Hard Determinism and Free Will
Disclaimer: Some people have a hard time with the idea that they may not have free will. We’ll get into that in this article. Feel free to hit eject anytime if it makes you overly uncomfortable.
Causal Determinism, as I understand it, is the idea that what is happening in the present moment is a direct extension, a result, of all prior events. Everything that has ever happened factors into what is now happening. Since there is only a single, fixed set of events leading up to the present, there is only one possible set of resulting events in the present moment. What follows is how I think about it. I’m not a trained philosopher, so if it’s janky, feel free to let me know where the analogy falls apart. Onward 🙂
I am currently in California. In the very next moment, I will still be in California and not in Beijing. If the temperature outside is 78°, the entirety of our experience indicates that in the very next moment, it will be almost the exact same temperature. This seems to be the case universally: how the world is in one moment is predicated by how it was immediately before.
Another way to think about this is as a mathematical formula. We know the following formulas are true:
2+2=4
10+3=13
In these formulas, we're working with numbers with a fixed value (2, 10, 13, etc.). If the numbers were not a fixed value the formulas could be rewritten as follows:
a+b=c
Each of the letters in this formula is now a variable, and the numbers you plug into those variables left of the = have a direct and necessary impact on the number to the right of the =. Plugging 10 in for a and 3 in for b necessitates that c equals 13. In the same way, we could think of the events just before the present moment as fixed values in a formula - they’ve already happened and are not variable. Since the values to the left of the = are fixed, the value to the right of the = can only be one thing. The present moment can only happen in one way because the events that led up to it only happened in one way.
I’ll use t (time) to denote the present moment and t-1 to denote the moment just before (time minus one moment):
event A t-1 + event B t-1 + event C t-1 + (...) = all events t
Plugging in fixed values for the variables could look like:
I am in California t-1 + It is 78° outside t-1 + The sky is blue t-1 + = I am in California t + It is approximately 78° t + The sky is blue t
Sure, there is change in the world, but it seems to have a particular framework. There is a gradual process as one moves geographically, as the temperature changes, and the sky's color changes. The present moment seems reliably predicated by what came just before.
So what happens when we scale this observation to the entire world? We get a world in which current events (at time t) result from what happened just before (at t-1). Like 2+3 can only equal 5, the entirety of reality can only lead to one version of reality in the next moment. And everything that happened at t-1 directly resulted from what happened before, at t-2, chaining all the way to the beginning of time. The thread of events woven from the beginning of time could not have happened any other way, stemming back to the events in the first moment.
AI’s depiction of “the thread of events from the beginning of time”
For example, consider your own life. The entirety of your life’s events have led to the present moment. Who your parents are, where you were born, and how you’ve grown and developed all resulted in who and what you are. And, in varying degrees, everything else that has ever happened has the same influence. The influence of all events that have ever happened have resulted in the reality you’re now experiencing.
Ok, so what? (this is where it gets fun)
Well, this has a lot of implications that fly in the face of how we commonly do life. It means we have no free will, it renders “doing your best” a meaningless concept, highlights the nonsensicalness (is that a word?) of thinking about what might have been, and it leaves most people asking, “Ok, so what’s the point of doing anything? Why even get out of bed in the morning?” Let’s get into it.
No Free Will
Let’s define free will as the ability to make choices and take actions not determined by anything other than our mind and will. This definition of free will implies that, if we could rewind the clock, we would be free to make different choices, leading to alternate lives. Hard Determinism (a theory that follows from Causal Determinism) goes, “Nope, that’s not a real thing.” The entirety of our actions, thoughts, and emotions fit into the equation of all previous events since the beginning of time leading to a single possible reality in the present moment. Hard Determinism says the entirety of our thoughts, actions, and emotions are just a direct extension of everything that happened before, and since things only happened in one way, what happens next can only go one way.
“But free will is something we all experience. I feel as if I have free will. How does that work?” True, you feel as though you have free will, and Hard Determinism would congratulate you on having such a convincing illusion. Our senses limit the human experience, and there are things about reality we just can’t experience or verify. There are aspects of the universe's inner workings that we just can’t study, let alone verify as true or false. Fancy philosophers call it ultimate reality. Regardless of what you call it, the fabric of reality is only experienced to the degree that your senses and brain can perceive and render it to your mind (and arguably only if your mind can understand it). All of that is to say that free will is an illusion. It seems you have free will, but that’s just because your senses, brain, and mind can’t see the truth of things.
Hypotheticals are Nonsensical
How often do you ask yourself what would have happened if you’d ended up with a different partner, been born to different parents, or played the lottery and won?
Thinking that things could have turned out any other way is analogous to thinking that 2+2 could have equaled 5. It's more outlandish because the imagined alternative reality is entirely fictitious. The only way to think of what might have been as “real” is that it exists in imagination. It is no more nonsensical to ask yourself, "I wonder what would have happened if I'd studied a different major in college" than it is to ask yourself "I wonder what would have happened if I turned bright yellow three years ago” or "I wonder what would have happened if 2+2=5." All three are completely imaginary fictions contemplating hypothetical scenarios that aren’t real. In some very important sense, there is a fixed binary criteria of TRUE or FALSE. What has happened is TRUE, and these imaginary scenarios are all FALSE. Hypothetical what-if scenarios are a fundamentally different thing than real events; they are not different versions of the same kind of thing.
“Ok, but there’s still some value in considering hypotheticals. I can come up with better plans and strategies for the future, right? Even if they’re nonsensical, they are still a valuable preparation tool.” Nope, because things can’t turn out any other way than they will. Things will just happen as they do, including what you think and do, regardless of whether you made plans. If you did make plans, that also couldn’t have happened any other way.
There’s freedom to be found in this realization. We can stop agonizing about what might have been. Or at least we could if we had any free will 🙂
“Doing my best” loses all meaning
This one is particularly difficult for a society of capitalist overachievers. Regardless of how hard you’ve worked, you are having the life you are having because it couldn’t have happened any other way. At the scale of the universe, you didn’t earn or deserve any of what has happened in your life because earning and deserving are illusory.
“Why even get out of bed in the morning?”
Whether you got out of bed in the morning or not, it couldn’t have happened any other way. Hard Determinism says this is a nonsensical question to ask because it’s still operating on the assumption that you get to choose.
“This fucking theory doesn’t seem to have any practical value. Why am I still reading this?”
This is actually a valid question. Regardless of whether there is free will or not, or whether Causal Determinism is the way the world works, we do go through life with the feeling that we’re the ones at the wheel. So why not just go back to your life as if you’d never read this? I’ve found that even though Causal Determinism seems like it’s likely the way the world works, it doesn’t do me much good to try to live by that truth. The virtual reality moderated by my senses and brain offers a more engaging, dynamic experience. Practically speaking, it’s the world the rest of humanity lives in, and it would be tough to live your life from moment to moment with Causal Determinism as your understanding of reality.
Some really smart people propose we don’t have free will using other arguments. For example, Robert Sapolsky takes a biological approach. Sapolsky argues that we are the result of our genes and environment, and that factors like that predicate everything we do. When asked what we should do in light of this realization, Sapolsky makes a mistake. He says we should try to evolve away from a society based on personal accountability. If there is no such thing as a real choice between committing a crime or not, people who do crime can’t be held accountable and found guilty. They had no choice. It would be inhumane to give someone the death sentence for murder if they have no free will. The problem with Sapolsky’s conclusion is that he allows free will to sneak back into the discussion. He says we can try to change how we think about personal accountability and that we can choose not to punish people for doing bad things.
Unfortunately for Sapolsky, if we don’t have free will, our society will either change how it handles criminals or it won’t. Whichever way it turns out, it couldn’t have happened any other way.
The gold at the end of this demoralizing theoretical rainbow
One massively important and valuable takeaway might redeem this whole mental exercise. Regardless of whether you have free will, irrespective of whether you find meaning in life, you have the experience of what it is like to be a human, and that alone is enough. It’s a gift. It’s a miracle. Especially because you did nothing to earn it or deserve it.
Whether you agree, whether this alone is enough to make it a worthwhile experience, and whether this results in some gratitude on your part—it couldn’t have happened any other way.
