Do human beings possess free will?

even if free will is an illusion its a good illusion to have and maybe part of positive illusions like illusion of control

science says there is chaos and randomness so none determinism concepts like that give way to free will

@deg If everything is random, that's actually more proof that we do not possess free will. After all, it's all random. How could we?

Intelligence is a curse, not a blessing. As a highly intelligent person, I don't share tastes with majority of anime or vidya game enjoyers. It's truly a sad place to be in. When surrounded by a world of ignorant happy-go-lucky people, you become lonely and dejected. You become overly cynical and secretly jealous of the normies. You have no place where you truly belong. You are destined to be alone with your own thoughts. It takes time to come to terms with the reality. It takes time to start feeling comfortable with yourself. You know that you can never become as blissfully ignorant as the headless majority of the population. So the only thing left for you is to embrace yourself. Embrace your hobbies and lose yourself in them.

I am cursed. I've figured out free will doesn't exist in my early 20s. Because of that, I no longer feel remorse for my life failures, nor do I feel pride in my achievements. Why would I feel bad about my failures if I know that I don't have free will? Why would I be proud of doing something that's in no part my own result?

How do I know that free will doesn't exist? Does a robot that's been programmed to process external stimuli (coming in the form of audiovisual and gyrometric feed) and respond accordingly to its programming, have free will? Obviously no. Does a CPU in your PC have free will? No, it doesn't even though it is built to perform smart tasks. Do balls on a billiards table move according to their free will? No, they act according to laws of physics. But you might say "analogies are not logical arguments", and you are correct. I showed you those analogies so you better understand the similarities between what happens in a human being and what happens in the dead matter outside of living beings.

Humans are no different from dead matter. We are a collection of particles that move and interact according to the laws of physics. You might say that "humans are different, because we have an immaterial part we call "soul" that allows us to be different from the dead physical world and allows us to be good people". But you are wrong. It's very easy to prove we don't have soul. Get drunk, consume some drugs, get injected by doctors with chemical substances, get a neurological treatment to your head, get a radiomagnetic treatment to selected parts of the brain, or sustain an injury. All of those actions will completely change the way you think and act. If soul existed, it would prevent us from performing evil acts. It would act as a correction mechanism for when the physical world inside our brains leads us to commit a sin. But there is nothing that prevents us from doing those atrocious things that we do. There is no soul inside of us. We are simply puppets dancing around to the tune of the laws of physics. Our civilization exists only because the laws of physics are unchanging and we've figured out to a great degree how the world operates. The fact that you're using a PC to post stupid messages like "I have free will ez gg no re ohio gyatt rizzler" is all thanks to our understanding of the laws of physics. All the medicinal knowledge, practices and drugs are so reliable thanks to our understanding of the physical world inside us humans. We've even established some basic understandings of the human brain, such as which areas of the brain get activated during certain thought processes. We understand what thinking is - it's a very chaotic and incredibly fast and complex exchange of electrical signals in the brain. We know the process of synapse activation. We understand the chemical cascade of events that lead to a neuron sending a signal. We know how certain hormones and other chemicals affect the activation and propagation of electrical signals in the brain. We know that those substances change the thinking process, since they change the signal propagation status. Sure, we don't understand everything about our brains. But everything we've understood leads to the same answer - there's no soul inside of the brain. There's no supernatural powers going on that allow us to be "human". We are only a very complicated mess of matter and interactions between those pieces of matter. And all the knowledge the collective of humanity has accumulated leads us to an undeniable fact, that everything physical in this world is ruled by the laws of physics. It doesn't matter if the laws of physics are deterministic or not, since we have no concious control over the outcome of a hypothetical probabilistic outcome of wave function collapsing into a definitive state. We are slaves to the laws of physics. We're here just for the ride.

Why does the society not teach us in school that we don't have free will? It's a very simple answer, actually. A great portion of the society would become unproductive and uncooperative if they were taught there's no free will. It's easier to build strong nations and to control people if they believe they have a choice. Also, there's no danger of people figuring this out on their own. Only the top few percentage of people will ever analyze the world around them enough and figure out that free will doesn't exist. Only the analytical types who see patterns and piece observations together will notice that the world flows according to absolute rules, and that human beings are not any different from the outside world. It takes a certain level of self-distancing from one's ego in order to accept this reality. But as I'm a very analytical and logical person who rarely operates on emotions, I was able to do it. You, as a most likely emotional person, will most likely have a knee-jerk reaction to this post. But I can't blame you. It's just a natural reaction from your brain. You were just built this way. The visual information in this post will get processed by your brain in a certain way, and the most common outcome is denial. When faced with information that turns your entire world view upside down, denial is the common response. But hopefully, over time you will start to notice how humanity's prosperity comes as a result of the infallible nature of the laws of physics, and how there's no claims to believe we are any different from the physical world around us.

@BigBoyAdvance A little edgy, but I agree with everything you said. No free will. Analogies actually do work as an argument, by the way.

Freedom ends with the beginning of someone's else freedom.

And Free Will isn't doing everything you want, even in the wikipedia the first sentence says it:

"Free will is the notional capacity or ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded."

Fact of choosing the possible actions, no matter if other are prohibited by laws of physics, by human laws, by any other forces is a free will.

If free will would be "doing everything you want" than there would be way more people who would do a "Special Operations" which would kill many people or other living beings just because they wanted to go out and make a killing rampage.

@Zettaiken I mean, even under that description, I would argue we do not possess free will. I cannot choose between multiple courses of action unimpeded. Our subconscious mind prevents this.

In a practical sense, the appearance of free will is great enough that you shouldn't be going into a depressive episode over it. Generally speaking though, it is irrelevant, all that matters is that the human condition produces beautiful and aesthetic things. But I do think the scientifically inclined (and perhaps I could count myself a such) should stop using apparently infallible and highly revered scientific phenomena as mathematical axioms to draw logical conclusions, a priori, about philosophical notions. This is discipline bleed that leads people to believe they can make proven statements (rather than generally accepted theory) about notions that are possibly beyond human perspective or understanding.

I read a book "Metro 2033" that gave me an interesting insight on free will, fate, etc.

Can we believe in fate? A lack of free will and that everything is already determined? Maybe it is both, that's the way I choose to see things. Say you have the free will to make one's decisions and 'be your own man'. Say the world acts in a certain way that causes your actions, which you know you will take in a certain way, to unfold in an often predictable manner. If this can be so accurately predicted, isn't that your own personal fate? Sure, the world can work it's own weavings upon you, and things are so often left up to pure chance, but the ways we live can be frequently determined by how we have lived. I believe in many moments in life fate is in effect, yet your choices and thus free will has brought to to where fate/determinism said it always would.

The book is worth a read, one because it's a fun book and two because the philosophy is much better explained there. Polyanka Station has been on my bucket list for years now because of that scene.

Additionally, the whole "atoms/quantum mechanics" argument is dismissible in my mind solely because it is fucking boring and lets people give up. And being cynical is ugly.

@DreamWindow

I've noticed alot of things pop up as a means to avoid accountability and that too is scary. Like if these ideas exist for that purpose and they are being proposed as healthy concepts to believe or entertain then that is awful.

I want to be more optimistic about these things though. Believe in humanity and all that jazz.

Free will is a myth
1. Your parents determine your genetics
2. Your genetics determines your looks
3. People treat you based on your looks even as a child and baby
4. Your behavior adapts from the treatment of others. Ugly=negative affirmation good looking=more social
5. Your intelligence is also rooted in genetics
6. Behavior molded by treatment of others and genetics determines your hobbies.
No real place for free will. I call it fate.

Free will is a myth
1. Your parents determine your genetics
2. Your genetics determines your looks
3. People treat you based on your looks even as a child and baby
4. Your behavior adapts from the treatment of others. Ugly=negative affirmation good looking=more social
5. Your intelligence is also rooted in genetics
6. Behavior molded by treatment of others and genetics determines your hobbies.
No real place for free will. I call it fate.

@_Nette_

At the center of most movements is a core in where the people motivated by the cause believe that others should pay the costs of their own decision making. The scariest thing about it too me is that, if the majority of people genuinely believed that nothing mattered, it would open the door for some really heinous shit.