Free Will, Quantum Consciousness, Chaos Theory, and Gravity

I fell down a long, complex rabbit hole

Hiya!

We’ve spent thousands of years applying a reductionist mindset when studying the world and our place in it. In other words, to understand ourselves and, really, life itself, we’ve reduced as much as we can down to the sum of its parts. We have specific sciences dedicated to defined subjects — mathematics, biology, astronomy, chemistry, psychology, archeology, and so on — with each branch of knowledge separated into smaller, more precise subjects.

But we’re finally reaching a point where we can start integrating different subjects to see how they work together to create something new — or emergent. All this came to mind while I tumbled down a rabbit hole of complex theories. Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be a subtle link between these ideas. Hear me out. I’ll discuss each concept and then tie my thoughts together at the end (as best as I can). That said, this is a long one, so you might want to get comfortable.

Deterministic (Fate) vs Free Will

The first idea, and likely the easiest to comprehend, revolves around the age-old argument concerning free will and fate. Do we make our own decisions, or are our choices predetermined?

Well, according to science, in a reductive sense, classical physics supports the deterministic (fate) standpoint, while quantum physics reflects free will.

Deterministic/Fate

Ancient Greek philosophers and scientists notoriously debated the concept of free will. They struggled to reconcile it with their observations of a deterministic Universe in which everything that happens is a reaction to prior events. Future scientific findings supported the deterministic viewpoint, including the periodic table’s orderly arrangement of elements and the laws of motion discovered in the 17th century.

Considering all of this, it made sense to assume that our decisions are no more than outputs of our brains — which, regardless of complexity, are ultimately made of physical matter and thus subject to the laws of classical physics, no different than planets.

This logic suggests that Team Fate triumphs from a scientific standpoint. The thought was that if technology were advanced enough to monitor the positions of every neuron, synapse, and molecule in our brain, a machine could predict our decisions before we make them.

Of course, we’re now in the 21st century, not the 17th, yet even modern science supports the deterministic argument. Clare Wilson’s article, published in New Scientist, offers several examples.

The first is that geneticists have already discovered hundreds of DNA variants that influence our disposition toward depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Anxiety, and impulsivity.

Additionally, epidemiologists found that the nutrition a fetus receives during pregnancy can influence epigenetic changes to its DNA, sometimes with lifelong impacts. And, social scientists have shown how adverse experiences during childhood influence a person’s tendencies to commit crimes and experience higher levels of anxiety and depression.

Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist at Stanford University in California and author of Determined: Life without free will, tells Wilson:

“It’s one big seamless arc. There’s no aspect of behaviour that’s not being influenced by a zillion of these factors.”

It would be easy to feel a smidge defeated at this considerable amount of evidence suggesting we have no free will. Though, if true, the ramifications would be nearly unimaginable. After all, we teach children that their actions have consequences, but if every choice is predetermined, should we be punished (or rewarded) for our actions?

Thankfully, or perhaps confusingly, the debate between fate and free will isn’t settled yet. There are some things that suggest we do have at least some control over our actions.

Free Will

The keyword in the previous section is “influenced.” Each point I made said that some factor can influence a certain outcome, but “influence” is not the same as “determine.” In other words, something like a gene variant, hormone, or even experience can make a person’s actions or decisions more likely — but not guarantee them.

Another supporting argument for free will comes from the Chaos Theory. I’ll explain it in more detail later, but it describes how small changes can cause highly sensitive, complex systems to behave unpredictably. Ultimately, it suggests that even if we could account for all the information and every variable, we still couldn’t actually predict everything that occurs.

Further, while classical dynamics support the deterministic viewpoint, the discovery of early 20th-century quantum physics offers a lifeline to free-will believers (beyond chaos theory).

In the microscopic quantum world, subatomic particles can be in multiple states at once, which is called superposition. In this state, they exist in a range of probabilities that only “collapse” into something finite and measurable once observed. (We’ll come back to this bit too.)

So, while large groups of particles behave in accordance with classical physics, individual particles behave in a far more seemingly random matter. This suggests that the Universe is non-deterministic at its most fundamental level, aka its Team Free Will at heart.

But surely, our level of autonomy involves more than physics… right? After all, we’re conscious Beings that are aware and full of emotions and thoughts. Except now, scientists think that even consciousness itself is the result of physics.