Free Will

"But this one's no good becuse your travelling back into time would itself chanbge those EXACT circumstances; the only way would to become independent of everything; is this possible?"

Ah, but to determine if free will exists in those circumstances I described before (going back in time), the observer need only be independent of the awareness of himself and of all of the influences that caused the person to make that decision. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If the two people partaking in this excercise of free will have no awareness of the external observer and likewise have had no influences from him, the experiment can still produce sufficient evidence to the existence or illusion of free will. For something to exist, doesn't it have to be percieved?

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance - Aldous Huxley"

"But this one's no good becuse your travelling back into time would itself chanbge those EXACT circumstances; the only way would to become independent of everything; is this possible?"

A thought just came to me about this statement. Nothing in reality is exact. There will always be minute changes. The only thing we can possibly achieve then is similarity. So I guess we can only test free will through time travel by creating similar circumstances. Me and my friend recently got into a discussion about the definition of perfection. And I believe we settled with the theory that perfection can only be achieved if something is compared to itself. You cannot, for instance, create a picnick table that is exactly the same as one you deem as perfect. Even if you made the recreation exactly the same in wood grain and structure, assuming that's possible, they still wouldn't exist in the same space. If they were side by side and you said that the recreation of the one picnick table was perfect as compared to the other, they would be different, one would be the picnick table on the left and the other would be the picnick table on the right. This same concept could be described to all aspects of life. We are not the same people as we were a second ago. Everything is constantly changing, so how are we the same people? We are similar to who we were. Our essence remains the same. Now, although perfection cannot exist by comparing two different entities, we can look at the other viewpoint of perfection and compare everything to itself. It is then that everything is perfect. I guess the lesson here is that we should all take everything for what it is and not compare it to our idea of perfection because you'll never be able to achieve it, you can only approach it. Perfection, then, is simply that line in algebra class on a graph that goes into infinity forever approaching some number.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance - Aldous Huxley"
[  Edited by ChrisD at   ]

lol. These questions seem never-ending. The idea that a tree doesnt make a sound if it falls over was put to rest by the fact that we can have devices that can measure sound (microphone) and store it (tape recorder) and know, though not 100%, that the event took place without oneself actually being there.

However, quantum phsyics and experiments thereof could dispell this. Schrodingers cat problem basically states that if a cat is sealed off in a box and left with cyanide or whatever and there's exactly a 50:50 chance of it dying; then until the experiment is measured; the cat is considered BOTH dead AND alive.

fantastic link to get a taste of the weird world of quantum:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc


If what is happening is true, and there has never been an experiment in quantum phsyics that has never not worked, then Decuis' comment is also invalid. To explain this it seems that it is probable that the future affects the past, or perhaps to be precise, future thought affects the past. I'm a bit dodgy on the ins and outs of this and how it relates to space, time and/or spacetime, but essentially experiments in parapyschology (and these are in mainstream journals) show that a person a few hours in the future thinks of a question and that a quantum computer (one that can calculate instantaneoulsy without 'steps' gives the answer that time period before. Thus, either the answer id the question or the effect is the cause (relative to convention). This is all a little weird, and physics is not equipped to answer these questions yet. But, nonetheless, if we determine free will as a function of teh knowledge of past events, as Decuis suggests, we may in fact be wrong, for future events may also affect past ones.

On a speculative note to those who understand these experiments more than I do, is quantum pushing at the fact that maybe every single atomic and subatomic particle knows each other both in the present and in the past. Does the mind work on relativistiv principles at its scale and thus are the quantum world and the normal world actually two different worlds. We've discovered a lot; but only a fraction.

""No words""

Phew! What a discussion, I don't know where to start. It was pretty deep stuff all this free will and physics and time travel and the law and such.

First of all I personally believe whole-heartedly in free will, but as a plain English girl and not too bright, I don't think the test idea at 18 would work in this country, partly because a hell of a lot of kids leave school at 16 to work and how would you test those with special needs who do not have the same capacity for understanding as you very intelligent 18 year old American genius' seem to have?

It's such a tough question that the more you try to understand it and rationalise it and give a proof either way the more confused you all appeared to get. At one point there seems to be the question not of free will exactly but of the duality of mind and body. Do you have to believe in a soul or separate spirit that exists apart from the physical to believe in free will. i.e. If you do believe that our physical bodies are just that physical, and that our brains control everything about us and that once we are dead we cease to exist then free will cannot exist?

How does it go? - "I think therefore I am"? Is that a definition of free will?

What do you think?

""Each child holds the world in an open hand to mould it into any shape they choose.""

Well i feel as if people are mixing today with free will with the mind, its more of a spirtual thing, combined with the powerful mind.

"Thy Lovest Soul"