The myth of free-will

In 1814, the French polymath Pierre-Simon Laplace expressed the puzzle most succinctly: how can there be free will in a universe where events happen like clockwork? Laplace's demon was his thought experiment, and his argument was as follows: if some hypothetical ultra-intelligent being or demon could somehow know the position of every atom in the universe at a single point in time, along with all the laws that governed their interactions, it could predict the future in its entirety. There would be nothing it couldn't know about the world 100 or 1,000 years in the future, right down to the tiniest quiver of a sparrow's wing. You may believe you made a free choice to marry your partner or to eat a salad instead of chips with your meal, but Laplace's demon would have known it all along, by extrapolating out along the endless chain of causes. "Nothing could be uncertain for such an intellect," Laplace said, "and the future, like the past, would be present before its eyes."

Now pick one of these: an apple or a banana.

Whichever one you chose was entirely your choice, and this is what we call free will. It is the belief that we are the sole authors of our own fate. In the face of multiple options, we have complete control over our decisions; we have the power of free choice. But what if I told you that free will is a myth and that we are all just a collection of atoms that will react to a specific stimulus predictably? If you chose a banana at the start and we go back in time, if free will truly exist, you should be able to change your mind and choose something else. If we go back in time and you picked a banana, if free will truly exist, you should be able to change your mind and pick an apple instead. What if I told you that if we went back in time under the same conditions, you'd still pick the banana? In fact, what if I told you that I can predict which of these two options you'll choose 300 milliseconds before you do?

In the 1980s, physiologist Benjamin libid used an EEG (electroencephalogram) to demonstrate that you can read and tell when someone is about to move 300 milliseconds before they decide to move in their conscious mind. This means that before we decide to move our bodies, our subconscious has already decided for us, and we only believe we made the decision ourselves after it has already been made. A similar study used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to ask participants to press one of two buttons while looking at a clock with a random sequence of letters on a screen. They discovered that two brain regions of the participants indicated which button they would press. They discovered that two of the participants' brain regions predicted which button they would press 7 to 10 seconds before they did so consciously.

The findings of this study only prove one thing: a few seconds before you pick the banana or the apple, your brain makes that decision for you; it is only after this decision has been made deep in your subconscious that your brain becomes aware of it, and we become convinced that we are in the process of making that decision; the brain is like the heart; we don't tell it what to do; it just does. So, in reality, the experience we call free will is an illusion of consciously making a decision. So, in reality, the experience we call free will is an illusion of consciously making a decision. It's simply a visual representation of events that the brain has already initiated. It informs you of the brain's decision.

We've understood the role of surrounding influences on our decision-making for as long as society has existed, with idioms like "it takes a village to raise a child" and "you are the product of your environment" we understand that to a large extent our upbringing, our parents, the society we grew up in all influence our decision-making process. If someone is born religious, it is reasonable to expect them to remain religious throughout their lives. 

Taking it a step further, things like genetics play a significant role in our decisions. In his theory of evolution, Charles Darwin proposed that if species do evolve, then things like intelligence must be heritable. Intelligence is a trait that helps us make better decisions, and while you can study hard to know more than the average person, how intelligent you are is not entirely in your control. So some people are unable to make intelligent decisions not because they do not wish to, but because their genes are limited! Would you say in that case that the person has the freedom to make those intelligent choices? In reality, they do not!

Their genetic fates are predetermined. How can we all truly have the ability to choose our own fate if we are not dealt equal cards from the start? It's not just the cards we're dealt, but also our ability to play them. When you examine the concept of free will critically, it appears to crumble pretty quickly. Researchers have concluded that believing in free will is similar to believing in religion in that neither agrees with physical laws!

Consider this: if free will truly exists and choice is not just a chemical process, how can substances such as alcohol and antipsychotics completely alter a person's behavior?

However, believing in the non-existence of free will may lead to some odd conclusions! It certainly implies that every prisoner imprisoned for committing crimes is some unfortunate individual who was trapped in a situation where his crime was predetermined by external forces! In recent years, lawyers have begun to use MRI scans to help plead their clients' cases, with neuroscientific research proving that brain tumors and malfunctions cause them to commit crimes. It's difficult to argue against it because if they didn't have the option to do something else, why would you give them the harshest punishment for actions they had no control over?

Some scientists who believe in free will argue that, while it is true that the subconscious makes decisions for the conscious, we still have the ability to shape the unconscious world. On the surface, this makes a lot of sense. When you read a book, an idea enters your subconscious, and when faced with a decision, the idea from the book floats back out of your subconscious, forming your conscious decision. However, there is a flaw in that thought. It's a bit of a paradox because where does the desire to change your subconscious mind through reading a book come from? Desire, like choice, is generated by the subconscious, so consciously shaping your subconscious is actually a subconscious effort to change your subconscious.

When considering free will, many people fall into the trap of fatalism. Fatalism is the belief that we have no control over the universe's game. People who believe this believe that because we do not have complete control over our destiny, we are completely at its mercy. It's arbitrary and beyond our control. Then they become much less happy and begin to slack off in their relationships. They stop trying to be good people or uphold any moral standards, and they begin to feel less fulfilled in life. However, we do not have to fall into that trap. Scientists who agree on the absence of free will prefer to explain it philosophically as determinism rather than fatalism. Determinism is the belief that all events are predetermined by existing causes and that everything that occurs can be explained by the time-tested laws of cause and effect. But that doesn't mean we're completely powerless and at the mercy of what happens next. It simply provides us with a new perspective on everything that happens around us. According to the UK government, more than half of those incarcerated have a brain injury. Isn't that a terrifying story?

Understanding the true meaning of free will will help us see how similar those people are to us. They are not worse people and many times. They're only there because of a series of unfortunate events beyond their control. Similarly to deterministic thinking, we would be more humble when discussing our accomplishments because we now understand that we are simply a product of our past experiences. It allows us to have empathy for people who are not in the same situation as we are, and it allows us to reduce our anxiety. If people in higher positions in society do not attribute all of their success to their own efforts alone, they are more likely to do more for others, to help and give back to others in the hope of recreating the factors that helped them succeed. If you're scared or confused right now, I completely understand. Even scientists who have been studying this for decades have found it disturbing. It's a difficult concept to grasp because it contradicts everything society is built on. Our society is built on the principle of free will. It is what determines who is correct and who is incorrect, who deserves to be praised, and who deserves to be punished. That is the fear of propagating the idea that there is no such thing as free will: it tells us that someone who kills another man deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison and that someone who works hard deserves to live a good life. Many scientists think that if enough people became aware of this concept, it would effectively put an end to society as we know it because no one would risk their lives to save someone else's if they knew that they wouldn't be praised for it. Since praise and punishment are two significant factors that affect our decisions, removing them from our society will have a negative impact. It's an odd situation to find ourselves in because, in reality, we don't have the freedom to decide that what we do is significantly better for us. This is illusionism, and while free will is an illusion, we must recognize it because, given the option to choose between truth and good, most of us benefit most from doing so. 

So the next time you pass a homeless person on the street, instead of rolling your eyes and passing judgment, consider the fact that there are many factors, many of which they may not have been able to control, that have led to their current situation. Be humble about what you have and what you've accomplished because you might not have made the one decision that changed your life if you had just a little bit less intelligence in your DNA. Be aware that you don't have free will, at least not in the way you think you do, and that you're just lucky your atoms' combination makes the right choices! But...forget everything you've read for the past ten minutes right away, and pretend that every choice is entirely your own, because only then will you be able to make choices that can actually alter someone's life.