posts/on-free-will/

[utterances-bot]

On Free Will: Part 1

About a year ago, I was running at night, around 9’o clock. I was around a sharp bend and Sam Harris’s voice came on, “there’s no free will”. I had to take a pause from running because it was one of those statements that sounds like bullshit but also induces some sort of anger. I think to myself, “I had an inactive lifestyle, I decided to get better and I started running.

https://bejoygm.com/posts/on-free-will/

[bejoygm]

1. American History X
2. The Shawshank Redemption
3. Catch me if you can

[sharathannaiah]

1. Interstellar
2. The Shawshank Redemption
3. 3 idiots

[sanchitsharma]

Gangs of Wasseypur 1, 2 The Man from Earth 12 Angry Men

[divyanshu013]

Solid post :heart:, personal favorites:

1. Back to the Future
2. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
3. Sing Street

[nidhi-tandon]

1. Whiplash
2. Interstellar
3. Shawshank Redemption

[nidhi-tandon]

So what if we think about free will in contextual way. Like for e.g, given a choice of movies, we can choose what we like based on how we feel about it though those choices and the feelings can be biased based on a lot of factors like our past experiences, environment, people etc. but we can still call it free will considering we have the chance to make a choice based on how we are feeling at the moment. This is just a subset of a bigger problem where overall we have no free will but given choices and considering other factors, we can still choose to pursue free will or not. What say?

[bejoygm]

@nidhi-tandon thanks for that well put thought.

The decisions taken after a particular feeling are not completely detached from the feeling itself. Like studies have shown that if you are super hungry and go grocery shopping, you are more likely to pick up junk food. Some parts of our neurons fire up to crave that high calorie food.

But it doesn't not mean that you cannot resist your feelings to take rational decisions. Like if an athlete goes to a supermarket, they are more likely to resist junk food. We look at them and say they have a higher degree of willpower. But feelings and thoughts are kind of intertwined, one happening after the other in endless cycles.

If you have ever resisted some junk food before, you will think that you are making conscious choices. But you will be quick to notice that you made those choices because you have this "feeling" of being better or healthier. One feeling is overpowering the other feeling. But you don't really know why you have a preference for that particular feeling over the other.

Since at any given moment it is impossible to isolate an action from the previous states, and we didn't have any control over those states to begin with, it is safe to say that those states will impact your next actions, luck being the only external factor. But we humans are extremely lucky animals, so far at least :)