Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends. — Friedrich Engels
You don’t become free by somehow escaping causation / becoming “free from” something. You’re always embedded in systems with their own dynamics. You become free by understanding the laws governing your situation and acting on that knowledge (agency, discipline).
Free will is happening at the boundary of computational irreducibility. When you need to make a decision, there is no shortcut. Sometimes when you’re trying to predict your own decisions, there’s no shortcut. You need to get to the point where you actually make the decision. It’s not freedom in the sense of indeterminism, but freedom in the sense of you don’t know what you are doing.
The stuff you do that is neither prescribed nor forbidden by your materials and algorithm.
What is free will? What are we free from?
We have freedom in how we interpret our memories and experiences.
Very little freedom in the short term, but if you consistently apply effort to shape your behaviour towards your values, you’ll eventually see a shift where you are doing more of the things you like to do. You have exerted your free will to mold yourself, to be in accordance with yohr values. Free will is the application of effort towards large scale goals. Free will is discipline. Discipline equals freedom… We are free in our attitude and interpretation of events.At any given moment in time, free will is infinitesimally small. But over time it adds up zo a nonzero quantity.
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Levin on free will
I once had lunch with a philosopher who said they didn’t believe in free will. The waitress came over, and they said, “hmm, let me see, I think I’ll have…” and I said “whoa — what are you doing — are you choosing a sandwich?! Why don’t you sit back and see what sandwich the universe ordained for you.” The reality is that it’s impossible to actually not believe in free will. People say they don’t believe in free will, but they are mistaken — of course they actually do (if you watch how they live their life) — it’s an aberrant, false belief about themselves in an otherwise consistent cognitive structure.
More importantly, all of the stories about the influences on our life are looking backwards. They are irrelevant. The past is gone. What’s relevant is what you do next. None of those stories about causation help you with that. Robert Sapolsky is right about this part: do not dwell on what you did, what you could have done, what caused what — neither credit nor blame for the past, they are all irrelevant. The only thing that matters is: what next. Do whatever amazing thing you were going to do, before you heard about all this free will stuff. The “no free will” frame is destructive and unhelpful; it’s all about explaining things that have already been done; it stymies creation. And realize that to be free of your own preferences, your past experiences, etc. is to wipe away your individuality — randomness and “blank slate” are not what we want out of free will. The one useful sense of free will is what you exert over a long term of effort to change the things that determine your behavior — your environment, your memories, your skills, your personality traits. You can change it, by concerted effort, little by little, every day. Like a curve in calculus — infinitesimal, infinitely small acts of effort, summed consistently over time, results in targeted changes in your likely behaviors and experiences. That’s the useful sense of free will. It will never be entirely free, and you don’t want it to be entirely free (of your own unique properties) — what you want is to be as free of others’ agendas as you can be, to take charge of your own long-term trajectory by concerted repeated effort toward a goal chosen judiciously.