The illusion of free will

A friend who has started a meditation practice using the Waking Up App reports that one of his gains has been “dissolution of the illusion of free will.”

This is a big deal because free will is mostly an illusion. Not always. But mostly. And dissolving the illusion is goodness.

Who gives a fuck?

I do, for one.

So should you (I’m speaking to you, Future Self, among others).

Why it matters

Our conditioning constrains what we call our lives. We think we are free agents, but we’re usually just robots doing what we’ve been conditioned to do.

If you imagine that free will exists when it doesn’t you are preserving and promoting an illusion.

By preserving the illusion, you keep yourself and others trapped.

The only way to become free is to see through the illusion of free will and step outside of it.

The only way to help others to become free is to help them step out.

Initial conditions of conditioning

Once upon a time, we were infants.

Our biology conditioned our behavior. It conditioned us to seek pleasure. To avoid discomfort and pain. It conditioned us to mimic others. To repeat what was successful. To vary what we did and choose the best variant.

All mindless. All conditioned.

Our inborn conditioning was designed to help us survive and to expand the scope, complexity, variety, and sophistication of our conditioning.

Our inborn conditioning let our environment—our parents, the people around us, and our culture—further condition us. When we did what the environment wanted, the environment rewarded us. When we did what the environment did not want, the environment did not reward us—or it punished us.

And thus, the environment conditioned us.

Why?

Because their environment had conditioned the people in our environment to condition babies, children, and even other adults.

Why?

To pass on the knowledge that’s helped them survive.

When people condition the people around them, they preserve the knowledge they’ve acquired through their own conditioning and the knowledge they’ve acquired throughout their lives.

Cross-generational and cross-cultural conditioning is a survival strategy.

Conditioned responses

When people do things that others don’t like, they often react with blame, or resentment, or anger or worse. They react more strongly when they know that the offender was aware of the effect they might create—and did it anyway.

Fuck them, anyway!

Why do people do things like that? Because their conditioning leads them to do them.

Why do we react that way? Because our conditioning leads us to react.

Reacting is reasonable, but it’s not reasoned. It’s conditioned.

It’s part of the illusion of free will. We believe that people have a choice in what they do and when they seem to make a bad choice, we choose to respond as though they actually made a choice.

But it’s an illusion.

It’s conditioning, all the way down.

And seeing through the illusion can help us.

Stepping outside of conditioning

Long ago, Gautama Buddha was able to break away from his conditioning. He conditioned others to break from their conditioning. And so on through the ages.

I was conditioned to read books and sometimes follow the suggestions I read in books. After I read the Sam Harris book, “Waking Up”, my conditioning led to me follow his suggestions.

And so my conditioning caused me to step outside my conditioning.

It was not the first time I had stepped out of my conditioning. I had done so several times during my time with Scientology. But it was the first time I had a reliable and repeatable way to step out on my own.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll realize that almost all your moment-to-moment behavior and even your reflective decision making is automatic. Conditioned. Mindless. Robotic.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll want to spend more time apart from your conditioning.

I believe it’s possible for anyone to step outside their conditioning, but I also think that it’s not easy to remain there.

The illusion that we are not conditioned is convincing. A logical argument that almost all of our behavior is conditioned is not enough to penetrate the illusion. It takes effort even to step outside momentarily. And it takes a lot more to step out long enough to change our conditioning.

I believe we can be free of our conditioning only to the degree that we’re aware of our conditioning.

We can free ourselves from reacting to another’s conditioning to the degree that we are aware of our own conditioning—and theirs.

But ironically, we’ve got to condition ourselves to do that.

​

Four free will fables

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As Fred was growing up, his parents told him what to do in order to be a good person, and that's what he does. Or tries to do. When a situation he's in matches something that he's been told about, he does what he's been told to do in that situation. When there's no clear match and he needs to decide what to do, he follows the decision-making guidelines that he's been told to use.

Does Fred exhibit free will? Does he have it?

If you asked him whether he did or not have free will he would have said yes.

Or he would have said no, it all depends on what he's been told.

Do you think he exhibits free will?

Jane was raised differently than Fred. Her parents also told her what to do in order to be a good person. And one of the things they told her was: "Question everything! Don't take anything on authority." Then they laughed and added, "Including this."

So she does what she's been told. She's open to different points of view and chooses among them.

If you asked her whether he did or not have free will she would probably have said yes.

Do you think she exhibits free will?

Tommy grew up just like Jane, but his parents also told him:  "never make an important decision until you've spent at least five minutes inventing plausible alternatives, then choose the best among them."

When Tommy is faced with an important decision he does a lot of thinking because that's what he's been told to do. Sometimes he thinks of things that are the same as or based on things he's read. From time to time he thinks of something that he can't remember having read or heard, so he thinks that it's his own idea.

If you asked Tommy whether he has free will he might give you a quick answer. If you told him it was an important decision, he might take five minutes thinking, then give you an answer.

Do you think he exhibits free will?

Mary was raised like Tommy, or maybe like Jane, or maybe even like Fred, but her path diverged after she had what she came to call "waking up." She suddenly realized that she lived most of her life in a kind of trance state, doing things automatically. Then she lost that realization. Then, later, she had it again and realized that she'd spent the time between the two realizations in a trance state.

She learned that she was not the only person ever to have that experience: there was a body of thought, literature, and practice devoted to understanding, maintaining and extending the experience that she called "being awake."

If you asked Mary before her "awakening" if she had free will, she would have said yes.

If you asked her afterward, she would have said: "Certainly not when I'm in the trance state. In that state, everything that I do is conditioned. There's no free will involved."

If you asked her after she'd been working for a while to understand "awakeness" and "trance" she might have said: "I might. But if I do, it's only when I'm awake."

If you asked her sometime later she might have laughed. Then she might have written this post, which I would have found in my Drafts folder.

I might have edited this several times because that's what I've been conditioned to do.

And, then, as I am conditioned myself to do, I would have published it.

But first, I would have changed the date to January 13.

Free will and self improvement

P-zombies, or philosophical zombies, are indistinguishable from normal people but lack conscious experience.  (See Wikipedia.) I know I am conscious, so I know I am not a p-zombie. But I don't know about you, whoever you are. Not just because I may not know you. It's definitional. P-zombies are indistinguishable.

In computer gaming some characters are controlled by real people and some are run by the game's software. They're Non-Player Characters, or NPCs. NPCs are not p-zombies because they are distinguishable from human beings. Not easily distinguishable, if programmed well, but still distinguishable.

When I was in my teens and twenties I developed a theory: that were two kinds of people, real ones and not real ones. I was a real person, of course. Not real people seemed just like real people, but they were different. They did not have feelings the way that I did. They were not conscious the way that I was. I would not have considered them p-zombies, had I known the term, because I could distinguish them. I might, had I known the term, called them NPCs.

So I will now. In this game of life there are players and there are NPCs.

I could only tell the difference between an NPC and a real person face to face, when our eyes met. I felt a sense of connection with a real person. "I know you" might be the feeling reduced to words. With NPCs no connection. Nothing. How could there be a connection. They weren't real people.

The only distinguishing characteristic was my sense of connection. Some NPCs were smarter, wittier than more interesting than some real people. The only difference was my perception: they were not real.

Yesterday MikeSim 73.0 and maybe I wrote a post speculating whether free will existed or not. Today, back to free will and its implications

P-zombies and NPCs do not have consciousness, so they can't have free will.

That leaves the rest of us.

Consciousness is necessary for having free will. Having free will is necessary for exercising it. But having it does not mean you exercise it. I think that I might have free will. I know that most of the time I don't exercise it.

To make the distinctions clearer, let's consider the following set of mental states, as I perceive them. Maybe yours are the same. Maybe different.

In the default state I do not "stop to think" or "pause and reflect." I perceive and I acts without even being aware that I am perceiving and acting. This is my "non-awake" state. Most of this post is written in that state. Either I (by free will) or my conditioning has started me writing. And then the words appear. From time to time I wake up and watch them appear. And from time to time either I, or my conditioning, decides to change something. Eventually it gets completed.

In the default state I believe behavior is entirely conditioned. Programmed. Certainly that's true for kids. The conditioning is mostly done by Mom, Dad, evolution, and the environment.

My "awake" state is when I realize that I've been in the default, non-awake state and I realize that I'm not in that state at that moment. At the point of transition, the moment of waking up, I become an active observer. I may not be making decisions yet. I'm simply observing what my programming is doing and deciding to do.

Once awake, I think free will is possible. But to exercise it I think it's necessary to do something beyond simply observing what one's machinery does. I think I do exercise free will from time to time but it's rare. All action is conditioned, and so are most decisions. Even when I am awake.

So what can I decide, if I can decide?

I believe that given two conditioned courses of behavior that I can flip the bit that causes me to follow one course rather than the other. By default that bit will be flipped by some higher-level conditioning, but I believe that I can intervene. But only if I am awake. And only if I try. Which is rare.

I believe that I can't outright change my programming just by deciding to change it. But I can make decisions that result in such a change. I can decide what I'd like the end result of change in conditioning to be. I can put myself in a environment that will produce that change in conditioning. And I can help that environment change my conditioning by waking up as often and as long as possible, because I believe that helps the conditioning along.

To change conditioning takes practice. It happens faster if one does deliberately practice. So it might make sense for me to decide to deliberately practice. But that doesn't work. I've tried it, and I know why it fails.

Making such a decision is ineffective because it requires that I be awake for more time than I can stay awake. I might decide to start practice but I can't decide to keep going. It doesn't work for me.

Instead I have to decide to put myself into a good practice environment. That's an environment where momentum is on the side of continuing rather than stopping, and where there are lots of opportunities to wake up and focus and exercise whatever free will I have.

Right now I'm using Yousician to practice guitar and keyboards. I'm doing it for several reasons.

First, because I like music and I'd like to get better at it.

Two, because it forces me to wake up more and get better at that.

Three, because of my last responsibility in this life.

And what is that? It deserves a post of its own, but here's the TL;DR version.

I want people (especially my kids, all 6 of them) to say: "When I get to his age, that's the way I want to be. Only better."

It's my job to be a model, and set standards. I hope that other people will see what can be done work to do even better. In many cases my kids have blown the standards to bits, they've so far exceeded them.

Of course it's entirely possible that some of them are NPC characters, just following their conditioning. But I think they are all real.

They just need to find a way to exercise their own free will (if they have it) and practice, practice, practice.

Free will? Maybe. Maybe not.

Hardcore reductionists say that physics explains everything. There's no such thing as free will because the laws of physics don't require free will, and don't allow for free will. Everything is either predetermined or random.

I sort of believe them. 

Given that brains are made of matter and all matter obeys the laws of physics, how could there possibly be free will?

But then I consult my own experience. I feel as though sometimes, I make decisions. Don't I? Given that experience, how can there not be free will?

But then I consult some other experience: the feeling that the conventional sense of self, that thing that seems to make decisions, is an illusion. Given that experience...what?

Does it matter? If there's no such thing as free will, then, of course, it doesn't matter. I'm writing this because my conditioning has led me to these ideas. You'll read it, and either things will change for you or not, depending on your conditioning.

If free will is possible, it would be good to know the conditions under which it might obtain and expand the circumstances under which free will can appear.

So here's what I believe. Or possibly it's what my conditioning will inevitably propose that I believe.

I believe my body was built by machinery that I did not create that runs under the control of a DNA program that I didn't write. When the program started running, cells divided and divided and differentiated, producing a body. I didn't do any of that. At some point, my brain appeared and allegedly started to function. I had nothing to do with that.

After the body was born, my sense organs (which I didn't create) started processing sense data and feeding it to my brain. Human brains are built with some important wired-in programming, like turning a baby's head toward anything that touches its cheek and trying to suck whatever gets in its mouth. Brains are built with wired-in programming that lets the brain reprogram. This helps the body to better satisfy needs that are programmed in from birth.

The reprogramming system lets a child's environment, including its caretakers, guide the reprogramming. As a result, a child's repertoire of responses expands vastly beyond its built-in smiling and wailing. In most cases, it will include talking and understanding speech, manipulating the environment (including said parents).

I got reprogrammed, but I didn't do any reprogramming—no free will required for that.

Hard-wired into normal human brains is the following algorithm: try something different, see what happens, adjust the program. That underlies all learning. I didn't design that algorithm. I didn't apply it. My brain did. And so I learned.

When mom gave one-year-old me a spoonful of something, and I spit it out, what happened? My sense organs might have detected a taste or texture that had, according to previous experience, led to an unpleasant result. My conditioning caused me to do carry out an action that, in previous experience, had gotten rid of such unpleasant sensations. It's also possible that my brain was trying to "try something different and see what happens." Either way, I decided nothing. It was all automatic. No free will required.

And so it went. My behavior was automatic, based on prior conditioning. When I learned new things, my "learning" was a conditioned response to success or failure. Success: keep it up. Failure: change. All automatic. No free will.

As I grew older, I started thinking. Did I invent thinking? Did every human who thinks independently develop thinking? I think not. If Julian Jaynes, who wrote "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," is right, ancient people didn't think the way that we think of thinking. Thinking, to rephrase Jaynes, is a fairly modern, socially acquired skill. 

I was conditioned to think.

And I was conditioned to think that I was thinking.

As a child, I was well-conditioned: I did simple, kid things. As I grow up, the conditioned behaviors become more complex. 

"Why did you do that?" I was asked from time to time. When an adult asks a kid that question, the kid will be rewarded--or not-- based on the adult's (conditioned) evaluation of the child's answer. That interplay conditions the child to give "good answers," whether or not they are true.

"You've got a decision to make," my Mom would say. She'd spell out the options. "Either stop acting up, or suffer the consequences!" Did I make a decision? Reward and punishment conditioned me to not make the "This will piss mom off decision." The algorithm is deeply ingrained. It takes no free will to do what you've been trained to do.

Eventually, choices become far more complex, require more thinking, have greater consequences. So when does something other than a simple algorithm make these decisions? When does free will appear?

I don't know. But I have some ideas about when free will _can't_ be present. 

If I'm "awake" (see this post for an explanation), I might decide. Possibly. If I'm "awake," I might be able to cause a change in my conditioned behavior. Possibly.

If I'm not awake, not aware of my own existence, I think that whatever is acting, reacting, and deciding can't be me. It's got to be my conditioning.

This post was mainly written by MikeSim v 73.0, a simulated human being. Didn't it do an awesome job? I was awake for substantial parts of the writing, so it's entirely possible that I helped.