Are We Free?

In my last video - which was meant as satire - I gave the following argument against free will - you’re made of stuff, stuff obeys laws, therefore you obey laws.

I ended up having a few discussions on this with friends so this video is is a semi-serious follow-up. 

I think it’s almost impossible to argue that free will exists, but I almost think it doesn’t matter. Let me explain.

There are two options: Free will (however you define it, either exists or it doesn’t)

If it does exist, well we have some options because we’re free - we’ll get to these in a moment.

If it doesn’t, then, well, we don’t have any choices. But we have the illusion of choice (as obviously, we experience that we’re free).

So suppose we can broadly categorise our choices into living as though free will exists, and living as though it doesn’t. 

If we believe it exists, either it’s all an illusion (and we were going to anyway) or we’re actually taking advantage of the freedom that exists, however small.

If we live as though it doesn’t, it either doesn’t matter, or it’s, uh, a bit of a waste.

This is kind of how I get out of the nihilistic hole of thinking I have no control over my life. If I choose to believe I do, there’s possible upside, but no downside. It’s a Pascal’s Wager style argument.

In the past few months this question has been whirring in my mind - in particular because I’ve been reading about Stoicism.

Stoicism is a philosophy that acted as a precursor to cognitive behavioural therapy, and basically asserts that the world exists in two categories - things we can control, and things we can’t. Stoicism suggests that the good life is when we only focus on what we can control, and we can control very little. Namely, our thoughts, our efforts and our actions. Everything else - how people react to us, what people think about us, the weather, is all out of our control.

This is a powerful philosophy, developed by emperors, slaves, POWs over thousands of years. Viktor Frankl’s famous quote “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” echoes this stoic belief. 

But it seems hard to believe that you know, I don’t fully control my thoughts - I wasn’t free to choose a different brain, or a different set of outside influences as I grew up. My attitude is probably largely shaped by genetics and so on. 

Yet it seems necessary, especially when undergoing hard times. 

The idea of not having freedom has its benefits you know - you can’t fully blame others for their actions, perhaps it could make you more compassionate. But it’s also damning, as if life isn’t what it could be, you could feel powerless to change it.

If you believe you’re free, you might be wrong, but if you’re right, that opens up the option of making things better. Sure you might fail, and that’s a heavy weight to carry, but it might be worth it. To have the opportunity to do your best, to fail, fall, dust ourselves off and try again.

And maybe in the face of it all, it is stupid to live this way, to live freely on the basis of a bet.

But stupidity of this kind is sometimes not that much different from courage - certainly when gazing into the abyss.