(credit: Biswarup Ganguly, Wikimedia Commons)

                                 How Human Free Will Works 

We can’t prove beyond logical challenge that we have free will. The arguments for and against the claim that we are free run on into infinitely finer subtleties until they, as Keats said, “tease us out of thought.” But we can assume that we have it and then follow that assumption to see what results it produces. That much was shown in our last two posts.

The assumption of human free will leads to fruitful ways of thinking in the sense that the assumption – if we accept it even provisionally – enables us to get good results in the real, material world. It tells us to watch, think, and act. Be daring. All the alternative assumptions get poorer real-world results.

Science outruns superstition in the long races.

Today, for the pleasure of indulging our curiosity for a while, let’s consider a model of how our freedom might be working.

We could have sensors attached to our bodies, many installed from factory (i.e. at birth), that enable our brains to constantly scan incoming data from cameras, microphones, contact sensors, heat sensors, balance and orientation sensors, and aroma and flavor sensors. Our senses, in other words. All of these can be imitated by current technologies. There’s nothing far-fetched here.

Then we might have programs in our brains that constantly scan and sift our sense data, current and stored, to identify data that indicate either something of use for promoting our well-being, or something that might pose a threat to our well-being, is coming at us. The proposed scanning and sifting program may be factory-installed (e.g. little babies fear falling) or alternatively, some programs may be written by the organism itself. (In other words, we have the capacity to learn from our mistakes and avoid making them in future.) Or programs may be socially installed. Much of what and how we think is shaped by our mentors – parents, teachers, coaches, the media, and so on.

                          

                                        (credit: Affebook, via Wikimedia Commons)

The human animal is complex and amazing. We are born fearing falling, but we can learn not to touch the cactus plants in the house. 

Can all human activity be construed under this model? It seems to me that the answer is “yes”. When circumstances are not urgent – i.e. when not afraid or hungry or driven by any other urgent need – humans often pursue either their creativity, making new things out of familiar materials, or curiosity, exploring the edges of what is familiar to discover more about their surroundings.

Why would programs for creativity and curiosity be installed in our computer brains? Because over many trials, failures, and successes – over generations – humans programmed with creativity and curiosity out-survived others who had no such programming. Evolution favors curious and creative tribes.

In English, an old adage says that curiosity killed the cat. But cats never reach the heights humans do. In Jesus’ parable, those who invest their “talents” increase their holdings, and those who hide them under a rock, lose even what they have. In parable form, he’s teaching: get out there in the world, engage with the things in it, take the risks. That way of life works. The alternative of adhering to what seems familiar and safe does not work nearly as well.

                                       robotics engineer, David Hanson, with "Sophia" 

                                      (credit: Sazzad Hossain, via Wikimedia Commons

Existence for any entity (human, robot, or Martian) in a quantum, uncertain, probabilistic universe is more likely to continue if it lives in creative, curious, active, daring ways.

Fire. The wheel. Arrows. Stirrups. Gunpowder. Antibiotics. Cars. These came from people who did not settle for the status quo. When they had the time to pursue something they found interesting, they did the pursuing.  

Once we assume that the universe runs on probabilistic principles, and that the septillions of particles in the universe are crashing into each other all the time, it is reasonable to infer that “life forms” – things that hold their shapes and their internal order – given enough matter, space, and time, are going to emerge. Roll a thousand dice a septillion times and snake eyes on all the dice will come up. (For readers not familiar with this expression in English, "snake eyes" means the dice come up as all ones. A remote possibility, but still a possible one.) 

In our universe, we have a lot of matter, space, and time. Life emerged, and some of its forms became freer and more conscious for statistical reasons. If we live as if we are free to act in ways that improve the odds of future events that will favor our tribe’s expanding and to reduce the odds of future events that may harm or even wipe out our tribe, our tribe will survive. If not, not. 

“Life forms” are more likely to continue to exist against the downhill flow of entropy if they keep becoming more and more sophisticated at defying their own destruction, even becoming capable of reproducing themselves. So we do.

That is the “why” of human freedom.    

But the life forms’ reproducing of themselves is another story. For today, we will settle for accepting that, yes, it is plausible in a quantum universe that something like what we call “life” sooner or later was bound to emerge, and then it will keep getting stronger and more complex as time passes. One of the life forms was bound to reach self-consciousness and the concept of its own free will. The “meaty” computers even became capable of making better versions of themselves. And did. That’s human freedom, how and why it works.

   

                                                    Curious child, smelling flower 

                                             (credit: Flickr, via Wikimedia Commons)

All the technology described above now exists in the software world, which has nothing like the complexity of the living world, though it is growing by the hour. But if how living things, and especially humans, continue to exist against Physics is enormously complex, this should not surprise us.

We have had nearly four billion years of experimenting and refining the basic life idea; we are on the verge of getting it really right. We are on the verge of carrying our planet’s ways to the stars.

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless, be fruitful and multiply.

And once in a while, party. You have surely earned it.