4 ms·
To determine if I have free will, I shall now attempt to willfully raise my arm. Raises arm. I don't know, that's pretty hard evidence to refute.
by reader5000 17y ago
To determine if I have free will, I shall now attempt to willfully raise my arm. Raises arm. I don't know, that's pretty hard evidence to refute.
- byrneseyeview 17y agoYou've probably evolved to avoid asking too many boring existential questions when you could be breeding, instead. You probably have no choice but to trick yourself into trivially proving that you have free will.
- reader5000 17y agoYou've probably evolved to produce offensive body odors and to fear social interactions with your own species. You probably have no choice but to trick yourself into thinking you are good at trivial reading comprehension.
- codahale 17y agoAnd yet the nerve impulses which caused the muscles in your arm to contract left your brain about 500ms before you became aware of deciding to raise your arm. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6640273 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6640273) Additionally, the mechanisms which sent that nerve impulse were spinning up for up to 10s before that (http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html). The you that lifts your arm and the you which feels like it decided to lift your arm are on different schedules.