The existence of Free Will

What is free will? Does it exist? Was the food I chose at the cafeteria today my own choice or
was there something out of my comprehension that led me into choosing the item on the menu?
Now you might be saying at this very moment, "It was your own choice Robb, you did it with
your own free will!!". Free will is the ability to act at one's own discretion. Free will allows us to
choose paths without being constrained by things like 'fate', 'destiny', etc. You can freely choose
left, or right, or to go back, etc. without any obstruction. But again, arises a big question, can you
really do that? Can you choose paths without keeping the consequences in mind??
Decision Making
A problem can be defined as the discrepancy between the actual state and the desired state. We
strive to find solutions to every single problem of ours, and there are various solutions to a single
problem, which we call the alternatives. Decision making is the process of selecting the best
alternative for the problem. Imagine a problem has 3 different solutions and you'd have to choose
one of the three solutions to solve the problem. Did you choose the solution without considering
its consequences?? Did you not consider the feasibility, applicability, and other factors while
making the choice? Yes, we obviously did it. That’s what makes us a rational person. The
alternatives chosen through the process of rational decision making is more likely to solve the
problem. But this goes on to prove that free will does not exist as we are constrained by
consequences, fate, etc. when we are making decision. Even for the task that seems quite
inconsequential like buying a T-shirt, you are constrained by various factors like "Will it go
along with the pants I have at home? Thank goodness, my best friend doesn’t hate this color?"
while making the choice. Even the shopping spree you go on is not your own free will.
If free will existed, then you'd make irrational decisions ninety percent of times. The economy
would fall, the thing going on between Ukraine and Russia would have been the 759th World
War, and Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin would have written some EDM beat instead of
"Stairway to Heaven". Thus, free-will and rational decision can't co-exist.
Neuro-philosophy
Neuro-philosophy is the inter-disciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy that explores
the relevance of neuroscientific evidence on human philosophy. It encompasses various areas
like consciousness, the self and free will. Various neuroscientists performed wide array of
experiments to settle the debate of free-will once and for all. As a result, a specific aspect of the
notion of freedom (the conscious control of the start of the action) was identified and researched.
In an experiment by Banks and Isham (2009), participants were asked to push a button whenever
they pleased, and later they had to specify the precise moment when the intention to push the
button struck them. Auditory feedback was received by the subject with a delay ranging from 5-
60ms, to give them the impression that the response happened after the button was pushed. Even
though the subjects weren’t aware of the delay between the action and the auditory feedback, the
intention to press the button was reported as happening later in time, according to a linear
function with the delay of the auditory signal feedback. The apparent time of the subject's
response, rather than the actual answer, was thus used to determine the moment in which the
subject intended to press the button (as measured by judgment W). This finding suggests that
people evaluate the time when they had the intention to act based on the consequences of their
action rather than just the motor action itself. This experiment goes on to prove that free-will
does not exist because the subjects clearly are constrained by consequences.
Thus, there is no meaningful control over what one decides to do, and people are guided by
consequences and outcomes in every choice-making session they are put into throughout their
life. The apparent free decisions are guided by accumulated information, manifested preferences,
attitudes, and motivation. Thus, all choices are bounded and guided.
The Benford's Law
In my point of view, Benford's law is the most interesting phenomenon related to digits, almost
everything abides by the Benford's law. This law is important for data scientists as this law helps
to detect fraudulence, digital image forgery, tax evasions, and even legitimacy of election.
Benford’s law maintains that the numeral 1 will be the leading set in a genuine data set of
numbers 30.1% of the time, the numeral 2 will be the leading number 17.6% of the time, and
each numeral, 3 through 9, will be the leading digit with decreasing frequency. Putting this in
simple terms, let's assume that we have a pouch with numbers from 0 to 99999 and you
randomly pick a number out of the pouch. Look at the first digit of your number, if you picked
have picked the number randomly, then the first digit should be random as well, right? But
Benford's law says it's never random and it applies to all the number we see in our daily life from
newspapers to number plates. Let's take a song, Moonlight Sonata by Ludwig Van Beethoven.
Here, the duration of each note in the song abides by the Benford's law. This means, that there is
a pattern that’s pleasing to our ears, and since the pattern is the Benford's law, the pattern is
everywhere (Not only Beethoven, but Beyonce too).
Sports is quite unpredictable, isn’t it? Athletes play to win, not to make any patterns, right? But,
if we take all the sports statistics, like the number of baskets throughout the career, no. of runs
per batsman, no. of passes before interception, etc., they make a sweet pattern of Benford's law.
So as the athletes play to outperform everyone else, to reach the highest level, to trick the
opponent with their sheer unpredictability, everything they do seems like breaking the pattern,
but unknowingly they are being a part of the pattern. A footballer must make a split-second
decision about whether to pass or shoot, he is constrained by the outcome of his decision on one
hand, and the statistics should also abide by the Benford's law on the other. Furthermore, the
city's population also abides by Benford's law. This means, your decision to move into another
city isn’t technically yours and certainly not a free decision. And surprisingly, crime stats abide
by Benford's law too. This means, the decision to commit a homicide, to rob someone is boxed
into a mathematical formula. Thus, every decision we make abides by the Benford's law and it
builds intense skepticism about the free-will.
In a nutshell, Free will is an illusion. Our wills are not of our own making. Thoughts and
intentions emerge from unnoticed background causes over which we have no conscious control.
We do not have the freedom we believe we do.