Free Will
Introduction
Cereal or bread, cereal or bread, it’s quite a tough
decision, even when it’s just for breakfast. Eventually you do make a choice,
and apparently it’s cereal, for some reason. While eating that sweet cereal
soup with some fresh and cold milk, a thought strikes you, “Could I have chosen
to eat bread?” well of course the answer seems obvious, “Yes of course I could
have,” but the thing is, is it really? Is it equally likely for you to either
choose cereal or bread for breakfast? And if it isn’t, if the probability is
gravitating towards cereal perhaps, did you made that choice? Or is it
determined by the laws of physics?
The question of Free Will has been debated for most of
humanity’s existence. But somehow, there has not been any actual scientific
experimentation to try and disprove Free Will, unlike the idea of God, which
many people constantly tries to refute. It seems that the idea of Free Will is
so good, and has been embedded so deep in everyone’s minds that it is
practically impossible to resist, and refute. But it can be refuted, it is
possible, and with enough analysis, the truth of this somewhat long standing
concept can be found.
What is Free Will though? Free Will is the concept,
the idea that we humans have the power of choice, we can make choices freely by
our own conscience. Freely meaning without coercion, and also without any
influence. According to this concept, there are choices where it is free, and
there are choices that is not free. A very easy example is in two situations,
on one hand, a person is mind controlled using advanced psychological
technology and they were used to kill others. What that person did was not
considered Free Will, as they had no control over what they are doing. On the
other hand, your choice of eating a cereal or a loaf of bread is Free Will, as
you had control. Note that an important aspect of Free Will is control.
From the surface, it seems that this concept is a good
concept, as it means we have freedom and control over our choices. The idea is
not without heavy implications though, as this idea entails another concept, of
moral responsibility. Both of these concepts became the basis of how most, if
not all of the world’s justice system work. Eventually, these ideas are
followed by forms of hatred and discrimination towards “evil” people, that most
people would claim to be a justified and righteous anger. In fact, when these “evil”
men suffer, others would laugh and say that they deserved it for all of the evil
they had done. This is by reality enforced in some legal systems, in the form
of capital punishment, where a person has their life taken away for something
others have assumed to be commited in Free Will. And this is when it has taken
too far.
Refutation
The idea of Free Will, hinges upon the assumption, an
untested one that is, that we humans have control over what we are doing. And
that there are choices we made, that are purely from ourselves, and not because
of other people. This is a common advice from people about making a mistake and
ending up in failure, that we must never blame others, but we must always blame
ourselves, as there is only ourselves to blame, but the science simply doesn’t
cut it.
The very idea that there is a choice, even just a
single choice that is purely from ourselves, has violated a lot of physical
laws. Because this is the problem, when we make a choice, we first must have
prior knowledge about that choice, and we don’t just create that knowledge do
we? The law of conservation of energy states that something must come out of
something, it can not come out of nothing. In short, whatever knowledge we have
about that choice must have come from somewhere, either from experience, or
from other people and so on. Of course, knowledge alone is not enough to make
someone do that choice. Knowing about murder, and various ways to murder
someone will not make someone an instant murderer. Choice is influenced by more
factors.
Choice itself is influenced by two main factors at the
contemporary time period, that is an external physical factor and an internal
subject factor. The external physical factor is the environment surrounding the
subject, such as where is the subject located, what time is it, what is
happening around the subject, basically any physical elements surrounding the
subject at the contemporary time period. Social elements are included in this
physical factor, as they are essentially external and physical in nature. The
second factor, the internal subject factor, is the subject themselves, that is
their capabilities, their positions, their general physical condition, but most
important of all, their mental conditions. Mental conditions being their
personality, their memories, their knowledge, in general their psychology.
This, is the most important part to examine and to analyze.
Let’s say a boy was peer pressured to
peep at the girls’ toilet. The boy can either decline or fall into an immoral
choice. Eventually, he was threatened that he’s going to be bullied if he doesn’t
join his perverted peers, and he fell for the peer pressure. He then got
addicted to it, and began watching porn, and it all went downhill from there.
In this situation, there are physical factors that made the boy gravitate
towards the act, but the true driving force lies within the poor boy’s mind. The
boy was at his puberty, which means his curiosity towards the opposite sex is
at its highest. But he has also heard warnings and has received sex education,
not to mention his parents. He still fell for the peer pressure though, why is
that? When asked, the boy claimed he wants to fit in, and he was scared of
being bullied. In short, a desire to fit in, and a fear of exclusion. Those who
believe in Free Will would say that his contemporary mental condition is made
up of his previous choices. And if an argument that it is because something
happened to that boy, the folks would say that the boy had a choice on how to
react to it. But in truth, the boy had no choice, let’s analyze the most
initial stage of the human life, birth.
When
a baby was just born, it is true that the baby’s mind is born mostly empty. But
it is still equipped with a neural network, a basic algorithm that enables the
baby to learn new information and store it as memory. Information comes in
multiple forms, sound, sight, smell, taste, touch, anything that can be sensed
by the human baby. Now, every bit of information taken in by said neural
network affects the neural network itself by making it process newer
information a little bit differently, depending on that bit of information. And
a single difference, would already change the neural network, which means an
alternate universe where just one single element is different, the following
effects would be widely different as well.
Eventually
the baby will grow into a child, and the neural network will begin to show
signs of computer like behavior, which is actually already owned by the baby
since birth. The computer, which we know as the mind, controls how the human
acts and behaves towards others, towards themselves, how they think and feel
and so on. Any new information will also affect the computer and update it,
making the human change in their mind or personality by a bit slowly by slowly.
What this means is the way the brain, the combination of the neural network and
the computer, processes new information depends on what kind of older
information is received by the brain. If the brain had processed A before B,
then it will process B in a one specific way, but if the order is reversed, the
way the brain processes A will be different from the way it processes A if A
comes before B.
There
is a time where a human can only receive information, but not react towards it.
During this period, where does the information came from? From external
physical factors, primarily the parents, anyone else the baby meets, the
environment, all of those information unoriginal of the baby. And these
information, will determine how the human will react towards newer information
in the future. As for our peeping Tom, all of the information builds up, his
brain develops, and as a result of his experiences during his prior times, he
fell for the pressure. Whatever it is that made him do something so disgusting,
it was not his fault.
All
of this effectively means one thing, any choice we make has been predetermined
by previous information. As our choices are done by our brain, which is the
combination of a neural network and a computer, and the way our brain works
right now is determined by our past experiences. As a result, all of our
choices must be influenced by the outside world, and none of it came from us
purely. Because us today, is shaped by us yesterday, which collectively, is
just a mix of every form of information that we receive combined with the
progressive development of our brain as a result of such information. This
effectively refutes Free Will to its very cores, and this new information has
its own implications. By this, Free Will is declared to be false, and
scientifically impossible.
What Now?
Of
course, one may say that they feel like they have a choice. But that is merely
a psychological illusion, a fakery. While Free Will in its pure form is
non-existent, a form of it still exists. It is Psychological Free Will, the
thought, or the feeling, the awareness of a choice. We humans are embedded with
this so strongly since birth, that we always feel like we have control, because
we are alive, we can know that we are alive, we can affect the world, and we
know it. That is true Free Will, the awareness of a choice, we don’t actually
have one, but we have an awareness of it. And that is the Free Will concept
that we should use in our daily lives.
Conclusion
Freedom,
something all wish to have, but sometimes, we wish for it so much, that we made
up that freedom. It seems good at first, but it ends up destructive, destroying
many people’s lives, and fooling everyone. It creates anger and hatred that is
actually useless and unnecessary. That is what Free Will is, and like all
fakery, it can be exposed, and it has been. We are all a remix of our old
selves, our brain, and every form of information that our brain has sensed. In
short, we are a remix, of the outside world, multiple elements of it mixed
together, to create us. Our choices, they are made by the outside world, which
are not us, but eventually became part of us. Even when those things are now
part of us, our choices, those things we did, are still not from us, as in the
end, it is because of things that is not from us at all. To tie everything up,
and as a final statement, Free Will may be false, but sometimes, an illusion
may suffice. Have a nice day.
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