# About the illusion of free will

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-illusion-of-free-will/689217>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [May 25, 2014, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-illusion-of-free-will/689217 "2014-05-25T01:26:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 544

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**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2014, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-the-illusion-of-free-will/689217/544 "2014-06-12T15:09:15Z")

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I just caught this from another thread. These two comments pretty much sum up this entire discussion:

> [@What's the craziest thing you absolutely 100% believe?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-craziest-thing-you-absolutely-100-believe/690368/8):
>
> I’m almost certain I believe in the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum physics – in the most practical sense, that all possible historical time-lines are fully realized.

> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> I believe that the brain is natural and material, but that it is too complex to be deterministic in the Newtonian sense.

The MWI is fully deterministic. This is fully and unambiguously “Newtonian” in the sense that every single grain of sand – in every world – is fully determined, including which percent of worlds have the grain of sand here instead of there.

The entire essence of the thing is that the complexity we see around us, including the apparent “randomness” of events at the quantum level, stems from hard, simple laws of physics that are never violated. Everything we experience is based on these laws of nature, which can apparently be expressed in an extremely short amount of space.

If you’re almost certain that the MWI is true, then you’re almost certain we live in a determined universe.

And based on what I’ve read from physicists, I agree. The MWI is probably right. Any concept that’s thrown in on top of the basic laws of physics can theoretically be derived from those initial laws. We essentially never have the computational power to do such a derivation, which means we must necessarily rely on higher-level rules to do the best we can, but any such higher-level explanation will by necessity be less accurate than one which can start from the actual simple rules of the universe.

> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> Evolution isn’t wasteful at that level.

I was clicking back through the thread, and I missed this one earlier.

Evolution can be extremely wasteful, of course, [as any biologist like Dawkins will tell you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0). The path dependency of evolutionary change creates wasteful “mistakes” that even the worst engineer wouldn’t make. To assert that it’s not wasteful “on that level” is just an empty statement. It’s wasteful on whatever level that continues to work. Obviously the human mind has worked. Any waste that exists from the development of mammalian and primate mental processes is now baked in. Unlike an engineer, evolution can’t start again from scratch.

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