Poll: Do you believe in free will?

[Hedberger]

Free will's simply causality. Every decision you make is caused by something, and that something was caused by something else, and so on in a chain of cause and effect that has gone on since anything has ever existed.

To put it simply, Dr. Manhattan was right.

This is kind of my point. It isn't really free will because there is no chance of it being something else since it is determined by everything that has gone before.

The thing is there is a certain uncertainty built into the universe or so it seems so I don't think we can say what will happens is all set in stone from day one. However I am not so sure about free will either. Ultimately humans seem to be reasoning machines, though we don't know the exact rules we run on we do run on rules. Given a set situation at a set point in your life and you will always make the same choice.

Though I guess it could be argued our ability to sort out information and pick the best choice for it is free will of a kind. I am just not sure it is the best word for it.

The only thing that keeps the future uncertain is uncertainty. In theory we could make a map of all of history both future and past if we knew all variables originating from the Big-Bang.

See this was exactly the point I was trying not to make. You are assuming there is no innate randomness to the workings of the universe but what if there is? Then it would be impossible to map out the future like you could the past it also means you can't really work back from now to say what the past was like either. However this says very little about free will, the universe can be as random as it could be and this would have no effect on wither or not people have free will.

My theory is that there is a law for how everything works. I don't believe in a god or something like that, it just evolved. What we percieve as random is simply what we can not explain. How would you define random?

Sure it might just be we can't explain it but I would not bet on it,once you get into quantum mechanics the universe is a lot harder to track. This does not mean there are not reasons behind it or we can't understand it but it does not mean we will ever get to the stage where we can predict what will happen next. While not 100% what I am talking about do you know the uncertainty principle? When you know the location you can't know its speed and when you know its speed you can not know its precise location if we can't know both those values then maybe the universe is not as solid as we like to think.

I've read up on the uncertainty principle and i think i see what you mean. That we can never know all variables for certain, it is in fact mathematically impossible? However there are still reasons as to why things happen and there are laws for why they happen in a certain way. Regardless if we can never know all variables the future is still fixed until someone learns what is going to happen before it happens.

Or do you mean that if we can't ever know some things there could in fact be things that are random but we can never understand how or imagine how that would look/behave. Sort of like einsteins theory of relativity about how we can't imagine the fourth dimension anymore than a twodimensional being can comprehend the third dimension.

 

[Tonimata]

The truth is much simpler than that. Our free will will always be limited by the free will of others. For example, I could use my free will to run around naked in the street, but, shamefully, another person has use his free will to condone this action as something bad, and this person had to do this because other people were tired of seeing naked people run around the streets.

"Our individuality is crippled by other's individuality"

Serrant

 

[CheeseSandwichCake]

Free will is a little far fetched, we're always going to have laws prohibiting freedoms, mostly bad freedoms of course but still freedoms that you would be allowed to use with total free will.

 

[Hedberger]

there's no life in a lot of these answers doesn't anyone believe in magic or the unexplainable anymore? science is so dry and boring to me. don't you guys think its a little depressing to sum your self and life down and your actions down into meaningless numbers the quantum this bla bla the atoms that bla bla the outside environment and psychology bla bla. if we have no free will and we're just pre-programed biological machines why do anything? whats the point? whats the fun in it?
it all sounds to me like more rules someone i guess the great mathbot in the sky wants us to follow. rules rules rules how i hate thee.

I'm in no way saying anyone's answers here are wrong ,and i think its good for people to have different answers, i guess im just curious if anyone else feels like i do.

I don't think it is dull actually. It sorta like when you see a movie and you know that the protagonist is going to survive. The path through the movie can still be interesting and there is always that niggling little doubt that you could be wrong this time.

with me it just seems like anymore science isn't just trying to explain why something does something its now trying to pin everything down like a bug pinned down to cork board where are the free thinkers, the anything is possible people, the people that don't want to spend their lives calculating the stones that build the walls of there prison cells.

but then i guess anything can be fun to someone i know a guy that loves to look at pictures of ladies feet.< may be a bad example but my point is different strokes for different folks< also may be a bad example to write by first example, but you get the point.

I think it's interesting to try and come up with how things work. There are laws for everything but, you still can't keep all of them in your head and simultaniously remember how they all interact and react to each other. I really can't claim to know what is going to happen. Even if i could do that things would still be interesting. For example, A magicians trick would still be interesting even if you know how he/she performs the trick.

i understand what your saying and i guess its hard to tell over the internet but im always being somewhat facetious its just apart of my personallty. though i do disagree about the majic trick. i think this shows the diffrents between us, to me if you know how a magic trick is done then its no longer a magic trick. the magic was in not knowing how it was done and thinking even for a secend wow maybe that guy is magic. thats the fun in it for me.

This very much highlights the differences between us. I know from the beginning that there was no magic involved, merely dexterity. I also think it's fun to try and learn how the trick is performed. But that does not mean i can't appreciate the dexterity that the trick requires.

 

[similar.squirrel]

I believe in completely random events, but claiming to have free will is just arrogant..
I'd go on, but I have to go to the bathroom.

 

[Spacewolf]

well its not an easy question to answer, as i dont think you could ever 100% accuratly predict what someone is going to do but i do think that someone will choose a course of action based on their personality which would of been infulenced by prior events which would of been decided by their previous preonality (as it would of changed after the event) or someone elses personality which would of been influenced by another event and so on and so forth

 

[Crimsane]

My ego demands that I believe in free will. I'd like to think that all of my sexual encounters, promotions, etc, have all been due to my skill and diligence rather than merely being destined to happen.

 

[Rolling Thunder]

Atoms and particles behave in probabilistic ways, but our mind is made of atmos and particles...

How can free will exist?

By the simple fact that there is that nothing that is the mere sum of it's parts?

 

[jamesworkshop]

I believe in free will unless someone just decided that I should say I believe in free will....
sure my actions are predictable if you had the abilty to know every partical and its location/movement etc
but to me thats still a part of me as much as anything else and so doesn't invalidate freewill

 

[PeterStarr]

Only the end is fixed. Not the journey.
[sub]C'mon! Even The Doctor believes in Free Will![/sub]

That's because this doctor is written by Russell T Davies, who would rather use half an hour of the show to form feeble emotional attachments to characters who will soon die and no-one cares about, create stupid and irritating flirty banter with 'spunky' female sidekicks and have the doctor get emo about how he's the last of his kind. Another of his preferred tropes is writing about the wonders of humanity's powers if we all believe in each other rather than remembering that he's supposed to be a science fiction writer or that he's supposed to resolve the story in a vaguely satisfying and/or explanatory way.

Hmm. Rant over. No free will btw, for reasons already stated. Unless you want to redefine what you mean by the term, which kind of relies on too many assumptions.

 

[Agent Larkin]

Freewill exists. Its just the consequences that hold you back.

-Agent Larkin making up Philosophy since 1802

 

[Halokon]

I don't think it matters much, if you believe there isn't, you'll think you chose it, if you believe otherwise, you'll think you were guided. Either way, you do what you do.


What annoys me though is people who try to 'prove' this one way or the other by either doing nothing at all or doing completely random or insane stuff...like doing that proves one way or the other, because you couldn;t have been destined to sit on your arse all day waiting for fate or have kicked a policeman to show that you have free will...

In summary, people are idiots and will believe what they believe, and will attach any number of reasons to it to try and justify something that needs no justification.

 

[Raddragon]

You could say i'm a bit like Neo.

Morpheus: Do you believe in fate, Neo?
Neo: No.
Morpheus: Why not?
Neo: Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life.

 

[Rolling Thunder]

Free will exists. Its just the consequences that hold us back.

-Agent Larkin. Making up Philosophy since 1802

Fixed for dramatic effect.

P.S: What were your experiences of the War of 1812? I had splendid fun, I must say. Three Quarters of my regiment died, and then I lead the rest into a spectacular bayonet charge against your guns. Funnily enough, we won that battle for some reason...

 

[Jinoru]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. all you people who "will never believe in free will" are pretty funny. and silly. Just because some educated authority said that life is the sum of your genes and environment doesn't mean free will doesn't exist. Do you really all believe that Nature is in control of us? Can't we cut down the tree? Can't we scale a mountain? Can't we push against the wind? We are the masters. and we CAN choose. but there is always a consequence which may or may not give us the desired results.

 

[Jinoru]

and free will is actually impossible. but "will" is.

 

[AmrasCalmacil]

We can never know and it probably doesn't matter.

Would we have knocked the vase over were we not pre-emptively forgiven?

Whether life has a path or we chose how it goes doesn't matter, either way it's got to turn out the same.