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Does free will really exist?

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Well, does it? According to our everyday thoughts, emotions, ideas, and feelings it does. Or could it simply be an illusion? Could all that we know and understand be nothing more than a magic trick? Our thoughts, ideas, feelings nothing more than strings on a puppet, being pulled by an enigma? Is reality just an illusion?
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Well, we could look to religion for our answer  We could turn to ourselves for the answer  However as I have stated, can you really trust your reality, yourself, your feelings and your thoughts? Lets start with probability. Something that I find very interesting. I, as I am sure you all have heard the argument for the “Goldilocks principle” the earth is not too hot or too cold, but just right. The universe is fined tuned. The latest adjustments put the probability for life as we know it at 1  in 10 with 40,000 zeros after it. Now lets put this into perspective,

Billion 1,000,000,000 (9 zeros)

Trillion 1,000,000,000,000 (12 zeros)

Quadrillion 1,000,000,000,000,000 (15 zeros)

Quintillion 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (18 zeros)

Sextillion 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (21 zeros)

Septillion 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (24 zeros)

Octillion 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (27 zeros)

Nonillion 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (30 zeros)

Decillion 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (33 zeros)

We are looking at a number with no name!!! If we were to change one thing by a Quintillion’th, which would be the equivalent to taking all the sand on the earth, and taking away one grain. It would all fall apart. Stars would not be born, gravity would fall apart, physics as we know it would be thrown out the window.

What odds!! Now I want you to do something. Take a penny, stand in the middle of your room and flip it in the air. Let it fall to the ground. Now record whether or not it fell on heads or tails. That’s an easy one. It’s a fifty, fifty chance. Now record the exact position in the room it landed. Now figure the odds of it landing on whatever side it landed on, plus where it landed, in contrast to where it could have landed, in your entire room. A little more pressure in your flick, a little less humidity, a slight gust from an open window could have caused it to land where it did. The chances of that coin landing in that exact location, on that face, at that time are astronomically high!!

Change one things out of the equation and the coin lands somewhere different, or on a different face etc etc…..What are the odds? Here is the kicker to get your heads around. You are able to look back at the coin, determine it’s location, and know of it’s existence in your room. Change one thing and it would have been different. Now take the universe, if something would have been one Quintillion’th different we would not be able to perceive ourselves, or this reality. We simply would not have existed to look back on it. Or we would be something totally different. You can do this to anything in the world. A leaf falling to the ground. What are the odds? A leaf would land in that location at that time in that way? Astronomical. Yet you see it, it happened, was it put their? Or did it beat probability? Or is it more likely that given the circumstances at the time, that the leaf was going to land their when it did?

A probability nightmare!!Now we get to the real juice. In quantum mechanics there is a problem. It’s called the “Measurement problem”. The quantum measurement problem ultimately shows the inseparability of the observer from the observed. There is no measurable, solid reality “out there” independent of the measurer. What is “out there” when we’re not looking is an infinite wavy cloud of criss-crossing possibilities. Then when we focus our attention on something, the wave function collapses into a defined particle in a definite location for us to observe. Don’t believe me? Here is Dean Radin to push the point home.

“This rather simple experiment raises a central question about the role of the observer in quantum reality. This is known as the quantum measurement problem: We infer that the photon acts like a wave when we’re not looking, but we never actually see those waves. So what causes the photon to ‘collapse’ into a particle when we do decide to look at it? In classical physics, objects are regarded as objectively real and independent of the observer. In the quantum world, this is no longer the case.”

Our brains fire millions of neurons a day that work at a cellular level, as well as a quantum level. All the processes of the brain we assume we control. However we only use 10% of our brain consciously, the rest is subconscious. So lets look at the measurement problem. “Then when we focus our attention on something, the wave function collapses into a defined particle in a definite location for us to observe.”  So when we focus on something a thought occurs, a thought for us to measure as well as observe. Where do these thoughts come from? The key here is memories. Our collected memories through out our entire lives. Subconsciously stored. Why did you decide to eat one thing today than something else? What is the probability that you would have chose that? You ate what you did, because you responded to outside stimuli today that drudged into your subconscious that formed a thought that led to your decision. Your brain ultimately came to a conclusion before you formed the thought. Sorting through it’s memories of your entire life in order to reach a conclusion that led to you choosing one thing over another.

To simplify it, you fell when you were 12 and scratched your leg, which led to today when you decided to eat a bowl of ice cream.  You are a creation of your reality. Nothing you do is controlled by you but by the nature of the reality you were subjected to. Your ideas, thoughts, decisions are nothing but consequences of your past experiences. This is in essence determination. Everything is determined. Lets go back to the coin. You flicked it a certain way at a certain time. If we were to go back in time and redo the test a million times it would be exactly the same each and every time. Now lets say we go back in time and change one tiny thing. It would alter the results no matter how small, they would be different.

Think of time as a straight line on a piece of paper. One end represents when you tossed the coin, the other now. Go back and change something the line forks off because you have altered the outcome. Giving rise to an infinite amount of possibilities or in sci-fi terms, “parallel universes.” Everything that you have chosen or will choose is determined, why? Because it came into existence by the very act of perceiving it into existence. You are then able to perceive it, you logically proclaim the possibilities and then conclude that it was a choice. Yet it could not be your choice if everything in your life led you to the point to make that decision. If the universe is not deterministic then it is indeterminate. Which means that our thoughts are not controlled thus not our own either. Everything would happen randomly, yet we can see the universe acts in accordance to scientific laws. So do we still have free will or are we subject to quantum mechanics? Just auto bots floating in the universe? This is some really deep shit!! Cool to think about though.

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