Free Will

10/10/15

I've talked about free will before a long time ago. So long ago that that post's (tab) title is a javascript function declaration because the script I made to make it a link didn't print out the result of the function but the function itself. I have since done no real reading on free-will, but I do continue to think about it from time to time.

I decided to look around a bit and there's this decent page on the subject. It's neat and I'll read it properly eventually maybe.

But in any case, my personal ponderings on the perception of participation led me down a personal philosophy of identity. The old, old question of who-am-I and what-have-you, Stephan.

It is at this point that I feel compelled to say that words are fun to string together. But that's a quick aside.

Back to identity.

Free-will and identity kind of go hand-in-hand. Without identity, what exactly is free-will? Right?

Anyways, what is identity? I mean, beyond the perception of self, what do I identify as myself? My incredibly limited understanding of Taoism has it strip away everything, and there's nothing there. But, you know, in that deep "what is the sound of one hand clapping" sort of way (which is mixing philosophies but whatever).

My thinking on the matter is best explained by using another incredibly limited understanding. This one being quantum mechanics and the many-worlds interpretation of it.

Now I want to stress that this is more an explaination of my thinking, and does not in any way rely on the many-worlds interpretation being true for it to still be how I see things. Though, I do believe the many-worlds interpretation. But that's also an aside.

Let's say that there's a possibility space. Everything that could happen is in this space. What does happen is a collapse of that space into our reality. Each person, then, has a possibility space of anything they could possibly do. It collapses into what they actually do, a subset of all the things they could do. This collapse, this filter, of all posible actions into a subset of actual actions, is what defines a person. It is who they are.

All the things I did, and by implication all the things I didn't do, that's who I am. And yeah, I didn't have complete control over those things. I made mistakes. I was pulled this way and that by family, friends, and enemies. By interpretations of reality I no longer consider, and visions of a future I no longer desire.

Those things are me, too.

It is as thought there is a tether tying all those things to me, but really I am that tether tying all these things together.

And every moment I'm different. The past becomes a little more incomplete as the future becomes more certain. Memories become faulty as plans become concrete. The only thing I'm certain of on May 7th, 2014 is that I created this blog. And on May 7th, 2016, I can only guess that I'll celebrate this blog's 2nd anniversary in some way.

On both days I have no idea what else I did or will do. It could've been a great number of things, and great deal less other things.

I am that little bit of certainty between the possibility space of the past and the possibility space of the future. A connection tethered to reality by so many things.

The more I think about it, the more the identity feels nonexistent. It's like a word that gets said too often and loses meaning.

Identity.