Not gonna lie.. was never a fan of that study. I won't say it is wrong, but feel like it is flawed.. or cherry picked to fit a belief, biased for strict determinism. I could never find how many people they looked at.. and they only ever mention the 'positive' results. Even in the video, the guy said the test doesn't take very long.. and with being almost 8 years ago, I don't think a short test would be adequate in determining if consciousness is already determined. Even today, I think it is a little early to be able to say one way or another.. I mean we do know a lot about our brains, but what we know is still just the tip of the iceberg. Here is one of the better examples I like to use when pondering consciousness. Say you have a specific route you take to work everyday.. and you've done so for years so driving it is practically nothing to you, a subconscious process. Then one day, there is a disaster that closes off one of the roads.. so you have to take a new route. As you travel, you come across an intersection.. and when you look on the map, you see that no matter which way you go, straight, left, or right.. you see that it is about the same distance to your destination. So the first day you left.. the next you go right.. and the 3rd you go straight.. and see that all paths are pretty much equal, so you have no real preference. On the 4th day, you turn left.. and in doing so, have strengthened the neural track responsible for turning left. On the 5th day, as you come up to the intersection.. your conscious thought process is busy thinking about the song on the radio or how much you hate going to work.. and since turning left has the strongest neural track, the subconscious follows it and you will instinctively turn left. On the 6th day, as you near the intersection.. you're not so distracted and can consciously focus on which way to turn. Naturally, you're going to favor turning left.. but with our irrational freewill, we can consciously override that and decide to turn right. Same with all the days to follow.. unless you put conscious thought into which way you want to go, you're brain is going to subconsciously take the neural path with the least resistance, and the path with the least resistance is the path used most often. Every time brain activity goes down a path, it strengthens it and offers lower resistance. The great thing about it though.. is even if you turn left 1,000 times in a row, you can always consciously override the decision. If strict determinism were correct.. I don't think that you would be able to override subconscious habits.
I was determined to read your wall of text but then thought tl;dr so i jumped to the conclusion that you are right.
I like to think about free will vs determinism using the analogy of skiing: A skier atop a mountain can choose to go down one of many trails; however that choice does not determine which trail he will reach the bottom on. Trails often intersect and skiers regularly move shift between them. The design of the trails however limits (i.e. determines) options and slowly excludes possible outcomes until only one is possible. At the top, your options are unlimited. At the bottom your options are closed. As you go down the number of possible outcomes decreases according to which choices you make. It is possible re-choose, but this requires climbing up the mountain to the passed decision point. Did I mention I'm eager for ski season?
Need a lyft ticket? hehehe but what about the possible dangers of colliding into another skiier on the way down? Does your free will determine whether or not that person will swerve to evade your oncoming speed? Or do you have the choice to make them move on their own by yelling as you are speeding down the slope? Life has curveballs that seem to throw themselves at you any which way. But maybe I haven't gone skiing enough to be able to know the difference just yet
I like this analogy.. but alas, not much into skiing. I am ready for winter.. got the shits of this heat and humidity. Maybe I should enact my freewill and move my ass to CO.
Legend has it that moving to Colorado will create in you an irresistible urge to ski. See you on the slopes High in the mountains.
Lift Ticket... I like that. Any analogy can be pushed to the breaking point, however skiing does have an interesting set of etiquette for avoiding collisions. Two interesting rules (Paraphrase): (1) Don't stop where people above you can't see you. (2) The Lower skier has the right of way. The truth is that collisions happen all the times with effects ranging from hilarious to tragic. "As when high in the mountains, so too in life."
explaining how something works doesn't change what it is. Saying love is just a hormone response is like saying a raft is just a piece of wood. I choose to have free will because its my choice -Yuri
The mind itself is the most fundamental basis of this entire reality. We make distinctions of internal and external, putting labels on phenomena and arguing the truth of them. All concepts are like a limited reflection of the vast sky in a small mirror. The relative nature of our experience gives us a very specific understanding of how the world is arrayed. Yet what are you? If you think that the fundamental substance of your being is transitory in nature, it means you misunderstand the entire affair. There should be a distinction made between two aspects of reality. There is the transient reality of shapes and forms, none of which are ultimately lasting, all of them fundamentally unreal. The other aspect is the fundamental unchanging reality that is the root of all phenomena, yet is beyond all phenomena. You don't exist inherently. You exist in the conditioned and are of a conditioned nature. Yet, that conditioned "you" is not you. The real "you" is the unconditioned basis itself.
When you decide to choose, the choice becomes yours. Timing is all that never once was. Take it or leave it, but I can't make you do anything to it objectively speaking. "Freedom rings as the caller picks up"
It can be, or not. These are just words (or sounds) describing an assigned set of ideas. Everything is up for determination based on what it means to you, or him, or them, or me, ect... you get the point.