Guest Post by Scott Adams
Regular readers know that I don’t believe in the superstition of “free will” because the laws of physics don’t stop at your skull. Whatever is happening in your brain is the result of cause and effect, and perhaps some randomness. But “free will” isn’t a real thing, except in our imaginations.
But it might be a real thing soon.
We’re hearing in the news that someday, perhaps within ten years, humans will be able to implant microchips in their brains to boost performance or fix problems. When that happens, we’ll have our first opportunity for something like genuine “free will.”
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With our current fully-organic brains, we do whatever the physics and chemistry of our brains tells us to do. You might want to lose weight, but your brain is telling you to eat that ice cream at midnight anyway, so you do. Your urges are simply stronger than your rational mind.
But what if the microchip in your brain could reverse that situation? Suppose you programmed the microchip to allow your rational mind to overcome your irrational urges. In that situation, with the help of the chip, and for the first time in your life, your rational mind would control your irrational urges. You could resist the ice cream when the time comes because you hacked your brain in advance to prevent the bad urges from overwhelming the good ones.
Your current human body allows the strongest “urge” to win every time. You later rationalize your actions after the fact as something like “thinking.” But in reality, your so-called thinking is just rationalizing for why your strongest urge won again, for the millionth time in a row. In my simple example, the urge to eat ice cream would normally be larger (in some people) than the urge to lose weight. But the microchip in the brain can turn down one of the urges based on reason. The trick is that you have to anticipate the problem (the ice cream) in advance, and make sure you have programmed the microchip to suppress that specific urge when needed.
Some of you will argue that all I have done in this example is add a new link in the chain of cause-and-effect, and in my example, everything is still predetermined. But the part I added (the microchip) allows your weak sense of reason to best your stronger urges later. That’s new. The old you always went with your strongest urges in any given moment. The microchip in your brain allows you to substitute reason in those situations by manipulating your competing urges.
The Persuasion Filter (my own term) says humans are irrational 90% of the time. We’re only rational during those rare situations where no emotional pull is involved, such as when you do boring routine tasks. But that limited power of reason rarely gets involved with our important decisions because in those situations our urges overwhelm our sense of reason. The microchip could reverse that situation and substitute our calm sense of reason where our urges would normally prevent that from happening. Thus, humans would have something like free will for the first time.
Yes, but will they then still be “human”? And if you think “hackers” are bad for your online profile now, just wait until governments can simply send out a computer virus to control the “irrational animal instincts” (read: anything that threatens their power) of their citizens.
“With an open mind, seek and listen to all the highest ideals. Consider the most enlightened thoughts. Then choose your path, person by person, each for oneself.” – Zarathustra (the real one).
Considering that Zarathustra was speaking for the big guy (Ahura Mazda), I consider him a better judge on the subject of free will than a Trump-guzzling cartoonist.
I had a 323 once. Later they called it a Protege’. Ran for 12 years. Not bad.
My son bought a 2002 Protege (a former Budget RENTAL car, even) with over 100,000 miles on it in 2012 for $2500. It limped along with ZERO maintenance except new tires and rare oil changes for another 4 years. When we moved to Missouri, we discovered it was “untaggable” due to the brake lights having an intermittent flicker we resolved by disconnecting them. Since Oklahoma requires no inspection, we continued to tag it there until it was totaled when a truck slid into it across the median on a rainy, icy day. My son walked away unharmed and the man’s insurance paid my son $2900.
Apparently, Mazda Proteges appreciate in value when they are so old no sane person would consider driving them.
The thing rattled and shook as if something were about to fall off it as it hobbled to and from my son’s college town, but the engine? I have a feeling the thing would have made it to 200,000 and kept right on going.
Mazda engines really were/are something special.
Free choice is prevalent at all levels of life — it is what most people mean when the use the term free will. Free choice trumps emotional impulses all the time, even in the most mediocre minds. Human civilization is built on the power of delayed gratification, choosing long-term gain over impulsive urges.
And what about the phenomenon of choosing what action to take while experiencing competing emotional urges?
It would be a mighty fucking leap to go from the electrode arrays that are being experimented with today, for stopping seizures, to microchip implants that are somehow “inserted” into the brain to control behavior. This is delusional fantasy on par with The Jetsons.
If you need to use your biological computer to activate your digital implant, then you’re right back at where you started, Scott.
I can say that Scott is a bloviating asshole ( just an example, not based upon any feelings either way)–now you can make the willful choice to give me a thumbs up, a thumbs down or, if it is your will, then no action at all can be taken on your part.
I was waiting for someone to say what I was thinking!! Thanks Javelin
Call me when the sexbots are perfected.
Entrained & directed by an urge, or by a chip. 6 of one….Free will exists thusly, & only thusly: Somebody dies. They leave a will. You’re in it. That’s it.
Spinoza, one of my fave jews:
“Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.”
“men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. Their idea of freedom, therefore, is simply their ignorance of any cause for their actions. As for their saying that human actions depend on the will, this is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond
thereto. What the will is, and how it moves the body, they none
of them know; those who boast of such knowledge, and feign
dwellings and habitations for the soul, are wont to provoke
either laughter or disgust.”
I enjoy alcohol–I enjoy fast foods, I enjoy younger, attractive women—I exercise my free will every time I make a conscious decision to not partake of these things. My decision is based on far more than my wants or desires but also on the ramifications it would have on family, friends, children, wife etc…I without doubt exercise free will when I make decisions for the greater good or out of empathy for others and set aside my own carnal tendencies or desires for self satisfaction. It is an act of WILL.
You all can believe this pre-determination BS and that we are all automotons, but contrary to “I Forget”‘s favorite Jew, I am not a rock without the means or self determination to make decisions that affect the trajectory of my life.
I yam what I yam. ~ Popeye.
So am I. So are you, javelin. So was Spinoza. So is everybody. Despite used user’s illusions to the contrary. The nature intersect nature factory selects & installs the options. And then each of us “just rides” a la Bill Hicks. The will will o’ the wisp – been there & done. It’s not true.
Here’s another pith quote, from Darwin’s private notebooks:
“Thought, however unintelligible it may be, seems as much a function of organ as bile of liver. This view should teach one profound humility, no one deserves credit for anything. Nor ought one to blame others.”
All too often, luck (of the draw) is recast as something that credit can be, should be, taken for – then collateralized. Like mortgage-backed in\securities.
Free will, wasn’t that a movie about a whale? Shit, I’m glad I don’t have that.
I suspect that if they ever did come out with a chip that you could program to avoid irrational actions / thoughts and steer you to logic, it would be banned in a microsecond, or dumbed down to the point where only insignificant decisions would be effected. Why? Because, if humans were able to turn off all illogical and irrational thinking, entire industries would go out of business, and the government / bankers would be overthrown tomorrow. The fed would be literally mobbed by angry protesters and most politicians would be in tribunals for all manner of charges against humanity.
The more likely scenario would be a chip that would subliminally tell you to go out and consume, and to pay your taxes, and don’t question authority, cops are heroes, well, you know where I am going with this. Just like what Carlin said – if voting meant something, they would not allow you to do it. Like every technology that has come about to supposedly “help the individual” it has turned in to an instrument by the usual suspects of the common mans slavery. This will be no different.
I’ve stated it many times before and I’ll write it again right here:
If you want to win at anything, the key is to decide in advance. If you wait until the moment of victory or defeat, you will hesitate; and those who hesitate, lose.
Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.
Now give me 20 push-ups people. Then, get out there and kick some ass.
This guy is a fucking MORAN! Go ahead, put a chip in your melon and just watch the assholes and overlords (is there an echo in here?) program it to make you do what THEY want you to do. Anyone signing up or volunteering for “chipping” will deserve everything they get.
I think you are onto something. I thought he had some good ideas for awhile. I wuz rong.
Silly Dilbert.
God not only gave man free will / freedom of choice, he did so for His angels as well. Otherwise, Lucifer never would have rebelled and Eve never would have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
No one has ever had even the slightest understanding of consciousness. Period. I hear this BS about cause and effect all the time, but no one ever seems to mention the fact that conscious thought in and of itself is a CAUSAL PARADOX. Posit: I have an bio-mechanical machine called a brain…I can apply this thing known as my will to force this biochemical machine to manipulate information (think) in new and different ways (this is NOT up for debate. I HAVE done this. I DO this on a daily basis.) However, the will MUST be wholly contained within this biochemical machine. It is a causal loop with no beginning and no end and yet consciousness itself does (or so we are compelled to believe from evidence.)
I have no explanation for this, but there are seven billion sentient meatsacks running around with similar paradoxical equipment.
This actually dovetails in nicely with HSF’s discussion on AI. Computation and Cognition are fundamentally different things. If true, then NO amount of computation can EVER sum up to cognition.
What do you get if you cross an elephant and a rhinoceros?