Week 3 Post 2

The light cone displays an observer in one singular moment. If this is the case, the observer will be affected by photon energy in any given moment former or coming. One could then infer that said observer is continually being affected by change due to particle movement. This concept is similar to free will. Free will is the hypothetical* ability/inability to make decisions based on information that is exists in the upper portion of the light cone. Often times people tweak the meaning of Free Will to avoid a pessimistic connotation, bot according to its formal, philosophical definition, Free Will does not exist for a number of reasons.

The first reason Free Will cannot exist is because no one can exactly predict any following events and attain future information to make decisions upon. One might say, "couldn't we use technology to analyze particle movements, standing waves, photon energy, and present information in order to make accurate conclusions about the future?". This does not work because our technology and the scientific method is just an extension of our senses, and will never be so precise to gather all exact information in any given setting. In addition, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal is another fundamental limit to human knowledge which asserts a range of accuracy that "values for certain pairs of physical quantities of a particle, such as position...and momentum...can be predicted from initial conditions".

The second reason why Free Will must not exist according to the formal definition is because all natural laws imply that if in one moment you have an initial condition [pertaining to particles and their quantum information] then you can calculate what happens at any moment in time from those conditions. This statement is rational considering newtons 3rd law declared that for any action (being the initial condition) there will be an equal and opposite reaction (being whatever happened as a result of those conditions). 

An easy way to think about this is to pretend there is a box of ladybugs flying around and doing their thing. Observers record the happenings and information such as the temperature, positions of the ladybugs, color, pressure, any other "things" in the box, etc… In theory, you should be able to calculate what exactly will happen to the ladybugs in the box at any given time. Still, the observers do not have the ability to know and comprehend the vast amount of information that box of ladybugs contains.

This reinforces human inability to tell the future, and that free will perhaps does not exist

*I say hypothetical because it does not lead us to a false claim but cannot necessarily be proven.



Comments

  1. Ms. DunleyDecember 10, 2020 at 10:45 AM

    How would you explain to someone in one easy sentence why free will is a hypothetical ability?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Emmy KroneJanuary 8, 2021 at 7:12 AM

      Free will is hypothetical because you are not able to prove it false but you also cannot prove it to be true considering theories have to be falsifiable- it is sort of stuck in limbo.

      Delete

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