Do You Have Free Will?

For the sake of this post, let's take free will as the ability to choose one among multiple available options without being forced by outside factors.

Most of us assume that we have free will. It lets us feel in control of our lives, take responsibility for our actions and have morality.

These are indeed very important for society to function. But there's a problem.

There is no free will.

Regardless of which interpretation of Quantum Mechanics you go with, free will cannot exist. The many worlds interpretation is deterministic and the Copenhagen interpretation is fundamentally random.

In many worlds interpretation, which is preferred in this blog, every time you are presented with multiple choices, you inevitably choose all the possible ones and your wave function splits into many. You never have any other option, hence no free will.

That also means there is no absolute morality in non-dualism. Good and bad are both relative.

That being said, we do indeed have the feeling of free will in our everyday life. It would be unwise to act irresponsibly there. It's pretty simple, if you act unjustly, you will very likely suffer for it. Granted both of them are illusions but do NOT use it as an excuse for creating injustice in this world.

Please let me know your thoughts on this potentially controversial topic in the email.