The free-will delusion?

Imagine that you are in your favourite room at home. My personal favourite room in the house is my bedroom. I love my bedroom because; simply by being in there, I reduce the statistical probability of running into my three-year old and accidentally ripping out his Adam’s apple by a factor of three.

I’m a very clumsy man, you see. Especially when my Troy DVD is scratched at the point of the fight scene between Achilles and Hector — after “someone” has been jumping up and down on it, singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. And since I don’t fancy waking up at C-max in a post-coitus embrace with a man called Bulldog, sometimes I spend four hours in my bedroom sulking.

So, imagine that your favourite room is your own bedroom too. I have been known to get up at 9am on a Sunday and only leave my bedroom at 1pm. My bedroom is a very self-sufficient space. I have a bed if I want to lie down, a chair and a table if I need to surf the net and a bathroom if I want to make wee-wee. I’ve even been known to keep some biltong to munch on and beer to guzzle.

Imagine that you find your own bedroom as comfortable as I find mine. Are you feeling all peaceful inside just thinking about spending four hours in this, your own private sanctuary? Now, imagine that someone comes and locks the door from the outside at 9am, unbeknown to you. For the four hours between 9am and 1pm you’ll likely sit peacefully in there sleeping, farting, flossing or whatever else you do in your own bedroom.

Okay, now imagine that you try to get out at 1pm, only to discover that you’re locked inside. That changes things a tad, doesn’t it?

Now, try to imagine the feeling you’ll have for the next ten minutes until someone (say one’s three-year-old) decides to open the door at 1.10pm. All of a sudden a peaceful experience snugly tucked away in your own bedroom turns into an ugly experience by being cooped up in the room. It becomes a little prison. If you are claustrophobic you might even yell, wail and carry on like a caged orang-utan — behaviour that might prove to be exceptional entertainment for a three-year old whose true biological father may or may not be Lucifer himself.

A few years ago I read a book entitled God’s Debris, written by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame. (Out of interest, the book is freely available on the web). In the book, Adams dedicates an entire chapter to debunking the myth he calls “the illusion of free will”. That’s correct, Adams does not believe that human beings are capable of exercising free will.

He asserts that human beings only believe that they have free will because they have an innate need to believe that they make choices in their lives. In fact, says Adams, we’re just victims of the brain’s stimulus-response physical rules. Obviously I’m completely oversimplifying what Scott Adams has to say on the subject matter in the interest of time and not boring you to death. Adams’s ideas may sound like the well-worn, beaten causality laws but they aren’t exactly that. For the full explanation click on the link.

My point here is not to regurgitate what the Dilbert guy believes, but to ask the question: Do you believe that you have free will? Or do you believe what the cartoonist believes? Just to mess around with you I feel the need to point out that Scott Adams is a proud and admitted atheist. It does not take too much of an imagination to see which direction this is probably headed — that’s right, the whole God’s omnipotence versus man’s free will to choose his destiny conundrum.

Using my bedroom example, does Scott Adams not have a teensy little point? Does my example not prove that we possess an intrinsic need to believe that we have the free will to make choices? That as long as we believe that we can choose, we are happy? That it is the natural state of human existence to want to believe that we choose our respective destinies? That this state is encoded in our DNA?

And just in case anyone hallucinates because I’m saying that my example supports Scott Adams’s assertion that human beings do not have free will, let me state categorically that this is not what I’m saying. All I’m saying is that I think my example supports Adams’s qualification for his viewpoint i.e. human beings have an irresistible urge to feel that they have free will. It’s an important distinction.

Clear as mud? Let’s move on then. Does my bedroom example not prove that, as a human race, we’re just tweaked to need to believe that we have free will then? I think it does. As long as one believes that they can leave the bedroom at any time they want to, they are happy. As soon as they realise that they can’t, panic sets in. We intrinsically need to know that we have options. It is in our nucleotide sequence.

Now, here’s the critical bit. If we have a natural, gene-encoded need to have free will, does it not then follow that we have to believe that we have free will, even if we don’t? That this might mean that we have to create the illusion of free will to satisfy our need for it? I mean, if our DNA says free will is essential for our existence, then not having free will is not an option, is it?

But isn’t this the root of all delusion? Surely if we had free will none of us would have double chins, covet our brother’s wives or live uninspiring lives? I mean, my dream is to live in a R30-million house, own a Lamborghini and have twelve, nubile young cheerleaders precede me everywhere I go chanting “Go Ndum! Go Ndum!”

And I know that the only thing standing in my way is the lack of willpower to make it happen. But do I even have the willpower? Instead of heading for the pub every opportunity I get, I could spend that time coming up with a strategy to make that first million. Or could I?

Speaking of the pub, do any of the poor sods who frequent my pub have any chance of one day not wanting a beer? What is the percentage of alcoholics who are able to resist their urge to have a beer? And isn’t that statistic proof that, as a rule (versus the exception), human beings do not have free will?

And lastly, leading to my next philo-hallucinatory question: Isn’t believing in free will the surest way to lifelong misery and unhappiness? Aren’t we tweaked in such a way as to ensure that we are an unhappy species? Think about it — if the cartoonist is right, we’re designed to believe that we have free will when we don’t, just so that we are perpetually unhappy.

Imagine it. Alcoholics accepting that they just can’t put that bottle of vodka down. Smokers embracing the fact their tongues will always smell like a strip-club carpet at 4am. Fatties having guilt-free triple-decker burgers in the knowledge that they couldn’t put them down even if a burning bush in the desert instructed them to. Imagine that.

Let me recap all the things I’m not saying:

1. Human beings have no free will.
2. God is a figment of overactive imaginations.
3. Serial killers, alcoholics, smokers, druggies, fatties and hookers are cool people.

(For the record, I don’t believe that this four-point clarification will make a difference anyway — lack of free will and all that. I therefore look forward to hearing how I’m making excuses for evil and mediocrity.)

Let me clarify what it is that I am saying. All I’m asking is that you consider the possibility that all may not necessarily be what it seems. Can you imagine life without free will?

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Update:

Seventeen comments into the comments, the cartoonist is proven right. Most comments are from people debating whether human beings have free will or not despite me explicitly stating that this is not what I was arguing. All I was saying is that my bedroom example supports the qualification for the Dilbert guy’s stance. But my readers saw the ‘free will delusion’ red flag and natural cause-and-effect laws elicited a typically Pavlovian response. This is why the cartoonist calls human beings moist robots without any control over their responses.

I think he just might have a point.]

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