Freewill: The Illusion

One thing that can be discussed without too much knowledge in Physics and Philosophy is Freewill. My question for discussion is:

What is your take on freewill?

What i think is that there is an illusion of freewill. From our perspective we get a choice, but no matter how hard we tried we could never take the other direction. For example, you have a choice between A&B. You select A because you think A is better. You were destined to pick A, you could never pick B despite the illusion of Freewill.

I base my outrageous theory on the fact that if another universe was created with exactly the same conditions as our big bang, I believe, that all the same things would happen. In essence, a mirror universe. For example, flipping a coin is determined by how hard you flick it, in a universe made from the same type of big bang you would flip it with the same force so in both universes the coin would land tails. So, in my head at least, if you could somehow replicate a simulation of the big bang you would be able to ‘foresee’ the future.

Of course I can think of thousands of paradoxes, but why not? So if a future could be potentially for told in a computer program, discounting paradoxes, I believe that it makes the future ’set’ which means no Freewill. So I was destined from the big bang to write this article, and no can stop me.

You could also come at this from a philosophical view point.

Imagine you are holding a cup of coffee. “I can’t change my mind in an instant about whether to drink the coffee or hurl it across the room. My decision must have roots in brain processes that occurred in the past”, he says. “Whats more important is that i have freedom to calculate what happens if i throw my coffee cup. Equally, I have the freedom to calculate the effects after drink from my cup.” “What we lack is the freedom to instantaneously switch between which of these initial states we start from. ‘t Hooft calls his new formulation the “unconstrained initial conditions postulate.”*

Now the important bit:

*However, Artoine Suarez, a physicist at the Center of Quantum Philosophy in Zurich, Switzerland, remains troubled. “If ‘t Hooft is really correct, then the work for which he is framed was not carried out as a result of his free will. Rather, he was destined to do it from the beginning of time,” he says. “In that case, maybe his Noble prize should rightfully have been presented to the big bang instead”

Sound familiar?

“Suarez has performed an experiment that he claims proves ‘t Hooft wrong. ‘t Hooft’s deterministic theory and his redefinition of freewill will rely on fundamental states obeying casual laws, so that a chain of events can be calculated precisely, given the starting conditions. By bringing the effects of special relativity into play in a standard entanglement experiment, Suarez and his colleagues were able to check how time flow interacts with the quantum world. “We tested the very concept of time,” says Suarez.*

“I think it will spark an interesting debate,” Suarez says.

“…so that a chain of events can be calculated precisely, given the starting conditions. By bringing the effects of special relativity into play in a standard entanglement experiment, Suarez and his colleagues were able to check how time flow interacts with the quantum world”

I disagree, the real test would be to create an alternate universe and see if the results are the same. If they are, ‘t Hooft is right.

(My information was sourced from New Scientist, 4 May 2006, p

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