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by loup-vaillant 2547 days ago
> Our behaviors are tremendously complex, but that doesn't demonstrate that we have free will.

If by "free will", you do mean what I think you mean, it would be very surprising we have it. It would basically imply dualism, which I have dismissed a long time ago.

Of course our thoughts are entirely automatic. They're physical processes like any other. It would still be nice to understand their structure. I for one would be thrilled to learn how choices actually happen.

1 comments

How does an electron decide where to go in the dual hole experiment?
Like the double slit experiment with a photon, or the semi-transparent mirror?

Simple: it goes both ways. Then decoherence happens, the universe splits in half, and we experience being in either one of those halves. What we observe is but a glimpse of what actually happen. We don't have access to the other side (split universes don't communicate with each other, contrary to what much sci-fi material describes).

That may sound weird, but the alternative (that half the amplitude is "not real", or that it "collapses" (in a way that is non-local, that is, exceeds the speed of light), is even weirder.

Or you could just refuse to answer the question, and stick to "this equations mean I should observe this with those statistics".