I came to the conclusion the other day that our perception of our ability to freely make choices is false. Free will, it would appear, is indeed an illusion. I will try and prove this point as plainly and succinctly as possible.

The world in which we live has a certain set of characteristics and properties. Elements react with each other in certain ways, large bodies of mass attract each other via gravity. Electrons flow, molecules form, the wind whistles through the trees and oceans of water crash upon stones and wear them down. All of this behavior is set — there are simply ways the natural universe exists, and thats all there is to it.

I have to make an important distinction here however — “science” is NOT how all of that works. Science is simply an approximation, a theoretical model. We observe how things work and we describe those things, and for quite a lot of it we’ve described it quite accurately. There are lots of things however, that science has gotten wrong about in the past, is currently wrong about in the present, and will quite likely be wrong about or simply not be able to model for all of eternity.

However — and here’s the important part — just because a system exists that is too complex for science to accurately model and understand, does not mean that system is magic. That system is still behaving according to the rules by which it behaves. The fact that we don’t quite understand it is irrelevant. Every single thing in this universe behaves in physically explainable ways, even if we as humans ourselves cannot explain them. This is a very important point that I hope I have gotten across well enough to continue. As an example, take the three main theories we have right now about everything — gravity, quantum theory, and electro magnetics. Inside the scope of those three, they are explained quite well and we understand how they work. Tying all three together however, is something scientists cannot do. The theories of quantum mechanics do not extend to the movement of galaxies — science just doesn’t have a way to explain how all three theories interact with each other. That doesn’t mean that interaction doesn’t exist, it just means we haven’t discovered it.

This all came about to me rather on accident, actually. I had stumbled across some Physics simulation software on the internet, I forget what it was called. It was basically a CAD program that let you draw any sorts of shapes. Balls, squares, polygons. It had motors and springs and all the variables were available to be set. Gravity, mass of objects, electro static fields, and so on. You’d set up a certain scenario — say, 3 ball shaped objects suspended above a flat platform — and press “play”. It would run through the simulation, the balls would fall down, hit each other and the board, and bounce away. It was quite novel and fun to play with, creating little systems that would funnel your balls down to a rotating board that would fling them back up into the air.

I had some friends over one evening and I was playing around with it, showing them what you could do with it. I made a group of 30 or so small ball objects and let them fall onto an inclined plane that had a square object sliding down it at the same time. The square object would hit the falling balls and send them scattering quite satisfactorily in an explosion of rotating circles on the screen.

One fellow stopped me and said “Wow thats cool. If you reset it, does it do the exact same thing again? Do all the balls go in the exact same place?”

We all kind of stared at him for a second, until someone else said “Um, of course it does. It’s physics. Thats how physics works. If you reset all the variables back and play it again, of course its going to do the exact same thing. If it didn’t, we’d better be worried!” And we all laughed.

Worried, indeed.

A few weeks later I was playing with it further and making more and more complex systems. Lots and lots of components with conveyors and swinging things and springs and balls flying all over the place. It got to be a bit of a game. I began to realize that when things got really complex, the “exact same thing” wasn’t happening each time. It was just too much for my little laptop, so the program was having to not be as accurate with its calculations. So with less accuracy, at the 30 or 40 second mark into the simulation, I was beginning to get different outcomes. So I would bump down the speed, bump up the accuracy, and viola, problem fixed. I realized I needed a faster computer.

The point in which I realized we do not have free will, then, was at the point that I realized the following: The most accurate simulation of physics does not exist on any computer — it is our universe itself. Our universe and the things inside of it behave with one another with 100% absolute perfect accuracy, if accuracy is even the word you want to call it. This is rather a bit of a complex way to express and identity rule. 1=1. If 1 did not equal 1… well it wouldn’t be 1 anymore, and it just doesn’t make sense. There are no rounding errors in reality, there are no levels of accuracy in our universe. It is not a simulation of physics… it is physics. The behavior of the system of our universe is catagorically perfect in all senses of the word. It behaves the way it does, and thats all there is to it. If it behaved some other way… then that would be the behavior of our system. Either way, there is certainly no magic or supernatural anything going on.

I resist even saying that our universe follows rules or laws. We as humans developed the concept of rules to be able to simply approximate how the universe works. The rules follow the universe, not the other way around.

If that physics simulation on my laptop “has” to play the same scenario, with the same variables, in the exact same way everytime its played, then reality DEFINITELY has to. If you could setup a scenario in our real, physical world and could somehow absolutely 100% control all the variables involved, you would absolutely get the same result every single time. Create a perfect vaccuum and drop an indestructable and unmalleable mass from a height of absolute precision, controlling every single other variable… that ball is going to fall with the exact same velocity and acceleration — its going to hit the bottom at the exact same angle, bounce in the same direction, every single time. If it didn’t — all while still assuming we do indeed have “perfectly exact” variables — we’d all be in for a lot of trouble and the world in which we live wouldn’t exist.
So, you might be asking (or perhaps have already guessed) what this all has to do with you, and your ability to freely make decisions, or to have free will. Here’s the crux of it:

You, and everything about you, exist in our physical reality. “Who you are” is entirely dictated by that lump of grey matter sitting in your skull. Smash that skull open on a freeway and disrupt the configuration of that grey matter, suddenly “you” stop existing. We’ve already shown that every single atom, molecule, object, planet and galaxy behaves according to perfect, unbreakable, unmutable laws of reality (laws which we as scientists do not fully understand). Your brain, and its structure, are composed of those atoms. The decisions you make, the behaviors you exhibit, the way you process certain data, is all *somewhere* inside that brain of yours.

So go back to our “perfect” environment again, in which all variables are somehow able to be completely, 100% controlled. Say you have a ball rolling at a certain speed in a certain direction — now place another ball in its path. They will collide, and they will behave in ways we can predict, and will shoot off from one another at certain angles and at certain speeds. This is undeniable. This is a fact. Reset the situation and do it again, they will again follow the exact same paths, again and again and again. Put a 3rd ball into the path of one of the diverted 1st or 2nd balls. We’ve got a more complex situation, but as we step through it, the truths still hold. Those objects ARE going to behave however they are going to behave, and there’s no way they can’t. Thats just how things work. Add a 4th ball and a 5th, then a 10th and a hundredth. Increase velocities, add obstacles, electromagnetic fields, add 1,000 balls, then 1,000,000. It doesn’t matter. Reset the scenario to exactly the same variables and at the end you absolutely will have the exact same outcome. You have to. There’s no other way for it to behave except the way that it just does.

The point? No matter how complex the scenario is — even if it became so complex that we as humans could not fully understand or model it — it will behave the way it is supposed to. And, supposing we could model it… if you gave us a snapshot of what the beginning looked like and told us all the variables, why, we could run it through a computer and tell you what would happen!  We could indeed see into the fucking future.  We could tell you what would happen as a result of events that had not yet occured.  We could step through it even, tell you where all the balls are at any time point.

What makes you think you are any different?  Who “you” are, your consciousness,  your mind, are nothing but by-products of that lump of grey matter in your skull receiving, processing, and outputting data and information.  Your entire brain is nothing more than an insanely complex system of interacting molecules, hormones, and neurotransmitters, all of which are absolutely 100% behaving the way they have to, as the way they simply do.  Do we as scientists understand how it all works?  Of course not.  Does that mean its magic?  Say it with me now, of course not. 

When you go to make a decision, completely autonomous subconcious processes begin firing in specific, highly ordered patterns.  Different subroutines of your brain’s current configuration engage other subroutines, in ways we do not even come close to understanding.  Data is retrieved from your long term memory, values are weighed, and ultimately a decision comes out.

Reset *everything* back 5 seconds to the exact same variables, and replay the situation — IE, let you choose again — you will choose the *exact* same thing.  Everytime it’s reset and replayed, you’ll come up with the same decision.  There is no hand-wavey randomness in reality — only in our understandings of reality.

You build a fast enough computer, a big enough computer, a computer so intense that it could literally model every variable in our reality, and you would have in your hands a time machine.  A time machine that could see into the future, a time machine that could see into the past.  All it has to do is step backwards through its calculations.

The idea of free will is absolutely nothing more than an illusion.  A damned, damned convincing illusion, an illusion so palpable that its hard to admit to, but it is there.   The exact position of your hands at right this instant was determined several billion years ago when the universe began, and all the original variables were set.  Since then its been nothing but a chain reaction of events that could occur no other way than the way they did — and the events that will occur in the future, whatever they may be, cannot be bent or changed or altered.

How then, I can accommodate this fact of reality with the visceral obviousness of my own existence is the next question.