Can Free Will be Saved in a Deterministic Universe?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 พ.ย. 2020
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Physicists have a long history of sticking our noses where they don’t belong - and one of our favorite places to step beyond our expertise is the question of consciousness and free will. Sometimes our musings are insightful, sometimes incoherent, and usually at least somewhat naive. Which a fair description of this show, so of course Space Time needs to weigh in physics and free will..
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When PBS Spacetime uploads, I click. Not sure how much free will is involved there.
ok
More Pavlovian
@@LavaCreeperPeople b'okay
Emergent subscription
It were just my atoms predetermined to write this comment.
"I'm gonna end the episode without saying "space time."
Actually, quantum mechanics forbids this.
if anything the founding principal of quantum physics forbids knowing until heard.
Data point of one, but I'm convinced.
That's a tall order to prove, but all the empirical data supports your statement. Count me jealous.
@@christophersheffield9574 Another fun epistemological category that seems unincorporated here is that which is knowable. Say you know of two unconfirmed options, the knowledge of those options has its own having been "heard"
He said it actually.
"we must believe in free will, we have no choice"
Well, then I refuse!
For many this is a valid statement.
Good one, but how ironic. The fact that you don't have a choice eliminates free will.
Sums it up pretty much
@@francoisdesnoyers3042 But you do have a choice. Given a world of perfectly reliable cause and effect, every event is causally necessary and inevitably will happen. This means that it was inevitable that a choice would have to be made and equally inevitable that you would be the single object in the universe that would be making that choice. Free will is inevitable.
Ivan Pavlov went shopping & heard a bell ring, and he said “damnit! I forgot to feed the dog!”
lmao
Now that's funny.
"heard a bell ring" Who rang the bell? The dog did.
I love you
He made a decision to set the alarm.
Hey everyone, I'm so excited about my first co-writing effort with Matt.
(I'm especially proud of the last line!)
You did well! I can't wait to see more of your co-writing efforts!
Could we get a part 2 maybe? (Pretty please?)
Mind blowing episode.
Don't be shy to shamelessly advertise your own channel if you ever decide to make some more of your own stuff.. You can always say you didn't have a choice afterwards, no free will.
Proud and happy that I now know you worked on the script of this episode; keep up the good work! And, push Matt to make more videos on this topic and other topics related to neuroscience!
Came for the science, stayed for the existential crisis!
Commented due to deterministic physical tendencies
@@Terminus316 Commented due to deterministic mental tendencies. 🙃
I always say to myself that it doesn’t change how I live so I don’t start using determinism as an excuse.
Commented late due to relativistic psychological tendencies
Just because our paths our not our to operate, does not mean we can't enjoyed the experience :)
I flipped a coin to decide, and apparently I do have free will. Take that determinism!
Oh wait a minute...
Food for thought:
If a cosmic gamma ray from a hawking pair nearby an event horizon activated a neuronal pathway when your muscles were launching the coin, causing it to spin at a slightly different speed and to a larger height, would that not be considered sufficiently of random origin to constitute free will?
If an apparently random quantum decay damaged a neuron, causing you to spontaneously choose a coin toss versus having a passive statistical distribution laid out in your neural network, could that be considered free will?
Does the existence of ionizing neutrino radiation, being hitherto unshieldable in any feasibility, rule out the concept of controllable determinism in any advanced intelligence system?
Should we build a simulation where naturally occurring intelligent agents have all the characteristic properties which we enjoy, including free will?
Are we truly fully capable of being in control of what we consider to be intrinsic sources of "free will"?
Ah, but little did you know, I always use a double headed coin. Take that Kobayashi Maru!
Oh wait a minute...
"I got here the same way the coin did" - No Country for Old Men
Probably the strangest situation is when you preform an action, seemingly by free will, and then you think back on your own history to find the events in your life that would've led up to such an action. With or without free will, we are ultimately products of our environment, and had I grown up in a different environment, even if I had the same genetics, I would've made very different choices due to experiencing different situations. Sometimes a chance happening somewhere can change your fate in a way far beyond what mere choice alone could do without that luck.
I think about how I came to like the game Omori, with a simplified causal chain of 60 elements from the first "thoughtless curiosity of a 2 year old" about a computer, in the shower. The trick is that the only downside of acting like you have free will (and not spreading that knowledge unprompted) is that mass media can manipulate you a little easier, and it comes with good benefits like morale in the face of a bad situation and encouraging critical thought. I don't know what definition of free will I am in possession of, but I pretend that I have one if I don't, and exercise it if I do. Easy.
@@AlfredMorganAllen Exactly
Imagine a different universe and with the same conditions as right now lets say you decide to eat bread, the other universe that we made has the same past and all the previous actions the same as this universe till the moment you decide to eat the bread so now tell me would you eat a pizza in that universe
Logic says you will eat bread in that universe too
Genetic determinism is the one rabbit hole that many never seem to want to go down but it, along with the environment is just as deterministic heck it might even be more so.
Yes that is called cause and effect
Things I took away from this episode:
Atoms are not made of appleness
My takeaway was that i'm dumb af
That's honestly a really good takeaway.
Atoms are not red. They do not have taste. They do not grow on trees. And yet, the apple has all of those properties.
I have never thought about emergent properties in that light before, and it's...interesting....I think. Truth be told, I'm not really sure what to make of it.
It's not "appleness", but the universe is shaped like that. Imagine the earth as a seed in that apple spinning around it's core as it grows
@@tomc.5704 imo there no such thing as an apple. Apples are just an arbitrary arrangement of atoms and molecules that tend to have a general shape that we recognize as apples.they have not gained any new properties.
@@tomc.5704 a sum is more than it's parts. some sort of entropy has to be factored in
This channel has a knack for posing a straightforward question, and answering it so thoroughly that I come away more confused than ever.
When I clicked on the video I thought I was about to find out something almost religious. Im with you, I now question my existence and my decision to play this reality from the hollideck selection.🤷♂️🤦♂️
@Society Destroyer being taught how to think is fundamentally how education works. You don’t want to teach information because we do not retain it well; you want to teach algorithms or constructs that allow you to think in ways that you would have never thought had you not learned that skill. For instance, Machining. All the information for any machine job can be calculated by a calculator and ran independently of a person. The issue where machinists come in is when abstract concepts that adhere to multiple possible substrates of logic that could reasonably determine the correct result and how to make it. In machine class they teach you how to think like a machinist so you can machine. Just because you’re a competent person who can read manuals and apply math doesn’t mean you can just decide to be a machinist; however conversely, it is possible for someone to develop these skills on their own, as how else would we derive the systems? But to say that we should not allow another to influence how we think is the same as saying we should have the same lives we did as cavemen. We build on the foundation left by our predecessors.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure free will is just our brain reacting to our senses and stored memory. Simple as that.
U haven’t done ur job unless u come out more confused.
Yeah this could be incredibly more simple without Losing the important details. But what would be the fun in that?
Been waiting a number of years for someone to come out with this topic at a sufficient level of information density and quality. Good on you.
13:19 "I am now going to exercise my free will to not end this episode with me saying "SpaceTime"..." - oops...
That's kinda deep
This idea sent me into a 6 month existential crisis that I only got out of because I decided that, determined or not, experience is still novel to the person experiencing it.
That's why you use equations, don't go too deep on life tought or you're gonna deny the existence. Try to approach it more methodical and judging it more like a movie than attaching the tought to yourself. I've been there too ;)
And it doesnt feel deterministic to the person experiencing it!
Experience can never be novel to anything but experience since the 'person' is novel to the experience of the 'person' experiencing it.
I like thinking about philosophical questions like this, and I am pretty sure I have no free will. However I can also leave that thought behind and have fun once in a while.
@@MrBeezweeky experience can't be anything unto itself
Matt's closing statement that "Is free will an illusion?" is probably a poorly worded question is the most insightful answer I've heard so far on that topic.
Well if you go into philosophy, you can question anything and everything, so...
Cue Leee John “boo boo boo boo ahhh, I L L U S I O N “
I've watched two hour long conferences with the big names in the topic that don't seem to be aware that of the things Matt says in his closing statement.
@Reverend Exactly, compatibilism babyyyyyy.
But seriously, even in a more simplistic sense to deconstruct the semantics here, I used to have more of a strict materialist position but in terms of the lived conscious experience it's not really useful or accurate to say we don't have "free will" in a descriptive sense, even though in a purely technical descriptive sense we do not. In other words, the fact that we experience life with a sort of lacuna toward the underlying physical processes that may be deterministic tautologically implies that there is a gap between this base physical reality and the way in which we experience reality, which is what I believe the term "free will" is supposed to evoke in its essence. Or something.
It's a bit of a subset of any question about the reality of pretty much everything. As long as everybody agrees on what they mean by "real" you can have a discussion but if people disagree on that then things get messy.
If somebody asks me if love is real then I say with some confidence that it is having been there done that. If they mean is it real as a metaphysical force that exists outside of biology, chemistry and evolution... I might change my answer to "no". I'm all for arguing over pointless things just for the sheer fun of it and because it exercises the old bonce but sometimes I'm happy to dismiss questions about the reality of as being irrelevant. "I love my dog because I say so" is quite good enough an answer.
I can't really comprehend nor understand what is even being described anymore
This episode was definitely a "okay I need to rewatch that again to be able to make some sense out of it" type. I really enjoyed this shallow little dive into physics and philosophy, and I'm very interested for the quantum and consciousness sequel.
"In the end this is all semantics"
I've noticed this is frequently more and more an issue the deeper we go. Our normal intuitions, semantics, and our way of perceiving and looking at things seems to break down.
Perhaps thats the great filter
It's more a problem with language.
@@alext5497 Well kind of, but really even our concepts start to blur, for lack of a good example right the moment.
Edit: actually the way we view time is good example. Many people have no idea what space-time is or refers to. The way we think about time in our regular everyday lives is slightly different.
Our brains aren't built to understand the world as it is. They are built to understand a heuristic model of the world that we create.
So, the deeper we go the more our heuristic fails. But it works most of the time and we can do experiments to discover the differences.
@@Ghoifzghkknb "Semiosis" Cheers! I just learned a new word thanks to you and wikipedia 👌
I'm usually able to say "Space Time" when he does. You got me this time. Best ending ever :D
Yeah pretty good, I was wondering how he was going to work that in there
But did he fail to use his free will or not? *ponder*
I usually catch it half a minute before it happens, I can just tell when he's wrapping up to the words "space time," it's always very pleasing having him close with the channels title, this one caught me off guard.
When I was very little I could enter sometimes in some very peculiar state of mind. It feels like a deja vu but isn't. It started with the question "what happened if I chose another action?" that popped in my mind every time I did something, anything, even moving a part of my body. "What happened if I chose differently? Would the future be the same? Do my actions have a domino effect going indeffinitely?" I knew nothing then about physics or quantum mechanics but it bugged me so bad. It got so intense that I felt tired when it was over. It's safe to say that now, 20 years later I still can't answer those questions satisfyingly
Standing policy for me is that wether or not I COULD have chosen differently, I would not want to gamble with my whole life. I mean, if a single choice a decade back can just leave me in a similar world but with half my friends and an addiction, then it's no deal.
13:00 That covers just about all paradox (paradoxes?). If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? That depends on your definition of sound. Do you consider sound to be the pressure waves traveling through the air, or the perception of those waves by a conscious being? The "Ship of Theseus" takes this to the ultimately absurd extreme. It asks if an object that has had all of its parts gradually replaced remains the same object once it no longer contains any of its original components. You can't answer that question without first defining "identity" (and there will likely be more than one definition". Of course, once you define identity the question answers itself.
Reminds me of Dr. Farnsworth's Death Clock.
"So it predicts exactly the time you die?"
"Well, it can be off by a second or two, what with 'free will' and all..."
Thank you for the specific punctuation.
"Good news everyone! There is limited free will."
Lol sounds just like him
Dibs on your iPod!
The existential question ripped in half by a rational algorithm... maybe this explains the end of Futurama lol
This is a fascinating discussion, but I'm afraid it'll never end.
One of the most fascinating things to me is that despite all we have learned about the world, we are still no closer to settling the debate on free will. For a while, it looked like determinism was going to be the clear winner. But now quantum physics and the nature of consciousness have shaken things up.
Maybe we'll never know. Maybe it's ambiguous. Maybe there's always another layer, and sometimes it will look deterministic, sometimes it won't. Maybe it's turtles all the way down.
And it is an expected comment.
I agree that here on this plane of existence, or in this universe of the multiverse we probably will never know the answer to the "free will" you question. However, I think somewhere there exists a highly intelligent conscious entity that knows the correct answer.😬🤔🥴🙄
It's like walking along the railway hoping that the two parallel rail tracks will meet at some point.
GOOD, I WOULD HATE TO SEE A UNIVERSE SO DEVOID OF MYSTERY THAT WE HAVE ANSWERED EVEN THIS QUESTION.
I’ve been watching several TH-cams on this topic. Most place a ceiling on the potential complexity (wrt Science & Philosophy) and while possibly reaching a wider audience, fall short of crucial aspects. this talk breaks those barriers without becoming too hard to follow. A good result is that we are inspired to think more about the issue rather than given hard answers. This is, after all, Good Science.
It's very cool that you are exploring with this question (the meaningfulness of free will). Keep going! I believe this pursuit is worthy of more than a semantic argument.
Hahaha, I was asking myself how were you going to end this espisode saying “Spacetime”. That was witty :D
Yep, this one made me grin wide!
This topic has been a particular interest to me so I'm really happy you covered it, love the work keep it up!
Same here. Been following Closer to Truth?
this topic bothers me since...my birth, literally, but nowadays i know that the free will is predetermined - it's just the illusion of "choosing against the expectable" which has it's root in the bigbang
Related scene from a great movie: th-cam.com/video/4arOKZvuZK4/w-d-xo.html
Suggest watching exurb1a if you're down for a philosophical joy ride, he did a podcast I can't quite recall the name of but it covers this topic excellently
@@Dichtsau your logic is illogical. Read your own Comment. You know that 'free will' is 'predetermined' is a contradictory statement. It's just the elusion of the ' choosing against the expectable'; any choosing requires freedom to choose i e. Freewill. All the confusion will disappear if and only if you believe in the God of the Bible. The Bible is the precursor to science. The scientific method is actually the Biblical method. Put everything to the test and hold fast to that which is good. People need to read the Bible for themselves and let the Bible interpret the Bible. It's the ONLY book EVER written that stated that everything detectable is MADE FROM THAT WHICH IS UNDETECTABLE. Scientists have discovered this recently. So using their own limited intelligents they surmise that the universe came from NOTHING. How Stupid is that? The Bible is the ONLY book EVER WRITTEN that stated that the universe had a beginning, has FIXED laws of physics, is expanding, and has a CAUSAL AGENT OUTSIDE OF ENERGY MATTER SPACE AND TIME. The latest spacetime theorems state that ANY UNIVERSE LIKE OURS MUST HAVE A CAUSAL AGENT OUTSIDE OF ENERGY MATTER SPACE AND TIME because all have a beginning just as the Bible stated VERY CLEARLY. The Bible also gets all the conditions and sequence of Creation events 100% correct. No OTHER book COMES close. The Old Testament PROPHECISED the birth life ministry and death of Jesus Christ and the New Testament fulfilled those PROPHECIES exactly as PROPHECISED! Only God knows the end from the beginning. Time to wake UP to the truth before it's too late. Jesus Christ FORETOLD many events that came to pass exactly as PROPHECISED. He said he is coming back and all the signs that He TOLD US to watch for, are happening right now. He said when we 'SEE' THESE SIGNS, know that He is at the door. The generation that SEES THESE SIGNS WILL NOT PASS AWAY BEFORE HE RETURNS. If all the other Prophecies have come to pass and they have, surely This Prophecy will also. MARANATHA. God bless and enlighten everyone.
Another killer episode! SpaceTime's been cranking out some bangers. When Matt was talking about "emergent phenomenon, conscious free-will can recursively influence the machine itself", that was some powerful stuff and reminds me of those people who say "Computers can only do what we tell them" and little do those people realize that self-modifying programs are pretty much Artificial Intelligence 101. I also like how, on a previous episode about determinism, you essentially related the relativistic block-universe to the quantum many-worlds and that's cool because I had a serious misunderstanding that the many-world somehow meant, every future and that's not true, it's "every _possible_ future" and that's a much different landscape of reality.
OMG this is the most complete analisys about determinism I've ever seen ! Most of the thoughts I had alone about it you just talked in it and made me feel a little bit more contemplated . Determined or not , thank you very much for this !!!
I saw a video once where they explained destiny as not a line but a platform, and free will was just us moving in that platform. They put a mouse on one end of a table. The mouse was able to choose where ever it wanted to go on the table, but the table determined it would always end up at the other end of the table, no matter what the mouse chose.
This is by far one of my most favorite channels. It excites the imagination while educating you that reality is so much stranger than what it seems
After reading your response I believe you would enjoy the Consistent Calvinism podcast. Have you heard it yet?
consistentcalvinism.podbean.com/e/free-will-is-logically-impossible-for-us-calvinism-vs-arminianism/
Best video i've seen on the subject. Thank you very much !
Personally, I like the idea of the many worlds interpretation meaning that either the future is undeterminable, or every possible future is determined, since it means that you do actually have choice. The latter option, I feel, is also ideal for religeous individuals who believe in an omniscient entity, as it allows for that, whilst also not destroying the notion of free will.
Also, I think it doesn't entirely matter whether or not free will exists. If it does, then great! If it doesn't, then there's nothing we can really do about it, so there's no point in worrying about it - as far as we need to be concerned on a day to day basis, we make our own choices that have an impact on the world around us, and the only way believing that there is no free will can truly impact you is if you let it stop you from living your life.
"your" future doesn't seem determined only because you cannot know it. But in many worlds, every possible configuration of Hilbert space that doesn't break the laws of physics is happening / will happen. It can't be called free will just to simply not know which angle of this your current state thinks is reality. In fact, they all are. And most importantly, you cannot choose to change your angle.
i love you for this response
According to Penrose, the human brain functions as a quantum computer, and since quantum information is eternal and cannot be destroyed, it must exist somewhere. Since we know the human body will eventually decay into dirt, (at least when not tampered with filled with chemicals, and sealed in an armored metal box), and we know that dirt does not contain all the quantum information of every computation our quantum computer brain ever made, then it must exist elsewhere. Process of elimination seems to leave one answer that doesnt take playing mental twister to justify, which is that we have some other, non physical, consciousness, where all those computations continue to exist, eternally, as we know quantum information must.
As a layman with limited understanding, I would love to hear a response that addresses the matter of the loss of quantum information when the brain stops functioning and decays into soil, vs my argument that consciousness must exist independently of our physical bodies, in order to prevent the loss off that quantum information, which would be a clear cut violation of the laws of physics. (if we operate under the assumption that Penrose was correct about the human brain being a quantum computer.)
Sadly the many world interpretation fails in Afshar experiment (hence is incorrect). Transactional interpretation of QM (TIQM) correctly predicts the outcome, but shuts down free will.
The first sunrise determined the warld up to the last sunset (Omar Khayyam).
"I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe!"
I see this comment in every video about free will, and i like that
Bite my shiny metal ass.
u dont believe in the free will :/
m8 ur a robot xd
All of you only believe this is happening because I programmed you to believe it.
@@HauntaskhanHYPNOSIS you think you programmed them because I programmed you to believe
Randomness: Doesn't affect freedom, decreases reliability of choices.
Unpredictability: Doesn't affect freedom nor control of the future.
People want to feel in control. The things above won't help. For some, trusting the thinking algorithm to make good choices is comforting enough. Learning to choose better or overcome cognitive biases can increase this trust.
Yes, thank you!!!
You are talking about very different things.
The video is about physics, determinism and quantum mechanics. Your comment is about the human brain, neurology, and psychology. Two separate things.
But I totally agree that people link these things because they want to feel comforted by the notion of having control.
"Doesn't affect freedom, decreases reliability of choices" - if you dont see contradictions here and in the rest of your comment, than you are free willed to live in your bubble universe.
Matt specifically started the video explaining flow of quantum information yet you didnt even noticed that. About what cognitive biases you even talking about?
@@antares-the-one Why such angry response?
Perhaps you misunderstood what I mean by "freedom". I mean it in the way Matt presented it in the beginning of this video: being the author of your choices (as opposed to your choices being predefined, or being determined by a random coin flip). If no deterministic process and no indeterministic process leaves room for such freedom, it doesn't matter how much randomness you have. And Matt agrees.
And the reason I said that randomness decreases reliability of choices is because I'd rather know for certain that I won't randomly choose to punch myself in the face, a more deterministic decision making process is more trustworthy.
Later in his video Matt plays with a different way to define free will, but - as Sabine Hossenfelder put it - this is just verbal acrobatics. I'd rather call deterministic unpredictability by it's name, rather than attaching the label "free will" to it just to have something I can call "free will". This definition of "free will" has no value.
I recommend you watch Sabine Hossenfelder's video on free will, I agree with her entirely and she explains it much better than me.
@@potato4360 deterministic unpredictability - now we talking! I think it is obvious given current state of physics. And it removes the "free" part from free will in both cases of determinism and all levels of randomness. In this case it should be called "unpredictably determined will" or you name it
Excellent discussion. I love the example of an apple's atoms not having redness or "appleness". Emergence in Systems Thinking/Systems Theory, the idea that a system can have properties that it's parts do not have, is key to this debate. The brain is not randomly processing information in a random way. It evolved to solve problems and make decisions that increased the chances of surviving long enough to pass genes onto the next generation.
Each individual calculation by the brain is driven by deterministic laws of physics, but they all align to the state or memory of the system. Your brain has a mental model of yourself, the world around you and your place in it. A cosmic ray might might hit one of your neurons and cause a cascade of effects that pops a strange idea into your head. But if that idea doesn't conform to your values, beliefs and world view it will be dismissed. Our behaviour isn't random and it is justifiable to say we make decisions of our own volition without denying the deterministic nature of the parts that generated that outcome.
i tend to think of a computer... it's software is practically a wholly more expansive paradigm than just the sum of binary hardware, ever more so what you personally choose to do with it, and even more so the resulting informational culture ecosystem... to just say, oh, the entire history of the internet is just you know bits, whatever, is about as reductive as saying art is nothing more than sensory perception and thus devoid of any more significance to anyone full stop, and the entirety of human culture and psychological experience as devoid of meaning as any random pile of rocks, an accidental aberration of arbitrary matter, as if human experience can't possibly exist as its own realm of consequential meaningfulness within itself (regardless of what "harder" substrate it might be generated upon/within) despite that underlying fundamentally all of our entire lived experiences of it, however unexamined.....
What is the problem of having no free will if you have the illusion to have one.
Exactly my point. Just like that dude who chose to go back to the Matrix. He saw and knew how real life is but he still preferred the life in the Matrix, at least that illusion was a good one.
Because it breaks the illusion knowing.
And if deterministic, its like our computational directive or something so the system doesnt operate that well.
It's actually a super important question when it comes to society. If someone commits a crime, but people don't have free will, is punishment ethical?
Hilariously though, if we DO live with determinism then whether we act ethically or not isn't up to us.
@@zeikjt well every thing happens in unconscious mind...decisions are made there...we can just observe them consciously...but even when you observe...that impulse comes from the inside
@@zeikjt Punishment for its own sake may not be ethical, but protecting society from the crime recurring is. (I don't necessarily think prison is the best way to do that in most cases, but that's another story).
Deep Thought : "I think your problem is that you don't really know the question"
I really yes the question
I don't know the question, but the answer is 42
@@masattac what??
"Is that all you have to show for five and a half years of videos?!"
@@masattac Brilliant
One of the best Space Times I've seen.
Great ending.
One thing I appreciate is your self awareness. Many of your peers lack this trait. You da man
Dr. Matt, l just want to say that your last line in this one is the best thing l have heard in quite some time.
Reminded me of Christopher Hitchens' quip during a debate "Of course we have free will. We have no choice but to have it." Miss that guy.
Isaac Bashevis Singer said a similar quote, "We must believe in free will, we have no choice."
I once knew a guy with the same name as u :o
@@3moirai though i still don´t see how we even experience an illusion of free will. no reason to assume it.
Reminds me of a story I read from an ancient greek philosopher. A man catches a robber in his house so he starts beating him. The thief says "Do not beat me up, I can not help but steal, this is my nature". The man replies "Do not complain, I can not help but beat those who rob me, this is my nature".
I see a video, I click. No free will here
One of your best videos imo, great explanation
What a show. Keep up the fantastic work guys
Even if its quantum and unpredictable, its still not free will - its just a roll of dice.
And we are at its mercy.
@Reverend I think it goes further than that. I know of no definition for "free" and "will" that I'd be able to recognize, such that we have "free will". Now I'm sure you can come up with _some_ definition, but those would be about as similar as a byte in IT and a bite of bread - your ideas about the one have pretty much nothing to do with your ideas about the other.
And roll of a dice is not unpredictable. Our perspective of it makes it look random.
The universe is neither completely random nor completely deterministic. It is a mix of both, and therein lies the possibility of free will.
@@KaiHenningsen free will is the ability to grasp the extent to which you can interact with your enviroment (this includes the ways you can't interact aswell)
, those interactions include hypothetical interactions, that can take form in subjective ideas
Probably one of my favorite episodes yet. I love how you tackle this topic in the sense that it's basically a paradox in itself and we know that more ideas or answers will simply create more questions and doubts about it. Keep up the good work!
yup. 'twas well done. :)
Is free will an illusion? Depends on what your definition of "is" is.
Exactly my sentiments. All the known laws of nature are but in perspective of the human experience of nature. In my opinion, any law of sciences should begin with "According to the human perspective, .... bla bla bla"
I believe that when one speaks of free will, it generally relates to freedom of speech, or being allowed to do things freely as needed or as desired. Otherwise, I simply have no clue what free will means! It makes no sense to me at all. Wanting something implies that a will has been generated somehow by circumstance, a will which did not exist before that circumstance occurred. So, the will is a process which occurs in reaction to one's environment. It is the effect of not accepting one's current state.
Maybe not wanting anything is the meaning of freedom. Death.
XD
@@kosi7521 Yeah, sun evaporates the water. It's not unique to "the human perspective"
@@deepstariaenigmatica2601 Unless you can prove the existence of another species that understands your statement, your argument is flawed on arrival. Reality is much more complicated than our reality - heck! there's no absolute reality - but you should already know this.
I have to say, I was really reluctant to watch this video at first, but the intro definitely convinced me to give it a try x)
14 minutes well constructed to say, 'Freewill as a concept is unknowable; much like consciousness.' I'm OK with that; it's great to continue pushing our knowledge and boundaries. It's also wise to remember this question has been and likely will be with us 'forever' (w/two little girls holding hands in a hotel hallway). Cheers Space Time
How is consciousness "unknowable" as a concept? We experience consciousness every day... However we do not experience such a thing as "free will"... Consciousness is there when you look for it - complete authorization over your neurology is NOT
@@Mageblood experiencing consciousness doesn't have anything to do with consciousness being unknowable "as a concept".
If you can generate random ideas and simulate them in your head and judge them by your own and/or hypothetical criteria, how is that not something which at the very least approximates free will?
This question is very interesting and I have often thought about it. Having it analyzed scientifically has really broadened my horizons. Very interesting video.
First, love that you did this episode - can be a risky subject, but should be addressed, and you addressed it pretty well, so kudos.
Having said that, I have some quibbles, because... of course I do. ;)
1) I don't think the creation of NEW information is a requirement for agency, simply influencing the DIRECTION of information could represent a choice - or even just the ability to affect a probability distribution in a non-deterministic manner could demonstrate free will. If encountering a "Free Agent" (brain, or whatever) ALTERS the course of events in a manner that is not normally observed where no agent is involved, then that agent has made a free choice. They have taken a set of inputs and caused an atypical result. IE: They have acted on the information in a manner that demonstrates the ability to control, rather than be controlled by, the information. I don't think it's necessary to completely disconnect from a system to demonstrate free will, freedom to move WITHIN a constrained system is still freedom - and more importantly is the only presumption that makes any sense. The ability to create something from nothing is Godhood, not free agency... and a bit of an unreasonable ask in my opinion. ;)
2) On free will and randomness. I think this comparison is something of a problem. Since we generally define "random" as "unpredictable", free will MUST, to any outside observer, appear random. If an outside observer could perfectly predict the outcome from an encounter with the agent, then it can only be presumed that no CHOICES are being made by that agent, which doesn't necessarily mean the agent doesn't have free will, but only indicates they did not exercise it, or have already used it previously to "lock in" their future behavior, and aren't any longer exerting it) and thus free will in that encounter isn't even something that can be discussed. The observed outcome would be indistinguishable whether free will is present or not. The agent/event in question is simply acting as a transformation function and could be represented as a natural law (or perhaps a complex combination of laws, but same basic principle). Therefore, the question of free will can only ever even be ASKED when a non-predicted (ie random to the outside observer) outcome/event is observed.
My personal postulate at this time is that the inherent non-deterministic nature of the micro universe demonstrates that free will is not only possible, but inherently present. The "apparent" deterministic "laws" we observe in the macro world (and the fact that they ONLY seem to apply at macro scales) are simply the results of emergent statistical principles like the "law of large numbers". That is to say, that the predictability of the macro world is not proof of a deterministic universe, only evidence that when you get enough free agents together that their GROUP BEHAVIOR becomes statistically VERY RELIABLY predictable.
Basically, what I'm saying is that if I took a few billion people and handed them an egg crate and 12 colored eggs (each egg of a different color, but each person receiving the same 12 colors) and instruct each to put the eggs in the crate, the fact that the outcome is deterministic on the macro scale (I have 12 eggs in each crate) at the end doesn't demonstrate a lack of free will, only a set of restrictions on the range of choices available. Each person will likely fill their crate with a different color arrangement (micro scale). Again, from the final perspective the micro-world arrangements will appear random to an outside observer (the final result state no longer contains the information on how decisions were made, and therefore appears "random") and I can even make very reliably predictions about the overall arrangement patterns using the principles of statistics (like how many crates of a given color arrangement I can expect to see). Nevertheless, neither the predictability (or lack of randomness) of the end state, nor the failure to create a new/unpredictable outcome (like a crate with only 11 eggs in it) demonstrates a lack of free will. It only shows that we have lost the information involved in making those free choices by the time we see the results.
In other words, I don't believe the existence of a deterministic macro universe precludes free choice, it only shows that those choices are constrained and reliably predictable on a macro scale, or that the information used in making the decision was lost or hidden... (not that I particularly subscribe to the idea of a perfectly deterministic universe as that has never been remotely proven except on HUGELY macro scales where individual "choices" would be so overwhelmed by statistical forces as to be no longer discernible from error margins anyways...)
"spacetime" Matt is actually a robot reveal
Best ending phrase of a space time episode so far.
I read the title as “does physics negate free wifi”
Yes, yes it does.
Absolutely not...it provides for it 😎
That's economics.
@@Sam_on_TH-cam That's thermodynamics.
Free Wifi creates a gravitational data field which attracts mobile data misers, negating the availability of free Wifi. So the answer is Yes.
Well information. Good show.
Ok so I listen to these to help me sleep pretty sure I’ve watched every one (and not cause they are boring or anything like that but imagining what all the geometry and physical processes looks like helps me sleep) but just as I was about to fall asleep he had to say “I’m going to exercise my free will to NOT end the episode by saying space time” so thanks for keeping me up
Thought experiment! If I were to make a perfect quantum level copy of myself, put him and myself in 2 separate but perfectly identical rooms with telephones in them connected to each other, and tried to have a conversation with myself. Would I ever be able to converse? Or would we just keep interrupting each other endlessly saying the same thing at the same time?
That’s a stunning thought experiment.
Maybe for a little while. Then you would get annoyed and hang up.
The rooms would have to be a closed system with no influence from anything on the outside. Say there was a gravity wave that made one room expand and the other contract, you would then be two different quantum systems and would not be the same any more and then be able to converse with someone very similar to yourself.
@@Aquillyne Yeah, it's been driving me nuts for years now as I've not had the physics skills to really answer it. But this Space Time episode seems to do it, or at least come really close. The physics (as explained in this episode) seems to point to conversation being possible because of the random qualities of quantum mechanics (regardless of Copenhagen vs many worlds). That randomness would eventually manifest itself into consciousness and cause a "split" in what each copy would want to say. Eventually (or maybe instantly) each copy would have made different "choices" as to what to say and a conversation could be had.
And that seems to point to free will being real.
@@DestinovaDrakar Yeah I understand, I mean for thought experiments it's not really about it being actually possible to execute it. Just imagining for a moment that all conditions were perfect for the experiment would a conversation between exact perfect copies be possible or not.
@@mattk3233 I agree up to a point. It's a great thought experiment because it really targets the question of whether the universe is deterministic. I agree that according to current quantum theories, you could have the conversation due to randomness. However - as is noted in the episode - it doesn't help the case of free will to have actions caused by randomness. That's just random actions, not freely chosen actions.
Matt you deserve an award for the script of this episode, it was not just insigtfull but also fun and full of wordplay, thanks a lot for the great work, I would like to ask if you could make a video about emergence, both soft and hard emergence and if possible about the Landau-Lifshitz pseudotensor (you mention it a long time ago but haven't got to it yet)? I know you are super busy with all your work so sorry to bother but if you read this I will be very gratefull :3 hehehe
Bahar Gholipour is co writer
@@mmoviefan7 Thanks for letting me know :3 I will search about her :3
Very interesting episode, thanks.
Thanks for another outstanding video.
Free Willy: about to jump out of the tank
PBS Spacetime: Actually, quantum mechanics forbids this
Underrated comment.
Sir, you made my day.
Loved the last part about emergent phenomena , you made a great precisation ! Reductionist science has always been correct but that doesn't mean its always the full story...especially on deep , complex and not fully understood subjects as consciusness or free will. Electrons in your brain might not be forced to make you say "spacetime" as your last word in every video...but they might just be loving it !
Excellent video. There's nothing left to add
I love how often whenever I challenge someone's free will belief, they respond by doing something random to try to demonstrate their ability to freely choose. One of my friends was getting frustrated once, so he said, "Oh yea, well I freely choose to do this" and he throws a shot glass at the wall and it shatters, and my other friend goes, "and now you freely choose to go clean it up." lol.
Yeah, even highly intelligent people, or sometimes geniuses have trouble to understand free will. It is very complex unsolved problem. You can't expect from someone, not knowing anything of the subject to give you any meaningful answer. He will probably use common folk psychology, or common sense to give you reason. After all free will is illusion, we are likely programmed to believe in it, it makes perfect sense from evolutionary perspective. And evolution is fact! Also check en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will Sometimes people couldn't tell why they did something, if acting impulsively. th-cam.com/video/pjDS578FROw/w-d-xo.html
@@jirivesely5697 I have trouble understanding why people are so stuck on holding onto the concept. You have to work really hard with acrobatics--mostly just changing the definition--to find any consistent way of justifying it. Why? Is it ego maybe?
@@joed180 Yeah, i mostly gave up on the idea of free will when I struggled to define it in any meaningful way. If you define it as a randomness in the brain due to its quantum nature, sure you can say it exists, but it's pretty worthless.
@@nishd7161 How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Determinism 😂
@@nishd7161 This is at the core of it for me. Sure you can explore all sorts of science-based issues with free will, but before that, can you define it? I can't see anything at all between 'deterministic' and 'random', which to me immediately excludes anything we would colloquially describe as 'free will' on a purely logical level.
Thanks I thought I was out of excuses to use for not doing my homework...
Spacetime, the greatest excuse of all time. Also, it has the biggest collection of t&a. What??!
"I'm sorry teacher, there was only one path in the universe sadly it choose me to not do my homework."
@@GentleRainRobbert super determinism is a life saver😈
@@GentleRainRobbert And teacher be like " I know kid. Inorder to maintain the thread from that information I have to talk to your parents."
I've always felt that my ability to choose freely isn't really impacted one way or another by the fact that someone else already knows what I'm going to do, either because their spacetime trajectory gives them such a time-slice of the loaf universe or because they have sufficient knowledge of the particles in my brain to be able to predict. I have been told that I'm very predictable, even without special quantum insight, but I don't think that negates my freedom to choose.
All that exists is one gigantic free will choice. We are witnessing that choice. The choice To Be.
I'm grateful that this was The Choice.
Devs is a great show that touches on this topic. Recommended
Katsumoto: “You believe a man can change his destiny?”
Algren: “I believe a man does what he can, until his destiny is revealed.”
Damn, bro!
but how do you know his will to change destiny is not pre-determined?
They are all perfect...
Alot of nothing
@@never._.mind._. This is a quote from a movie, and it is a simple explanation that I like to share with laymen. Me personally I had the exact idea of Laplace's demon when I was a teenager, before even knowing who Laplace was. Quantum mechanics did not change that theory, it actually verified it in a way. So it is all pre-determined (not that some other consciousness pre-determined it for us humans; it is just pre-determined by the nature of the laws of physics.) It is this way in our perspectives i.e. human brains cannot and will never ever evolve in a way to surpass this. Assuming there are higher dimensions (very high probability there is) we will always be limited to the 3 physical and 1 time dimensions because our brains and bodies are made in such a way it will not allow us to be aware or conscious of other dimensions.
When Spacetime uploads I simply click the video. There's no free will to prevent this from happening.
This emergent phenomenon was randomly determined to think that it does not have free will
I love feeling my brain grow, great video!
I absolutely love how you finagled the "Space-Time" ending into the video. Matt as always breaking all the laws
My grade school teacher: "This is the kind of question that will bake your noodle." LOL
It's more of a boiling oil bath than a baking oven.
Your grade school teacher was 'The Oracle' ?
@Buse Toköz bruh
@@jedaaa Would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?
Speaking of deterministic universe this seems fitting
@@AliKandirr did you just see a cat..?
question: why assumes that in the many worlds interpretation we would be "choosing" our reality instead of reacting to simply being in that instance of it?
this seems to assume free will before the discussion of whether it exists.
I don't think such an assumptions is made. The intention is to highlight that we either "choose" the instance we are in, or that we are just randomly in the instance we're in. One indicates a level of free-will, the other indicates pre-determinism. Both are possible, and currently untestable, so we cannot determine that one is true and the other false.
@@AlabasterJazz So if both are of equal possibility then stating "we choose which reality to experience" (it's been a day since I watched it so i may not have that verbatim) would be begging the question, why can we "choose" that if we don't already have free will?
Exactly. There is also other thing that I think should be addressed.
At 5:10 he gives the criteria by which he argues a brain could be reasonably considered free. Any combination of the first three criteria that he wants to use can be applied to simple computers. Just take a true random number generator (like hardware random generator using quantum events as a source) and boom you have a computer card with free will.
In fact such computer takes in quantum information, processes it and spits out an answer that it is not predictable, neither in principle nor in practice. At the the host adds that the brain can also recursively influence itself via consciousness, but a recursive influence could be programmed into a machine easily as well.
It certainly will not be an influence as complex as consciousness, but the end result would be the same: a machine that makes decisions which are unpredictable (both in principle and in practice) by incorporating both outside and inside information.
Even though this is perfectly consistent with the parameters he laid out, I don't think most people would agree that true random number generators have free will.
In other words, sure, the laws of physics leave room for free will for humans, but such free will is something that many other not living objects could posses.
Connecting this to his statement at about 12:05: one can assign whatever meaning they "feel" to assign to something, but that does not make it objectively meaningful. I, as a human being, can assign a lot of meaning to the complex chemical reaction that I call love, while also accepting that it is no different from any chemical reaction I can make in a lab to which I do not assign meaning.
In the same way, I can also assign importance and meaning to my complex decision making process while also accepting that it is essentially no different from that of a complex random number generator.
My whole point here is that, the "free will" that meets the criteria laid out in the video may not be an illusion. The illusion would be the belief that such free will sets us apart from complex machines (none of which was stated in the video, but which is normally implied when discussing free will).
@@eliomonaco147 I want to thank you. This may be the first response to one of my TH-cam comments that I 100% agree with. I feel just the tiniest bit normal again.
😊
@@Noah-fn5jq nice to hear :)
Loved it. Was looking for the current status quo on the matter and this did the job very nicely. No ideologically predetermined (or random, for that matter) opinions like "I believe in free will" or "free will is an illusion", just a presentation of the best possible guesses based on the newest scientific insights.
It doesn't even have to do with science. Free will is a nonsense concept incompatible with any world.
I find it interesting WHY people have such a bias toward "free will"
WHY is that??
I don't have a problem with living in a deterministic universe at all
Perhaps you are unique, but most people seek to live virtuously and do good in some way or another. Not having free will changes the way we interact with the concept of virtue and the gods
@@benmorgan1718 agree that a belief that everything is determined lets a person ignore moral and ethical responsibility before God---and that allows us to opt out of the need to react justly and in love toward one another. A totally deterministic view comes at great price.
It might be helpful toward your answer as to why you find determinism satisfying, to explore what you like about that view.
"I don't have a problem with living in a deterministic universe at all"
Then you don't really have a choice to have a problem or not, do you?
I think people are very confused about what "free will" means, switching definitions of free will mid-argument sometimes. For example, someone might argue that you are only responsible for your actions if you have "free will". Then they will say that if the universe is deterministic, you do not have "free will". So in a deterministic universe, nobody is responsible for their actions, legally & morally speaking. However, the "free will" of a discussion around personal legal and moral responsibility is more about saying that you were not forced to do it, it wasn't an accident, and you were not suffering from some kind of mental issue that prevents you from making decisions as a human normally would. These are not really relevant to a discussion of a deterministic universe.
"We'll ignore what happened at the beginning of time, for today"
Little does he know the universe is eternal.
@@Zero-pe3iq Yes it would have to be, wouldn't it?
@@ThePeaceableKingdom always has been
@@heisenmountainb6854 "It ever was, and is, and shall be, an ever-living fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out." - Heraclitus, 2600 years ago. But whadda he know?
I find it interesting that, more or less, as long as humans have been human, we've been.. well, human. Thousands of years ago they were asking the same questions we were, we just have the added advantage of being millenia on the shoulders of prior thinkers.
This is a superb channel and I assured your episodes
"Apples aren't imaginary" is possibly the best argument in favour of free will I've heard to date!
All pedantry, really.
A pretty disappointing argument to be honest, given the fact that it bases what is “real” on what is “perceived.” At that reality is subjective, and meaningless.
Thé problem is that apples are imaginary, in facts. It’s only a human concept.
@@numero6285 well, if you're going to say both apples and free will are imaginary, then at least you're being consistent. I'd say both are real as emergent phenomena. If emergent phenomena aren't real, then probably nothing we know of is real. Even the quarks that make up protons and neutrons are emergent phenomena of a more fundamental reality (strings, possibly?)
@@iambatdan You are absolutely right: almost everything we know of is somehow an emerging phenomenon.
However, the concept of "free will" should only have meaning if it corresponds to something other than an emerging phenomenon. When we talk about free will, we suppose that it refers to something other than a set of causes that we ignore.
Otherwise it would be absurd to speak of "free will" as part of justice and guilt.
“Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.” ― John von Neumann
“Invoking quantum effects is just hand-waving. Just means we don’t know." - Dennis Taylor: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1)
As a human, you do not need to understand free will, you just need to get use to it and believe you have it.
As an engineer, you do not need to understand Quantum Mechanics - just need to get use to it.
As a human, we must simply accept that our definition of free will, which western nations inherited from christianity, is simply false. If free will exists, we would currently not consider it free.
@@xellos5262 is not false, it just an illusion
Time also is an illusion and it's not false.
And christianity didn't invented free will, that is a universal believe
@@ThePowerLover I now assume you missed the word definition in my comment.
@@xellos5262 Yes, I did.
But I insist on that this definition preexist avery religion. It's exist, basically, because of our ego...
@@ThePowerLover So you think that saying a "definition is an illusion" makes sense? I gave you an out, a chance to think clearly about what you just said, and instead you double down. Our definition of free will, in the western nations, is clearly and fully derived from our christian heritage. Other cultures might have had similar definitions for it, but certainly not this particular one. Free will on its own can neither be proven nor disproven. When a deterministic system is too complex to overview, you cannot distinguish it from a chaotic system. To claim otherwise is lunacy. Just as unrestricted free will is.
Hot take: as long as it feels like free will and is actionable like free will, it doesn't matter if it actually is or not via physics
Pray tell, what do you mean by "actionable"? You have a thought, you have a reaction to it (me like/ me no like), and what you've decided to do is now another thought.
@@godsofwarmaycry right, which feels for every intent and purpose like free will. So if it feels and acts like free will for every intent and purpose, it doesn't really matter if it's because of underlying predictable chemistry and physics.
Now if you could start to change people's decisions based on perfect knowledge of their underlying chemistry and physics, that'd be a different story because that's actionable. Now it comes into play in real life terms and consequences
We'll never know because free will and non free will are just equal to each other
Furthermore, even if our brains turn out to be purely mechanical and relielable algorithm executors, you are the only individual with your specific set of inputs (all your life up to now), so nobody else would be able to output the same decision, even at the same time in the same situation
We are all in the Matrix.
Thank you! I yesterday watched a youtube video of an other physicist convinced there is now free will based on ridiculous simplifications. I got kind of annoyed by that video. I agree with your video completly and my mood is lifted by it :-)
The conclusion that "free will" can exist if it is defined as an emergent property does not negate the fact that cause and effect are never broken, and that a "new thought thread" can never happen.
Roy: A Life Well Lived, makes a light hearted attempt at answering this question and is no weirder than the many worlds theory
Would love to see an episode of PBS Space Time postulating the existence of free will and determinism with CosmicSkeptic.
6:30 This is the most interesting part. Nobody will probably read this, but I would like to bring up an important aspect to human consciousness: it's a multilayered consciousness. Think of it as a pipeline which produces the conscious experiences we have, where each step may or may not loop back to a previous step in the pipeline. Why this is necessary is because of the presence of metacognition, where we consciously act upon our consciousness, leading to abilities such as thought editing, memory reintegration, lucid dreaming, cognitive discipline and purposeful design of coping mechanisms. We're simply not just one mind, but many, slaving away in the factory that generates the experience of you.
Very true. I'd akin it more to a computer since I don't think there is much feedback from our conscious experience, the main part we are in tune with. I view it more like a monitor. It's a feed of information, observation. But it doesn't send anywhere near the amount of data to the actual computer, which is the subconscious, hormones, chemicals and other machinations at work.
What's fascinating to me is that we desire to be in control. I think it's an evolutionary thing. It's more beneficial to have more options at any given time and this extrapolates into the desire for entirely free choice because it would be endless possibility.
I genuinely like this. There's room for interpretation, along with how the video poses information that promotes both arguments/topics. I guess all that's left to do is choose... (XD)
But is that choice... ...
free?
@@Wtahc depends how one interprets things. One could add an outer force we can't truly measure (like a spirit or soul) into the scenario, if that's what you believe in, since a lot of science still remains to be speculation or one could simply make the argument that quantum mechanics and such small functions don't exactly apply the same in much larger functions.
@@charlestonian7110 there is no ambiguity of meaning, determinists believe the universe is a function, indeterminists believe it is not. that is what these words have always meant
@@Wtahc I'll put it this way: I believe, from what I gather, that our reality isn't deterministic, but the "boundaries" or "limits" of things (which are not determined - again, in my observation) make certain scenarios impossible. Those limits cannot be broken by default, so within a scope of "determined potential", indeterminism exists. I hope I'm not sounding to contradictory, but it's past 3 AM, so...
Absolutely brilliant, the uncertainty principle blows my mind. What is remarkable is how well these explanations agree with the Buddhist understanding of free will and choice, that when we don’t use awareness then our lives become predetermined, only through careful observation of the mind can we begin to make more fully conscious choices to change things around us.
Budhists dont really say that. (With respect)
They say that by observing the mind and by using awareness you escape samsara and enter nirvana. Samsara is cycle of life and death. So using those things you get no body, no brain, no mind etc whatsoever. The only reason why they dont promote suicide is because they beleive it makes things worse in the next life, otherwise without that trigger it would be perfect.
They do tell the story that you are saying in some schools on the surface, but only reason for that is so people would not run away.. people like samsara and like to live..
Well death is not uncertain 😐seems to me that’s the opposite 😐as death is for certain if anything o would say the uncertainty principle is us being born again 😐as their is no telling how long all of us were all ready dead before we were even born what is it ?😐1 sextillion years ? 1 goggle years ?🧐1 septillion years ? I don’t know 😐I say death is certain and life is the uncertainty
That Laplacian demon was utterly terrifying. Was it predetermined that I would have to see that nightmare today? If so, curse you oh universe!!
It's useful to consider the word "will" in free will in the same way we think of "will power". Will power is a relatively recent evolutionary attribute, that gives us a significant survival advantage. there are deterministic ways to explain will power, but it's also reasonable to think that the brain could have evolved to take advantage of quantum randomness to get a little extra help in breaking pre-defined behavior patterns.
this view of free will is real free will, the ability to make choices that are not predetermined. it doesn't contradict our understanding of motivation and psychology. it doesn't rely on appeals to the supernatural. and it's still actually pretty satisfying.
UBotDevTeam, I think will power is almost more important than free will as an issue. The universal laws of cause and effect do not change based on your view of free will. In fact, nothing changes, even in a person who suddenly is caught up in the delusion that the choice they just made was not made at all, but was just the unfolding of the universe following a set of unbreakable laws. Will power shows up in every action and choice of people. It works right along with impulse control to separate the wheat from the chaff. The fossil record seems to indicate that anatomically modern humans have been running around for anywhere from 50,000 to even 200,000 years, and I always wondered, "What were they doing all that time?" that prevented them from building civilization and using technology. I don't think they were modern in terms of will power/impulse control, just like much of the population today.
Brilliant. A different take than Sabine's video, especially touching the different quantum interpretations and the explanation of emergent properties of a system.
If you search around, you will find out that Sabine is working on a Theory of Everything that requires total determination at every level, so she is "determined" to make it so.
Truly ,,,we are all clueless . Ecclesiastes 3:11.
Being a VERY simple-minded person, I have absolutely no idea how quantum physicists manage to reconcile the law of conservation of quantum information with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. They seem to completely negate one another to me. I could use an explanation. Thanks
The uncertainty principle does not state that things are actually uncertain, just that we change the outcome of something by making the observation, said another way, by interacting with the thing we are observing.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is actually just a statement about the observable properties of waves, and only applies to quantum mechanics because of its formulation in terms of probability waves. Quantum information is information about the probability waves and so it conserves the wave uncertainty as well. I think the uncertainty principle should be called the indeterminacy principle or something, because we are precisely certain about the limit to which we can determine paired properties of waves.
I just remembered that this topic was an old pbs space time video: th-cam.com/video/izqaWyZsEtY/w-d-xo.html
"conservation of quantum information", or of "unitarity", are really ambigous/shifty expressions, TBW; if we're talking "conservation of energy", just saying ' |Psi(t)> = exp(iHt/h)|Psi(0)> ' in no way conflicts with ' sigma_A*sigma_B
@@dustman96 this is wrong. You're talking about observer effect, which is unrelated. Heisenberg uncertainty principle states fundamentally there are certain pairs of things where knowing one better means the other one has to be ill-defined to larger extent.
I think a (good enough) layperson explanation is that the conservation refers to the information that exists and the uncertainty principle refers to what we can learn about that information.
My free will is telling me it's not free, there is always a cost
It costs about a buck oh five.
Your will and it's existence costs energy if nothing else.
Tree-fity!
@@Megalomaniakaal Not energy. Entropy.
@@dlevi67 aka usable energy
Okay, this video is far more intelligent, well researched and all around great than any of the other similar ones I have ever seen ...
This is one of the best intellectual migraines Spacetime has given me in a while!
this is EXACTLY what I've been waiting to see a physics video about, thank God, free will and consciousness are very interesting and itd be nice to see more videos about these fundamental properties
Some of what you talking here about I've read in Roger Penrose's book "The Emperor's New Mind".
Penrose believes in quantum consciousness I think. Something not really backed by scientific evidence.
@@sluxi he believes in some far out connection between consciousness and an as-yet-unknown theory of quantum gravity.
However, even if you don't find that very likely (I certainly don't), I can still recommend The Emperor's New Mind. Despite its title and its ostensible purpose, it deals very little with consciousness until the end of the book. Most of it is a beautifully-written exploration of theoretical physics
@@sluxi Penrose doesn't argue, that his evidence makes his theory highly probable.
Free will is automatically eliminated when any limitations are placed on it. Can't wave your hand and be in your personal paradise? Then you only have limited-will.
@@sluxi He doesn't "believe" it. He has a convincing theory that can be experimentally verified (in the far future). It's called Orch OR.
The only fact that matters is that we act as if we make our own decisions. If it is a perfect illusion, it is all that is needed in our lives. The feeling of moving into the unknown at every moment of human life is all we need.
much Appreciated