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Is there free will?
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this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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well so this gets back to what I call effective free will. We have free will in the sense that we feel it because why you can theoretically build an impossible construct that would not make it so effectively it works that way. I may decide to grab another donut because its tasty or I may decide I need to watch my weight. If I grabbed one I may eat it or as about to my health concerns win out or I drop it and decide I just don't want it now and im not going to bother with another. Its effectively infinite possibilities and choices from our perspective and we make the choices through them.
Superdeterminism is a bit odd in that it rejects even effective free will, at least in very specific circumstances. Let's say you set up an experiment where the observer is given the free choice to measure a particle in a particular way. If you were Laplace's demon and could see the precise state of the initial particle, that information alone would be sufficient to predict the choice the observer will make because they would be guaranteed to be pre-correlated with that value.
It would be like Final Destination where, just by looking at a single variable in a single particle, you would know with absolute certainty what conscious decision the observer would make ahead of time, and all their complex brain chemistry and stuff becomes unnecessary to predict what decision they will make, because you will know with certainty what the orientation of the measurement must be. You could try everything to stop them and change their mind and even fight them, but you'd find yourself entirely unable to change it, because the laws of physics would guarantee the particle would be measured on that particular choice of orientation.
You might be able to get around this by arguing that the these variables are fundamentally unobservable and hidden from us so that you still have effective free will, but then the model becomes pointless. Hossenfelder has suggested she thinks a hidden variable model should be testable and she thinks it may be possible to find patterns in the quantum noise and violations of the Born rule under specific circumstances. If these variables become even partially knowable then even effective free will, at least in certain very contrived circumstances, becomes doomed.
That is kind of the weirdest thing about it.
What's put into question is not our perception of getting to decide between different choices, what we are challenging is whether or not those choices are taken freely or determined by external factors.
Again, just because you are making a choice, amongst many possibilities, does not mean that this choice is "free".
And one cannot judge this based on what one knows about the factors affecting oneself, since you necessarily cannot have full knowledge of them.
This is another recursive problem, one that happens in our own perception of those factors, if we knew about everything that affects our decisions, then this knowledge would affect our decisions, and so there would be a new external factor which would be the repercussions this knowledge itself would have...and if you knew this new factor this knowledge would again be new information that would be added to your knowledge, altering the data pool you use to base your decisions... and so on infinitely
This makes it impossible for us to ever be aware of that which determines us. So the "feeling" of having no external factors that determines you is actually not really proof of us having any kind of freedom, since even in a deterministic world, with no freedom, it would be expected for people to be unaware of their own determining factors. It's in fact expected for people to not be aware of the determination.
So. Here is the thing and where it gets silly to me. I don't view choices being made taking external factors into consideration as not making them freely. It makes free will this thing that can only be achieved by randomness or at least it feels that way to me. I consider free will and effective free will as essentially the same thing. I mean thing about the idea of optimization and choices. People write books about it and we have business practices around it. Yet people being cognizant of the optimized choice will still make a different one. Because of different priorities. Somone might be known for choosing the optimized choice and its part of who they are. But others will not. This is free will to me. Two people in the same situations making different choices because of who they are. Thats the thing the stuff that might in theory tell exactly the decision the person will make is knowledge about who they are. Innately. As an entity. It is the impossibility of truly knowing someone. So it is the fact we make different choices to me that is free will. That we make these choices and define ourselves in the process.
This leads us again to "freedom" losing meaning. How do you differentiate a free choice from a choice that is not free? "free will" vs "non-free will".
Optimizing choices is a mathematical operation.. a rock, when thrown, moves in such a way that it optimizes the potential energy and does not stop moving until it reaches the minimum energy state, optimizing for minimal entropy. A slime mold optimizes the nutrient intake by having its cells expand and reproduce where they connect with food and progressively die where they don't.
All the things you mentioned are not incompatible with free will not existing. Two non-free people in the same non-free situations make different non-free choices because of who they are. The impossibility of truly knowing someone is something that's consistent with a non-free world were nobody has full knowledge of all factors that determine them. If the human brain was simple enough for us to understand we would be too stupid to understand it. It's a recursive problem. We can analyze simpler mechanisms, but the simpler they get, the clearer we understand them, and the more clear the lack of "agency" in them becomes.
Yeah and to me its basically getting down to a definition of free will. If free will is no factors internal or external can effect the choice it must be free of any influence. Well its just silly. To me its demanding that no mechanism of free choice (will) be present. To me you can't really include the individual and their molecules and such as they are the individual that has the agency. They make the choices based on who they are and in that sense they are free and why one individual makes different choices than another in the exact same circumstances. To me its a bit of going to down in a definition and losing the forest for the trees kinda of thing (or maybe vice versa). Alls I meant with the optimizing was actually that people choose not to. Even though theoretically its considered the best way to go and even if the individual knows the optimized choice they may choose to not go that way. So I was more saying us not making the optimized choice because of what I would see as free will.
Well.. yes, if that is the implication, then well.. that's the implication. But changing the definition of freedom just because one does not like the implications would not make much sense to me.
The whole point is to find out if the individual has freedom or not.. and for that you need to find out if each and every of the molecules that make up that individual has been influenced by external factors past and present. Emphasis in past, given that there are way more external factors in our past than there are in our present. The external factors go even beyond our own lifetimes.. you are influenced by factors that happened before you were born.. and before your parents were born.. we have external factors even encoded in our DNA. The reason why you even feel the impulse to eat that donut is an external factor... the reason why you feel the impulse to NOT eat that donut is another external factor. Our individual wishes and wants are just the expression of external factors... our molecules are built through external factors, external factors make us grow.. external factors are what we are made out from. And since we all are modeled in different circumstances, we are different, every last one of us, with different combinations of different external factors, each influencing each other, in a harmonious soup of relationships with one another and with our environment. Even 2 identical twins become more and more different the more they experience the world, since they will inevitably have different experiences in life (even from the womb, before they are even born!)... even the smallest of things can snowball into experiences we will unconsciously internalize and alter our personality and the way we see ourselves and others.
I disagree. People always take the optimal choice for them. It's just that what's "optimal" depends on the dataset one uses. Eating that donut has a lot of pros, and not eating it has a lot of pros too.. it's all about what action is optimal given the influence of the external factors that model one's behavior. In some models, eating the donut and getting the gratification is the optimal path, so they do that (whether it's good for the individual or not), other neural models might see more value in not eating it so they don't do that.
So yeah I think we are getting into fundamental disagreement territory. Which in all honestly I have with sabine as well on this. Even though I generally like her stuff. Its not the only one. Even when I otherwise agree with her I definately often have a different perspective on the particulars.