had already been predicted?

Today we're going to talk about one of the most irritating functions of our mind.

A function we use basically all the time.

We say, I could have done otherwise.

That was my choice.

He decided.

It's his fault.

He should have known better.

There's just one small problem.

Nobody can show exactly where this free will is located.

01

Part One — The Universe Works Suspiciously Well

The universe works suspiciously well.

If you push a cup off a table, the cup falls.

If you know its mass, height, force, air resistance, and a few other things, you can predict pretty well what will happen.

Planets don't hold a morning meeting either.

Hmm, I think I'll change my orbit today.

Stars don't choose whether to begin fusion.

An atom doesn't have an existential crisis before a chemical reaction.

The physical world looks as if events result from other events.

Cause.

Effect.

Cause effect.

And then a human appears.

The human says, yes, yes, everything has a cause, but I happen to be the exception.

All right, why?

02

Part Two — Where Did Your Decision Come From?

Where did your decision come from?

Let's say someone asks, pizza or sushi?

You choose sushi.

Why?

Because you like it.

Why do you like it?

Maybe you've eaten it before and had a good experience.

Maybe the taste suits your brain.

Maybe today you don't feel like eating something heavy.

Maybe you saw an ad for sushi an hour earlier.

Maybe you have a memory connected to a particular restaurant.

Every answer leads to an earlier cause.

So we try to reach the place where we finally find pure free will.

Something like, you can see the code in our conversation history.

free_will.c

if human.has_free_will {<br>decision = ???;<br>// what fills this in?

Exactly.

What is under those three question marks?

If the decision comes from your character, your character has causes.

If it comes from your memories, memories have causes.

If it comes from your values, your values came from somewhere too.

If it comes from the workings of your brain, the brain is a physical object.

And suddenly free will starts to look a bit like an API that everyone calls, but nobody has ever seen the back end.

03

Part Three — “What About Randomness?”

What about randomness?

And this is where a rescue often appears.

Ha!

But quantum physics!

The world isn't completely deterministic.

Possible.

Except randomness doesn't help at all.

If you are facing a choice, A or B and some quantum process in your brain randomly causes you to choose B, then where are you in that?

A roll of the dice is not freedom.

If my decisions are completely determined, we have a problem.

If my decisions are partly random, we still have a problem.

Because free will would have to be something other than, this had to happen.

And something other than, it happened by chance.

So what is it?

And this is exactly where philosophy starts to hurt.

04

Part Four — The Most Unsettling Experiment

The most unsettling experiment.

Imagine a perfect copy of your brain.

Not a magical one.

Just an incredibly accurate model.

It knows your memories, your character, your preferences, what you're afraid of, how you react to provocation, how long you think things over, how often you do something just to prove someone wrong.

The model says, in 10 seconds you will raise your left hand.

Naturally, you think, oh no, I'm not giving you that satisfaction.

You raise your right hand.

The model responds, I knew that after hearing the prediction, you would raise your right hand.

And this is where things get really bad.

Because if the prediction takes into account the fact that you learned the prediction, then even rebellion against the system can be part of the system.

A bit like in Bandersnatch.

You are given a choice.

You feel in control.

And later you realize that someone even predicted that you would try to break out of the script.

05

Part Five — Does That Mean That “I” Don’t Exist?

Does that mean that I don't exist?

And here it's easy to fall into a trap.

Because you can say, if everything has a cause, then I don't do anything.

The universe does everything for me.

But wait, you are part of the universe too.

That is very important.

If a stone breaks a window, we don't say, the stone didn't do...