
Free will experiments reveal how little we know about our minds - scorchio
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150806-why-your-intuitions-about-the-brain-are-wrong
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nota_bene
There is no need for these experiments: There is no free will, and you can
understand this by simply applying pure logic/rational thinking:

When you're born (the "1st second" of your life) you're given 2 variables: (1)
Your genome and (2) the environment you're born into. You have absolutely no
control whatsoever over these 2 variables (with their infinite number of sub-
variables they "contain"). And everything else that follows (the "2nd, 3rd,
nth... second" of your life) is a function of these 2 initial variables: And
this includes your brain that you will use to make the infinite number of
choices in your life (both consciously, such as "I'm going to buy milk" and
subconsciously, such as "firing neuron X at second Y", "moving atom A to
location B", etc.).

EDIT: Downvoters - please state why this would be wrong.

~~~
ucaetano
Depends on how you define free will:

1) Free will is the capacity to act at our own discretion, independent of our
current surrounding and context, including the physical state of our body and
brain

2) Free will is the capacity to act at our own discretion, independent of our
current surroundings and context, not including the physical state of our body
and brain

Note: In both cases I'm assuming there is no soul, mind beyond the body, etc.

If you define free will as (1), then there is no free will, since any decision
will always be subject to the physical state of my body and brain (except, of
course, if there's something not physical in play as described in my note).

If you define free will as (2), then there is free will, since despite the
context surrounding you, you can still make decisions independent of it.

The same could be applied to a state-machine (finite or not): 1) Free will is
the capacity of a machine to produce outputs independent of it's current
internal states and the external inputs 2) Free will is the capacity of a
machine to produce outputs independent of it's external inputs

(1) means no state-machines have free will, (2) means they can have free will.

~~~
nota_bene
The issue with (2) is that the physical state of our body and brain is a
function of all past and current surroundings and context (including our
genome). Which means it can never be independent, but is instead fully
defined.

~~~
ucaetano
Exactly, so it all depends on how you define free will.

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cristianpascu
Much of the confusion about free will and how much free is our will comes from
experiments that study limit cases like our body reactions to external stimuli
or something of the sort.

But I don't think anyone can seriously state that we are _absolutely_ free,
specially when our bodies are involved. Extreme cases reveal that that there's
much to say about how we (body+mind) work, and we're certainly not absolutely
free.

The simplest and, perhaps, best argument for our partial freedom is that we
can ask questions. I don't think there is any kind of property in the physical
world that would yield questions and truth-intuition about answers to those
questions. Electrons just bump into each other. They don't ask questions about
it. They move on like there's no tomorrow.

~~~
Retric
Software which clearly does not have free will asked a question allowing you
to enter that post.

So, if you exclude the language part of asking questions as cruft the type of
experiments that human baby's do is the same type of experemnts birds do when
learning to fly. But, biological examples of this get really simple and plenty
of people have built non biological examples.

At a lower level you can argue that QM shows every time a wave function
collapsed a question was asked and answered.

Which is really the issue of free will, most definions boil down to either,
'humans' or include simple systems that clearly lack choice.

~~~
rrss1122
You could think of that software's question as an extension of the
creator/owner of the software. Said person is asking for your opinion and
delegating to the software the ability to receive your opinion and display it
to other people.

~~~
Retric
By that notion, by opening or closing a door or even standing on some sand I
endow it with free will. Which is an odd way of looking at the world as more
or less everything on the earth would then be endowed with free will.

Honestly, I can see that what you are taking about being a property. But
calling it free will just muddles the debate.

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stefanix
About the experiment, how can Libet conclusively derive the decision came
after the initial EEG measurement. I mean how did he know the duration it
takes to report the decision. The origin of the decision to being able to
reflect on it may take a variable amount of time therefore invalidating the
claim.

Also the strict separation of conscious/unconsciousness seems simplistic. Most
actions may very well be processed subconsciously with very little decision
making bubbling up to consciousness. Driving a car comes to mind. This also
means when asking a subject to process something impulsively the vast majority
of their actions may be subconscious.

tl;dr People spacing out does not invalidate free will.

~~~
return0
The subjects reported the position of the dot, that's how he knew the exact
time point in which they were 'aware' of their impending action. There was a
comfortable time difference between the two.

More recent experiments have been able to "foresee" actions ~ 10 seconds
earlier:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18408715](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18408715)

These studies do not invalidate free will, they just show that free will is
not something ethereal, but a product of the specific makeup of ourselves,
which is encoded in our brains.

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scorchio
Sam Harris' book on the same subject - [http://www.samharris.org/free-
will](http://www.samharris.org/free-will)

~~~
andy_ppp
Yes, it's a brilliant book that proves what we see as free will is obviously
not free and it's not even up for contention that we actually have the ability
to decide, even though it feels as though we do.

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robgibbons
The law of causality is ultimately incompatible with free will. You cannot
have truly autonomous agency within a physical framework ruled by cause and
effect. To truly express freedom of will, without influence from any prior
cause, you would literally need to exist in your own isolated vacuum of space
and time (no outside influence from environment), having also created yourself
(no outside influence from genetics). That is to say, if you believe you have
free will, the burden is on you to prove that your body, and your brain
itself, are not bound by the laws of the physically causal universe.

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coldtea
As stefanix writes:

> _Also the strict separation of conscious /unconsciousness seems simplistic.
> Most actions may very well be processed subconsciously with very little
> decision making bubbling up to consciousness._

This. The "unconscious" processing an answer/reaction belongs to the same
entity that the conscious part belongs too.

Implying we're some kind of automata because reactions can come pre-processed
by the subconscious part misses the point.

The subconscious part is the same "self" that the conscious part is, it's not
just what we can think "out loud" in our head that counts as us taking a
decision.

~~~
evanpw
This is scientific evidence, not mathematical proof.

One way to frame the concept of free will is that some subjective experiences
_cause_ rather than are caused by or are identical with, physical changes in
the brain.

One way to test for causation is to see which one happens first. If free will
(at least as defined above) is true, we expect that some subjective
experiences should precede the corresponding physical change in the brain. If
free will is false, then we should expect subjective experiences to be
simultaneous with or come after the corresponding brain change.

Since the actual result of the experiment (brain change comes before
subjective experience) is less likely under the "free will" hypothesis than it
is under the alternative, by Bayes' rule, it should make you less confident of
the existence of free will. If you believe that this result would be only
slightly less likely even if free will were true (as you apparently do), then
you should update your estimate only a little bit, but this is still the right
_kind_ of experiment to run if you want to test for free will.

~~~
coldtea
> _One way to test for causation is to see which one happens first. If free
> will (at least as defined above) is true, we expect that some subjective
> experiences should precede the corresponding physical change in the brain.
> If free will is false, then we should expect subjective experiences to be
> simultaneous with or come after the corresponding brain change._

Only if you assume that "free will" implies only conscious decisions.

Your subconscious brain is part of the same self as "you". So whatever you
think as your "free will" is also part of that, just that part of it plays as
"voice inside your brain" (conscious thoughts) and some of it does not.

It's not like the subscoscious processing is done by some other entity and
imposed upon you.

------
dmfdmf
Would the statement "Free will is an illusion" be less of a self-contradiction
than when stated as a question? Hard to say.

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wbillingsley
Libet's study is terrible -- as with many of these studies it's famous for its
controversial conclusion, but its flaws are very obvious.

He specifically asked his subjects to listen for an urge rather than applying
free will ("let the urge [to move] appear on its own at any time without any
pre-planning or concentration on when to act”). That the urge is measurable
before the decision, then, just means his subjects did what he asked them to
-- to wait for a feeling of an urge.

And frankly, it's most likely the urge was the tension of having sat there a
while, knowing someone's expecting you to feel an urge to move your arm...

1\. Ask subjects to wait for an urge to react to (and therefore not apply free
will)

2\. (Nice-sounding but actually irrelevant measurement set-up with dots,
clocks and electrodes)

3\. Observe subjects decided after a measurable urge

4\. Conclude free will doesn't exist, rather than that your subjects did what
you asked them to in step 1.

~~~
return0
Thats a simplistic refutation. There is a long line of studies on the subject
summarized in wikipedia here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will)

~~~
wbillingsley
Yes, indeed it is a simple flaw. One of my criticisms of the paper, given how
popular it is to write about it in the media, is quite how obvious the flaws
are.

------
skwosh
Our perception of time is an also at odds with our scientific understanding of
the universe, but that doesn't mean that it isn't real...

------
danbruc
In my opinion it is almost trivial to see that something is fishy with the
idea of free will - just try to formalize it.

Assume you are sitting in a restaurant facing the decision to either order a
steak or some pasta. One possibility is that your decision is a deterministic
choice, a function of the current state of your body (What nutrients do you
need?), your brain (What are your past experiences with steak and pasta?) and
your environment (What does the steak on the neighboring table look like?).
This does not resemble what I would call free will.

The other extreme is that your decision is completely random and not
influenced by anything. This assumes that there is real randomness in our
universe which is, as far as I know, an open question. There is no real
randomness in classical mechanics, only apparent randomness due to ignorance
of microscopic degrees of freedom. Quantum mechanics seems to have
probabilistic features but they are, as far as I can tell, at odds with the
unitary evolution of quantum systems and it remains to be seen whether there
is real randomness in quantum mechanics or not.

But lets just assume there is real randomness, at worst, if there is only
apparent randomness, this option becomes deterministic and degenerates into
the first option. There is still some freedom in this option, namely the
probability distribution over the different choices. This probability
distribution may just be what it is for no deeper reason, a fundamental
property of the source of randomness. In this case I wouldn't call it free
will, too, because the choice is entirely random.

It may also be the case that the probability distribution gets shaped in a
deterministic way. The steak on the neighboring table looks really good making
it more likely that you choose it but there is still some probability that you
will choose pasta. This is kind of a middle ground between the first two
options, the final choice is random but the probabilities reflect your current
and past states and the state of the environment in a deterministic way. But
again I would not call this free will.

So what would free will have to look like? The choice must not entirely depend
on the current state of you and your environment but it must also not be
completely independent of it, i.e. be completely random. I spent quite some
time thinking about this but I am completely unable to come up with something
that is in some sense between deterministic and random (including
deterministically shaped randomness). Am I - or even everyone - missing a
(fundamental) third option? Is thinking about free will in terms of systems
and states and state changes in some way inappropriate? For the moment I will
side with the people denying the existence of free will, if someone can
formalize what free will really means I will reconsider things.

~~~
vixen99
Which leaves criminals where?

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AdieuToLogic
This appears to be a bit of bubblegum neuroscience. First, the article states:

    
    
      He asked participants to report, using the clock,
      exactly the point when they made the decision to
      move.
    

Then, it goes on to say:

    
    
      There’s no reason to think that we are reliable
      reporters of every aspect of our minds.
    

Well, this is quite the conundrum. Which is it? Report _exactly_ when you do
something or accept that we are not "reliable reporters?" Yet the author goes
on to further say:

    
    
      Even supporters of Libet have to admit that
      the situation used in the experiment may be too
      artificial to be a direct model of real everyday
      choices.
    

Given the delays in perception we all experience due to working at "chemical
speed", as opposed to light speed, this experiment smacks of fast-twitch
muscle measurement more so than exercising free will.

Even the original premise of Libet's experiment negates a free will choice:

    
    
      “let the urge [to move] appear on its own at any time without any pre-planning or concentration on when to act”
    

How is this free will? Free will is a conscious _choice_ to do something, not
a subconscious act.

~~~
raverbashing
Really, the experiment seems to boil down to 'the decision happens before it
is noticed'

It seems a big jump to extrapolate this to 'there is no such thing as free
will'

~~~
varjag
It can also be a case there's a cognitive delay associated with taking note of
the time. The mechanism involved into decision making for muscular movements
might be dramatically faster than cortical perception and verbalization of
time.

