<story><title>Confessions of a Theoretical Physicist</title><url>https://nautil.us/confessions-of-a-theoretical-physicist-787199/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kaiwen1</author><text>Off topic, but eureka moments are my favorite go-to evidence for the absence of free will. No one chooses to have a eureka moment. They just arrive. And not just those moments, but every thought in every moment. They all just arrive, none are choosen.</text></item><item><author>BrandoElFollito</author><text>I am an ex-physist who stopped after his PhD in particle physics. I love physics but while money does not bring happiness, it is better to cry in a Mercedes than on a bike (this is not true, I just laughed when I first read it).&lt;p&gt;I went through the stages of OP (on a way smaller scale, I do not have his experience) and I think this is awesome. You continuously go from &amp;quot;oh yeah, now I get it&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;crap&amp;quot;. This always have you on the bleeding edge between &amp;quot;this si physics, I know that&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;yes, but what if...&amp;quot;. To me this is the essence of knowledge though curiosity.&lt;p&gt;I started my PhD on a specific topic and at some point I was a bit stuck (not panic mode stuck but pissed off stuck). I had dinner with a friend, we were discussing about my work (she is also a physicist) and she off-handly suggested something. And bam! my world changed. The direction of the thesis changed. I added an extra thesis director because what I was about to do was a world where the hands of men did not step on yet.&lt;p&gt;I thanked her profusely for her help in the thesis and suggested a joined publication (which she did not want to take because she was not interested and asked me to stop stalking her :))&lt;p&gt;And this is how science moves: because of eureka moments under the shower or at dinner or because someone thought &amp;quot;hmmm...&amp;quot; (looking at you Nikola Tesla).&lt;p&gt;So the fact that this guy doubts about what the world is, and that he is a theoretical physicist (so hopefully will not switch to some insanities) is awesome.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>d0mine</author><text>The presence of subconscious processes doesn&amp;#x27;t deny the existence of conscious ones.&lt;p&gt;Focus&amp;#x2F;diffuses modes are widely known&amp;#x2F;accepted.&lt;p&gt;You can direct the unconscious thoughts too. If I spend some time intensely trying to solve a problem on the conscious level, often I get new ideas on how to approach it in the morning or during a long run (without thinking about it on the conscious level).&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;Unrelated: the discussions about free will often miss that the existence of atoms doesn&amp;#x27;t imply that a wooden table doesn&amp;#x27;t exist: they are on different levels of abstraction--no point in comparing.</text></comment>
<story><title>Confessions of a Theoretical Physicist</title><url>https://nautil.us/confessions-of-a-theoretical-physicist-787199/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kaiwen1</author><text>Off topic, but eureka moments are my favorite go-to evidence for the absence of free will. No one chooses to have a eureka moment. They just arrive. And not just those moments, but every thought in every moment. They all just arrive, none are choosen.</text></item><item><author>BrandoElFollito</author><text>I am an ex-physist who stopped after his PhD in particle physics. I love physics but while money does not bring happiness, it is better to cry in a Mercedes than on a bike (this is not true, I just laughed when I first read it).&lt;p&gt;I went through the stages of OP (on a way smaller scale, I do not have his experience) and I think this is awesome. You continuously go from &amp;quot;oh yeah, now I get it&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;crap&amp;quot;. This always have you on the bleeding edge between &amp;quot;this si physics, I know that&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;yes, but what if...&amp;quot;. To me this is the essence of knowledge though curiosity.&lt;p&gt;I started my PhD on a specific topic and at some point I was a bit stuck (not panic mode stuck but pissed off stuck). I had dinner with a friend, we were discussing about my work (she is also a physicist) and she off-handly suggested something. And bam! my world changed. The direction of the thesis changed. I added an extra thesis director because what I was about to do was a world where the hands of men did not step on yet.&lt;p&gt;I thanked her profusely for her help in the thesis and suggested a joined publication (which she did not want to take because she was not interested and asked me to stop stalking her :))&lt;p&gt;And this is how science moves: because of eureka moments under the shower or at dinner or because someone thought &amp;quot;hmmm...&amp;quot; (looking at you Nikola Tesla).&lt;p&gt;So the fact that this guy doubts about what the world is, and that he is a theoretical physicist (so hopefully will not switch to some insanities) is awesome.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cameldrv</author><text>I don’t think it rules out free will, but perhaps free will is more limited.  There is a self reflective part of your mind, probably physically located in your frontal lobe, but there are also many other parts of your mind and brain that do important things, but aren’t self reflective.  I’ve come to think of my brain as a committee.  There are many things I can do, like walk or even do a mathematical proof, that I cannot really describe the process.  We see in things like addiction that the self reflective mind also does not always (or maybe even often) have ultimate control over behavior.  Kahenaman and Gallwey talk about this as System 1&amp;#x2F;2 and Self 1&amp;#x2F;2.  Julian Jaynes even thinks that people used to have complete other simulated people inside of themselves that they called gods, and this still happens to people with Schizophrenia.</text></comment>