Are You an NPC?
Summary
TLDRThis thought-provoking script delves into the debate surrounding free will, contrasting deterministic physics with quantum mechanics' inherent randomness. It explores the philosophical divide, questioning whether our actions are predetermined or genuinely our own. The script introduces the concept of emergence, suggesting that complex layers of reality may grant us autonomy beyond the sum of our parts, ultimately leaving the question of free will open-ended, prompting viewers to ponder their own role in shaping their destiny.
Takeaways
- 🧠 The debate on free will centers on whether our actions are determined by the laws of physics or if we have the autonomy to make decisions.
- 🎯 The concept of free will suggests that the future is not fixed and can be influenced by our actions, which is fundamental to our moral and legal systems.
- 🌌 Determinism posits that all events, including our actions, are the inevitable result of preceding events, tracing back to the Big Bang.
- 🚀 Quantum mechanics introduces an element of randomness that challenges the deterministic view, suggesting that not all outcomes can be predicted with certainty.
- 🔬 The argument against free will suggests that if our brains are subject to random quantum processes, then these processes, not us, make decisions for us.
- 🌱 Emergence is a phenomenon where complex systems exhibit properties that their individual components do not have, challenging the reductionist view of the universe.
- 🌐 Reality is organized in layers, each with its own set of rules and properties, and higher layers are not necessarily predictable from the lower ones.
- 🤔 The script questions whether the search for free will should focus on fundamental particles and deterministic laws or on the emergent properties of complex systems like the human brain.
- 💭 Consciousness, character, and feelings emerge from the interactions of neurons in the brain, suggesting that 'we' are part of the decision-making process at this level of complexity.
- 🕊️ The argument for free will is seen as more appealing because it acknowledges the complexity of the universe and the role of emergent properties in shaping our actions.
- 📰 The script also touches on the influence of algorithms and media on our perception of the world, suggesting that Ground News can provide a more balanced view by aggregating diverse sources.
- 📍 The video concludes by emphasizing the subjective feeling of having free will and the importance of making conscious decisions, even if the existence of free will is philosophically disputed.
Q & A
What is the core debate about free will presented in the script?
-The script presents a debate between two philosophical camps: one that argues free will is incompatible with the deterministic laws of physics, and another that argues for the possibility of free will through the concept of emergence and the layered structure of reality.
How does the script describe the deterministic view of the universe?
-The deterministic view posits that the universe operates based on fixed laws of physics, implying that all events, including human actions, are predetermined from the moment of the Big Bang, leaving no room for free will.
What role does quantum mechanics play in the debate about free will?
-Quantum mechanics introduces an element of randomness at the subatomic level, which some argue could provide a basis for free will. However, the script points out that the no-free-will camp believes this randomness does not equate to decision-making power.
What is emergence, and how does it challenge the reductionist view of the universe?
-Emergence is a phenomenon where many small components come together to create new properties that did not exist at the individual level. It challenges the reductionist view by showing that properties of higher levels, such as consciousness and free will, cannot be fully explained by looking at the fundamental particles alone.
How does the script suggest that layers of reality are largely independent of each other?
-The script suggests that while layers of reality influence each other to some extent, they often operate independently. For example, understanding politics does not require knowledge of cellular biology, and understanding organs does not require knowledge of quarks.
What does the script imply about the relevance of the layer of reality to free will?
-The script implies that the layer of reality most relevant to free will is the one where consciousness and individual identity emerge, suggesting that our decisions are shaped by us and that we have a say in this layer of reality.
What is the script's stance on the practical implications of the free will debate?
-The script suggests that even if free will is an illusion, the practical implications are minimal. It argues that as long as we feel like we are making decisions and are not sure either way, the debate may not significantly affect how we live our lives.
How does the script relate the concept of free will to the Ground News service?
-The script uses the Ground News service as a metaphor for taking control over what occupies our minds, suggesting that just as we may have free will in our decisions, we can also choose the information we consume and compare different viewpoints.
What is the significance of the limited edition pin mentioned in the script?
-The limited edition pin represents the philosophy of the script's creators, encouraging viewers to embrace the freedom and impermanence of life and to make the most of their time on Earth.
What is the 'Curiosity Guide' mentioned in the script, and what is its purpose?
-The 'Curiosity Guide' is a resource created by the script's creators to inspire viewers to embark on adventures that can change their perspective on the world, aligning with the theme of seeking understanding and making the most of life.
Outlines
🤔 The Illusion of Free Will
The first paragraph introduces the concept of free will and its philosophical debate. It questions whether individuals truly have the freedom to make choices or are simply following a predetermined path set by the universe's laws. The script explores the deterministic nature of physics, suggesting that if the universe operates on fixed laws, then every event, including human decisions, could be predicted from the moment of the Big Bang. This deterministic view implies a lack of free will, as all actions are the inevitable result of preceding events. However, it also mentions quantum mechanics as a potential counter-argument, introducing randomness at the subatomic level, which could challenge the idea of complete determinism.
🌐 Emergence and the Layers of Reality
The second paragraph delves into the concept of emergence, which challenges the reductionist view that everything can be explained by fundamental particles. Emergence refers to the phenomenon where collective properties of a system cannot be predicted from the properties of its individual components. The script discusses how reality is organized in layers, each with its own set of properties and rules, and how higher-level phenomena like consciousness and decision-making cannot be fully understood by examining only the basic particles. It argues that the complexity of the universe and the existence of these layers suggest that free will might be a real and relevant aspect of our existence, as it cannot be reduced to mere physical determinism or quantum randomness.
📰 Free Will in Practice and the Influence of Media
The third paragraph shifts the focus from theoretical debates to practical implications, particularly how the perception of free will affects our daily lives and decision-making. It humorously suggests that while we may not have control over the broader state of the world, we do have choices in our immediate actions, such as selecting what to watch next. The paragraph also discusses the role of algorithms in shaping our news consumption, potentially limiting our exposure to diverse viewpoints. It introduces Ground News as a tool to counteract this by providing a platform for comparing different news coverage and perspectives. The script concludes with a promotion of a limited edition pin and a Curiosity Guide, both designed to inspire making the most of life's fleeting moments.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Free Will
💡Determinism
💡Quantum Mechanics
💡Emergence
💡Reductionism
💡Causality
💡Consciousness
💡Moral Responsibility
💡NPC (Non-Player Character)
💡Algorithms
💡Optimistic Nihilism
Highlights
The concept of free will is fundamentally questioned in relation to the deterministic laws of physics.
The idea that we may be like NPCs, unable to make decisions for ourselves due to the laws of physics.
Free will is central to human relationships and the basis of our moral and legal systems.
The philosophical debate on free will is presented, focusing on its compatibility with the universe's laws.
The deterministic nature of physics suggests that our actions may be predetermined from the Big Bang.
Quantum mechanics introduces randomness, challenging the deterministic view of the universe.
The argument that quantum randomness does not equate to free will, as it is still outside of our control.
The concept of emergence in physics, where new properties arise from the collective behavior of smaller entities.
The layered structure of reality, with each level having distinct properties that cannot be explained by the levels below.
The argument that free will may exist at the level of human consciousness and decision-making, beyond the quantum level.
The philosophical stance that even without free will, our subjective experience of making decisions is significant.
The practical implications of the free will debate and its impact on our understanding of responsibility and choice.
Ground News is introduced as a tool to combat algorithmic bias in news consumption.
The promotion of Ground News as a platform for balanced and comparative news coverage.
The introduction of a limited edition pin representing the philosophy of kurzgesagt and optimistic nihilism.
The Curiosity Guide created by kurzgesagt to inspire exploration and change in perspective.
Transcripts
Are you free? Free to choose what you do and make decisions? Or are you an NPC,
unable to decide anything for yourself? You feel that you have control over your life,
or at least what you’ll have for breakfast. But this may be an illusion. Physics actually
may force you to go through life as if on rails, with no free will at all.
You experience free will all the time. Like when
you decided to watch this video instead of doing something useful.
Free will is your ability to decide by yourself what you do. It means that the future is an open
arena that you can shape with your actions. It’s at the core of human relationships – it means
you are responsible for your actions, which is the basis of our moral and legal systems.
There are too many dimensions for one short video – moral, psychological, biological,
so we’ll focus on the most essential part: Is free will even possible?
Two main philosophical camps are fighting about this. No matter how we represent them,
they'll be upset about it – so we’ll use our own words. The first camp claims that
the very idea of free will is fundamentally incompatible with the laws of the universe:
You Are an NPC
Whatever “you” exactly are, it's somehow made up of your physical
brain and body. And these are made of cells,
which are made of proteins, which are made of atoms and particles like protons or electrons.
So fundamentally, you are a specific, quite lovely, dynamic pattern of particles. Particles
have no will, no motivation, no freedom, they blindly follow the laws of physics.
And we don’t know why, but most laws of physics are deterministic – which
means that things happen the way they do because of the things that came before.
If you play pool and hit a ball at a specific speed and angle, the laws of physics tell you
exactly how all the balls on the table will behave – their speeds, recoil directions,
everything. These laws completely decide the behavior of all balls on the table. At the
microscopic level things work very much like that, only without players. Actions
and reactions affect all the particles in the universe, creating a chain of causal effects
that extends throughout time, from the past to the future. Things happen, making other things happen.
Now imagine that if, right after the Big Bang, a supersmart supercomputer
looked at every single particle in the universe and noted all their properties.
Just by applying the deterministic laws of physics, it should be able to predict
what all the particles in existence would be doing until the end of time.
But if you are made of particles and it’s technically possible to calculate
what particles will do forever, then you never decided anything. Your past,
present and future were already predetermined and decided at the
Big Bang. That would mean there is a kind of fate and you are not free to decide anything.
You may feel like you make decisions, but you're actually on autopilot. The
motions of the particles that make up your brain cells that made you
watch this video were decided 14 billion years ago. You are just in the room when
it happens. You're only witnessing how the universe inside you unfolds in real time.
But this can’t be true because of quantum mechanics, right? Quantum processes are
intrinsically random, not deterministic, and can’t be predicted with total certainty. On
the quantum pool table, balls can go randomly left or up or banana. Their
behavior isn’t set by what came before but randomly decided in real time.
But for the no-free-will camp, this doesn’t affect their argument . They think that since
quantum processes are random, they don’t allow you to make any decisions. Because if there is
randomness for the things that fundamentally make up your brain and body, these random
processes make the decisions for you. How?
Say an electron can randomly go right or left. If it goes left, it triggers electric
currents between your neurons that create a neuronal process, which triggers a long chain
of actions that make you watch a youtube video. Or it goes right and makes you clean your room.
Just because the chain is extremely complex doesn’t mean you have any control over it.
So maybe your fate was not decided at the Big Bang but it is decided at this very moment. The
important part is that it's not decided by you. You get no say in this, you have no free will.
Wow. This is kind of a bummer because the argument fundamentally seems to make sense.
Except nooooooo, screams the free will side, this is a really bad way to think about the universe.
You Are The Main Character
We know that we can reduce everything that exists to its basic particles and the laws that
guide them. While this makes physics feel like the only scientific discipline that actually matters,
there is a problem: You can’t explain everything in our universe only in terms of particles.
One key fact about reality that we can’t explain by looking just at electrons and
quantum stuff is emergence. Emergence is when many small things together create
new fundamental traits that didn’t exist before.
A drop of water is just a sextillion H2O molecules.
If you get water on your pants, they get wet. But what is… wetness? H2O molecules
are not wet. But your pants are definitely wet now. Many small things together just
created something new that doesn't exist at the level of the individual molecules.
Emergence occurs at all levels of reality, and reality seems to be organized in layers:
atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, organs, you, society. Put many things in one layer together
and they’ll create the next layer up. Every time they do, entirely new properties emerge.
One Atom can’t handle information, but many of them together can form a DNA molecule.
Molecules are not alive, but many of them can form a cell, and cells are alive. With each jump up the
complexity ladder the rules of what's possible change. Completely new things emerge that are much
more than the sum of their parts. And here the reductionist view of the universe breaks down.
The layers of reality need each other to make sense. You can explain living things with cells,
cells with molecules and molecules with atoms. But because of emergence,
you can’t start with quantum particles and reconstruct the universe. You can’t explain
galaxies with quantum mechanics, or human psychology with quarks.
This is not the whole story. Reality is not just structured in layers but for some reason
the layers are also largely independent of each other. Things existing within the same
layer can influence each other and maybe a layer up or down. But often they don’t
seem to influence things much higher up or down. To figure out how your organs work,
you don’t need quarks. To understand politics, you don’t need to know about cells! If you want
to explain things happening on one layer, you can only do that by staying close to that layer.
“Noooooooo” screams the no-free-will camp
in frustration. “You can’t just use magic to explain free will!”
But the emergence argument doesn’t invoke magic. It just says that thinking about free
will in terms of determinism and fundamental laws is a dead end. A kind of category error,
like trying to explain galaxies by looking at your digestive tract.
It is part of a reductionist school of thinking about the universe that
very successfully shaped science for a long time – but that's challenged by emergence.
So maybe, trying to understand free will by looking at fundamental particles,
deterministic laws and quantum mechanics misses the point. The
question we should be asking is – which layer of reality is relevant to free will?
Well, just like no individual molecule creates wetness, not a single cell in your brain wants
to watch Youtube. But one layer up, your brain made of 80 billion interconnected
neurons does. On this layer all the things relevant to you emerge: your consciousness,
character, feelings, your fears and dreams. This is where you emerge. We don’t know why and how,
but we know that you're here, right now. How all the things going on in your brain
play off each other to make you who you are is a whole different can of worms – but on
this layer of reality, you are part of the decision process. Because, at this level,
“you” are just one more physical cause of whatever happens in your brain. You are shaped
by your decisions and your decisions are shaped by you. You have a say about this layer of reality.
You are not just witnessing how the universe inside you unfolds – you’re
actually taking part in it! And you are free to do so however
you see fit. At least this is how some on the free will side see it.
Conclusion and Opinion
So who is right? Is there free will? We don’t know. If you ask us personally,
we think the argument for free will is more appealing because it brings
the complexity of the universe to the table. Maybe existence is just the sum of its parts,
but at least for now it seems the universe is not that simple.
But even if we don’t have free will, it’s not clear what that changes for practical
purposes. You and us, we humans, on a purely subjective basis, feel like we have free will
and that your decisions are yours to make. As long as we are not sure either way, and if it
feels like you are making decisions, what does it matter if a non-existent supercomputer could
have calculated the future at the big bang? Or if quantum stuff all the way down randomly
nudges your cells one way or the other. Free will that feels free is good enough for us.
In any case, now you can decide what to do next. Maybe get some stuff done? Or watch
more of our videos? It’s your decision! Probably.
At least you can pick which video to watch next - in theory.
What you have really almost no control over is how the state of the world is presented to
you in the news. Algorithms are constantly working behind the scenes to decide which information to
show you, and alarmist headlines get amplified over straightforward reporting. But Ground News,
the sponsor of this video, can give you back a feeling of independence.
They gather related news articles from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage.
For example, last month the UK government passed a bill to deport asylum seekers to
Rwanda. This bill was widely covered by more than 150 news sources around the world. And
using the Ground News Blindspot feed you can see how this event is being framed by both sides of
the political spectrum - instead of one side that an algorithm has decided you align with.
Right leaning sources focused on the idea that migrants are continuing to cross the
Channel despite the bill’s attempt to act as a deterrent, while left-leaning sources focus on
human rights groups' opposition to the bill. This way you can compare different viewpoints
from all over the world, see how the story and coverage change and be better equipped
to engage in constructive dialogue with those who hold different views.
Go to ground dot news slash nutshell to give it a try. If you sign up through this link you’ll get
40% off the unlimited access plan. We think they do an important job – If you’re not completely
free in your decision to stop scrolling, at least take control over what occupies your mind.
Buckle up! Our latest limited edition pin is available for pre-order now.
And this time it's personal.
It represents nothing less than the philosophy of kurzgesagt.
This world is a scary place. As far as we know the whole universe will
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This could be terrifying. But this also means that we're not bound by any rules or purpose. If our
life is all we get to experience, then it's the only thing that matters. We are truly free
in a universe sized playground. So, we might as well aim to be happy and make the most of it.
Counter existential dread with optimistic nihilism
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