 |
|
Dance monkey. Dance. |
About this time of year we all go about making our resolutions for the coming year. I, for example, have resolved to be in the best physical shape of my life and also to have the best year of my life (God willing). The latter includes using my free will to make proper decisions based on the experience gained from bad past ones. Resolutions seem to be an acknowledgement of the hope that we do indeed possess the free will to determine our fate, regardless of what has happened to us in the past or what some “magical power” wishes upon us (but just to be safe some throw in a “God willing” whether or not they are believers). To quote Swami Vivekananda on the subject:
Each one of us is the maker of our own fate. We, and none else are responsible for what we enjoy or suffer. We are the effects, and we are the causes. We are free therefore. If I an unhappy, it is of my own making, and that shows that I can be happy if I will. The human will stands beyond all circumstance. Before it — the strong, gigantic, infinite will and freedom in man — all the powers, even of nature, must bow down, succumb and become its servants. This is the result of the law of Karma. [Link]
An article in the New York Times, however, throws us a curve ball. Perhaps we have as much free will as a monkey standing backward while riding a tiger with a mind of its own. Perhaps free will is an illusion also:
A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.
As a result, physicists, neuroscientists and computer scientists have joined the heirs of Plato and Aristotle in arguing about what free will is, whether we have it, and if not, why we ever thought we did in the first place. [Link]
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of cause-and-effect type experiments in my own life in order to test out this whole free will thing. I think I may have finally arrived at a point where I am able to make some fairly accurate predictions based on limited data, simply by paying careful attention to my thoughts as I have them. In a few instances last year I was able to predict an answer even before presented with an actual problem. I suppose this was a good thing but as recently as today (before reading this article) I had begun to question my free will. I can’t help but think (or hope) that there should be some randomness thrown in to the system to make in less neat. I also hope that there isn’t a point where you become so enamored with the idea of free will that you keep watching yourself exercise it like a never-ending game, just to prove to yourself that you are still free. Did the last few sentences feel like a confusing abyss?
Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Tufts University who has written extensively about free will, said that “when we consider whether free will is an illusion or reality, we are looking into an abyss. What seems to confront us is a plunge into nihilism and despair…”Einstein [said]… “This knowledge of the non-freedom of the will protects me from losing my good humor and taking much too seriously myself and my fellow humans as acting and judging individuals,” he said. [Link]
I don’t know about you guys but I am going to read this post again just before going to bed. I am somehow convinced that if I dream that I am a monkey riding a tiger I will be able to swivel facing forward by the time I wake up and my life will be different.
In the 1970s, Benjamin Libet, a physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, wired up the brains of volunteers to an electroencephalogram and told the volunteers to make random motions, like pressing a button or flicking a finger, while he noted the time on a clock.
Dr. Libet found that brain signals associated with these actions occurred half a second before the subject was conscious of deciding to make them.
The order of brain activities seemed to be perception of motion, and then decision, rather than the other way around.
In short, the conscious brain was only playing catch-up to what the unconscious brain was already doing. The decision to act was an illusion, the monkey making up a story about what the tiger had already done. [Link]
I recognize that this Times article might be a bit too deep for the first day back to work but I know that I’m not the only one wondering how free they truly are today.
But most of the action is going on beneath the surface. Indeed, the conscious mind is often a drag on many activities. Too much thinking can give a golfer the yips. Drivers perform better on automatic pilot. Fiction writers report writing in a kind of trance in which they simply take dictation from the voices and characters in their head, a grace that is, alas, rarely if ever granted nonfiction writers. [Link]
I agree with this. Some of my best writing can be attributed to voices in my head.
I sought clarity from mathematicians and computer scientists. According to deep mathematical principles, they say, even machines can become too complicated to predict their own behavior and would labor under the delusion of free will. [Link]
This is true too. It is what is happening on Battlestar Galactica so it must be.
Keep dancing you monkeys.
