If I'm being completely honest, I dont really believe we have free will. Or we do, but in an almost entirely meaningless way on a civilizational scale. While you might be able to make small choices, material conditions and the flow of history ultimately decide the course of your life. We're all just products of our environment which none of us can change on our own, and as much as we can change our environment as a collective is decided upon by current conditions which are determined by oast conditions, etc. Basically i think the entirity of history was determined at the big bang, and were all just along for the ride.

  • ComradeBongwater [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    The universe is not deterministic. Quantum mechanics tells us that at a very small scale, things seem fundamentally probabilistic.

    The closest view I hold that could be considered spiritual in any way is this: For every probabilistic quantum superposition collapse, each outcome does happen, in proportion to the probability of each outcome. For example, if at a given moment, there is a 25% chance one quantum event happens and a 75% chance that the event does not happen, the universe branches into 4 child universes, 1 of which where the quantum event happened and 3 where the event did not happen.

    I believe theoretical physicists refer to this as the Many Worlds Theory. And the implication of it being true is that every possible state of the universe from its initial conditions actually happens.

    In terms of "free will", this would imply that you could not possibly exert influence over the collective system of states, as every branch that physics allows your consciousness to traverse gets traversed, but you can only perceive the one this instance of your consciousness resides in.