|
I find that the more ignorant of the world we are, the more we believe that there is no free will. At first glance, I am here, and you are there. Everything in the world is predecided because it is possible to know everything about everything all at once, and if you know that and all the laws that govern them, then you can know where they will be 1 second, 1 day, 1 month, 1 year, 1 decade, and 1 century from now. You can know what decisions you will make and what affect they will have. You can know how you will live and how you will die. This, however, is entirely inaccurate.
Modern advancements in physics (which, sadly, the majority of students do not learn!), show us that choice is an integral part of the universe. If you know exactly where I am, you cannot know how fast I am going. If you know exactly how fast I am going, you cannot know where I am. If you know how much energy I've gained, you cannot know the length of time it took to gain it. You can even cheat the conservation of energy, as long as you give the energy back before anyone notices.
A particle chooses to be the way it is - its location, its velocity, and its state - purly by the probability of it being there. There are "waves" of probability affect everything in the universe, including our lives. Our lives are made up of chance, and cannot be predicted. There's one thought experiment where you see what a running jaguar would look like if a constant in the universe were much, much higher. It would be a blur! You would not know where it was by inches in all directions. So, the affect surely much less noticable, but it is certaintly all around us.
So, in a sense, we do have free choice. If a choice is not predictable by anyone, including yourself, is it not free?
__________________
"Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose." -- Douglas Adams
|