tiger777

It all really depends on how you define the word free will. In one sense we don't have free will because all of our actions are usually predetermined. In other words how we react in certain situations are a sum of our genetics (chemicals) and past experiences (information). Basically all of our choices come down to our tendencies which react to the probabilities of external conditions. See we can't control the external conditions we can only react to them.

Let's assume for a second that if we had perfect information and could account for the trillions upon trillions of variables in all given situations we could foresee the outcome of everything. In other words we would know everything would free will still exist? I would argue that it wouid not because of the fact that everything would be predetermined. You could say well if you knew what would happen then you could change it, but even the change you made could be predicted beforehand when taking into account you knew what would happen. So in this case you really don't have a choice because think of it like watching a movie, if you watch the movie no matter how many times you watch it the same things happen. And if you could watch and rewatch your life, that's exactly how it would look given this scenario. No matter how many times you watched it, you would always do the same thing. This is assuming of course all of the variables were the same in other words. For example if you think back to yesterday if you went back in time and had the same state of mind at the time and all of the variables remained the same, you would make the exact same decisions as you did the first time. So free will seems like an illusion to me.

The closest thing that makes sense to free will to me in the traditional definition of the meaning would be our ability to alter our tendencies. The way I see it is, there are billions of cells in our body doing things for us, they all have a job and there are various functions of the brain that all have jobs too and control many things. I see consciousness as basically our 1 job. This is the part of the brain we're assigned to and it allows us to sort of oversee things. Imagine if we were a president so there's all of those branches that make orders etc and vote on things, but at the end of the date we can either accept it or veto it. See for example let's that we are addicted to smoking and we want to quit. Well all of our tendencies point to us continuing to smoke, excluding developing like cancer or something like that, or some other deadly harmful health problem, we always have the choice to stop without a sudden external condition pressuring us to do so. Although of course if we didn't know the studies about how it was harmful we would likely never stop because we are addicted and enjoy it, so even that is contingent upon information which was part of your other question about understanding the consequences.

But really I think the more I think about it, free will is just an illusion. It's the illusion that we can choose to do anything at any time. sure I could take that pen on my desk and stab my eye, but choosing to do so could be predicted by the fact that I purposely did so for the sake of doing something I felt would be unpredictable in which case would be free will the opposite of destiny or prediction. So I mean a rat will keep administering opiates and such because it gets addicted and what not, it's just doing what it's program has written for it, but it doesn't self-administer stuff like alcohol to my knowledge. Because it's body tells it no. Yet we still will drink alcohol even though we can tell it's poision and we want to puke, this is because our brains are so much more complex, we have the choice to drink it, so I mean the illusion of free will, is this extra awareness, and intelligence we have. We are basically a super complex program, we have the ability to imagine anything and everything that is in our brain, we basically have a virtual simulator in there, we can conceptual so many great things. Basically it's these higher abilities that I feel have given us the idea of free will. So Through this long winded ramble I think I went through my opinion that free will doesn't exist whether or not we know the outcome.

Anyhow I guess I have rambled enough for now. As for your major changing, well that shows how important information is. See if you had done more research and found out that they didn't have the program you wanted for the major you wanted to pursue you could've then made a more educated decision about your future. Not doing the research however basically threw more variables into the equation to shape your future without your knowing. This isn't necessarily bad, but it can be if you really want to accomplish something, but then get strayed away from it because of unforeseen circumstances that you could've circumnavigated.