Basics.

Man is on the verge to unfold the biggest and most revolutionary scientific discovery in the history of mankind: There is no Free Will. Free Will is just an illusion produced by our brain. The persona — the self — is an illusion produced by the automated brain and this illusion have embedded a notion of Free Will. Control. Power over events.

Through history many philosophers and physicists have argued that the concept of Free Will is in conflict with everything else in universe — it’s just scientifically absurd — it breaks every law of nature. The last thirty years neuroscience and neurobiology — much thanks to Functional MRI — have collected results that show clearly that our conscious mind — what we experience is our persona with a Free Will — have no control or effect on the actual events in the material world — not even in our brain itself. We can’t even control our thoughts — decide what to think. What I’m thinking now and writing here now is not a decision made by my consciousness — my persona — it’s just a product of a casual system witch I have no conscious comprehension of. Simple put; it’s automatic. I (my experience of me) am just a “tool” (I put “tool” in quotation because a tool postulates an owner of some kind…and that’s not the point here).

Everything in cosmos is causality from the Big Bang to now — and this law is the same for planets and neurons in our brain. Nothing can be other than series of events and that a biological construction — a specific primate on one of billions of planets — could break this law of nature is absurd…or just pure religion.

Why have evolution designed this illusion of Free Will? Why does the automated brain bother to create a scam self-awareness and fool it to believe it is on top of it all — while the brain subliminally continue to conduct everything — execute all the billions of causal events demanded by billions of events in the past — every nanosecond? Well, this is my theory; our extreme cortex — our intelligent and conscious brain which have given us many advantages in the struggle for life — would go insane (counterproductive) if the consciousness — the me in us — did not have this illusion of control and Free Will. Homo Sapiens can not just sit back and enjoy the ride. Somehow the illusion that we really decide things, controlling our body and have an impact on our life and future — benefits us. I suppose the illusion is necessary when an animal brain gets to a certain level of consciousness; maybe it’s a protection from schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Maybe this is just a temporary solution in Homo Sapiens evolutionary brain development — maybe 50 000 years from now evolution have designed a brain that can function even if it knows it is an automated machine — or maybe the typical human consciousness will disappear and our brain will “go back” to a level more like for example small apes. If this typical human consciousness becomes a burden when it comes to survival of the fittest — it will be erased. Consciousness may be one of evolutions dead ends. Conclusion; we have as much Free Will as a bacteria or an ant. Or a river.

So — the earth spins around the sun — and I write this exactly now — because things happened a long time ago and led to that some things happened a nanosecond just before exactly now. It’s all a series of events and with the right mathematic system we could — in theory — calculate everything that will happen in the future. Every event to come is already embedded in all the past events — and there is no force witch can stop the process — of course not even Homo Sapiens.

Mankind’s all other scientific experiences is nothing compared to this; that the biological robot have discovered that she is just a robot. And nothing about this is in the newspapers — no headlines — no global political meetings and not a sound from the UN. Nothing. Why? The answer is simple: we can not accept this and we are so automated that even if we “intellectually” know the truth we will continue to demand individual responsibility for all actions — we will keep punish “evil” people even if we know that there is no personal guilt in anything — the juridical system will be intact in all nations. We are emotionally programmed to this and science will not effect anything at all. This — if anything — is an explicit picture of our robotic behavior. It seems like the system have this security system embedded; even if we uncover the scam with reason and science everything can continue like before. Most humans can’t even grasp what have been discovered — can’t even think those thoughts — and is only capable of producing primitive culture, like creating religions for example. Many humans on this planet — even educated people in high political or academic positions — have not been touched by the french enlightenment or even embraced the theory of evolution. In that perspective late and coming neuroscience will have no important impact on ethics or the way we organize our societies — only on cognitive and chemical disciplines. This is unique; it’s the first time in history that mankind will ignore revolutionary scientific breakthrough’s even in the long term. For the first time she will not embrace knowledge — and this because she is not capable to mentally handle the truth. The only thing I can see is a minor cultural impact in a small minority. This blog may be in that context. Some people — like me and of course involved scientists — can not ignore this revolution and it occupies our mind more or less. I really wish there was a Free Will, but it’s just an illusion and I accept this. My soul is just an electrochemical product of a biological robot. For me this information can be a source to great intellectual entertainment and maybe some new interesting culture artefacts. That’s how I’m programmed to deal with it.

If you don’t believe in Free Will, what will you call yourself? I robot? Autoist? Determinist? It doesn’t matter — the paradox is that you will still act as you always have acted; like there is a Free Will. And — like I said — all this text wasn’t written by me — it’s just a series of neuron-events in my brain controlling a nervous system controlling muscular movements — and it was all just an effect of events in the past. My conciseness had nothing to do with all those events. All this text is just an automatic result of the Big Bang — like everything else. In other words; I can’t neither be blamed or saluted for this text. When you read it now it’s also — of course — fully automated and a result of events in the past resulting in a sparkling neuron computing process in your brain. Your persona experience the process and believe it’s in charge of it all. When you stop reading you will be fully convinced that it was you that decided to stop reading. You also feel that you decode the text and if you like it or despise it…you believe that it’s youthat made those thoughts of value in the brain — that you executed the billions of complex synapsis cluster connections that is the physical manifestation of those thoughts and values. One electro-chemical process believes it’s alive and is convinced that it’s controlling the other electro-chemical processes. This special electro-chemical process even think about itself — it’s a self reflecting bio-machine.

So — there is not even a Free Will the short time we breathe on this tiny little planet. We are not alive the way we thought we were alive, existing the way we thought we existed. Our presence is just a dream… or rather; the organism participate in a flow of events and the brain generates a dream we can call consciousness — and this dream have access to the senses and has a built-in illusion of control over body and brain. Is this scary? Cold and dark? Fantastic? A door to a new better world? Not an issue at all because no one cares and everything goes on like nothing have happened?

Anyway — this new discovery is also a result of causality. It was inevitably that the robot would one day discover that she is just a robot. Everything is inevitably. Galaxies or neurotransmitters events and behavior; all inevitably. Cause and effect. Nothing or no one can bend this track of events — it’s physical time and it’s all just a place where things happen. Welcome to Phenotopia.