Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

dbx999 t1_j8t6kva wrote

Another simplistic demonstration I found neat is this distribution of balls which despite the random falling behavior of each individual ball, ultimately reveals an orderly outcome of an aggregate population of balls - and consistently behaves this way over and over when the process is repeated.

So if we imagine ourselves as being one single ball, then we will feel as though the paths we “choose” will be either random or even made by our free will to pick between a right or left direction at each collision and crossroads that we encounter - and where we end up may feel as though we chose our adventure. However, the fact we all together as a group behave in such a predictable way as to repeat the bell curved distribution contradicts the idea that individual choice is separate and independent from determinism.

Our choices are not only limited (we cannot for instance choose to violate physical laws of the universe - so we’re constrained to choices bracketed inside parameters) but our choices are ultimately following a grander deterministic set of rules. What you choose and what I choose may seem independent of one another - and independent of the choices of everyone in our population- yet we will fall within a bell curve and the bell curve will be established each time by our so called choices.

We have no more free will than each of those little falling balls. Randomness exists but randomness leads to both order and predictability and consistency. Randomness does not equal complete chaos. It is merely a process to carry one thing from one state to another state and there is nothing chaotic about that process, only that from the perspective of the individual in motion, the future is opaque until it becomes the present.

3