Hi Michael,
Interesting exercises about thoughts and free will.
I get where you’re coming from, but here is something to ponder:
Free will comes from the fact that we experience hesitation. If there is no free will, then there could not be hesitation. The mere fact of experiencing hesitation is proof that things are not working like clockwork. If your brain would take decisions like a computer or a neural network, then even if a decision is 50.000000001% more “likely” to be the “right” thing to do, based on the interactions between all your neurons and connections in your brain, then there still wouldn’t be hesitation. You would just DO it or be conscious of taking that decision. For a computer, there is no difference in taking an action with 100% certainty, or 50.000001% certainty. In the end, it translates this information to a 1 or 0, a “yes” or “no”, a “do” or “not do”, a binary option.
However, the fact that the Universe has lead up to the emergence of life and even us, self-aware beings, is proof that there IS some form of “determinism” and not just randomness in all of this.
I would argue that our “free will” is akin to that of the cells in our body. When you cut yourself, it’s not like every single white cell has a “predetermined” destiny, and knows exactly which bacteria to take on, at which time, and everything is plotted like a movie. Rather, the END RESULT is predetermined. The body has this kind of “global intelligence” which makes sure that even if some white cells get lost along the way, or decide to NOT act according to their “genetic conditioning”, overall, there is a 99,9% chance that your wound will be disinfected. And if it fails, there is a plan B, and a plan C etc. Otherwise, you wouldn’t stay alive for very long. By the same token, it’s not like our own lives are predetermined. But the Universe has a sort of “global intelligence” which makes sure that “all that can happen will happen”. Here, we are getting metaphysical. I believe that we ourselves, are just one “cell” inside a global organism which we are far from imagining. If you’re interested, you can go down the rabbit hole here:
