(This is a chapter in a longer essay, starting with Limits )

Photo by Engin Akyurt

Philosophers have long broken their heads over the topic if free will exists or not. Liberty was one of the central ideals of the Age of Enlightenment and is still a guiding principle of our society. Kant’s ideas, for one, layed the foundations of liberalism and the way we look at ourselves. The notion of the free will is also at the heart of the free-market economy and the capitalist system as a whole. It defines who we punish and who we reward and it determines how we judge each other.

But science, or at least the deterministic branch of science, has popularized the notion that the universe could be a clockwork with ultimate causes that, together, define our next action. It suggests that free will does not exist. We can hear this echo in societal debates: what if Facebook manipulates us so deeply, that it starts altering our behaviour? How many data do you need to fully control somebody’s mind?

The funny thing here is, that fundamental physicists don’t really debate the matter of determinism because they have deemed it false already for decades. They say that even if you know the state and the motion of the entire universe, you can still not predict what happens next, because some particles are unpredictable by nature. You can calculate probabilities, but not be certain. According to that theory, free will could potentially exist.

Imagine a society that fully rejects the concept of free will. Judgment would be irrational. A murderer would be as much victim as culprit. Responsibility for your choices would be completely out of your hands. Little rascals would be seen as an unfortunate force of nature. In that society morality itself would have no meaning. We’d lock people up for pragmatic reasons only, to avoid them from damaging society further. We need to believe in some degree of individual free will, because it confronts us with our agency and responsibility. Free will gives us accountability of our actions and it gives us meaning in life.

On the other end of that spectrum, there is the equally dubious idea that free will is absolute and everything happening to you is your own responsibility. My generation was raised with that idea: you can become anything you like. But we’re learning the hard way that that is not the case. The full-free-will-idea ignores the fact that people aren’t born under the same conditions, with the same talents or with the same capacities. It classifies all achievements as merits, perceiving rich people as those who made the right choices, while poor people did things wrong. The sick should blame themselves for not making healthy choices. The voices of Black Lives Matter and the increased call for nationalist protectionism are reminding us once again that this vision is incomplete. There are plenty of people who, for whatever reason, are not able to reach the same degree of success in society as others. Not everything can be made, and such people also deserve a decent piece of the pie.

The concept of free will is not black and white, and you will always keep finding deeper and deeper nuances to this problem. By definition, society should always look for a balance between individual choice on the one hand and regulation on the other. Personally, I think the idea of free will, human rights and liberty remain a great guidance for our societal structure because it values the individual. But I also think we can’t be naive here. We should be more understanding of the limitations of free will than we have publically admitted for decades. Most of our personal achievements in the West, we achieve because the system hands them to us over the backs of others. We can be humbler and distribute the benefits of our collective achievements more evenly. That starts with understanding.

Tomorrow: What if we just plug in?