

Brain Scanner Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them - ericb
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision

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dcurtis
Wow, this is amazing.

Money quote: "Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the
time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done," said
study co-author John-Dylan Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist.

Most of the work has already been done, eh? So long, free will.

~~~
sox
Some comments... <http://reddit.com/info/1cqi4/comments/c1ctfp>

"Better still, check out Grey Walter's precognitive carousel projector
experiments. He implanted electrodes in patients' heads, and gave them a
slideshow to watch, with a button to push to advance to the next slide. But
the button was fake. What really moved the slide was a motor potential
building in the brain before they were aware of the desire to move it. It
unnerved the patients, because it seemed to them as if the projector was
always advancing just before they'd consciously decided to advance it."

" Also many said that they had not yet decided to change the picture, but were
just about to make that decision. These findings were replicated by German
researchers, who found the time delay between the brain trigger and subject
awareness that a decision had been made, to be between 0.5 to 1.0 seconds

[...]

The results here however, indicate that the self-aware part of thought is only
informed of a decision after it has actually been made by unconscious
processes. Your mind has made a decision before it lets you know what it is,
(the precognitive carousel manages to bypass the inbuilt delay necessary to
maintain the illusion of free will)."

~~~
phaedrus
From a philosophical standpoint, I surmise free will does exist over the long-
term course of your life - but not the short term.

