Dealing with the facts of Quantum Physics. (Free Will)

The fact that apparently i was determined to make this post from the beginning of time, makes me quite sad and very unhappy/depressed.

If the science behind this is true, all life is useless, and i have no purpose on this world, and i can never make my own decisions, ever since i found this out i feel like i have lost something inside me, and i feel completely controlled. Its like i've lost the illusion of free will, and now everything feels very strange.


Comments and questions welcomed.
Please help me cope!

nah dude that's only if time is linear

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JustSomeGuy118 wrote:The fact that apparently i was determined to make this post from the beginning of time, makes me quite sad and very unhappy/depressed.

If the science behind this is true, all life is useless, and i have no purpose on this world, and i can never make my own decisions, ever since i found this out i feel like i have lost something inside me, and i feel completely controlled. Its like i've lost the illusion of free will, and now everything feels very strange.


Comments and questions welcomed.
Please help me cope!

I view free-will as 'action without cause'. The reason I don't find it exist is that everything is caused by something.

I don't find any evidence for the existence of 'free-will', but I don't find any evidence for deterministic determinism either. I don't find any evidence that I was 'predestined' to make this post from the 'beginning of time'.

What I do find is that human beings are responding organisms. Like everything else in the world. We 'react' or 'respond' to 'stimuli'. If you are stung by a particular plant, for example, your brain will remember the configuration of that plant and you won't touch it again. Moreover, you'll warn others not to touch it either. If they touch it anyway, the same thing will happen, they won't touch it again. That's not free-will at work, that's 'responding to stimuli'.

I find that all behaviour is determined by the environment. Genes and epigenes can generate propensity toward certain kinds of behaviour to a degree, but they cannot give you a value system: that has to come from the environment. The 'environment' here means everything from your upbringing to your culture to your subculture and society and every influence you pick up along the way.

If you were raised in Nazi Germany where your only experience of life was Nazi propaganda, you're most likely to become a Nazi or identify with their ideology. If you were brought up in a Jewish family and your only experience was Jewish beliefs and traditions, you would become a jew. Likewise if you raised a Jewish boy in a Nazi family from birth, and his only experience of life was Nazi propaganda, he's most likely to become a Nazi. And vice versa for the Nazi boy raised in a Jewish family.

In other words, people merely reflect the environment in which they are accustomed to and react to stimuli in that environment based on their value systems. I don't find this to be evidence of free will.

Other people claim that 'free choice' exists, and that this evidences free will. But all of your choices are based on your own personal frame of reference, and all the choices you make will adhere to that frame of reference. That is learned behaviour from the environment.

If you went to the chief of an Amazonian tribe 100 years ago and told him to choose anything. Anything at all. He's going to choose something like a better harvest, more land, the destruction of a competing tribe, a better witch doctor, etc. He's not going to choose a BMW, a $300,000 executive position at General Electric and a semi-detatched with a white picket fence. He can't choose those things because they're all outside of his frame of reference, he has no concept of them, so he can't choose them. I don't find this to be 'free' choice.

Imagine you walk down a straight path to work in a straight line every day for ten years. You never deviate and you always go in a straight line. One day you find a cow is partially blocking the path. What do you do? You walk around the cow. What changed to caused that behaviour? The environment changed (the cow was suddenly part of it), so you reacted based on that stimuli.

And so on and so forth.

That is called the clockwork universe theorem. And is not exactly true. The theory suggests that from the beginning of time, everything is predetermined. This is solely based off traditional physics, but we live in a amazing world, where everything is not just traditional physics and predictable. subatomic particles like a electron don,t behave 'normaly'. particles such as these exist and move in a wave like nature. The movements and positions of these particles are completely unpredictable, and can be only guessed. If you want to look more into it, it is called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. These little uncertainties, add up over time, and make the universe unpredictable over large periods of time.

Even If what you are saying is true, does that really change anything? No matter if it is pre determined or not, I can still make choices. I can choose to put my hand up, or keep it one the keyboard.

If you have anymore questions about this stuff, feel free to ask. I am no expert but I can try my best to answer your questions.

you can look at it in a depressing light or you can take that information to be a liberating discovery. no matter how much you worry about your future and how your life is going to turn out, it doesnt matter! if its all pre determined then you can just sit back with a bowl of popcorn and watch the movie unfold, and realize that all of your speculations and reactions are just that, speculations and reactions. who knows whats really right though man. i personally believe in something in the middle. pre destined but with free will. like we are floating down a river that ends in the same place, no matter what, but we have the power to steer clear of rocks. but no one really knows the nature of reality. people have been meditating on it for thousands of years, what makes you think science has it all figured out?

Voltaic wrote:That is called the clockwork universe theorem. And is not exactly true. The theory suggests that from the beginning of time, everything is predetermined. This is solely based off traditional physics, but we live in a amazing world, where everything is not just traditional physics and predictable. subatomic particles like a electron don,t behave 'normaly'. particles such as these exist and move in a wave like nature. The movements and positions of these particles are completely unpredictable, and can be only guessed. If you want to look more into it, it is called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. These little uncertainties, add up over time, and make the universe unpredictable over large periods of time.

Even If what you are saying is true, does that really change anything? No matter if it is pre determined or not, I can still make choices. I can choose to put my hand up, or keep it one the keyboard.

If you have anymore questions about this stuff, feel free to ask. I am no expert but I can try my best to answer your questions.

I don't believe all of our choices and decisions are mapped out at the beginning of time, that sounds like metaphysical nonsense to me.

But the kinds of choices we can make are all defined by the kind of experiences we have growing up.

If you are taught to turn the left cheek by your parents, when someone hits you, you are likely to choose not to hit them back. But if your parents taught you to stick up for yourself, then you are more likely to choose to hit back when someone hits you.

You may be interested in Bob Doyles work on his website Informationphilosopher.com he provides the best argument for free will I have ever read.

I majored in philosophy at a fairly elite university and I'm familiar with the discussion and circular arguments that occur.

Ultimately, no one TRULY believes this. It's an interesting philosophical and intellectual exercise, but clearly Free Will exists for humans. It can definitely be argued and theorized etc., but ..... to keep it simple... c'mon.

*thanks WillR for the informationphilosopher website though, a nice bookmark I added now.