Free Will - Page 3

lol. These questions seem never-ending. The idea that a tree doesnt make a sound if it falls over was put to rest by the fact that we can have devices that can measure sound (microphone) and store it (tape recorder) and know, though not 100%, that the event took place without oneself actually being there.

However, quantum phsyics and experiments thereof could dispell this. Schrodingers cat problem basically states that if a cat is sealed off in a box and left with cyanide or whatever and there's exactly a 50:50 chance of it dying; then until the experiment is measured; the cat is considered BOTH dead AND alive.

fantastic link to get a taste of the weird world of quantum:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc


If what is happening is true, and there has never been an experiment in quantum phsyics that has never not worked, then Decuis' comment is also invalid. To explain this it seems that it is probable that the future affects the past, or perhaps to be precise, future thought affects the past. I'm a bit dodgy on the ins and outs of this and how it relates to space, time and/or spacetime, but essentially experiments in parapyschology (and these are in mainstream journals) show that a person a few hours in the future thinks of a question and that a quantum computer (one that can calculate instantaneoulsy without 'steps' gives the answer that time period before. Thus, either the answer id the question or the effect is the cause (relative to convention). This is all a little weird, and physics is not equipped to answer these questions yet. But, nonetheless, if we determine free will as a function of teh knowledge of past events, as Decuis suggests, we may in fact be wrong, for future events may also affect past ones.

On a speculative note to those who understand these experiments more than I do, is quantum pushing at the fact that maybe every single atomic and subatomic particle knows each other both in the present and in the past. Does the mind work on relativistiv principles at its scale and thus are the quantum world and the normal world actually two different worlds. We've discovered a lot; but only a fraction.

Phew! What a discussion, I don't know where to start. It was pretty deep stuff all this free will and physics and time travel and the law and such.

First of all I personally believe whole-heartedly in free will, but as a plain English girl and not too bright, I don't think the test idea at 18 would work in this country, partly because a hell of a lot of kids leave school at 16 to work and how would you test those with special needs who do not have the same capacity for understanding as you very intelligent 18 year old American genius' seem to have?

It's such a tough question that the more you try to understand it and rationalise it and give a proof either way the more confused you all appeared to get. At one point there seems to be the question not of free will exactly but of the duality of mind and body. Do you have to believe in a soul or separate spirit that exists apart from the physical to believe in free will. i.e. If you do believe that our physical bodies are just that physical, and that our brains control everything about us and that once we are dead we cease to exist then free will cannot exist?

How does it go? - "I think therefore I am"? Is that a definition of free will?

What do you think?

Well i feel as if people are mixing today with free will with the mind, its more of a spirtual thing, combined with the powerful mind.