Holy crap-buckets. When I predicted there would be incoherent dissonance as a response to the question of why those who believe in evolution (science) also believe in free will (superstition), I completely underestimated the extent of it. And you know what that means: More instigation.
According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, free will has two definitions. The first is about whether someone is forced to do something. That’s not interesting. It’s the second one that caught my attention.
Free Will: freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention
Except for the “human” part of the definition, does a computer that generates random numbers have free will? The computer’s choice is independent of prior causes or divine intervention.
I mention this because many of you tried to weasel around the constraints of cause and effect by pointing out that the quantum world is unpredictable, and since we are the sum of those unpredictable happenings, the world is not predetermined. Therefore – some of you say – we have free will.
First, I seriously doubt that those quantum fluctuations have an impact on whether I eat a salad for lunch, except in the most wildly improbable scenario. It’s like a sesame seed trying to stop an elephant stampede. I suppose if that seed got in the eye of the lead elephant, he might slow down. But that’s about it.
Second, even if quantum randomness did routinely ripple into meaningful causation in the big world, that would prove AGAINST free will, not for it. If your quantum matter is randomly pulling the strings about what you have for lunch, then your mind – as you free willies conceive it – is not.
You may commence irrational debate now.
[Update: For those of you arguing that there is no such thing as a true random number generator, check out this link: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/]