I am deeply committed to the idea of free will. Unlike many people in science and many more in ordinary walks of life, I really do think we are free. 

We are not free in the sense that we can jump from a cliff and fly away, or do anything similar that is beyond the limits of the human body. I also don't believe that we can, as some wide-eyed optimists say, be anything we want to be. That is absurd. But we are free in the sense that we can alter the courses of events at our level of resolution in the universe, the level of what J.L. Austin, the philosopher, called "medium-sized, dry goods". We can't influence the movements of the sun and the stars, and we can have only very limited, tiny effects on things at the atomic level. But we can do actions that increase or decrease the odds of events happening at our level of resolution. Almost always, each of us tries to influence those events so that they lead on to paths that result in more health and happiness and less illness and misery, for us and our loved ones. Our ability to do that kind of influencing has been rising since we set out on the path that can properly be called "human" more that a million years ago. 

In the philosophical view of the universe, it is quantum theory that opens up the door to freedom. The old view of science, from Newton and Laplace till the twentieth century, was that human beings were stuck in fixed sequences of events that had been preordained by the positions and speeds of particles going back to the start of the universe. If we could somehow know the positions and speeds of all of the particles in the universe, and also know all of the scientific laws by which these particles interact, then we would be able to predict all of the future and retrodict all of the past for every entity that the universe contains. In the Newtonian view, this makes perfect sense. No human brain could hold that many bits of data, but at least in principle, the future in this model is fixed.  

But quantum theory breaks the back of classical determinism. Under quantum theory's model of reality, events at the sub-atomic level, the tiny events that determine all events at higher levels, happen in probabilistic ways, not single chain, cause-effect ones. In that view of reality, there is room for humans not to make any future they can imagine, but to conceive and do actions that alter the probabilities of at least some of the various futures that might unfold so that the ones that contain a little more health for us become more likely and the ones that contain pain for us become a little less likely. And it is worth noting here that building our knowledge of the laws of the universe enables us to get better and better at spotting the opportunities for effective action on our part. In short, we pursue science because the better we get at it, the freer we become.

What does this mean for everyday life? We have every right to expect responsible action from our fellow human beings in most of the areas of living. The way a car maneuvers through traffic is the fault of the driver, not the car. If you insist on smoking tobacco, I will argue to you strongly that you are increasing your risk of one day getting cancer or having an early heart attack and draining our public health care system of resources that could have been spent on a person who got sick or hurt through no fault of her own. You are responsible, to a high degree, for your own health. 

But far more importantly, human freedom means that in most situations I respect your right to be yourself, to choose whatever paths in life you wish, as long as your choices do not directly infringe on the freedom of someone else. And you have a right to say with absolute moral conviction, "Leave me alone. When I want your help, I'll ask for it. I am a free citizen, just like you are. If my wearing my clothes backwards, or keeping my hair long, or whistling while I walk, or eating raw fish on my porch is bothering you, too bad."

The kinds of behavior that actually pose a health hazard to the community as a whole can rightfully be regulated by the community as a whole. But it is immoral for any laws to persecute an individual for living in some way that the rest of the community feels uncomfortable about if that way of living is not demonstrably harming anyone else. Muslim women who want to wear a head scarf in the West are not harming anyone when they do, and therefore, their dress code is no one else's business. The facial veil is another matter because it might enable thieves to evade being identified, but that can probably be handled too if women who want to wear a veil agree to have iris scans so they can be positively identified when they go to a government office, an airport, or a bank. 

Conversely, women in Muslim countries who go about unscarfed and unveiled are not harming anyone. They have a moral right to say, "Hands off my life. I'm not hurting you and therefore, I have a right to go my own way. If you don't like it, close your door, and let me get back to my day." 

Men and women both have a right to go and live in the wilderness if they want to. Or make their living selling old bottle caps, or live on the beach and eat kelp and clams for the rest of their lives. Or keep searching for a perpetual motion machine that they plan to then take out patents for and sell to buyers everywhere. Scientists will tell them that the idea of a perpetual motion machine is absurd by the laws of physics, but they have a right to search for one if they want to. 

What society gains by extending to its citizens as much freedom as it possibly can, within the dictates of physical safety for the community as a whole, is creativity. Invention. While most of the dreamers who chase wild ideas do wind up broke. a few come up with some invention that changes life for all of us. A wise nation loves its eccentrics, even though they do make some people nervous. We have ancient instincts that push us toward fear of the different. Xenophobia. But the whole march toward democracy has been toward a more and more diverse population. And the pluralistic societies around the world work. They are dynamic and productive. In fact, some of their most creative people flew in the face of conventional wisdom and struck out very young on their own paths in life. 

Steve Jobs, Brad Pitt, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey all quit college to strike out on their own. Jim Carrey, Al Pacino, and Walt Disney quit in high school, while in earlier times, Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln had almost no formal schooling. 

The point is that being different than the conventional is not necessarily an indicator of very much of anything. Every individual human being has a right to go his or her own way. And society gains by being tolerant. Talent and merit are more and more the qualifications which must drive a society's system when irrelevant qualities, like class, race, sex, ethnic origin, and so on are thrown out. 

It is also worth stating here that a free society is not somehow automatically a weak society. A free society can contain large numbers of citizens who really love their homeland, even though it contains lots of people that they don't understand. It is not only uniform societies in which citizens are pushed or even forced to conform that can fight. If the twentieth century, with all of its horrors, taught us anything, it taught us that. Democracies take a while to reach consensus, and longer yet to get mad. But when they do, look out.  

Let me live where I have every right to say to anyone, "I'm not hurting you so leave me alone. This is a free country. Go your own way and I will go mine." That isn't just pleasant-sounding idealism. It is a way of relating to others and to the world that makes a whole society that works. Better than any of the competing ways human beings have ever found. 

Be yourself. To the limits of your energy. Pursue your dreams, however ridiculous they may seem to everyone else around you. You are doing your fellow human beings the biggest favor when that is exactly how you live. Vaccines for smallpox and polio weren't found by charity workers looking to ease human suffering. They were found by curious, free human minds, just being themselves.