The Illusion of Free Will

Submitted for the approval of the midnight society...


Ok, so there has been some talk recently about free will and if it actually exists. Well, at least enough talk to get an article in the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/science/02free.html?_r=1&ei=5087%0A&em=&en=955a97875084f083&ex=1167886800&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Feel free to read that article if you so desire, but most of it is drawn out metaphysical garbage that is quite difficult to understand without a BA in bullshit. I'll try to make it simple.

Let's say you're trying to pick out a movie from the 5 you own. You're probably under the assumption that you actually have a choice in this situation. You know that you can pick whichever of the 5 you want. However, this may not actually be the case.
It is common scientific knowledge that things such as mood (which clearly affects actions) are controlled by the relative levels of chemicals and hormones in the body, which
can theoretically be read by a computer program (for example's sake). Now we can see that this computer program, with the aid of some knowledge of individual hormones, could tell what mood you're in. Now let's say the five movies are a comedy, a drama, a chick flick, a horror, and a documentary. It seem reasonable to assume that this program could possibly tell which movie you were going to pick based solely on hormonal levels in the brain. This in itself is actually theoretical proof of the lack of free will.
You're probable saying to yourself, "Yea, but even if I'm in a light-hearted mood and would thus pick a comedy according to my hormones, I could still pick the drama because I have free will." Albeit a good point for my example, my version of the brain and computer program are very simple. The actual human brain is a complex neural network beyond the scope of modern technology, so we would only need a more advanced software to determine the movie choice.
Yes, this is all hypothetical at this point, so let's take a concrete example (from the NY Times article):

In the 1970s, Benjamin Libet, a physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, wired up the brains of volunteers to an electroencephalogram and told the volunteers to make random motions, like pressing a button or flicking a finger, while he noted the time on a clock.

Dr. Libet found that brain signals associated with these actions occurred half a second before the subject was conscious of deciding to make them.

The order of brain activities seemed to be perception of motion, and then decision, rather than the other way around.

This means that first the brain will figure out the movie you're going to choose, and then you choose it. Also, this study has been replicated many times since then, always with the same result.

This is an incredibly hard concept to wrap your head around, seeing as you've probably lived most of your life under the assumption that you yourself were making all the decisions. In fact, you've only had the illusion of free will.

What does this mean? Well, with unlimited computing power and unlimited knowledge of the human brain... we could create the Matrix :/



Something to listen to: The Hush Sound - City Traffic Puzzle
Something to do: make some chili