Sunday 12 April 2009

Free Will Does NOT Exist.

Mr Raj, this is in reply to your comment on my previous blogpost. The reply was so long that I thought it would be better to put it in a separate blogpost instead


But no matter what decisions we make it is a result of electrical impulses in our brains. And these electrical impulses are a result of the movement of Sodium+ ions in our brain. Irrespective of how we make our decision we still can't make the Sodium+ ion move in a way that defies the laws of physics. When you choose to marry someone the "love" you feel corresponds to specific areas of the brain firing electrical impulses. By using Newtonian Mechanics slightly modified with General Relativity and the Principles of Quantum Mechanics we can calculate the fate of all the Sodium ions that created the electrical impulses. That is the theory put in its simplest form. If we ant to count the external factors, we take into consideration the events that happen around us. For example, choosing a career. It is a few specific events in a person's life that leads a person to choose a career. Other factors include mental ability, opportunities and finances. Mental abilities are completely determined by the size and health of specific sections in the brain which consists of atoms whose fate can be determined. Opportunities are determined by the state of the economy and other factors which are affected by the import/export of goods and specific economic events. All these events include matter which is made up of atoms whose fate can be predicted. Finances mean money and other assets which can be liquidated into cash thus helping you to get some education thus helping you to choose the desired career. Since money and assets are made up of matter they contain atoms whose fate can be predicted. As for events in a person's life those events are a direct result of interaction between matter particles (if the event involves you father telling you something his mouth is affecting the air molecules to move which carries the sound to your ears which make your eardrums move causing electrical impulses in your brain causing a decision/opinion to be formed.) I could also explain with appropriate detail how any other factors affect the decision making process. Give me any event ant I'll explain it. As difficult as it may seem to believe, all events ARE predetermined by the laws of physics. The notion that we are free to act as we wish is an Illusion. In fact we are forced to act as though free will existed by the Laws of Physics. Because, In theory we can map every single movement of each and every particle in the universe right from it's creation about 380000 years after the Big Bang up to it's destruction(Whenever that is). If we can do that in the atomic level it follows that we can do that in the macroscopic level. The only reason that we haven't done this yet is because as the size of the system we are dealing gets larger, the number of equations which we deal with gets larger and larger. So to predict the fate of a system as large as the human body we would nee computers with at least a hundred (or more) times the computing speed of today's computers. According to Moore's law (Which states that power of computers doubles approximately every 18 months. And it has stood wonderfully till now) that will take another 50-100 years. But stepping stones to the creation of such 'quantum computers' of immense power have already been laid. Scientists have used the power of 7 atoms vibrating exactly in phase with each other to calculate that 5 x 7 = 35. Although this is simple, we may see exceedingly complex quantum computers as the years advance.

2 comments:

Evee said...

bring this up to ks (i'm sure you have)

if free will does not exist, how did the phrase freedom of speech even crop up?

Ashwin Narayan said...

We feel it exists. What we call freedom of spech is actually bound by a set of rules in itself.