Waching daily Jul 1 2017

Imagine you are at you friend's place, helping him out in a project.

when you both take a break, he asks you, whether you would like tea or coffee.

and lets say you like both, but chose coffee instead.

Choosing coffee, was no doubtedly your free-will.

or, is it.

Well, what Is freewill?

free-will is the ability to act and make decisions, without any external constraints or inflence.

your choice of coffee might seem your free-will at first, but its not.

Our brain is made-up of approximately 100 billion neurons that are involved in the decision

making process.

we live in a world of cause and effect.

and there are alot of causes that have an effect on every decision that we make.

in-fact, these decisions can be a group of subconscious thoughts just popping-up in our

brain.

like, i like the consistancy of coffee more than tea.

their coffee tastes really good! drinking coffee makes me more active! all these subconscious

thoughts become tiny-subconscious decisions which either increase the probability of one

option, or decrease it.

all working together, resulting in the action that we call, a conscious decision.

even if you would have to choose letter A, B, or C.

your brain would take action based on your previous history, information, beliefs and

pattern related to the letters.

In 1983, benjamin libet performed an experiment involving a volunteer.

the volunteer had to randomly make conscious decision, like flicking their wrist, all according

to their free-will.

while all of this was going on, the activity of their motor cortex was being recorded by

an EEG machine.

motor cortex is that part of our brain, that is involved in control and execution of voluntary

actions.

no-one was expecting what happened next.

to everyone's surprise, the motor cortex became active, hundreds of miliseconds before the

conscious decision was made.

as if, the conscious decision was destined to happen.

hence, questioning the existence of free-will.. ok, but what if you flip a coin to decide

the cup of tea or coffee.

now what?

totally random, right? think it again.

coin-flips appear random only due to our lack of knowledge and data.

if we could know every elementary information, data, conditions and their exact values , forces

and properties for a particular coin flip, we could predict the result, even before the

outcome is revealed! infact, this is not so far fetched idea.

there already are coin-flipping robots that can flip coins and predict the outcomes that

are 100 percent accurate every time.

all of these facts & also the laws of physics say, the universe is deterministic.

but then there is the world of quantum mechanics, where you could never know where an electron

in a probability wave is.

or predict when a radioactive decay will take place.

the outcomes of this world can never be determined beforehand.

the only thing that can be determined, is their probability of being one outcome or

the other.

so, if everything is deterministic, and free-will is an illusion, then is punishing the criminals

really a valid act? because it would mean, they're punished for their crimes, even though

the action they did was destined to happen.

well.

all the crimes done by every criminal is completely deterministic, if given all the necessary

factors influencing the same.

but in-fact, punishing the guilty is necessary because if not done, it would influence others

to do more crimes.

hence increasing the criminal activity.

but, if free-will really exists, it leaves us with many unanswered questions.

like, is commiting suicide, a person's free-will? or : was creating our universe, god's free-will?

furthermore, you might also have some questions.

let's discuss them in the comments below.

And guys don't forget to subscribe, as there are more interesting episodes coming soon.

thanks for watching.

we'll see you in our next episode! till then, stay curious and have a nice time!

hey! here are few other videos you can watch.

and if you want to suggest any topic for an episode, let us know in the comments below.