To Think We Might Not Have Free Will
Disproving time travel paradox helps answer this question
Think back on your life up to this moment. Was it a series of carefully planned points in time that worked out exactly how you thought it would? Or was it a spider web of unlikely circumstances and improbable coincidences leading to something you could never have planned for?
Whether we believe in free will or not, we experience things every day that disprove its existence.
Have you ever bit your lip, or spilled a glass of water? Stubbed your toe or missed an exit on the highway. I like to think of these as course corrections.
Think about what you do every day. How many things dictate your actions? You have to go to work. Maybe you take your kids to school. Or maybe you have diabetes and have to watch your sugar. You have cravings that you can’t control so you stop at your favorite fast-food restaurant. Or you’re in active addiction with alcohol or a dangerous drug.
Have you ever made the decision to do something then do something completely different? Have you ever started doing something you weren’t even thinking about doing?
No matter how well we plan our days, it is filled with shifting choices we aren’t consciously making — Get a phone call; shift. Get honked at; shift. The title of a Medium article catches our eye; shift. We’re thirsty; shift. Have to piss; shift. Clean our glasses; shift. The sun is shining; shift. Clouds are out; shift. A person walks by; shift. Someone else’s phone chimes; shift. A bird chirps in the distance . . . shift.
There are large shifts to consider as well — We lose a job, gain a career, someone close to us dies, win the lottery, a global pandemic occurs.
There are hundreds, maybe thousands of small and large shifts that make up our day and life as we know it. But do these things ultimately define who we are? Maybe you’re saying, “These are things that are out of my control. I make much more important decisions every day.”
Are you sure? What decisions? I’m asking here, not being cheeky about this at all. Maybe Elon Musk has free will and is making ground-breaking decisions every day. Maybe not. What decisions are we making outside our normal routine, our day-to-day life, our career, our food, and drink, what we’re watching on Netflix?
We don’t make decisions, we make plans. Then we desperately try to hold onto those plans. Sometimes they work out, and sometimes they don’t. Either way, you can probably trace back a series of events that were out of your control.
If an alien race observed the entirety of humanity, do you think they would assume we all have free will? Or would they see us the same way we see animals? We have technology, sure. But it’s technology that helps us do what we were already doing. And it’s technology that tells us what to keep doing. If anything, we’ve pursued the lack of free will.
Try this thought experiment
Next time you’re doing something automatic like going to the bathroom, walking upstairs, or waiting in traffic, try to change your perspective to one where you are a mere passenger who is watching these events unfold instead of someone that is steering the ship. Can you do it? Do you notice any difference between conscious thought and ‘going along for the ride’?
Didn’t you mention something about time travel?
Absolutely. Check out this article that talks about an undergrad that might have proven time will correct itself.¹
Follow that up with this next article where scientists simulate sending a quantum bit back in time.² They rough it up a bit, and observe the same quantum bit in the present take no damage at all, therefore refuting the Butterfly Effect.³
These are heady subjects; Free will, time travel, quantum mechanics. But as technology grows exponentially, it’s important to start thinking about these things. I believe the scientific community will find answers to a lot of these impossible questions.
If free will doesn’t exist, I have a couple theories to share that are nothing more than fun thinking prompts.
Theory One
Whether or not we’re living in a simulation, everything is code. Code we can’t understand. Quantum code most likely. Maybe even other variations we can’t possibly even fathom. I don’t think it’d be too far-fetched to imagine code so complex that it automatically corrects time lines, memories, physical objects, etc.
So theory one is, we are vastly underdeveloped as a species and in regards to our technology, and the universe has far more control over everything than we thought, using science and technology we may never fully grasp.
Theory Two
Time is like a loaf of bread. We perceive time as slices of that loaf being cut away one at a time. But the whole loaf is actually what time is. The slices all exist as one. And if you take a bite out of a slice in the front, the slices in the back aren’t affected. The loaf always exists, and it’s immutable.
Final Thoughts
There are huge issues with both of those theories. Which is why I’m a blogger on the internet, not a scientist in a lab. But I couldn’t end this story without at least trying to guess what is actually happening.
Humanity assumes it is gifted with free will. We’re afraid to lose it. We hold onto this belief without question, because we can freely move our damn arms, right? Yes, but why did you move them? To prove a point? shift.
References1. Medium|Paradox of Time Travel May Have Been Solved
by an Undergrad by Katrina Paulson
September 6, 20212. Los Alamos National Laboratory|Simulating quantum time
travel dis-proves butterfly effect by Charles Poling
July 28, 20203. Wikipedia|Butterfly Effect
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