Does human free will exist, and if so (or if not) what are the implications for how we run our societies?

I come at this from the fundamental physics perspective so no, I don’t believe that we have free will. It feels as if I do, and I behave as if I do, but I didn’t really have any choice in that. I just do. Things get a bit meta in this worldview.

This is not to say that our lives are predetermined, however. We are not trains running on the inescapable tracks of destiny laid down in the first moments (the Clockwork Universe theory). No, it would not be correct to say that all outcomes were determined at the Big Bang, because of the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. It would be more correct to say that all POSSIBLE outcomes were determined at the Big Bang, but the specific path through Hilbert space (the perhaps infinite dimensional space of possible quantum states) that our universe took was inherently probabilistic, not deterministic.

Said another way, the probabilities are deterministic, but their outcomes are not. The wave function evolves deterministically, but how it decoheres into the reality we perceive can only be predicted probabilistically.

This doesn’t get us free will though, it just pushes the determinism up to a higher level. It does, however, mean that your fate was not determined at the Big Bang, which is comforting. Even Laplace’s Demon can’t tell you what will happen to you tomorrow with certainty.

Some have proposed that free will is to be found in quantum uncertainty, but the proposals are nebulous and essentially boil down to free will somehow intervening in the material world and violating the laws of physics. In short, magic.

This raises uncomfortable questions about personal accountability, however, since a person without free will cannot justifiably be punished for taking actions they had no say in. Likewise, credit and reward for good or valuable deeds are also moot. But our justice systems, and the entire edifice of “meritocracy” (flawed in its execution as it may be) are predicated on the assumption that human beings have the free will to choose their actions.

This dependence is addressed explicitly in the notion of someone being found “not criminally responsible” for potentially heinous crimes that they would otherwise face severe consequences for. I, myself, am uncomfortable with this type of ruling; whether or not a person chooses to commit atrocities, removal from free society seems appropriate. In fact, if they are not in control of their actions and their natural programming leads them towards violence against innocents, it seems even more appropriate. Someone who chooses to commit violence can choose not to in the future. Someone who engages in violence uncontrollably can never be trusted.

This puts the distinction of premeditated murder into an interesting perspective. Judicial sentencing for premeditated murder is typically more severe than for spontaneous murder, but one could argue that the murderer who plans in advance is of more sound mind than the one who impulsively lashes out. It would seem that the former could be reasoned with, convinced by rational argument not to do it again. I have less faith that the latter could be trusted to hold onto their conviction of such arguments, even if it were in their best interests.

(The preceding paragraph sets aside the issue of psychopathy, in which one could imagine both premeditation and lack of control existing simultaneously, and also grants, for the sake of argument, the existence of free will. The purpose is merely to illustrate the contradictions in a particular aspect of criminal justice, even when free will is assumed. Now we will return to reasoning from the proposition that free will does not exist.)

I now propose one of The Necessary Lies of Civilization*

NLC #0: For a society to function, its members must believe in human free will.

*Credit to CGP Grey for the concept of Necessary Lies of Civilization.

Note that from the no-free-will perspective, this is merely an if-then statement. There is no notion of people choosing to believe in free will or not. They either do or they don’t, and if they don’t then all attribution becomes meaningless, criminal justice ceases to have any basis, and likewise with merit-based reward. It is difficult to imagine how a society could function under such conditions.

Thus, it is imperative to the survival of a society to believe in something that, in the view of this author, does not exist. The wave function evolves deterministically (no free will there), and the outcomes observed are random within a probability distribution (no free will there, either).

I have indexed this as NLC #0 because it seems the most foundational; it must come first and upon it other Necessary Lies can be built. Other Lies we might consider*:

*Credit again to CGP Grey, and community discussion surrounding Hello Internet podcast episode #99.

NLC #1: Violence is never the solution to solving disagreements.

This one is also foundational, since civilization can, from one perspective, be defined as the social structure that results when a group of people collectively agree not to use violence as a means for solving disputes. Without this agreement, you basically just have a bunch of warring tribes, with Dunbar’s number setting a rough ceiling on tribe size. With this agreement, much larger groups can exist and disputes are solved through a judicial system.

But what is a judicial system? It is a bunch of codified laws and bureaucrats to administer them, yes, but behind that there must be an enforcement layer to ensure that what is decided by the bureaucrats is adhered to by the populace. Police. And what is the only way to ensure compliance? What is the only method of persuasion that, taken to a sufficient level, no one will resist in the end? Violence.

Usually the threat of it is enough, and often through multiple layers of abstraction. Only the most rash, impulsive, least in-control members of society will actually need to be chased down, tasered, beaten, tear gassed, or shot to render compliant. Most of us never get to that point. We put our hands up, we exit the vehicle, we submit to search when a warrant is produced. We show up to court, we pay our fines, and we surrender ourselves to imprisonment when the system has decided it must be so. But primarily, we architect our behavior so that none of this happens in the first place. Because we know that at every step along the way, the choice is to surrender our freedom or move one step closer to the state’s monopoly on violence.

In the societies we have constructed, violence is not the solution for solving disputes among the populace but it is the ultimate solution for solving disputes between individuals and the state, and between states. Make of that what you will.

NLC #2: Cheaters never prosper.

This one is imperative for social cohesion, but patently false. To quote a previous article of mine:

“Working hard and acting morally often lead to material success in life, but they are by no means necessary. Many a man and woman have worked hard and conducted themselves ethically their entire life and died poor, and many have lied, cheated, stolen, and fucked over the people around them and lived long, prosperous lives, leaving behind many descendants.”

Society would fall apart if too many people used the cheater’s strategy (sooner or later, you run out of people to steal from), but so long as a sufficient fraction are acting honestly then the cheater can enjoy outsized returns, provided they are skilled at what they do.

It is to society’s benefit to convince as many people as possible not to use this strategy, since it is inherently nonproductive. This is made easier by the fact that it is a lie that most of us want to believe, lest we feel like suckers for following rules that others flagrantly disregard.

It should also be noted that in this section, the word “prosper” is not limited to mere financial gain. There is a notion that many of us cling to that dishonest, immoral people may end up rich but are ultimately hollow and unhappy on the inside. This may be true in a lot of cases but I would like to posit the uncomfortable possibility that some people can be truly awful, net-takers, parasites upon the world, and sleep perfectly well at night with no sense of shame or guilt. Perhaps the Lie should be reformulated as “cheaters never prosper, and can never be truly happy.”

NLC #3: Your vote counts (for democratic societies only).

This one is interesting because it is a statement that starts out true, and then becomes less true the more people believe it. If very few people believed that their vote mattered, then few would vote, and the few that did would have their vote weighted proportionally high relative to the overall population size. As more people believe it, more vote, and thus every vote gets increasingly diluted and ineffective.

There are many other Necessary Lies, I’m sure, but the purpose of this article is not to make an exhaustive list, nor is it necessarily to argue against their widespread belief. It is merely to shine a light on the extent to which our societies are social constructs built upon a shared system of beliefs about how the world operates. The stories that we tell each other manifest materially into the world we create, and therefore have great power. In this Fourth Turning, many of the old stories will be discarded; I hope that we can author some better, more noble ones in the coming years.