Question: Is all determined or do we have what theists call ‘free will’? Does the universe determine everything, or does causality cause the choices we make? In this article we will explore the questions to hopefully result in the conclusion that in reality the universe determined causality causes choices in quantum realm.
To determine whether all is set in stone, or is changeable by our own intent, we need to have a couple of things clear. What does ‘determinism’ mean and what does ‘free will’ mean? And more over, what do they imply for our question.
Determinism, in philosophy, theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. Determinism is usually understood to preclude free will because it entails that humans cannot act otherwise than they do.
Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, guilt, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen.
As you can tell from reading the part of Determinism, it clearly states: Precludes free will. As such, IF Determinism is true, then Free Will is impossible. And inherently, if Free will is possible, Determinism is void.
A very very brief history of everything
Now, we can start talking about how the universes processes are continuously evolving and this means every thing that happened before caused what comes after (this is the mental awareness of time). And yes, on the scale of the cosmos, there is little we can do to change it. Now, lets zoom into the star called sun which holds about 9 large planets in its grasp, which themselves often have moons, circling them. One of them is covered mostly by liquid water and from a closer distance contains vegetation.
Are we calling determinism or free will here? When there is no selfaware actor yet?
On that globe, something happened during the last several million cycles of that globe around the star. In the constantly moving waters, friction and processes have caused proteins and amino acids to combine and fold, creating selfreplicating entities we will call ‘life’. All this, was caused from an initial moment that later lifeforms that are able to be aware of themselves will call ‘The Big Bang’ (fools, you don’t hear sound in the vacuum of space). For millions of years, it seems this life changed and differentiated due to several causes in the way the selfreplication requires chemicals and how the surroundings caused the natural selection of cultures with traits to overcome obstacles.
Are we still talking about deterministic processes, as life is fully dependent on two factors: Internal processes and external processes?
In the last 700.000 years something interesting happened with the more and more complex lifeforms, these primates who live in groups that are creating communication, that requires labels for ‘imaginary’ concepts like ‘other group’, ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘day’, ‘night’ etc. A creative bunch those primates.
Are we already talking ‘free will’? Or is this still determined by all previous processes?
So…which is which?
There is basically several flows that coincide and have their way depending on the amount of force applied. A. Cosmic evolution B. Biological evolution C. Animalistic instinct D. Human Civilization E. Human individuality
The starting movement causes us to be on a globe spinning silently in space. The complex folding of proteins, due to several interacting revolutions of spheres causes live to evolve. Life has caused changes to the environment as environments have caused changes to life and the way the latter reacts. Primates evolved into socially grouped species. They evolved to an awareness and size that caused them to create ‘concepts’ of mind. The individual primate genus Great Ape, family Homo Sapiens is able to choose his food and decide his short term and long term goals. But the before mentioned lines still influence his/hers.
As you can see, there ‘two’ options above, but the lines are several outcomes after those choices. Where on the line is your choice resulting? You can’t know yet.
So, while most things in the universe go without any choice made, including many of our own behaviors, some things are still what we as humans determine. If we CHOOSE not to do something, that is not automatically based on all previous processes. Yes, certain choices are more likely to happen, but as water can go two ways even when the Planck length determines the maximum deviation of particles. (this is an oversimplification of how even the smallest thing you can think off has a smaller resolution at base).
Forget about free wil, about determinism. Learn to understand causality. Though things CAN go a certain way, it doesn’t mean everything DOES go a certain way. In hind sight, things have gone a logical amount of steps that seem to have been determined (much like collapse of a wave function in Quantum Physics) by those steps…however, they are only that, in hind sight.
Determined causality causes choices in quantum realm
Don’t be alarmed, the end of this article might be more shocking than Quantum Physics.
Reality is basically everything you can (at the hazard of dying) touch and observe. Yes, air you can (and hopefully do so every moment) touch every day. Rocks you can touch. Snakes (though they can bite) you can touch. Even the sun you could touch, IF you were not incinerated by the fusion process already miles from the star itself (like in a nuclear reaction (because that is basically what the sun/star is, not a fire ball in the sky).
The depth of things
Now, we know that what we observe isn’t everything we can touch, and what we can touch isn’t everything we observe. Many fields of science and research direct themselves onto the ‘underlying’ part of what makes up things. For instance, we know that gold is a metal, just like lead. In the days before science became leading method of inquiry, there was a field between religious/fantasy thinking and what we call science.
Fall of the apple
Many well known scientists, like Newton for instance, was an avid practitioner of Alchemy. Alchemy is named to be the ‘the medieval forerunner of chemistry, concerned with the transmutation of matter, in particular with attempts to convert base metals into gold or find a universal elixir.’. The practitioners of this type of magical science, run all the way back to 200-300 CE (Common Era), but as far as today still.
Imagine, turning Lead into Gold. Looking at what we know now about the atomic structure of both:
Gold (Au). Diagram of the nuclear composition and electron configuration of an atom of gold-197 (atomic number: 79), the most common isotope of this element. The nucleus consists of 79 protons (red) and 118 neutrons (blue). 79 electrons (green) bind to the nucleus, successively occupying available electron shells (rings). Gold is a transition metal in group 11, period 6, and the d-block of the periodic table. It has a melting point of 1064 degrees Celsius. The trends across the transition metals are due to electrons filling an inner d-subshell (here, within the 5th ring), shielding the outer electrons from the increasing nuclear charge.
Lead (Pb). Diagram of the nuclear composition and electron configuration of an atom of lead-208 (atomic number: 82), the most common isotope of this element. The nucleus consists of 82 protons (red) and 126 neutrons (blue). 82 electrons (green) bind to the nucleus, successively occupying available electron shells (rings). The stability of an element’s outer electrons determines its chemical and physical properties. Lead is a post-transition metal in group 14, period 6, and the p-block of the periodic table. It has a melting point of 327 degrees Celsius. Excessive exposure can cause poisoning. Uses include batteries, weights and bullets.
Value of change
It is understandable that people would want to turn the cheapest type of metal into the (in the eyes of European humans) most valuable (at that time). As you can see, they don’t differ too much on the scale of electrons, protons and neutrons. But though the limited eye would say: Well, with such a limited difference, there surely should be a way to transfer protons and electrons from one to another… Well, no. Because of the strong interaction force makes the atomic bond nearly unbreakable, except by infusing extreme amounts of energy or force. This is all great, but the effects of infusing such energy and force, is unpredictable too. So you could end up with Steel, Gold, rock or air (these are unlikely, because most would be combined elements, but still).
Alchemy lead in new bags?
The idea of alchemists was that elements that were closely related, should be in some way ‘evolved’ from each other. As we are (even back then) able to ‘breed’ livestock to our wishes, so should we be able to influence the anorganic matter. And we can. We do. But not in the way alchemists wanted.
Mold theory, germ theory, grave theory
Since the time of Alchemy (and I dare say, even due to the fantastice imaginations OF Alchemy) we as humans have evolved our understanding and recognition of reality, the universe as to say. But…..we still fall for the same mistake as alchemists did. We project onto reality our expectations and find answers we look for. This is great! This gives us options to develop. BUT, it also causes us to mold our theories based on genetically evolved insights. We don’t use control moments, where we re-evaluate our insights and say: Okay, we came this far, did we at some point, limit ourselves by our knowledge and might come to different conclusions if we use our current understanding in earlier steps.
May the force be with you
For instance, we know we have identified four ‘forces’ or ‘interactions’ in reality. – Weak interaction (Effect in the Electroweak theory) – Strong interaction (Effect in the Quantum chromodynamics theory) – Electromagnetic interaction (Effect in the Quantum electrodynamics theory) – Grativational interaction (Effect in Einstein’s General Relativity Theory) (Do understand that these theories are so thoroughly researched that they are solid. There is little question regarding their legitimacy.)
We came to most of these, after gravity was recognized as a universal force by Isaac Newton (As mentioned someone who also practitioned Alchemy and was like most people in his time, Religious). Einstein added the observational variation to it and from there on many scientists evolved our understanding of matter and energy adding Quantum Physics/Mechanics to the Standard Model (of Physics) and Theoretical Physics.
Selfcentered?
Our reality severely changed by understanding what Copernicus said about the non-heliocentric universe we lived in. Many people know how amazing things can be when you are raised in a small countryside village and suddenly at 18 years old, you go to the big city. Imagine that you are Columbus and you sail through dangers and such for weeks and find that the world isn’t just Europe and Africa and Asia (which as you know are three continents, but one landmass), but America too. The world became bigger for him and slowly for those in other societies as well. The theory of Copernicus was great, but it didn’t hit home yet because of Columbus found a new continent.
Global recognition
The idea that the world was really a globe, like the Greeks already had deducted, was still a stretch for most. Copernicus had given a vision of more than just our world. Only when we finally got the technological advancement to test it, we came to realisation (as humanity), that the universe was bigger than Earth. Only decades ago, we came to the conclusion the universe is bigger than our solar system and even that our solar system isn’t the only one. All ‘zodiac signs’ were merely bigger stars that we had made patterns over, but in reality all were ‘solar systems’ of their own, in galaxy parts not even close to each other.
Though this is what we observe, this is not where the stars are in the galaxy. They aren’t on a flat distance from us.
Paternal or patternal
Humanity learned that patterns were not random and patterns weren’t based on intention (Though humans learned that their own influence on patterns were often intentional). Gods started to lose their meaning.
We skip ahead and see humanity evolve their knowledge of the universe and even matter and energy. The ideas of Aether left and Oxygen, Nitrogen, Argon, Carbon Dioxide and other elements replaced it as ‘air’.
But as our understanding of the universe grew, so did we want to pass on this information and knowledge to other generations. We ‘schematized’ all findings to a level that people that where smarter would have to ‘jump the bandwagon’ and people who weren’t would consider the ‘bandwagon’ a fata morgana.
Breath, breath!
If you learn that this is Oxygen:
Oxygen model
How do you then jump to this:
To this:
For some of you who have read this now, will say: WHAT?! (for two different reasons).
Some will start examining the first two images and learn how crude the first schematics is to the second schematics, however still a schematics (like a cave drawing of an mammoth to a Van Gogh or Rembrandt). The third is how we are able to actually detect the ‘form’ of the actual element.
Eventhough we now KNOW that what we observe in the latter is an ‘excited’ state of a field, we still refer from the ‘particle’ perspective. Even while we know that the particle as such ‘doesn’t exist’.
Two steps forward, one step back
I propose to look back and imagine how we would calculate the forces and models, if we started with what we know now.
We are pretty certain that what we observe as a particle, is the observed excited state of a field. This seems unintuitive, but it is not.
Imagine the universe being a expanding bubble field group:
Not to burst your bubble.
They aren’t these kind of bubbles exactly. These are fields, fields of energy frequencies. They started with a high amplitude and high frequency, but slowly start to stretch. Because they are ‘pushed’ by their original force, the space called the ‘period’ causes some of the forces to exist. The wave is a one dimensional observation of movement for the frequency. When two field-waves touch, they cause an excited state we observe as a particle. Because the frequency if stable and constant, the particle remains stable. This also explains why at point of observation of particles we recognize energy increase. Which direction on the field the wave moves and hits another field/wave, determines what we observe as spin.
Bubble fields, really?
This results in the idea (yes, just an idea), that reality, however real, is a bubble universe of fields. This is also why a particle can have different states at the same time, because, the particle doesn’t really exist. The particle is merely an effect of the frequency of the universe/reality. This means that there is much to find out still. But as always, very possibly, reality is stranger than fiction. The frequency of the universes fields and corresponding waves. How it will result into a bigger universe still and whether at some point reality will change if the field/wave frequencies collapse or start to misallign. Will physics change?
There seems to be controversy about the ‘size’ and ‘matter’ of the brain these days. Here is my view on how does the brain works.
Brainsize
The brain is evolved from millions of years of neural synapses integrating (as said by others much like the processors we create for computers etc), when life was but worms, there were still only a few strands of nerves. A small lump in the ‘seat’. What was (and still is) the ‘brain’ set to? For food. The worm is one long intestine and basically we are a intestine with vertibrates. Our brain has been evolving ever since life became multiple celltypes with specific functions. When complex animals arose, the brain was already a complex neural box. It was so intrinsic that even mice have basically selfawareness options (who says they aren’t?).
Brainfunctioning
But the brain still has the same function over all those millions of years: Making sure the body gains food and survives dangers in doing so. We as mammals have been on lower steps of the food chain for thousands of thousands of years. (imagine that. A life span of about 40 years and so generations every 15 to 20 years….imagine how many ancestral generations have gone before THAT point.). Then the weather changed, climate changed and we got less predators to take care of, but we still needed to find food. We ate what was in trees, bushes, die with failure, live with good food. Those choices are all embedded in the blueprint of our brain. They are the unlearned reflexes. Many of them come to pass each generation, without being triggered. And from that moment on, the brain needs less for certain type of reflexes.
Mind
Eventually we are in our current era and we are the top of the food chain and we changed the ability of running from danger, to preparing for danger for many hundreds of thousands of years. Now, we don’t have to run anymore, but some of the reflexes don’t die that easily (hence religion and other fear aspects, causing diversion and anger).
We are in a time where the brain evolves on. It might become smaller, but not ‘lighter’ per se. The density changes, but also its functions ‘narrow’. Who of us still know from instinct what to do with babies? With a wild animal attacking us? With how the weather predicts the effects on crops tomorrow? We are all losing parts that are ‘irrelevant’ to the specific ‘bloodline’.
Social mind
Those in cities don’t know about carpenting or farming, while in the suburb there will be those that still know. Life still requires it from them to sometimes build something themselves. The same happens for many things, not just ‘job’ related, but also personal. In the country, people are welcoming to new (new blood, information, etc), but also cautious of differences (dangerous behavior, different unknown bloodlines and physical attributes). In the suburbs where all come together, it is a mediate, while in the city it is the same as in the country, but reversed. They are less welcoming (busy lives, close quarters and thus more shortlived interhuman contacts), but also less cautious. In all, the brain grows smaller, but not around the globe. There are likely locations where it grows.
These are interesting times. Because the US is in this scenario that much of Europe was in 30-40 years ago, we seek to find ourselves in this. Where do we, as individual, as group, as society, as culture, as humanity, where do we stand.
Of Apples and oranges
The thing is, discrimination is human, but it is also instinctive and animal. And yes, no matter how you look at it, humans are yet another species of animals.
As you might have read elsewhere on https://www.metawareness.com, the first emotion, is fear. Fear thrives survival. Without fear, most don’t survive, unless very lucky. Fear causes use to find safe spots, safe havens. As humans, like all other great apes and many mammals, we are a social species. We are born in the safety (most of us) of a community. Our parents initially keep us safe (most of the time), but the fact that they themselves live within the protection of a community, within the rules of a society, keeps us double safe. This causes two things:
We are aware that we need to protect our offspring
we are aware that we need to protect our community
Danger, Robinson
To make sure that we don’t get into danger, we make sure that the ones in our community, are the ones we know and the ones we know are the ones that think like us. We can identify them, because we can identify ‘as’ them. We immediately recognize (instinctive) their meaning, if they look a certain way.
Them and us
The further an individual differs from our ‘group-general-markup‘, we tend to be more cautious. This is all instinctive, because different means danger. Fear will make sure that you don’t think on it too much. Step back from danger, or die.
Choose to change
Humanity has evolved, but what we don’t accept as part of our genome, we can’t decide to change. Religion and general ‘leaders’ demand that people behave a certain way. The more power a person has, the more money they have. Riches are to be lost and losing creates fear. The more power one has, the more fear one has to lose what is connected.
Everyone is unique, so different
Each individual is different. There is no two humans on earth exactly alike, not even twins. But why do we tend to ‘discriminate’ and fall for the ‘etnicism’ (or called ‘racism’? Because of our marvelous intelligence. True, the more intelligent a person is, the less he/she will ideally be concerned about arbitrary things like skin color or bone structure, but it is our intelligence that caused use to go from simply protective, to discriminating and do etnic profiling on the go.
It’s just an idea
Here is why: Conceptualisation. When I tell you I went to the store. You don’t ask me what the store looked like. You know the function of what ‘store’ represents and mostly you will ask: ‘What did you get?’. The same happens when I tell you I bought a new car. You will not ask me what kind of wipers it has, you will ask me the max speed, the color, the more obvious traits that don’t require extensive knowledge of either brands or technicalities of cars.
How come we can’t differentiate (most of us) between one Asian person and another, just like you most likely can’t tell one from the other from any etnically different human from your own group?
Clean up, stand up
To keep our brains tidy, we group things: Balls (that can be big, small, blue, red, football, soccer, tennis, etc balls), we don’t think about the type of balls that can fall into the hegemony, we make it a homogenous group of balls in our mind. Same with Houses, with Money, with Feelings, with Cupboards, with Math equations. We group, to preserve space in our brain, and to (IF the need arises) do differentiation later on when it is important. We do the same with people: Brothers, Sisters, Siblings, Fathers, Mothers, Parents, Spouse, In-Laws, Daughers, Sons, Nephews, Nices. Nowhere while reading those words did you pick one specific image and did you think: Oh, this is about this person. Except possibly with Fathers and Mothers.
Doesn’t differ to me
We discriminate because it makes life easier. Circles are circles, squares are squares. However, there are people who are very much aware of this, and they will use it to advantage. Fear is the strongest emotion and therefore the easiest to invoke. ‘Divide and conquer’ is how wars are won. It is how communities are controlled. You know who you CAN trust, so all one has to do, is make sure you don’t trust people that fall outside that scope and you are set for control.
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother
When you see your own kin, you put them in a box, when you see non-relatives, you put them in another box. When you see people that are ‘images of self’, you will allow them in your box. When they differ on visual, auditive or other traits, you will first put them in another box. Why? Safety, quarantaine, ease of mind, conceptualisation for later.
Now is the time, that people can become honest. Move to a new neighborhood and unpack all the boxes. Go to ‘Earth’ and meet your new neighbours. Unpack and bring a cake. If you don’t like your neighbours, dislike them for their actions. That is something that represents their individuality. Not their skin, not their feet, not their smell.
They only divide you, if you let them
We are all human. We should shed the bad concepts like religions. Those are still causing great grief. We should fill our problems with solutions from all trades of life. So everyone can live the same kind of life and enjoy their life on Earth for how long it lasts.
Deja vu (as far as I have been able to investigate and incorporate existing research) is the moment the mind recognizes a pattern that has been (at some prior time) ‘considered’. This means that the brain has a response structure for it and at the moment of deja vu, it fills in the blanks. That is why the consciousness feels everything that transpires is predicted. But this only goes for the very basic response to stimulus.
Survival patterns
Humans are the result of evolution over a long line of organisms that were (for a long time) not the top of the food chain. Our brains is the evolved version of the brain of other primates. However, our line has had the luxury to gain so much overhead in responses, that we could counter possible threats, before they occurred. This means that our system has space and basal response blueprints (instincts) embedded that are not used anymore. These options made us, as species become self aware. The same options caused us to become ‘religious’ (seeking a parent outside, or generally called animism), plan extensive, become verbal in more complex ways and sometimes have been hotwired in the complex structure of neurons.
Reaction Chain
Our brain is behaving primarily to respond to threats. We don’t have those in all levels of society anymore. There are levels where most of these parts of the brain are used for more cognitive options. The structures in which the brain is wired is inherited to extend. The decisions are caused by impulses coming in initially. When we come to a moment of deja vu, some arbitrary part of such a decision tree, is activated and the brain shoots hormones and other neurotoxins into the bloodstream to activate defenses of the organism. Such gives the organism a hastened response (heightened awareness) and the moment the brain sees something. The organism has the idea it has already transpired. We as humans are aware of direction of time and know that we can’t act what has already transpired, so our consciousness tries to make the event fit and you get the ‘idea’ that it was a repetition of an earlier event (but as we KNOW we haven’t been in that specific situation, we tell ourselves it must have been a dream).
The brain is evolved from millions of years of neural synapses integrating (as said by others much like the processors we create for computers etc), when life was but worms, there were still only a few strands of nerves. A small lump in the ‘seat’. What was the ‘brain’ set to? For food. The worm is one long intestine and basically we are a intestine with vertibrates. Our brain has been evolving ever since life became multiple celltypes with specific functions. When complex animals arose, the brain was already a complex neural box. It was so intrinsic that even mice have basically selfawareness options (who says they aren’t?). But the brain still has the same function over all those millions of years: Making sure the body gains food and survives dangers in doing so. We as mammals have been on lower steps of the food chain for thousands of thousands of years. (imagine that. A life span of about 40 years and so generations every 15 to 20 years….imagine how many ancestral generations have gone before THAT point.). Then the weather changed, climate changed and we got less predators to take care of, but we still needed to find food. We ate what was in trees, bushes, die with failure, live with good food. Those choices are all embedded in the blueprint of our brain. They are the unlearned reflexes. Many of them come to pass each generation, without being triggered. And from that moment on, the brain needs less for certain type of reflexes. Eventually we are in our current era and we are the top of the food chain and we changed the ability of running from danger, to preparing for danger for many hundreds of thousands of years. Now, we don’t have to run anymore, but some of the reflexes don’t die that easily (hence religion and other fear aspects, causing diversion and anger).
We are in a time where the brain evolves on. It might become smaller, but not ‘lighter’ per se. The density changes, but also its functions ‘narrow’. Who of us still know from instinct what to do with babies? With a wild animal attacking us? With how the weather predicts the effects on crops tomorrow? We are all losing parts that are ‘irrelevant’ to the specific ‘bloodline’. Those in cities don’t know about carpenting or farming, while in the suburb there will be those that still know. Life still requires it from them to sometimes build something themselves. The same happens for many things, not just ‘job’ related, but also personal. In the country, people are welcoming to new (new blood, information, etc), but also cautious of differences (dangerous behavior, different unknown bloodlines and physical attributes). In the suburbs where all come together, it is a mediate, while in the city it is the same as in the country, but reversed. They are less welcoming (busy lives, close quarters and thus more shortlived interhuman contacts), but also less cautious. In all, the brain grows smaller, but not around the globe. There are likely locations where it grows.
It will also still depend on the activities within the bloodlines, whether there is either higher density or loss of reflex/cognitive abilities.
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