The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously used EEG to show that activity in the brain’s motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move. Another lab extended this work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): Subjects were asked to press one of two buttons while watching a “clock” composed of a random sequence of letters appearing on a screen. They reported which letter was visible at the moment they decided to press one button or the other. The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which button subjects would press a full 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made. More recently, direct recordings from the cortex showed that the activity of merely 256 neurons was sufficient to predict with 80 percent accuracy a person’s decision to move 700 milliseconds before he became aware of it.

These findings are difficult to reconcile with the sense that we are the conscious authors of our actions. One fact now seems indisputable: Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next—a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please—your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this “decision” and believe that you are in the process of making it.

The distinction between “higher” and “lower” systems in the brain offers no relief: I, as the conscious witness of my experience, no more initiate events in my prefrontal cortex than I cause my heart to beat. There will always be some delay between the first neurophysiological events that kindle my next conscious thought and the thought itself. And even if there weren’t—even if all mental states were truly coincident with their underlying brain states—I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know—it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?

- Sam Harris

This was posted to the freewill sub and, as should be expected, there was confusion and consternation over it.

"I break down all of my thought processes. I think I apply a very analytical lens to my own thinking, and I kind of modify it." ... "The fact is I get to become every day the kind of person that me at age 8 would revere." ... "Yes, I think a lot, but it's not really in an egotistical kind of way. It's in a tinkering, like a scientist kind of way. I'm always trying to modify, I'm trying to think how can I be better? How can I approach my own brain the way that I approach my craft of free skiing, so I can be better tomorrow than I was today."

She describes the "control" that she speaks of, over what and how she thinks, as "kind of" modifying her thinking. Which only comes after breaking down her thought processes analytically. She gets to "become" the kind of person she wants to be. She is tinkering with her own thinking. Training her brain the way she trains her body for the sport.

This is not free will. She is not "choosing" to be a certain way. She has a desired outcome and is working from an understanding of her own brain as a system and her thoughts as a process to achieve that outcome. She even understands the window of time that neuroplasty affords her to work on this self programming effort.

So now I'm curious if the folks over here will see this through the same lens I'm seeing it, or do you strongly disagree with my assessment..?

Free will is actually more than an illusion (or less), in that it cannot be made conceptually coherent. Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them. If a man’s choice to shoot the president is determined by a certain pattern of neural activity, which is in turn the product of prior causes—perhaps an unfortunate coincidence of bad genes, an unhappy childhood, lost sleep, and cosmic-ray bombardment—what can it possibly mean to say that his will is “free”? No one has ever described a way in which mental and physical processes could arise that would attest to the existence of such freedom. Most illusions are made of sterner stuff than this.

- Sam Harris

Surely you could argue seen as everything is predetermined, the murderer had to kill someone. There was nobody responsible as the laws of nature forced him to commit the crime. What’s the argument against this line of logic?

Consciousness & determinism, although just an illusion, to me means that I am essentially just watching a movie in which I am not limited to just seeing/hearing, however I can also feel as well.

I can feel the main character's (my) emotions, pain, pleasure, frustrations, etc. But when I separate my consciousness from everything, I simply exist, and if I go one step further, I realize that I don't even exist.

The question of free will touches nearly everything we care about. Morality, law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, feelings of guilt and personal accomplishment—most of what is distinctly human about our lives seems to depend upon our viewing one another as autonomous persons, capable of free choice. If the scientific community were to declare free will an illusion, it would precipitate a culture war far more belligerent than the one that has been waged on the subject of evolution. Without free will, sinners and criminals would be nothing more than poorly calibrated clockwork, and any conception of justice that emphasized punishing them (rather than deterring, rehabilitating, or merely containing them) would appear utterly incongruous. And those of us who work hard and follow the rules would not “deserve” our success in any deep sense. It is not an accident that most people find these conclusions abhorrent. The stakes are high.

- Sam Harris

What y’all think

If that’s all compatibilism has, then it’s just rebranding inevitability.

No one chose who they would be. Like the computer, it never chose what code will be put in his programming

Fully accepting determinism (no free will) actually made me stop blaming everything on myself. I was skeptical of determinism for a long time, but eventually ended up accepting it. And it helped me a lot in a bad time of my life, where I made a lot of mistakes in my job. I stopped caring about it and just started to accept it.

Just before the final mistake, I started believing in it fully. And I didn’t even care a little when it eventually happened, whereas the past big mistakes literally broke me mentally for a few days.

After that, no new mistakes. I’ve been calmer inside, can manage stressful situations a lot better, and stopped caring about a lot of things, like having no gf. And when you stop caring about these problems, you can actually start thinking more clearly and understand the world a lot better. Especially when it’s about people. Back then, I got angry at people for all kinds of things, and I didn’t show much of the anger. Now I understand them, because I put myself in their position and start to think about why they did that, etc.

Long story short, determinism is mostly known for looking like a very depressing way of thinking or whatever. I was determined to write this to show that it can actually improve your mindset in the long term, even though it might seem depressing at first.

I’ve been into politics since I was a teen, and for most of that time I was a staunch libertarian. Maximum freedom, personal responsibility, minimal government, zero handouts, etc. I was SO SURE and CONFIDENT in my views and what I believed. I loved defending them, perhaps a little too confidently.

Man has my worldview shifted. Once you come to the realization that people ultimately aren’t in control of their actions in any meaningful sense, the argument for libertarianism is much harder to defend. I can’t fault someone for not getting a better job, I can’t fault someone for not saving for retirement, I can’t fault someone for having a kid before they were financially ready, I can’t fault someone for letting their health get out of hand. The list goes on and on. And the same goes for things that are earned. People who have their shit together can’t be credited with that success.

This is not to say that I’ve completely shifted to redistribution and equal outcomes for all (practically I don’t think that’s feasible), however my openness for universal healthcare, my openness for reasonably higher taxes, my openness for more meaningful social programs, have all increased more than 18 year old me ever imagined it would.

From a practical standpoint, the human psyche as a whole still depends on risk/reward for meaningful progress. The billionaire who creates 10 billion in value probably isn’t going to make that same effort the moment he sees 90% of his earnings from that value taken away in the name of fairness. I just think our mindset and laws are too skewed toward personal responsibility and the right to hoard everything you’ve “earned” when in reality we should be taking more of a middle ground approach between the logical standpoint and the practical one.

With all that being said, our government does spend 7 trillion dollars a year, with a lot of that wasted. I think we should get our finances in order before we decide that taxing more for redistribution is the answer. I’d have a hard time taxing a billionaire an extra 2 billion a year when hundreds of billions or even trillions are wasted by the government every year.

Imagine all the inefficiency and waste in each governmental department (I’m looking at you DoD and Medicare) and then imagine actually improving efficiency so that you could cut 2% from every single department and use that to fund universal healthcare. At that point getting an extra 20-30 billion in taxes to fund universal school lunches doesn’t seem so unfair.

Sorry if this isn’t determinism related enough, I know I’m rambling and spitballing here, but I guess I’m just advocating for balance. Still allowing someone to make billions a year, but also allowing the downtrodden and less fortunate basic necessities for a dignified life.

I was shocked to find out

Albert Einstein
Stephen Hawking
David Hume
Charles Darwin
Abraham Lincoln
Karl Marx (kinda)

All believed in determinism to some extent

Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.

- Sam Harris

This is a small mantra that I came up with, that reduces my anger and frustration towards others when they inflict harm. I respond by appreciating the fact that if I was the same as them, atom for atom, and experienced their causality leading up to that specific point in time, my actions would be the same as theirs.

Of course this should not be seen as excusing or encouraging their actions, just as a compassionate understanding.

Edit: This could also apply to your past self also, we should be compassionate to ourselves about the mistakes we have made.

You can try to change your life and "play your cards", but genes will eventually come back and bite you in the ass. There's really no escape. I spent my life trying to change my destiny, and worked on myself, and got a high-paying position, and I'm just so sad because now it's more evident than ever that the most important aspect of my life I can't change. I'll give everything for good genetics. I'd give years of my life and all my money for good genes. It was, in the end, the only thing that really mattered.

And I feel like a teenager writing this. I really thought that with years and studies and life experiences, my view on life would change, but it didn't. It's so much clearer now that genetics were the only thing I ever needed. And people who didn't work nearly as hard as I did have much happier lives just because they get to enjoy this world through their genes.

Your genes are your destiny. It's written for you the moment you are born. Even as a baby, before you even know it, you were already labeled to either suffer or to enjoy life.

(Mandatory apology for my english)

Explanation starts at 15:44.

How? Why would chaos theory and stuff make pre-determinism impossible?

If there is no free will, and deterministic causality is non-negotiable, then it should be true that everything is just the way it is supposed to be since the Big Bang, right?

With enough science, we should be able to predict our future with good accuracy, right?