<story><title>Can you use your &quot;free will&quot;? Try your hand</title><url>https://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nick/aaronson-oracle/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>legacynl</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s hard to come up with a scientifically valid test for something as wide and vague as &amp;#x27;free will&amp;#x27;. So what happens is that the tests are designed to test for very specific things that are then used to reason better about vague things like &amp;#x27;free will&amp;#x27;. What this test is actually focused on is decision making.&lt;p&gt;The participant in the test is asked to randomly press either button A or B. The cognitive&amp;#x2F;mental experience of the participant is the following sequence of operations that seem to happen sequentially in time:
1. The participants is asked which button to push.
2. the participant ponders his decision.
3. the participant pushes the chosen button.&lt;p&gt;But what this test shows is that while the participants internal monologue is still &amp;#x27;deciding&amp;#x27; whether to press A or B in step 2. The software is already able to accurately predict the answer at step 1.&lt;p&gt;So this indicates that even though your internal monologue might still be going &amp;quot;hmm should I pick A or B?&amp;quot;, the decision, where your internal monologue eventually will end up, has already been made.&lt;p&gt;This is what the clickbait headline refers to; even though it feels like we humans are able to dictate and direct our thoughts, it seems that it doesn&amp;#x27;t entirely works that way.</text></item><item><author>karmakaze</author><text>In what way is being unpredictable considered &amp;quot;free will&amp;quot;? Of course it&amp;#x27;s just being clickbaity but worth mentioning. I&amp;#x27;ve seen this better used to show that humans are poor sources of randomness.&lt;p&gt;Is there a difference between non-determinism and a free will choice? The latter seems to be a contradiction. A choice implies a reason which would be a cause, thus determinism.&lt;p&gt;This test is asking to make random &amp;#x27;choices&amp;#x27;. This does have value in something such as sports.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alwaysbeconsing</author><text>&amp;gt; even though your internal monologue might still be going &amp;quot;hmm should I pick A or B?&amp;quot;, the decision, where your internal monologue eventually will end up, has already been made.&lt;p&gt;There is an older better experiment by Benjamin Libet of this. The participant is directed to choose whether to press a single button, and watching a fast clock display to report the instant the decision is taken. The measurement and comparison of the brain activity clearly shows deciding to press, many milliseconds before the participant experiences deciding. Therefore, the participant does not have free will, is it not so? Since the decision is done before it is known to be done by the subject.&lt;p&gt;The retort is simple. The leap to &amp;quot;no free will&amp;quot; ignores that consciousness itself is a processing: the brain component that reconciles the internal input and renders it for externality &lt;i&gt;takes time&lt;/i&gt; to do its work. The decision is still made by the participant. The subjective experience is behind the objective activation simply just as the signal for a television screen must pass through the wire before it is translated for pixels.</text></comment>
<story><title>Can you use your &quot;free will&quot;? Try your hand</title><url>https://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nick/aaronson-oracle/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>legacynl</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s hard to come up with a scientifically valid test for something as wide and vague as &amp;#x27;free will&amp;#x27;. So what happens is that the tests are designed to test for very specific things that are then used to reason better about vague things like &amp;#x27;free will&amp;#x27;. What this test is actually focused on is decision making.&lt;p&gt;The participant in the test is asked to randomly press either button A or B. The cognitive&amp;#x2F;mental experience of the participant is the following sequence of operations that seem to happen sequentially in time:
1. The participants is asked which button to push.
2. the participant ponders his decision.
3. the participant pushes the chosen button.&lt;p&gt;But what this test shows is that while the participants internal monologue is still &amp;#x27;deciding&amp;#x27; whether to press A or B in step 2. The software is already able to accurately predict the answer at step 1.&lt;p&gt;So this indicates that even though your internal monologue might still be going &amp;quot;hmm should I pick A or B?&amp;quot;, the decision, where your internal monologue eventually will end up, has already been made.&lt;p&gt;This is what the clickbait headline refers to; even though it feels like we humans are able to dictate and direct our thoughts, it seems that it doesn&amp;#x27;t entirely works that way.</text></item><item><author>karmakaze</author><text>In what way is being unpredictable considered &amp;quot;free will&amp;quot;? Of course it&amp;#x27;s just being clickbaity but worth mentioning. I&amp;#x27;ve seen this better used to show that humans are poor sources of randomness.&lt;p&gt;Is there a difference between non-determinism and a free will choice? The latter seems to be a contradiction. A choice implies a reason which would be a cause, thus determinism.&lt;p&gt;This test is asking to make random &amp;#x27;choices&amp;#x27;. This does have value in something such as sports.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mapcars</author><text>&amp;gt; even though it feels like we humans are able to dictate and direct our thoughts, it seems that it doesn&amp;#x27;t entirely works that way.&lt;p&gt;Because it&amp;#x27;s not a binary thing, the thought process is more complex but we can take our body for example. We all control our body, right? But now you take an average office worker vs profession sportsman and see that one can do way more precise and measured movements.&lt;p&gt;Thoughts are similar, you take some buddhist monk who recites 5 hour long mantras by memory for dozen of years and their thought control would be on another level. It is just the question of training and developing the skill.</text></comment>