Free Will Debunked

Science continues to discover what I have long considered obvious:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision

Comments

[Wolfram]

I will still believe in a free will, until someone can show me a flaw in the following deduction:

Alternative 1: There is no free will.
In that case I have no choice in what I believe, because of having no free will. So if I believe in haveing a free will, I can't help it.

Alternative 2: There is a free will.
In that case I might miss some good oportunities if I don't believe in a free will and consequently use it for decision making.

Conclusion: If you don't believe in a free will, you either can't help it (1), or you might miss oportunities (2). So I believe in a free will and hope I decided to do so ;-)

[T-Bone]

Example: Billiards. In billiards/pool, we know that geometry, and the
basic principles of physics determine the outcome of every single action.
If we knew all the angles, speed, weight, trajectory, bounce, and basically
all the factors, we could in essence predict exactly where each ball would end up after the "break".
The universe operates under these same principles, only on a much
grander scale. Our microverse is also determined by these same laws.
All the atoms, quarks, neutrinos, or whatever, all have a deffinative size,
shape, energy output, lifespan, blah blah blah... And if we knew (not
very likely) what all the numbers correlate to, then we could, in essence,
predict every outcome of every action. Even our own actions.
And our actions include choice.

P.S. Scott, I think I'm an Avatar since '03

[Arch]

I do not understand why we consider the subconscious mind as some separate entity controlling our selves. We can always increase our consciousness and bridge the gap between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. The closer you are to the subconscious, the more your free will.

Most of the meditation practices have this objective.

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[ben]

This exact study has been done several times in the last 3 decades. Old news.

[Marlan Winter]

If you want to really see a philosphy of no-free-will (wet wired robots) then you'd find "The Mystery Method" a really good read. It's amusing to no end.

Marlan

[Chicklewitz]

As one psychologist wrote, free will simply means making a choice.
What influences those choices is another matter.
Science can affirm many things and then the next generation of scientists may affirm the opposite.

[ABTechie]

Since reading Scott's blog for many moons, I have come to believe that free will doesn't exist. I believe we are controlled by instincts and conditioning. The more knowledge we have, the better decisions we can make. Observing my wife and children daily only increases my beliefs.

Do you get to choose what sounds good or bad to you?
...what tastes good or bad?
...what smells good or bad?
...what looks good or bad?
...what feels good or bad?
I don't believe we get to choose. We are wired a certain way to know good from bad. We are also wired to choose good over bad.

Do you get to choose that joke is funny and then laugh at it?

Do you ever get bored? Why? Did you choose to get bored? Why not just choose not to be bored? Just think how much smarter people would be if they would choose not to be bored with school and studying.

Can drug addicts just choose not to be addicted?
Do people choose to have multiple personalities?
Do people choose to be bipolar?
How does dementia affect free will?

How do salmon know to swim back up river to spawn all at the same time? It is genetically controlled. It cannot be a learned behavior because the entire previous generation are dead.

We are humans and we are wired to act in certain ways just like other animals are wired to act a certain way. Dog breeds have definable behavioral characteristics that distinguish them from other dog breeds. Why? Because they are controlled by instincts that are passed down by genetics. We use training to condition them to act in a manner that is pleasing to us. But, we don't get to just choose any training method we want to get the behavior we want. We have to supply a stimulus that will give us the correct reaction. That reaction is dictated by the dog's instinct which is controlled by the brain which is an expression of DNA.

From the Myers-Briggs Type descriptions, I am an ISTJ. Could I choose to be an ENFP?

Did you choose to be a heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual?

[Kara]

I'm glad to see you using a scientific source for your argument--it's a great step in the right direction. I've found that debates based on evidence and studies are much more worthwhile than when people simply throw around theories based on unsubstantiated "facts."

It is an interesting study, but I don't necessarily see how it has anything to do with free will. It basically just says that people make their decisions a few seconds before they can pinpoint making them, at least in the case of simple things like pushing a button. If anything, it's about subjective perception.

But of course, free will is such a poorly defined concept, as "understanding" said, that it is really impossible to prove or disprove.

[Paul Coleman]

I notice that "Haynes' team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine. " Does this imply that previous attempts has used a NONfunctional MRI machine?

[quantum_flux]

Do bugs have free will? Why are bugs attracted to the light?

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bio99/bio99120.htm

Also, does our ability to logicize with our rational brains improve our unconscious decision making skills? I mean, obviously there are people who are so attracted to the tables in their front yards or to their bikes or vacuum cleaners, but perhaps there is a way to *zap* them like a bug zapper so they don't do it again. Also, precognition forms via the input that you allow into your mind, and you have some control over that, well some people do anyway. Isn't the scientific method the best rulebook that you can program your mind with if you happen to be a slave-bot like you believe we all are? If you program yourself to think "I doubt this, but I don't know for certain either way" each time you are presented new information then won't you make better decisions and form more intelligent beliefs than if you program your mind to say "I absolutely believe it because somebody said it".

Now, the only question I really have is, "can we or can bugs or can dolphins program ourselves to think in certain ways that are different than the rest of the group?"

Man is a social animal, meaning that everything he does is somewhat dependant on the environment around him, but I wonder if it is possible to train a person not to be attracted to that table in the front yard or a moth to not be attracted to that buglight, and then again, were they free not to be attracted as such or were they merely reprogrammed by their environment? I can't stop blogging, so I make a decision to delete all my blogs out of my favorites folder, I see a huge decrease in the amount of blogging I do because I have to take the time to find the blog sites once again, and thereby a huge increase in my natural productivity in doing other things.

Geeze, does it even matter that we are influenced by our environments to varying degrees from person to person, and by our internal workings? Herd mentality dictates that the masses will by your product if you advertise your product and people like your advertisment, whereas some people will just sort of say "I don't need that dilbert book, Monkey Brain!". Of course, my decision was more rational, I said that I didn't need it because it wasn't free because I'm a cheapskate, but if you made it free I probably would have snatched it up then and there. That's how my programming was at the time at least, but it could change over time, and hopefully as I improve myself by surrounding myself with the influences that I wish to become and by distancing myself from the influences that make me change my views in ways that I know to be wrong.

For instance, I am 99.99% certain that humanity evolved from single celled organisms in the ocean and only 0.01% certain that we did not, or at least for right now since the overwhelming evidence points in that direction. I am not going to read intelligent design books because I may begin to doubt my certain beliefs and it may look more like 80%-20%, and then I may do irrational things because of the internal conflict occuring in my mind. I may even completely overlook the scientific method and listen to an argument from a celebraty like ben stien, and thereby get myself expelled from the priviledge of complete scientific enquiry. However, if I go prepared, and view that movie from an objective viewpoint, overlooking the attractive status of hollywood and the humor of funny celebrities believing something absurd, then perhaps I won't go there at all or perhaps I'll laugh it off as merely an anomaly.

The scary thing, of course, is that religions don't use the scientific method for determining things or forming beliefs, nay, they just use peer pressure to get you to believe absurd claims.

Somebody at the ben stien movie: "Everybody else in here believes in God, so why don't you?"

Me: "Well, you see, there is no proof either way, so why would I form such a belief"

SATBSM: "Because you want to go to heaven, right!?"

Me: "There is no proof of an afterlife, and the evidence is overwhelming that there is no way of even detecting an afterlife with our scientific instruments"

SATBSML "The Bible says it's true"

Me: "And without any proof"

..... wow, what a tangent I'm on, I actually have no free will and this tangent is proof positive. Blogging less often means I have to say more stuff when I do blog, you understand, right Scott!?

[L. Silva]

My brain is making the decisions based on being me, I am my brain and my brain is me. How can that not be free will? To not have free will it would have to be someone else's brain making the decision.

[Chris]

What is interesting to me is that so many people in America think the burden of proof lies on the side of scientists. Perhaps initially scientists had to really duke it out to prove their points, but scientific knowledge has advanced to such a degree that the burden of proof SHOULD be shifting over to the side of intelligent designers/free willers. Why do people still scoff science but offer nothing as a counter-argument? Why is their best argument a scathing remark coupled with a quote saying that it is impossible to disprove something? Yes, science itself admits that disproofs do not exist with absolute certainty. But when a scientific theory can explain a process better than any other, and can accurately predict the future of that process, that theory is considered proven beyond a reasonable doubt. People need to stop yammering about more proof being needed to disprove their fairy-tale concepts and need to start offering proof of their own.

[understanding]

Many of you appear not to understand, and Scott hasn't really made it clear.

It's about predestination, in the sense of Calvin and Zwingli ... sort of.

You don't control what you do. You simply do. You _perceive_ what you do, but you don't _choose_. How could you? You are the logical heir of the big bang, as am I.

"You" are a construct of the brain in your skull. Once that part of your brain ("you") understands that, you appreciate what the kindergarten teacher earlier was saying. There is no blame, no shame, no guilt. There just is.

I will admit I haven't fully wrapped my software around this yet, but I don't see the alternative. God? Some other mysterious force?

It doesn't seem likely.

[Clumpy]

You haven't debunked free will. You've just moved the argument into the subconscious. How could you make a decision without drawing on all of your past experiences and knowledge?

"Free will" has never been properly defined so it's difficult to debunk or prove.

[Sir Mike Tallon, PhD]

I don't know about it proving anything about free will, but it does confirm my long standing assertion that people know exactly how they feel about something and how they want to handle it right away. The rest of the contemplation is "doubt" until they realize their instinctive answer is the only way. Strangely, people will know how they feel right away but will verbally respond with ways that vaguely indicate otherwise. You can see through it by hints and interpretable phrases they give.
It's funny how they say we know 7 seconds in advance what our decisions will be, there's an old ninja addage that one should be able to make a decision in 7 breaths. It's funny how intuitive some of our ancestors were. Or maybe not to Scott Adams.

[Rich]

A direct quote from the article that you say debunks free will:

"Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision."

Keep trying though.

[SlowMovingTarget]

Hmmmph...

Science continues to discover that experiments examining the brain-body connection cannot rule out free will.

[JP]

If you really want to know first hand how the brain works, listen to the amazing story of the brain scientist who studied and remembered the effects of her own stroke:
http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/jill_bolte_tayl.php#more

[Matt]

This will eventually be pointed up as rubbish, I think. Suppose I'm driving on a narrow road and a child suddenly runs in front of me. On the left side of the road is a rock ledge; on the other is a deep lake. I have one second to decide whether to drive into the cliff, the lake, or the kid. How is my brain supposed to have made this decision six seconds before the emergency arose?

[JEQP]

I don't get it. From the article I get the impression people were told to conciously decide whether to push a button with their left or right hand. In the process of them making that decision, the scientists recorded brainwave activity and found that it corresponded with the decisions people made?

If someone is laying out a path of logic to reach a particular conclusion, it is pretty easy to see the conclusion they are going to reach a long time before they get there. That doesn't obviate them reaching that conclusion. A similar process is occuring here.

The other caveat is that if it takes the subconcious mind 7 seconds to decide which button to push, and considering that many decisions are made in less than a second, it means the subconcious mind must be able to see the future.

[militon]

you forgot to add the DMD :)

[AC]

Free will is meant to describe the fact that you are not fated to be a certain way.

Obviously if you live in squalor, the odds of you being unhealthy reaches 100%. Obviously you are affected by your genetic makeup which means you may have more of a battle with weight or disease than the next person.

Free will means you get to choose how you respond to events that you cannot control. Free will is in the context of the question, Does God let me live my life or am I fated to only do what strings He pulls in my life? That is the question "free will" offers.

Yes, we make decisions based on what we saw as we grew up. Some of us had sucky examples in the adults we had as role models. Others of us had good ones. I have seen kids group up that had sucky parents do quite well. I have seen kids with decent parents end up in jail.

If you don't believe in a God that is taking an active part in human history, then the concept of free will is not relevant to your life.

[AC]

Quote from article:
"Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will. For instance, the experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more complicated decisions.

"Real-life decisions -- am I going to buy this house or that one, take this job or that -- aren't decisions that we can implement very well in our brain scanners," said Haynes.

Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision. "

[Elizabeth]

I choose to believe in free will because if I'm wrong, it isn't my fault.

[cmo]

Another article which is somewhat related.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/us/10names.html?_r=1&ex=1365480000&en=00e414c74b5f7a0e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

[Tom]

Scott, you need to get out more. You're absolutely obsessed with this topic. Why? Does it make you feel better or intellectually superior? Every time you bring up this topic I see an image of a desperate man thumbing his nose at people with other belief systems. It's as if you need to validate yourself at every possible opportunity. Great...free will doesn't exist. Hooray for you, Scott. Move on.

[Gandalf]

RE: Today's comic.
Wally to PHB: "Can I sit on you?"
So *that's* how he's gotten away with doing no work for all these years!

[Bertram]

DUH,
they found out that the user is not part of the computer. Thank you Captain Obvious.

I say this in spite of knowing that you, Scott, posted this only to provoke comments and thus prove again we are robots. This comment is not for you, it's for those who think free will can be measured (that would not be free).

[C Alvarez]

There was a young boy who said "damm"
I learn with regret that I am
A creature that moves in predestinate grooves
in short not a bus but a tram

[Marc]

Free will can't even be narrowed down nor described in any way that makes sense. Kind of hard to "prove" it doesn't exist if we can't even describe what it is.

But, more importantly, I see a much greater use for that technology. It's not there yet, as they can't predict complex choices, but that's just a matter of time. I'd like to see this in airports. I'd like to know, 7 seconds before someone boards a plane, if they've decided to take over the cockpit and fly into the Statue of Liberty. You can get rid of all the metal detectors. So what if someone has a knife or gun, if they aren't deciding to wave it around on the plane later, praising Allah? Maybe we could even catch those nasty mothers who might just be deciding that they'll breast-feed their kid in plain view.

[Sony]

Hi,

I know this is off topic but can any of you send me the comic scott had about the lemon eater? It ends with the pessimist saying "Choke on them and die you stupid lemon eater". If anyone has it then please please send it to me? I just thought of it and now its stuck in my head coz i don't remember exactly how is goes.

Email:saswatjyoti@yahoo.com

[Leen Torenvliet]

It's much worse than that. From an investigation into logic theories, by Catarina Dutilh Novaes it follows that even God doesn't have free will, assuming that He is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent...

[Charley]

_____________________________________
As you pointed out ('Proof You Don't Exist') the experimenters and the machine don't exist, so I don't think we need to worry about this one.

[Elise]

But how does this correlate to the proof that I don't exist?

[darkbob]

Damn you for being so smart... I'm trying to catch up, but you're not making it easy. Read that in your book (the first and last ebook I've bought) maybe you just have too much free time on your extremities. I'll catch you Adams...

[Jason Dumler]

I don't know about free will, what these tests seem to mitigate is the amount of conscious decision making we make. If my unconscious mind makes a decision...does that count as free will? I don't think it does by your definition, because the decision is still made by a physical process in my brain.

I don't know if I want decisions being made by some process that is not connected to my brain...it might decide something physically demanding is good for me.

I think the process works more like this:
* Our consciousness feeds information to our unconscious...ness.
* Gradually, decisions are made...first slowly, then faster and faster, eventually becoming reflexes.
* Eventually, our consciousness only feeds in the decision factors for many decisions. Our unconscious...ness feeds back the result it's learned to make.
* Our conscious mind either goes along with it or balks...where the process starts over at the beginning, where we might get a different answer, or we might not.

Consciousness takes a lot of energy, you want it occupied with things like enjoying blog posts, not working out which finger to use to type a response to a blog post.

[Chris H]

"You're not here to make a choice; you've already made it. You're here to understand why you made it."

Eh. Someone had to quote the Matrix, it might as well be me.

[Geeves]

This doesn't seem to prove much more than that a brain is involved in a decision. Oh, and that said brain is sometimes a bit quicker than it lets on... don't see how it has any impact what so ever on free will.

[Jimmy]

How is my brain making decisions not the same as me making decisions?

[Mike]

I'm not bothered about free will. Anyone got any proof of magic working? Derren Brown is my best candidate so far.

[neopolitan]

Look at all the people who exercised their free will by not responding ...

(Today it seems I am one of your dancing monkeys, since I felt obliged to point that out.)

Personally I don't think that we have either free will or self awareness - just two related phenomena which are very closely related.

How the heck can we not have self awareness?

Well, I am defining "self awareness" as that knowledge that "I am". Sort of like Descartes and his "I think therefore I am", it all revolves about there being an "I" who thinks and therefore is. And that that "I" is a self.

The conceit of "self awareness" stems from thinking that there is some quintessential me who is, if not controlling everything, at least observing everything. That is hardly the case. We have untold processes going on all the time in the brain and we are not observing the outcome of those processes, we are the result of those processes. To make an analogy with a factory, "I" am not a quality control guy, "I" am the product.

As a product, I don't have any free will.

Who is the quality control guy? Well, that would be our environment. If "I" (meaning me right now) am good enough as a product, "I" get to continue with few necessary adjustments to cope with a slightly changed market. Otherwise, there is a more significant change in the production line (if "I" am just a little bit defective) or the production line gets shut down (if "I" am too defective, for instance if the product that is me makes the decision to overtake a slow car around a blind corner in a heavy rainstorm into the path of a semi-trailer).

In that case, the last product from the factory may be the thought "Oh shit".

cheers,

neopolitan

[me]

boooooooooooooooooooooooring

[Tormod]

How was this experiement conducted?

If you were told to choose a button and then press it, then it comes as no surprise. You do select the button before pressing it.

I don't care much one way or another the question of free will. I don't know if I even consider the question to be meaningfull. If you want to make a factual statement, then you provide evidence. I don't see how free will implicates on the evidence, unless you plan on reproducing reality to establish a baseline.

As the proposition of free will puts no burden on what evidence you can observe, you must make yourself needlessly dumb to consider this article relevant.

[Martin Stennert]

I knew about the older study they cite, and I really never understood how that is supposed to debunk free will. That's like saying: No, my car isn't really running, that's just little explosions in the combustion engine. So, now we know a bit more about HOW we come to a decision... and I'm glad to know that we actually use the brain for it. :) But it's still our brain and it's still a decision. How the decision itself is made is still unclear, and depending if its made on the molecular or on the quantum level it might still be completely deterministic or completely undeterministic, which is the only interesting question about the "freedom" of our wills.

[Bob]

I'm also constrained to point out (ahah hah) once again that if your theory is correct, it cuts far deeper than you have any intention of accepting. If there is no free will then there is no reason to believe anything, and no choice between beliefs in any case, rendering arguments and the evaluation of arguments moot. Successfully repudiating freewill would be an argument that undermined itself, because it completely undermines the basis of the rational, scientific process.

[Urs]

WTF?!?
So if my subconscious is making a decision 7 seconds before I am aware of it, what does that have to do with whether or not there is a free will???
So perhaps it is my subconscious that has a free will, and my big selfimportant rational self is a big illusion. What else is bloody new?

[Bob]

...or maybe this is just what we mean when we refer to self-awareness. I decide something, and then I become aware of it, because I am self-aware. Free will and predictability are hardly incompatible in the first place. An MRI can look into a brain and see clues to what a decision will be for certain choices; big whoopee. Any human can look at a face and see clues to what a decision will be on a bunch of other choices.

I bet if you picked apart expressions and behavior far enough, you could predict based on simple observations what a person's decision would be at the beginning of hours of deliberation. It doesn't mean they didn't have free will, it only means that they weren't ready to make the call yet, or weren't ready to *accept* the call.

[Shankar]

Free will is something that is very hard to define as such. Does consciousness imply free will? How about self-awareness? Is it even possible to be self-aware without free will (or the illusion of free will)? And what advantage does free will (or its illusion) give humans from an evolutionary perspective?

[Craig]

Scott,

As a kindergarten teacher for many years it's been obvious for a long time that 'free will' is an illusion. For those that still believe in it I would suggest spending 6 months watching the same group of children during their play time.

As individuals our 'self' is simply a pattern in matter that has been decided by our genetics and our environment. In my line of work children whose character pattern has been poorly altered by bad parenting is very frustrating because I have to constantly remind myself that the child is not to blame for it.

With all the new experiments in neuroscience and what we're learning about in genetics (see epi-genetics) I just don't see how much longer the superstition of free will can last.

The realization that free will is an illusion is also not the bad thing that many think it is. In my experience people cling to this belief so that they can continue to look down on prostitutes and other dregs of society (as if they chose their profession) and also feel superior because they're clever and chose to work hard and get a good job.

The end of freewill is the beginning of humble attitudes and appreciation for being the receiver of a good brain and knowing that it was not a choice. Let's face it, you could have got that prostitutes brain!

[Bradley Gardner]

This is an old journalistic trick of relating an unrelated scientific discovery to some controversial subject.

From my understanding of this experiment, the scientist discovered that before humans make decisions the decisions are already made in the human's "brain." Essentially meaning, you make decisions before you realize that you are making a decision... which seems to confirm the existence of free will.

The article could just as easily have read "Scientists may have gotten one step closer to proving the existence of God. They have shown that before making decisions, humans are commanded to make the decision by something inside of them. This 'higher power' generally referred to as the brain, commands all human decisions..."

or

"Scientists have gotten one step closer to proving the existence of free will, by showing the location where decisions are made inside a human."

etc. etc. etc.

[Marco]

..."And if great reasoners are often maniacal, it is equally true
that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I was engaged
in a controversy with the CLARION on the matter of free will,
that able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy,
because it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic
would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse
in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's,
can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of
causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man.
But my purpose is to point out something more practical.
It was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian Socialist should not
know anything about free will. But it was certainly remarkable that
a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about lunatics.
Mr. Suthers evidently did not know anything about lunatics.
The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions
are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be called causeless,
they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks;
slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing
his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things;
the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such
careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand;
for the madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause
in everything. The madman would read a conspiratorial significance
into those empty activities. He would think that the lopping
of the grass was an attack on private property. He would think
that the kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice.
If the madman could for an instant become careless, he would
become sane."
-G. K. Chesterton, "Orthodoxy"

[baylink]

Not even a hat-tip, huh? That many other submitters?

[Dan Smith]

I think that we can control our sub-conscious, at least to a degree. Perhaps that control, or portion of it, is directed by free will. Very interesting.

[Ian Blais]

Don't get me wrong Scott... I don't believe in free will either... but nonetheless this article is just plain fucking stupid. Last time I checked my brain was attached to, and a part of, me. Therefore assuming a decision was made it was made by me. Saying your brain knows something before you do is like saying the ball hit the ground before it hit the floor... IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING!!! I would love to see a logical argument for our mutually shared belief... but this frankly doesn't qualify.

[terry k]

I like the ending..."Hallett doubts that free will exists as a separate, independent force.

"If it is, we haven't put our finger on it," he said. "But we're happy to keep looking.""

Anyone out there willing to send me grant money to look for something that doesn't exist?

[Aaron]

So "Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity" equals no free will?

OF COURSE BRAIN ACTIVITY PREPARES DECISIONS, that would be kind of the point of having a BRAIN I think ... maybe not so much for talk show hosts or listeners, but for the rest of us we use it to THINK about stuff and then CHOOSE. Likely sub-optimally, maybe incompletely, definitely with inherent biases based on all the factors making up our life and experience, but we are not simply the sum of our programming no matter how often you write it.

And no, my complete inability to prove that I think ABC does not mean it doesn't happen; just like the fact that scientists can scan for proof of ABC happening in my brain doesn't remove me from the equation - yeah, it's my brain, not the scientists / a god / my PBH / Einstein.

I suppose the real question for people drawing conclusions based on brain scans - where does free will live? In the brain, right?

[Rand]

Way to link and run. I just wasted a hit to your website in a heavily monitored corporate environment to see nothing but a link to something I've already read.

[Xanthippa]

The experiments seem neat, but there are better explanations for what is going on, they just would not make as good headlines.

ONE of the many more plausible explanations is that we use a bit our brain to do the 'analyzing' which is 'good at analyzing' and reaching decisions. This could be sort of the 'engineer' of the brain. When it does the processing, we see the 'first spike', as measured by the good scientists.

But, being an engineer, it might not be that great a communicator...it might take it a while to explain its point to the 'marketing' guys - who do the 'communication bit' with the overall consciousness of things. When they 'get it', we see the second spike - and become aware that we've made a decision.

I'm certain there are a lot of other, very plausible explanations that fit the data better than 'proof we have no free will'. It's almost like somebody planted that idea into the resesarcher's minds, and hardwired it into a part of their brain...

Of course, if the good doctors' explanation is right, with neuroplasticity being what it is, most of us parents ought to rejoice: once we wire up our kids' brains in our image, they'll never escape our influence! ;o)

[Real Live Girl]

I knew you were going to say that.

[cvantuss]

To think, somebody paid somebody else to do this study. All I see is that researchers are able to see which part of the brain is making the decision as to which button to press. Who is to say what the researchers saw. 7 seconds of predetermined choice, or 7 seconds of conscious deliberation.

While I would love to be able to dismiss free will, and thus be unaccountable for my actions, it just is not so.

[Andy Watt]

Oh few gawd's sake. It doesn't matter if a machine can see the original decision 7 seconds before you pushed the button - you still made the decision.

You're clutching at straws with this one dude!

[fallmoose]

So why can't our subconscious be directed by free will?

[Omer]

I read the first line -

"You may think you decided to read this story -- but in fact, your brain made the decision long before you knew about it."

and stopped reading!!

Is not your brain - you or atleast part of you?!?! Just that the relay in action to your actors took time, does not mean they solved the free will question.

[Snotfjold]

Sorry Scott, I can't see it. How long time do you have for making a decision? If the allotted time for makin a decision is shorter than seven seconds, how does it work then? Is there a relationship between problem posting to problem resolution?

In order for a person to make a decision in the first place there needs to be a choice or are we to assume that the brain has made a decision already before the problem is posited?

Nah, I can't see it.

[LadySatel]

I wonder why this information surprises anyone. Basic biology teaches that the body is a chemical factory. All functions intertwined and operating off the electrical energy created from the body.
Thought is an electrical impulse, generated in the brain. Then the person acts or does not act on the thought. For those whose chemical balance is upset in some way the thoughts find free expression, sometimes to tragic consequences. Others have the secondary thoughts which rein in those destructive impulses.
Yes training and conditioning play a part in determining which paths those impulses take in the thinking, then acting out process.
Science still has a long way to go to fully explain the process of life and it's various manifestations. At this stage of our development we are still like children playing with building blocks trying out various things to see what happens.

[Young Howard]

It seems more like lag than a lack of free will...

[Ruckus]

That is a stretch even for you. The machine "predicted" the difference in time it took for you to make a decision and react to it. It did so with a whopping 60% accuracy. So here it is how it plays out.

60% of the time
Person: I think I’ll push the left button
Machine: Scanning, Scanning…
Machine: He is going left!
Person: PUSH, Left Button
Machine: Left ha, told ya

40% of the time
Person: I think I’ll push the left button
Machine: Scanning, Scanning…
Machine: He is going left!
Person: Nah PUSH, Right Button
Machine: Hmm, slight calculation error?

[Julan Gall]

All this shows is that the brain does not function sequentially in the way we think it does. To make sense of the world, we need to have our consciousness recognise the linear passing of time. Just because our subconscious has decided something before we realise it doesn't mean it wasn't decided with free will.

[Muppet]

That must be why after the second paragraph, I lost interest.

[dsg]

Hi Scott,

I didn't find in the article any mention of how consistently they could predict the pushing of the button. The typical significance test for a binary classification model is better than 50% accurate (your model beats random guessing or coin flipping.) If they can predict successfully over 90% of the time I will be impressed, otherwise keep trying.

Also, they note that something is happening in the subconscious before the conscious activity begins. Anyone actually know what the subconscious activity is? Are they even related? I’m sure my brain is doing lots of stuff I’m not consciously aware of that probably isn’t related at all to conscios decisions. Until they can tell exactly what my brain is doing all the time, I’m not buying it. But keep researching, someday they might figure out something useful.

dsg

[Nathan]

There seems to be a number of conflicting definitions of free will floating about. As far as I can tell "free will" can mean:

1. Decisions that are random.
2. Decisions that cannot be predicted for some inexplicable reason.
3. Some conscious force controlling our brains
4. The idea that human beings have independant power to create their own reality (may or may not be predictable).

This guy seems to take definition #3. Which is confusing because he doesn't belive it and I don't think anyone really uses this definition to explain free will.

I prefer definition #4, which is more philosophical than scientific. You might as well say that Scientists have proved that art doesn't exist.

Now if the guy made a machine that predicted that they would make one decision, and then reliably forced them to take the other choice, and think that it was their own decision - that would be something to talk about.

[Richard Winskill]

In response to anyone who has criticized, or will criticize, the experiment: I knew you were going to say that...

[CarlM]

Well, to be fair, what the study showed is: "researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them."

For those of us who believe that "we" are seated in our brains, this doesn't say that "we" are not making decisions. It says that (at least in some situations) we make those decisions (a few seconds) BEFORE we are conscious of making them. I think this falls a bit short of proving that free will doesn't exist.

[RB]

Further more, I knew I would misspell "confirm".

[RB]

I can only conform.

[Zed]

Ah yes, because science does have such a keen understanding of the conscious and subconscious, and how the different areas of the brain interact. I for one seriously doubt that the subconscious and conscious can be so easily partitioned.

[LA Clay]

Dog pre-destined them to discover this.

[Dave]

"Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will."

"We can't rule out that there's a free will..."

"It's not like you're a machine."

Hey Scott -- you might want to invest in a dictionary before you go using big words like "debunked."