tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/free-will-191/articlesFree will – The Conversation2024-03-17T12:54:12Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2247252024-03-17T12:54:12Z2024-03-17T12:54:12ZEvangelical bestsellers reveal diverse — and sometimes dangerous — ideas about morality<p>The bestselling evangelical Christian fiction of the 21st century couldn’t be more morally different — from itself. </p>
<p>For example, William Paul Young’s 2007 novel <em>The Shack</em> is about the kidnapping, abuse and murder of a child. Selling <a href="https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/books-magazines/books/this-man-wrote-a-small-book-for-his-family-and-it-became-a-bestseller/news-story/61e659773e0b5e0e0f4028fced403e05">more than 20 million copies</a>, it tries to understand how such evil can occur in a universe with a good and all-powerful God. Theologically wrestling with these events, it centres on ethics of harm, healing and reconciliation.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the most popular evangelical fiction of the turn of the 21st century was the 12-volume <em>Left Behind</em> series, about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-things-to-know-about-the-antichrist-148172">coming of the Antichrist</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/04/03/1167715957/armageddon-shows-how-literal-readings-of-the-bibles-end-times-affect-modern-time">the final End Times or Armageddon</a>. The series has sold more than <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/religion/article/71026-lahaye-co-author-of-left-behind-series-leaves-a-lasting-impact.html">80 million copies</a>. Its violent action dwells on the persecution of Christians by <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/1/21">the global United Nations, led by the Antichrist</a>. It emphasizes themes of proper authority, in-group loyalty and traditional ideas about sex, sexuality and gender. </p>
<p>Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), developed by <a href="https://jonathanhaidt.com/">social psychologist Jonathan Haidt</a> and others, suggests that human societies configure their moral expectations differently from group to group, but they do so based on universal considerations of care, justice, liberty, purity, loyalty and authority. </p>
<p>At first, MFT seems to show that the spectrum of values represented in <em>The Shack</em> and <em>Left Behind</em> are just a matter of a diversity of ethical opinion. </p>
<p>But my new open-access research reveals a flaw within MFT itself: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13530">the moral intuitions exhibited by <em>Left Behind</em> are associated with social dominance and authoritarianism</a>.</p>
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<img alt="Four adults seen in a row." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579409/original/file-20240303-16-mky93v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579409/original/file-20240303-16-mky93v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579409/original/file-20240303-16-mky93v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579409/original/file-20240303-16-mky93v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579409/original/file-20240303-16-mky93v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579409/original/file-20240303-16-mky93v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579409/original/file-20240303-16-mky93v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The story of ‘The Shack’ focuses on care after harm has been done.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Lionsgate)</span></span>
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<h2>Care, justice, liberty</h2>
<p>In MFT’s terms, <em>The Shack</em> prioritizes the ethics of care, justice and liberty. It has lots of theological dialogue about God’s fairness in the face of evil and suffering. Its explanations about <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/christianity/christianity-general/original-sin">free will and original sin</a> are traditional Christian theology and their persuasiveness depends on a reader’s prior beliefs.</p>
<p>It also focuses on care after harm has been done. The bereaved father of the daughter has a weekend away <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Trinity-Christianity">with the Christian God as Trinity</a>, healing and establishing friendships with God. The daughter is in heaven — compensation for a harm that cannot be undone. The novel is egalitarian: God the Father is an African American woman, God the Spirit an Asian American woman and God the Son a Middle Eastern looking man. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/popular-christian-novel-the-shack-finds-a-surprising-solution-to-the-problem-of-evil-polytheism-135668">Popular Christian novel ‘The Shack’ finds a surprising solution to the problem of evil: Polytheism</a>
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<p>Other moral foundations are present but less important. God’s authority is challenged. Group loyalty is downplayed. We feel revulsion at the killer’s pedophilia, but the focus is on the harms of abuse and murder, not so much violated sacredness.</p>
<h2>Authority, loyalty, sanctity</h2>
<p><em>Left Behind</em>’s moral foundations are nearly opposite to <em>The Shack</em>. They emphasize authority, loyalty, sanctity and justice as vengeance. The series is about overturned authority. It depicts the Antichrist as the UN Secretary-General usurping God’s proper rule.</p>
<p>Haidt notes that <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/73535/the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt/">for conservatives, care is “blended” with loyalty</a>, and the same is true of the <em>Left Behind</em> series. The authors deem their Christian characters (who are occasionally martyred) worthy of care, but not so much <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/1/21">the billions of humans who suffer and die</a> during the tribulations. </p>
<p>In one sequence, the protagonist mocks abortion providers for losing business because unborn babies have been swept into heaven as the End Times begin. When the Antichrist refers to “fetal material that vanished,” we detect that the book frames abortion as being a problem about sexual sanctity, not a problem about harm.</p>
<h2>Apocalyptic genre</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581368/original/file-20240312-24-rnt6zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man standing near an orange fiery hoop." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581368/original/file-20240312-24-rnt6zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581368/original/file-20240312-24-rnt6zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581368/original/file-20240312-24-rnt6zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581368/original/file-20240312-24-rnt6zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581368/original/file-20240312-24-rnt6zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581368/original/file-20240312-24-rnt6zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581368/original/file-20240312-24-rnt6zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Poster of the 2000 film ‘Left Behind’ based on the fiction of the same name.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Namesake Entertainment/Cloud Ten Pictures)</span></span>
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<p><em>Left Behind</em>’s genre — apocalypse — is also concerned with God’s justice, but the book’s justice entails revenge. In the final novel <em>Glorious Appearing</em>, warrior Jesus slays the Antichrist’s army, creating a <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/1/21">“river of blood several miles wide and now some five feet deep.”</a> He then sentences most of the human race to eternal torture in the fires of hell.</p>
<p>The series does not feature egalitarianism: white Christian men are in charge of the Tribulation Force. Men and women are (supposedly) equal before God, but <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-complementarianism-the-belief-that-god-assigned-specific-gender-roles-became-part-of-evangelical-doctrine-158758">God has made them to “complement” one another</a> with different gender roles, with men in spiritual authority over their wives and children. </p>
<p>Insofar as female, non-white and Jewish characters come to God and accept the authority of evangelical white men, they can be considered part of the group.</p>
<h2>Not all ‘moral foundations’ are moral</h2>
<p>MFT proponents might argue that these two examples allow us to see the full range of ethics in contemporary (white) evangelical literary tradition and its cultures — even if evangelical cultures are lopsidedly conservative, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/">as their support for Donald Trump shows</a>. </p>
<p>On the contrary, as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13530">my open-access article shows</a>, moral psychologists have empirically demonstrated that the authority, loyalty and sanctity intuitions preferred by conservatives are not actually matters of ethics at all. Rather, as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-014-0223-5">MFT’s critics argue</a>, they are “dispositions associated with authoritarianism and social dominance.” </p>
<p>We might better think of authority, loyalty and sanctity intuitions as preferences for order rather than truly ethical foundations. Those preferences may have their place in human societies, but treating them as equal to ethics of care, justice and equality is a moral relativism that masks dangerous authoritarian tendencies.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/republicans-draw-from-apocalyptic-narratives-to-inform-demoncrat-conspiracy-theories-170529">Republicans draw from apocalyptic narratives to inform 'Demoncrat' conspiracy theories</a>
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<h2>Dramatization of a disordered world</h2>
<p>Even though <em>Left Behind</em> might be beloved by conservative “value voters,” its chief values, it seems, are not moral values at all. </p>
<p>The series emphasizes the Christian Right’s struggle amid declining demographics and challenges to its political power. The series also encourages the perception of threat among the Christian Right, and a continued sense of persecution by liberal secular elites. </p>
<p>What MFT does illuminate is <em>Left Behind</em>’s continued cultural power. <a href="https://variety.com/2023/film/reviews/left-behind-rise-of-antichrist-review-kevin-sorbo-1235505908/">The series was adapted to film a sixth time just last year</a>, yielding yet another dramatization of a disordered world where loyalty, sanctity and authority are upended. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HOQV1VzwsG8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Official trailer for ‘Left Behind: Rise Of The Antichrist’ (2023).</span></figcaption>
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<p>Those intuitions find expression in apocalypse: an <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/1/21">extreme moral dualism wherein the besieged community’s political foes are imagined as the enemies of God</a> who must be opposed until God’s Kingdom arrives to restore order and deliver retributive justice. </p>
<h2>Range of moral foundations</h2>
<p>We can read contemporary Christian fiction for the considerable range of moral foundations that it expresses. Doing so reveals that our morals do not so much come from our religious traditions as much as another possibility: our psychological predispositions find the values we already have in culturally mediated religious traditions. </p>
<p>Christianity is a big space. Some people might be challenged by its moral tenets, but many more might discover confirmation of their political and psychological preferences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224725/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Douglas receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>The ‘Left Behind’ series emphasizes themes of authority, loyalty and sanctity, but they are preferences for order, not moral matters.Christopher Douglas, Professor of American Literature and Religion, University of VictoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2185252023-12-01T01:17:45Z2023-12-01T01:17:45ZA Stanford professor says science shows free will doesn’t exist. Here’s why he’s mistaken<p>It <em>seems</em> like we have free will. Most of the time, <em>we</em> are the ones who choose what we eat, how we tie our shoelaces and what articles we read on The Conversation.</p>
<p>However, the <a href="https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780525560975">latest book</a> by Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, has been receiving <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/this-is-america/202310/an-attack-on-free-will">a</a> <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2398369-why-free-will-doesnt-exist-according-to-robert-sapolsky/">lot</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/does-biology-trump-free-will-a-behavioural-scientist-argues-we-have-little-choice-1.7023804">of</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/science/free-will-sapolsky.html">media</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area/23965798/free-will-robert-sapolsky-determined-the-gray-area">attention</a> for arguing science shows this is <a href="https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2023-10-17/stanford-scientist-robert-sapolskys-decades-of-study-led-him-to-conclude-we-dont-have-free-will-determined-book">an illusion</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">Sapolsky’s book was published in October 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determined:_A_Science_of_Life_Without_Free_Will#/media/File:Determined_A_Science_of_Life_Without_Free_Will.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Sapolsky summarises the latest scientific research relevant to determinism: the idea that we’re causally “determined” to act as we do because of our histories – and couldn’t possibly act any other way.</p>
<p>According to determinism, just as a rock that is dropped is determined to fall due to gravity, your neurons are determined to fire a certain way as a direct result of your environment, upbringing, hormones, genes, culture and myriad other factors outside your control. And this is true regardless of how “free” your choices seem to you. </p>
<p>Sapolsky also says that because our behaviour is determined in this way, nobody is morally responsible for what they do. He believes while we can lock up murderers to keep others safe, they technically don’t <em>deserve</em> to be punished.</p>
<p>This is quite a radical position. It’s worth asking why only 11% of philosophers agree with Sapolsky, compared with the <a href="https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all">60% who think</a> being causally determined is compatible with having free will and being morally responsible.</p>
<p>Have these “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/">compatibilists</a>” failed to understand the science? Or has Sapolsky failed to understand free will?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-communicators-need-to-stop-telling-everybody-the-universe-is-a-meaningless-void-215334">Science communicators need to stop telling everybody the universe is a meaningless void</a>
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<h2>Is determinism incompatible with free will?</h2>
<p>“Free will” and “responsibility” can mean a variety of different things depending on how you approach them.</p>
<p>Many people think of free will as having the ability to choose between alternatives. Determinism might seem to threaten this, because if we are causally determined then we lack any real choice between alternatives; we only ever make the choice we were always going to make.</p>
<p>But there are counterexamples to this way of thinking. For instance, suppose when you started reading this article someone secretly locked your door for 10 seconds, preventing you from leaving the room during that time. You, however, had no desire to leave anyway because you wanted to keep reading – so you stayed where you are. Was your choice free?</p>
<p>Many would argue even though you lacked the option to leave the room, this didn’t make your choice to stay unfree. Therefore, lacking alternatives isn’t what decides whether you lack free will. What matters instead is <em>how</em> the decision came about.</p>
<p>The trouble with Sapolsky’s arguments, as free will expert John Martin Fischer <a href="https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/determined-a-science-of-life-without-free-will/">explains</a>, is he doesn’t actually present any argument for why his conception of free will is correct. </p>
<p>He simply defines free will as being incompatible with determinism, assumes this absolves people of moral responsibility, and spends much of the book describing the many ways our behaviours are determined. His arguments can all be traced back to his definition of “free will”.</p>
<p>Compatibilists believe humans are agents. We live lives with “meaning”, have an understanding of right and wrong, and act for moral reasons. This is enough to suggest most of us, most of the time, have a certain type of freedom and are responsible for our actions (and deserving of blame) – even if our behaviours are “determined”. </p>
<p>Compatibilists would point out that being constrained by determinism isn’t the same as being constrained to a chair by a rope. Failing to save a drowning child because you were tied up is not the same as failing to save a drowning child because you were “determined” not to care about them. The former is an excuse. The latter is cause for condemnation.</p>
<h2>Incompatibilists must defend themselves better</h2>
<p>Some readers sympathetic to Sapolsky might feel unconvinced. They might say your decision to stay in the room, or ignore the child, was still caused by influences in your history that you didn’t control – and therefore you weren’t truly free to choose.</p>
<p>However, this doesn’t <em>prove</em> that having alternatives or being “undetermined” is the only way we can count as having free will. Instead, it <em>assumes</em> they are. From the compatibilists’ point of view, this is cheating. </p>
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<span class="caption">Compatibilists believe humans are agents who act for moral reasons.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/crossroads-two-different-directions-concept-choose-786770815">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Compatibilists and incompatibilists both agree that, given determinism is true, there is a sense in which you lack alternatives and could not do otherwise.</p>
<p>However, incompatibilists will say you therefore lack free will, whereas compatibilists will say you still possess free will because <em>that</em> sense of “lacking alternatives” isn’t what undermines free will – and free will is something else entirely. </p>
<p>They say as long as your actions came from you in a relevant way (even if “you” were “determined” by other things), you count as having free will. When you’re tied up by a rope, the decision to not save the drowning child doesn’t come from you. But when you just don’t care about the child, it does.</p>
<p>By another analogy, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around, one person may say no auditory senses are present, so this is incompatible with sound existing. But another person may say even though no auditory senses are present, this is still compatible with sound existing because “sound” isn’t about auditory perception – it’s about vibrating atoms.</p>
<p>Both agree nothing is heard, but disagree on what factors are relevant to determining the existence of “sound” in the first place. Sapolsky needs to show why his assumptions about what counts as free will are the ones relevant to moral responsibility. As philosopher Daniel Dennett once put it, we need to ask which “<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/lv/podcast/daniel-dennett-on-free-will-worth-wanting/id257042117?i=1000119514678">varieties of free will [are] worth wanting</a>”.</p>
<h2>Free will isn’t a scientific question</h2>
<p>The point of this back and forth isn’t to show compatibilists are right. It is to highlight there’s a nuanced debate to engage with. Free will is a thorny issue. Showing nobody is responsible for what they do requires understanding and engaging with all the positions on offer. Sapolsky doesn’t do this.</p>
<p>Sapolsky’s broader mistake seems to be assuming his questions are purely scientific: answered by looking just at what the science says. While science is relevant, we first need some idea of what free will is (which is a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/metaphysics">metaphysical question</a>) and how it relates to moral responsibility (a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/normative-ethics">normative question</a>). This is something philosophers have been interrogating <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-responsibility/">for a very long time</a>.</p>
<p>Interdisciplinary work is valuable and scientists are welcome to contribute to age-old philosophical questions. But unless they engage with existing arguments first, rather than picking a definition they like and attacking others for not meeting it, their claims will simply be confused. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-what-is-the-most-important-thing-a-scientist-needs-177226">Curious Kids: what is the most important thing a scientist needs?</a>
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</em>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Piovarchy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sapolsky summarises the latest scientific research relevant to determinism: the idea that we’re causally ‘determined’ to act as we do and couldn’t possibly act any other way.Adam Piovarchy, Research Associate, Institute for Ethics and Society, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1963162023-01-03T06:58:02Z2023-01-03T06:58:02ZFree will: why people believe in it even when they think they’re being manipulated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500375/original/file-20221212-93168-j2pe7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C36%2C4905%2C3209&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shopping centres manipulate us.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/woman-holding-shopping-bags-mall-546883993">Sonpichit Salangsing/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We all like to believe that we are free to make our own choices. At the same time, many people think that psychological techniques are constantly being <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-what-extent-are-we-ruled-by-unconscious-forces-161216">used to sway us</a> – from social media trends to advertising. So how do we square this? </p>
<p>Surprisingly, it’s a question most researchers have ignored until now. But in a series of recent studies, we asked people, “Where in your day to day life do you think psychological tactics are being used to manipulate you unconsciously?” – and investigated what that meant for their belief in free will. </p>
<p>In a 2018 study across four countries (Australia, Canada, UK and the USA), responses to the question above <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-00115-001">were remarkably similar</a>. In fact, they cut across age, gender, religiosity and political affiliation. </p>
<p>Approximately 45% of the examples people gave of psychological manipulation referred to marketing and advertising – especially “subliminal advertising” (using images or sounds to entice or persuade people that they aren’t consciously aware of). The next most common (19%) was research (such as using placebos), then political campaigning (7%), social media (4%) and hypnotherapy (4%).</p>
<p>People typically described methods that subtly change mood, emotions and thoughts in such a way they that they persuade us into choosing or doing things that we have not consciously consented to. For instance, shops can pipe the smell of fresh baked bread outside it to entice people in. In a speech, a politician may emphasise specific words to persuade people to support them. Despite knowing such a thing could happen, we typically can’t be sure when we were being manipulating in this way. </p>
<p>But do methods such as subliminal messaging actually work? Psychological research <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-08885-001">has not settled on an answer</a> to this. But it is interesting to ponder how all this affects our belief in free will.</p>
<h2>Rating scenarios</h2>
<p>We set out to investigate this topic over the past two years. Across eight studies <a href="https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/330509">we presented 1,230 people with scenarios</a> based on the earlier examples people had volunteered in the study conducted in 2018. The scenarios were from a range of contexts (marketing/advertising, research, political campaigning, social media, therapy). </p>
<p>For each scenario people had to rate the extent to which they believed there was unconscious manipulation (from none at all to complete manipulation), and the extent to which free choice would be maintained (from none at all to complete free choice). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Politician talking and making an oath with his arm raised." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500378/original/file-20221212-103551-q7hy77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500378/original/file-20221212-103551-q7hy77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500378/original/file-20221212-103551-q7hy77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500378/original/file-20221212-103551-q7hy77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500378/original/file-20221212-103551-q7hy77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500378/original/file-20221212-103551-q7hy77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500378/original/file-20221212-103551-q7hy77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Politicians try to sway us.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/politician-talking-making-oath-his-arm-1377668447">Minerva Studio/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Each person had to give ratings of free choice and ratings of unconscious manipulation several times over because they had to do this for each of the scenarios they were presented with. Totalling up all the ratings given across all eight studies across all 1,230 participants generated over 14,000 of each of the two ratings. A total of 3.7% of the 14,000 ratings of free choice were “0” (no free choice at all) and 8.4% were “10” (complete free choice) – with the remainder being somewhere in the between. </p>
<p>These are crude indicators, but they give a reasonable impression that even where manipulation was described to be occurring, there was proportionally more attributions of complete free choice than of absolutely none. For ratings of unconscious manipulation, 3.4% were “0” (no unconscious manipulation) and 9% were “10” (complete unconscious manipulation). So overall, people were more likely to think they had complete free choice than not at all, but they are also more likely to believe they were sometimes being manipulated than not at all. </p>
<p>We had expected to find what researchers call a negative correlation. That is, the more people think they are being manipulated, the less they believe they have free will. But this isn’t what we found. In the majority of the studies, there was no reliable correlation between the two. How can this be?</p>
<h2>Justifying beliefs</h2>
<p>One reason for this is how we think of the manipulation methods. Chances are we don’t think they’ll work very well on us, personally – leaving people to believe they remain in charge of their choices. </p>
<p>We did, however, find a difference when people were giving ratings from an impersonal point of view and when they are asked to imagine themselves in the scenarios. The more vividly people imagined the possibility of being manipulated, the more they saw this to impinge on their free choice. But chances are we are biased to think of others as more manipulated than ourselves. </p>
<p>The scenarios weren’t equal either. Some people don’t especially care that there might be manipulation going on. If marketing tactics and advertising steer us into selecting one cheap brand of toothpaste compared to another, then as long as we are saving money, it doesn’t matter. So people justify their belief in free will by assuming manipulation only happens for situations they don’t care about or that they are actively choosing to be manipulated – they are letting it happen.</p>
<p>That might be a reasonable approach to advertising. But if we are going into a voting booth, we will want to claim that it is our free choice who we vote for, and not a combination of psychological tactics that meddled with our unconscious. In such a situation, we are more likely to believe there’s no manipulation going on, or that we are somehow immune to it.</p>
<p>What the findings from our work tells us is that on a fundamental level we want to preserve a belief that we are free to choose. But how much we maintain the belief seems to depend on what is at stake. </p>
<p>While this may seem irrational, it is actually rather helpful and healthy. Ultimately, the world as we know it would totally collapse if we refused to believe we are responsible for our own actions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196316/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Magda Osman receives funding from ESRC, British Academy, Research England, Turing Institute. </span></em></p>We tend to think everyone is affected by sly, psychological techniques – except ourselves.Magda Osman, Principal Research Associate in Basic and Applied Decision Making, Cambridge Judge Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1892852022-12-20T22:18:24Z2022-12-20T22:18:24ZSmart buildings: What happens to our free will when tech makes choices for us?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481358/original/file-20220826-14-d0tvbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C8%2C988%2C389&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A so-called smart building. What will become of our free will when choices are made for us by technology embedded in the building?
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Smart buildings, which are central to the concept of smart cities, are a <a href="https://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/united-kingdom/insights/smart-buildings">new generation of buildings</a> in which technological devices, such as sensors, are embedded in the structure of the buildings themselves. Smart buildings promise to personalize the experiences of their occupants by using real-time feedback mechanisms and forward-looking management of interactions between humans and the built environment.</p>
<p>This personalization includes continuous monitoring of the activities of occupants and the use of sophisticated profiling models. While these issues spark concerns about privacy, this is a matter of not seeing the forest for the trees. The questions raised by the massive arrival of digital technologies in our living spaces go far beyond this.</p>
<p>As a professor of real estate at ESG-UQAM, I specialize in innovations applied to the real estate sector. My research focuses on smart commercial buildings, for which I am developing a conceptual framework and innovative tools to enable in-depth analysis in the context of smart cities.</p>
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<strong>
À lire aussi :
<a href="https://theconversation.com/get-ready-for-the-invasion-of-smart-building-technologies-following-covid-19-168646">Get ready for the invasion of smart building technologies following COVID-19</a>
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<h2>“Choices” proposed, or imposed</h2>
<p>Thanks to <a href="https://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2alpha/alpha-eng.html?lang=eng&i=1&srchtxt=ubiquitous+computing&codom2nd_wet=1#resultrecs">ubiquitous computing</a>, interactions between building occupants and nested technology are quiet and invisible. As a result, the occupants’ attention is never drawn to the massive presence of computers operating permanently in the background.</p>
<p>Personalization allows us, for example, to have the ideal temperature and brightness in our workspace at all times. This would be idyllic if this personalization did not come at a cost to the occupants, namely their freedom of action and, more fundamentally, their free will.</p>
<p>As technology increasingly mediates our experiences in the built environment, choices will be offered to us, or even imposed on us, based on the profile the building’s technology device models have created of us in function of the goals, mercantile or otherwise, of those who control them (such as technology companies).</p>
<p>Having the ability to decide either to do something or not, and to act accordingly, is a basic definition of freedom. Smart buildings challenge this freedom by interfering with our ability to act, and more fundamentally, with our ability to decide for ourselves. Is freedom of action even possible for the occupants of a building where interactions between humans and their built environment are produced using algorithms that are never neutral?</p>
<h2>Satisfied… but not free</h2>
<p>The 17th-century English philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/">John Locke’s</a> famous analogy of the locked room sheds light on this question. Suppose a sleeping man is transported to a room where, upon awakening, he is engaged in activities that bring him great satisfaction, such as chatting with a long-lost friend.</p>
<p>Unbeknown to him, the door of the room is locked. Thus, he cannot leave the room if he wants to. He is therefore not free, even though he voluntarily remains in the room and gets extreme satisfaction from what he is doing there.</p>
<p>Locke’s analysis reflects the situation of smart building occupants. They benefit from the personalization of their experiences from which they derive great satisfaction. However, once they enter a space, technology controls their interactions outside of their awareness. While they may want to stay in the building to enjoy personalized experiences, they are not free. Smart buildings are a high-tech version of Locke’s locked room.</p>
<p>There’s nothing new about the problem. Already in the 19th century, in <em>Notes from the Underground</em> the Russian Fyodor Dostoyevsky identifies the challenges that computational logic poses to free will.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You will scream at me … that no one is touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my will should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own normal interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic. Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic…?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Deciding on the role of technology in our living spaces</h2>
<p>Indeed, what can be said about our free will when choices are made for us by technology?</p>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-freedom/">An action is something we do actively</a>, as opposed to things that happen to us in a passive way. Also, the active will to perform an action differs from the passive desire for an act to be done.</p>
<p>While algorithms are concerned with the predictability of human behaviour, things happen passively to the occupants of smart buildings. Their role is limited to receiving stimuli whilst the invisibility of the technology maintains their illusion that they have sole control over their actions.</p>
<p>These human-built environment interactions erode our will to take action, replacing it with desires shaped and calibrated by models over which we have no control. By denying the free will of their occupants, smart buildings challenge the right to action that the German philosopher <a href="https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/everything-is-fragile-reading-arendt-in-the-anthropocene-2020-01-02">Hannah Arendt</a> defines as one of the most fundamental rights of humans, the one that differentiates us from animals.</p>
<p>So, should we prohibit, or at least regulate, the technology embedded in smart buildings?</p>
<p>The answer to this question takes us back to the very origins of Western democracy. Long before the Big Tech companies (<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gafam-stocks.asp">GAFAM</a>), the Greek Socrates (who died in 399 BC) was concerned with the nature of an ideal city. In Plato’s <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/republic/"><em>The Republic</em></a>, Socrates explains that the difference between a city where citizens have all the luxuries and a city without luxuries, which he calls “a city fit for pigs,” is the ability of the residents of the former to choose their way of life, unlike the residents of the latter where this choice is simply not possible.</p>
<p>Smart cities are the digital version of the luxury cities of antiquity. However, without granting their residents the ability to make informed choices about technology, they provide satisfaction at the expense of their rights.</p>
<p>To avoid building an entire environment according to <a href="https://www.ipl.org/essay/It-Is-Better-To-Be-A-Human-P3FJWSK6JE8R">the philosophy of pigs</a>, smart building occupants should retain the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361924759_On_the_Economic_Nature_of_Behavioural_Control_in_Smart_Real_Estate">legally defined right</a> to decide for themselves the role of technology in their living spaces. Only then can their freedom be respected.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189285/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Lecomte ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Having the ability to decide either to do something or not, and to act accordingly, is a basic definition of freedom. Smart buildings challenge this freedom.Patrick Lecomte, Professor, Real Estate, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1917872022-10-06T15:07:48Z2022-10-06T15:07:48ZDo we have free will – and do we want it? Thomas the Tank Engine offers clues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488090/original/file-20221004-21-t9r775.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C24%2C2695%2C1793&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/strasburg-pa-usa-june-20-2017-1778811005">George Sheldon/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Are we free or are our actions determined by the laws of physics? And how much free will do we actually want? These questions have troubled <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/">philosophers</a> for millennia – and there are still no perfect answers. </p>
<p>But it turns out that a character from a children’s TV series can provide a clue.
<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086815/">Thomas the Tank Engine</a>, despite being a locomotive, behaves like a human. He makes decisions and choices. And he is morally responsible: when he does something wrong, he gets punished.</p>
<p>But look deeper and things become complicated. He is an engine. His movements are determined by the shape of the tracks, the workings of his engine and the employees of the railway. So is his free will just an illusion?</p>
<p>Laws of physics explain how a past event results in a future one. For example, if I put a kettle on the hob, the laws of thermodynamics determine that it will boil at a nearby point in the future. If I don’t interfere with the kettle or the hob, there is only one outcome possible: the water will start boiling. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01624156">powerful philosophical argument</a> against free will states that since we cannot change the past and since we cannot change the laws of physics, we cannot change the future either. This is because the future is just a consequence of the past, and the laws of physics dictate that the past will result in the future. The future is not open to alternatives. </p>
<p>This also applies to us: our bodies are physical objects made of atoms and molecules governed by laws of physics. But every decision and action we take can ultimately be traced back to some initial conditions at the beginning of the universe.</p>
<p>We might feel like we have free will, but that is <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4545340">just an illusion</a>. And the same is the case for Thomas: it might seem to him like he is free, but his actions are decided by the layout of the tracks and the timetable of the railway. What he does is not open to alternatives. He is, after all, a steam engine governed by the laws of thermodynamics.</p>
<h2>Moral responsibility</h2>
<p>But if Thomas’ actions are not open to alternatives, why is he told off when he gets things wrong? If he were no more than a machine, would it make much sense to think he is morally responsible? After all, it would be odd to say that my kettle deserves praise for boiling the water, if it really could not have done otherwise.</p>
<p>The US <a href="https://scholar.princeton.edu/fraharg/home">philosopher Harry Frankfurt</a> has developed an <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2023833">ingenious thought experiment</a> to show that the future does not have to be open to alternatives for us to be morally responsible. Imagine two agents, let’s call them Killer and Controller. Controller has electrodes connected to the brain of Killer. If Killer doesn’t do as Controller wants, he switches on the electrodes – forcing Killer to obey. </p>
<p>Now, Controller really wants someone, let’s call them Victim, to die. So he thinks of directing Killer to kill Victim. But it turns out that Killer actually wants Victim to die as well, so she kills Victim without Controller needing to intervene at all. The electrodes remain switched off.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488092/original/file-20221004-20-yfizr2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488092/original/file-20221004-20-yfizr2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488092/original/file-20221004-20-yfizr2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488092/original/file-20221004-20-yfizr2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488092/original/file-20221004-20-yfizr2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=650&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488092/original/file-20221004-20-yfizr2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=650&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488092/original/file-20221004-20-yfizr2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=650&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Thomas Tank Engine.</span>
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<p>What’s the moral of the story? Although Killer’s actions were not open to alternatives (if she decided not to kill, Controller would have forced her to do so anyway), she is still responsible and punished as a murderer.</p>
<p>It looks like Thomas is in the same situation: when he does things within the rules of the railway, he is left to do them of his own volition. When he does not, someone intervenes: the driver, the conductor or the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/rabbit-holes/the-repressive-authoritarian-soul-of-thomas-the-tank-engine-and-friends">ominous Fat Controller</a>. But he is still reprimanded when things go wrong. The fact that his actions are not open to alternatives does not change anything about that.</p>
<h2>How much free will is desirable?</h2>
<p>So how about a universe where Thomas’ future is not determined? Would he be free there? </p>
<p>Although we are uncomfortable about the fact that our actions might be determined, the alternative isn’t much better. A universe where the future is completely <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00370-2">undetermined</a>, where it is too open to alternatives, is just too chaotic. I need to know that when I put the kettle on the hob, it will boil. A universe where the water spontaneously turns into frozen orange juice isn’t one where most of us would want to live.</p>
<p>And the same is true of Thomas. If Thomas was allowed to leave the tracks, fly off into the air, or if his steam engine did not follow the laws of thermodynamics, his universe would not function.</p>
<p>His character captures our intuitions about free will. We need choice and moral responsibility, but we do not want our actions to be completely undetermined. We want our free will to be somewhere between full determinism and complete randomness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191787/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matyáš Moravec does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thomas the Tank Engine’s movements are restricted by the tracks, but he still thinks he’s free.Matyáš Moravec, Gifford Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1853562022-07-11T15:31:50Z2022-07-11T15:31:50ZHow to talk about climate change: Highlight harms — not benefits — to alter behaviour<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470827/original/file-20220624-14-stcwtf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C187%2C5934%2C3769&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Using language that stresses the "seriousness" or "importance" of climate change in protests and campaigns can lead to counterintuitive results.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Climate change is slowly, but drastically, influencing how we live, work and play. Governments, as well as for-profit and non-profit organizations, are now seeking ways to limit the effects of human actions on the planet. In many parts of the world, <a href="https://www.marineconservation.org.au/which-australian-states-are-banning-single-use-plastics/">including Australia</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/21/canada-is-banning-single-use-plastics-by-the-end-of-the-year-.html#:%7E:text=">Canada</a>, governments are limiting the use of single-use plastics.</p>
<p>To get people to be more sustainable in their daily lives, governments and environmental advocates have been communicating the harms of climate change for humans, animals and the planet. However, there is a right and wrong way to spread this message.</p>
<p>Research has recently begun examining how to best convey the importance of human action to the masses. While people are frequently bombarded with appeals to reduce water use and bring reusable bags to the grocery store, studies are now analyzing the language that should be used to make such appeals effective.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-022-03372-5">recent paper</a> I co-authored with Jack Lin, a student at the California State University Northridge, we found that stressing the “seriousness” or “importance” of climate change could lead to counterintuitive results.</p>
<h2>The experiment</h2>
<p>We recruited randomly selected 762 Americans and had them read a passage outlining the effects of climate change. But, in the passage given to half of the participants, we added words such as “serious” and “grave” to stress the importance of the harmful effects of climate change. </p>
<p>We then asked the participants how likely they were to engage in various sustainable behaviours such as eating locally grown foods, taking public transportation and using less water.</p>
<p>You would think that saying that climate change is serious would promote more sustainable behavioural intentions. Instead, we found that using “serious” and other similar adjectives lowered behavioural intentions to make sustainable efforts. This effect was especially pronounced among participants who identified supporting the Republican Party.</p>
<h2>Word choice can trigger your sense of free will</h2>
<p>How could these results be explained? Well, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2018.1548369">Republican supporters generally are higher on “psychological reactance.”</a> Meaning they are typically more averse to restrictions on their individual freedoms and sense of free will. Therefore, to say that climate change effects are “serious” are seen by these individuals as an attempt to influence their perceived views of climate change. Conservatives <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246317">in other parts of the world</a> also tend to score higher on psychological reactance. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of people protesting with placards against poor climate change action." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473413/original/file-20220711-26-pzpx7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473413/original/file-20220711-26-pzpx7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473413/original/file-20220711-26-pzpx7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473413/original/file-20220711-26-pzpx7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473413/original/file-20220711-26-pzpx7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473413/original/file-20220711-26-pzpx7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473413/original/file-20220711-26-pzpx7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">If the words used in awareness and social messaging sound restrictive, they can trigger individuals’ sense of free will.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>According to this theory, when people experience a sense of restriction, they can take opposite actions to re-assert their sense of free will. Consistent with this premise, Republicans’ higher scores on psychological reactance explained why they said they would, for example, use even more water when they see an appeal that uses adjectives like “serious” to convey the effects of climate change.</p>
<p>Other research has found similar results. For example, you would think that telling people that 97 per cent of the world’s prominent scientists believe that human-caused climate change is real. Yet <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2021.1910530">Republican-aligned research participants</a> who see a statement like this become even less likely to act on it, compared to those that don’t see it.</p>
<p>These findings might seem to say that climate change communications and appeals might be futile, especially for Republicans. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfq073">Research published a decade ago</a> found that scientists consider the terms “global warming” and “climate change” to mean different things, while most lay people use them interchangeably. This research showed that Republicans are less likely to believe that “global warming is real” but more likely to believe that “climate change is real.” </p>
<p>Democrats are more likely to take action against climate change than Republicans, but Democrats themselves are more likely to act against “global warming” than “climate change” — the opposite effect among Republicans.</p>
<h2>The power of words</h2>
<p>Whether one is conservative or liberal, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220320">research</a> has found that highlighting losses is better at promoting behaviours than highlighting gains. For example, indicating the harms to humans, animals and the environment from not acting is more effective than indicating the benefits from acting. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1190-4">Other research</a> has also found that using pie charts to communicate statistics and figures is better at promoting comprehension than writing those figures down in text form.</p>
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<img alt="A sign that reads 'There is no planet B'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473033/original/file-20220707-26-3yco38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473033/original/file-20220707-26-3yco38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473033/original/file-20220707-26-3yco38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473033/original/file-20220707-26-3yco38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473033/original/file-20220707-26-3yco38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473033/original/file-20220707-26-3yco38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473033/original/file-20220707-26-3yco38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Words that highlight losses are better at influencing behaviours than those that highlight gains.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>What does this all mean? The way we communicate the effects of climate change needs to be considered. How we communicate — and the language we use — are just as important as what we communicate. </p>
<p>People process the information they receive through their own lens — a lens that is shaped by individual as well as cultural histories, differences and expectations. In order to drive our message through to all these individuals of diverse perspectives, we need to ensure that the way we communicate is adapted to those recipients’ histories, differences and expectations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185356/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eugene Y. Chan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Messages about climate change must be adapted to people’s histories, differences and expectations.Eugene Y. Chan, Associate Professor, Marketing, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1835592022-05-30T16:17:10Z2022-05-30T16:17:10ZFive tips for discussing diversity at work with those who seem dismissive or resistant<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465725/original/file-20220527-25-hknacz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Approach conversations with curiosity.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/smiling-african-businesswoman-looking-over-her-793367872">Ground Picture | Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Diversity and inclusion initiatives are supposed to <a href="https://theconversation.com/inclusion-starts-with-better-management-heres-what-employees-say-about-making-diversity-work-141878">make a workplace more equal</a> and welcoming. But not everyone agrees on quite what that looks like or whether it’s important. Indeed, some people can be dismissive or even opposed to the idea.</p>
<p>Let’s be clear: people from marginalised groups shouldn’t have to engage in debates about their dignity or worth, as some would have them do. But on other more general issues like inclusion or positive action initiatives, people can act resistant or dismissive if they don’t understand the concepts being used or aren’t clear on what an initiative is for. It’s what workplace psychologists term “<a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003026907/diversity-resistance-organizations-kecia-thomas">diversity resistance</a>”.</p>
<p>Having as many people as possible take part in inclusion efforts really helps to actually make progress. So at least trying to have a conversation is important. And even if that person isn’t convinced, you may be helping onlookers to understand. Here are five steps that can help you get started.</p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/six-misunderstood-concepts-about-diversity-in-the-workplace-and-why-they-matter-181289">Six misunderstood concepts about diversity in the workplace and why they matter</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-psychology-of-being-a-better-ally-in-the-office-and-beyond-140902">The psychology of being a better ally in the office – and beyond</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/diversity-in-the-workplace-must-be-matched-with-an-atmosphere-of-genuine-inclusion-173352">Diversity in the workplace must be matched with an atmosphere of genuine inclusion</a></em></p>
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<h2>1. Drop the temperature</h2>
<p>Approaching someone about diversity can seem confrontational. It’s also easy to get angry when someone appears to be threatening or belittling. </p>
<p>So before you don your armour and grab your sword, try to take a moment to cool down. As Lemony Snicket says, “If everyone fought fire with fire, the whole world would go up in smoke.” Instead, approach the conversation with <a href="https://theconversation.com/curiosity-were-studying-the-brain-to-help-you-harness-it-122351">curiosity</a>. You can learn from this person in the same way that they can learn from you. </p>
<p>There’s a limit to this of course. You should never have to put up with harassment or a hostile working environment, even if it is ostensibly framed as someone’s lack of understanding or “<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/10/playing-devils-advocate-in-conversations-about-race-is-dangerous-and-counterproductive.html">just playing devil’s advocate</a>”. Some will never get on board, and you should work out when to stop engaging, if necessary. There’s also a balance to be struck between talking about inclusion and actually taking action. </p>
<h2>2. Prepare the script</h2>
<p>Research shows that we often <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.585493/full">depend on scripts</a> for social situations, especially those that are potentially tense, emotional or confrontational. Think of how we use certain stock phrases at funerals, for example, to avoid saying the wrong thing. </p>
<p>To keep the conversation on track, and to stick to step one, it can be useful to have a script ready, before you engage. Set out your stall and the reason for the conversation. Try to avoid phrasing that makes it seem aggressive or confrontational. The words you use will be best chosen by you as befitting your style and context, but it’s worth taking the time to consider them carefully before you speak.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An Asian woman wearing a yellow sweatshirt and black tunnel earrings sits at a computer with an LGBTQ+ flag in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465727/original/file-20220527-13-xv2jrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465727/original/file-20220527-13-xv2jrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465727/original/file-20220527-13-xv2jrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465727/original/file-20220527-13-xv2jrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465727/original/file-20220527-13-xv2jrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465727/original/file-20220527-13-xv2jrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465727/original/file-20220527-13-xv2jrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Know what your aim for the conversation is and think about the right words to use.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-asian-tomboy-woman-casual-attire-1982688281">Atstock Productions | Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>3. Understand their reasons</h2>
<p>Before you engage, try to work out why the other person is reacting negatively. Is it “<a href="https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/full/10.1027/2151-2604/a000222">reactance</a>”? Psychology scholars use this term to describe the uncomfortable feelings, and subsequent negative reactions, that may arise when someone feels (correctly or incorrectly) that their <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-psychology-of-believing-in-free-will-97193">free will</a> is somehow being curbed. </p>
<p>Reactance has been used, for example, to explain <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246317">the resistance to wearing a face-mask</a>. Similarly, someone might react negatively to an inclusion initiative – particularly if it is something like mandatory unconscious bias training – if they feel that they feel that they are losing autonomy. </p>
<p>Or is it fragility? Fragility relates to the negative reactions (anger, fear and guilt) and behaviours (arguing, deliberate silence, or exiting the conversation) one has when confronted with issues of discrimination or privilege. Discussions and initiatives concerning racial diversity and inclusion, for example, often trigger “<a href="http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/view/249">white fragility</a>”. </p>
<h2>4. Explore why it’s important</h2>
<p>Many people don’t want to openly criticise an inclusion initiative publicly (at an all-staff meeting, for example). They might however mutter about it among their team or close colleagues. </p>
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<img alt="An overhead shot of a group meeting in an open-plan office." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465740/original/file-20220527-11-ok8q2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465740/original/file-20220527-11-ok8q2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465740/original/file-20220527-11-ok8q2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465740/original/file-20220527-11-ok8q2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465740/original/file-20220527-11-ok8q2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465740/original/file-20220527-11-ok8q2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465740/original/file-20220527-11-ok8q2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">People might resist diversity initiatives when they feel their autonomy is threatened.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/businessman-making-presentation-office-colleagues-174539279">Monkey Business Images | Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>This could be because they think that it will be ineffective. They may be right. We often don’t know how effective an inclusion initiative will be. Maybe their experience of the organisation or technical insight could be useful here. That could be one way of getting them to join the conversation, even if they don’t necessarily understand all of the background concepts or topics in depth. </p>
<p>It could also be that they don’t see the point or importance of the initiative. In this case, a one-to-one conversation that allows the person to openly question the concept or initiative may be useful. You might be the right person to initiate that conversation. Or, if you aren’t, think about who might be.</p>
<h2>5. Acknowledge that you don’t know everything</h2>
<p>No one knows everything. I’ve researched equality, diversity and inclusion for over a decade and I still benefit greatly from the insights my students, co-authors and colleagues share. Inclusion is a complex and constantly evolving topic.</p>
<p>Acknowledging your own ignorance drops the temperature. You go from a teacher-and-student dynamic to two people trying to figure things out together. Share what you do know. Signpost to resources from those with that lived experience. And listen. </p>
<p>The person you’re talking with might also give you insight into what they’re thinking, their experiences, or how they arrived at their current thinking. These are all important things to know for future conversations. And the hope, really, is that you will keep talking.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ciarán McFadden has previously received funding from the Irish Research Council, the Fulbright Ireland Commission, and the Carnegie Trust.</span></em></p>Finding ways to make talking about diversity less of a confrontation and more of a dialogue is crucial.Ciarán McFadden, Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1748132022-01-13T11:45:20Z2022-01-13T11:45:20ZCrypto countries: Nigeria and El Salvador’s opposing journeys into digital currencies – podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440633/original/file-20220113-23-s6t8er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=139%2C106%2C5324%2C3522&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Banking on bitcoin: El Salvador announced plans to build a Bitcoin City in November 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Rodrigo Sura/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We dive into the world of crypto and digital currencies and take a close look at two countries approaching them in very different ways in this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-conversation-weekly-98901">The Conversation Weekly</a>. And if the latest Matrix film has left you wondering whether we are really living in a simulation, we talk to a philosopher on the long history of that idea. </p>
<iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/60087127b9687759d637bade/61e00e99915bad00125a73fd" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="190px"></iframe>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-561" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/561/4fbbd099d631750693d02bac632430b71b37cd5f/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy and its most populous country. El Salvador is a small republic in central America. But despite their many differences, they have two economic problems in common. First, a large proportion of their populations don’t have access to bank accounts. Second, their economies rely heavily on remittances, money sent back by people living abroad. But the money transfer companies that facilitate these cash flows can be slow and costly. </p>
<p>In 2021, both countries turned to the fast-moving world of digital currencies in an effort to tackle these, and other problems. But they’ve taken very different routes. </p>
<p>Nigeria banned <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1970446/nigerias-central-bank-takes-aim-at-cryptocurrency-again/">bank trading of cryptocurrencies</a> in February and then launched its own central bank digital currency, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/10/25/nigeria-becomes-first-african-nation-to-roll-out-digital-money">the eNaira</a>, in October. Nigeria was only the second country in the world to launch a central bank digital currency, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-20/the-bahamas-central-banker-explains-why-its-sand-dollar-led-the-way">after The Bahamas</a>. More may soon follow suit, including China, which in January expanded the pilot of its <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/04/china-launches-digital-currency-app-to-expand-usage.html">digital yuan</a> to more areas, including the major cities Shanghai and Beijing. </p>
<p>Nigeria’s decision to launch its own digital currency came as a surprise to many, says Iwa Salami, reader and associate professor in law at the University of East London in the UK and an expert on digital currencies. Initially, eNaira wallets are only available for people with bank accounts, but the plan is to extend access to anyone with a phone number in the future. </p>
<p>One of the questions, Salami says, is whether Nigeria will be able to “fully achieve financial inclusion in the way that it’s been promoted.” There are a number of risks involved, she says, including to financial stability if those with eNaira wallets start using them as a deposit account. “Therefore, rather than using commercial banks, people actually use eNaira wallets to store their savings, which then means that the relevance of banks becomes redundant,” she says.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nigerias-digital-currency-what-the-enaira-is-for-and-why-its-not-perfect-171323">Nigeria's digital currency: what the eNaira is for and why it's not perfect</a>
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<p>While Nigeria opted to create its own central bank digital currency, El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt a cryptocurrency as legal tender. The US dollar has been El Salvador’s currency since 2001, when it abandoned its currency, the colón. But in September 2021, El Salvador <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/07/el-salvador-bitcoin-experiment-nayib-bukele">added bitcoin</a> to its list of official currencies. </p>
<p>Erica Pimentel, an assistant professor at the Smith school of business at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, says there were geopolitical reasons for the decision, as well as an aim to increase financial inclusion and speed up remittances. “We see El Salvador standing up and saying we don’t want the dollar anymore, we want to be masters of our own domain,” she says. </p>
<p>In November, the government of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele announced plans <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-59368483">for a Bitcoin City</a>. Pimentel says it’s “a city built from scratch, whose economy is centred on bitcoin mining and is powered by a volcano.” She talks us through the risks involved with El Salvador’s embrace of bitcoin, and says other countries will be closely watching what happens.</p>
<p>From virtual currency, we turn to virtual brains, and the question of whether or not we’re living in a simulation, a little like that in The Matrix. Benjamin Curtis, senior lecturer in philosophy and ethics at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, explains the long history of this idea. He tracks versions of this question posed by ancient Greek philosophers, to René Descartes in the 17th century and how it evolved with the modern computing era. Curtis says when The Matrix film first came out in 1999 it “certainly introduced these ideas to a much wider audience”. (At 30m20)</p>
<p>And finally, Rob Reddick, COVID-19 editor at The Conversation in the UK, picks out some recent coverage of the wave of omicron cases sweeping the world. (At 42m10)</p>
<p>This episode of The Conversation Weekly was produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. You can find us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/?hl=en">theconversationdotcom</a> or <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">via email</a>. You can also sign up to The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter?utm_campaign=PodcastTCWeekly&utm_content=newsletter&utm_source=podcast">free daily email here</a>. </p>
<p>A transcript of this episode <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-el-salvador-and-nigeria-are-taking-different-approaches-to-digital-currencies-plus-are-we-living-in-a-simulation-the-conversation-weekly-podcast-transcript-174807">is available here.</a> </p>
<p>Newsclips in this episode are from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC1eFaFR3Zg">Channels Television</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3qAr-T-k-g">TVC News Nigeria</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r72qNehD7M4">CBS News</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8nFfz_a-Fk">DW News</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OUaP2JPh9w">CNBC Television</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFS8c4Rpjj4">WION</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-V-hmSpBEc&t=64s">CNA</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV8z5AlIdHg">France24 English</a>. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Iwa Salami and Erica Pimentel do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointments.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Curtis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Plus, a philosopher explains the history of the idea that we might all be living in a simulation. Listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast.Gemma Ware, Editor and Co-Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The ConversationDaniel Merino, Assistant Science Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1663892021-08-20T12:39:34Z2021-08-20T12:39:34ZFree Guy’s philosophy: could we just be lines of code in a grand simulation?<p>Have you ever wondered if you’re just a character in some elaborate simulation? You shake the thought off because you’re a real person, living a real life, in a concrete reality. But can you be certain that you are? Isn’t it at least possible that your body and that the world around you are nothing but illusions? </p>
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<p>This is the conundrum that Guy, played by Ryan Reynolds, finds himself in the middle of in the film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2m-08cOAbc">Free Guy</a>. However, in this case he is, in fact, an NPC (non-player character) in an open-world computer game called Free City. He is a character in a simulation, and this realisation changes his “life” forever.</p>
<p>Many of us have wondered if we, like Guy, are just NPCs in some game. A sceptical hypothesis like this was first raised by the 17th-century French philosopher <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/epistemo/#SH4c">René Descartes</a>. He didn’t imagine he might be an NPC, of course. He imagined that an evil demon might be deceiving him into thinking the world around him was real when it was not. But evil demons are considered a bit passé these days.</p>
<p>In 20th-century philosophy, the favoured alternative was to imagine that we might be <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/brainvat/">brains in vats</a> hooked up to electrodes being deceived by nefarious neuroscientists feeding our experiences into us via electrical impulses. This is (more or less) the basic premise of the film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKQi3bBA1y8">The Matrix</a>. But now even brains in vats are old hat.</p>
<p>Contemporary philosophy instead asks us to imagine that we are living in a <a href="https://www.simulation-argument.com/">computer simulation</a> and that our minds themselves are mere emulations that run on computer code. This hypothesis has been taken seriously by many philosophers and scientists, with some arguing that the hypothesis is not only possible but has <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/">a good chance of being true</a>. So, the question of whether you are in a situation similar to Guy’s is a genuine one worth thinking over.</p>
<h2>Do we have free will?</h2>
<p>So if we are like Guy and living in a computer simulation, what becomes of our <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/">free will</a>? </p>
<p>In the movie, Guy certainly feels like he has free will, but admits that his thoughts and behaviour is down to his programming. And there certainly seems to be something right about this. If our minds were nothing but a computer program running on a server somewhere, then it’s hard to see how we could have any real control over what we think and do. Everything would be determined by our programming.</p>
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<p>But now we can take this a step further and ask: what is the difference between a mind that runs according to a program in a computer, and one that runs according to biological laws in a brain? </p>
<p>Guy has no free will because his thoughts and actions are the result of electronic operations going on inside a computer that he has no control over. But, our thoughts and actions are the result of biological operations going on inside our brains, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llM1ZR1htp8">we have no control over those either</a>. So, it seems, whether we are in a computer simulation or the real world matters not. Either way, we lack free will.</p>
<p>There might be some hope for both Guy and us, however. Perhaps Guy’s programming and our neurology merely sets certain parameters within which free action is still somehow possible, as some (known as <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199860081.001.0001/acprof-9780199860081">libertarians</a>) think. Or perhaps free will consists in something other than being able to do otherwise than we do, as others (known as <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/">compatibilists</a>) think.</p>
<h2>Can computer programs be conscious?</h2>
<p>A traditional view that was held by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/mind-body-dualism">Descartes</a>, and is still held by some contemporary philosophers (such as <a href="https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol26/iss5/3/">Richard Swinburne</a>), is that consciousness does not spring forth from the operations of our biological brains at all. The mind is on this view entirely distinct from the brain, but the two nevertheless interact. So conscious thoughts occur in a spiritual mind and are then beamed across to the physical brain.</p>
<p>But if like me, you find such a view implausible and think that consciousness arises from the operations of biological material, then it seems one must admit that a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VypuNfR2GE0">genuine conscious mind</a> could arise from the operations of non-biological materials too, like those a computer is made from. And if this is right, given the rapid increase in computing power that we are now seeing, and the development of artificial intelligence, the day when such a mind arises might not be far off.</p>
<p>The consequences of there being conscious computer minds are far-reaching. One such consequence is the question of the moral status of such minds, which is raised in Free Guy. If they can have desires and emotions, be happy or sad, and fall in love, all of which Guy does in the movie, then they certainly seem to warrant as much moral respect as human beings. </p>
<p>But then it would seem to be morally wrong to interfere with their lives, such as resetting their programming, which would be akin to murder. As such, it would seem that the legal frameworks that protect our rights would have to be extended to protect theirs too. How to do this is a complicated issue that philosophers and legal experts <a href="https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190067397.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190067397-e-18?fbclid=IwAR16Kdd5m4sZXMAN91zEXc0cpiGXIdng_rQZcQZ8TfD38xcBqRLd2XG8lZY">are only just beginning to tackle</a>.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Curtis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Guy is happy living his life unaware that he is just a character in a grand simulation. Could we all be doing same?Benjamin Curtis, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1320852020-10-27T18:31:55Z2020-10-27T18:31:55ZWill I or won’t I? Scientists still haven’t figured out free will, but they’re having fun trying<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327604/original/file-20200414-72274-2wo34j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5960%2C3658&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/young-man-choosing-button-push-concept-1335305078">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence, and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-science-of-free-will-88888">series on the science of free will</a>.</em></p>
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<p>In 1983, American physiologist Benjamin Libet <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4612-0355-1_15">conducted an experiment</a> that became a landmark in the field of cognitive sciences. It got psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers either very excited or very concerned.</p>
<p>The study itself was simple. Participants were connected to an apparatus that measured their brain and muscle activity, and were asked to do two basic things. First, they had to flex their wrist whenever they felt like doing so. </p>
<p>Second, they had to note the time when they first became aware of their intention to flex their wrist. They did this by remembering the position of a revolving dot on a clock face. The brain activity Libet was interested in was the “readiness potential”, which is known to ramp up before movements are executed.</p>
<p>Libet then compared the three measures in time: the muscle movement, the brain activity, and the reported time of the conscious intention to move. He found both the reported intention to move and the brain activity came before the actual movement, so no surprises there. But crucially, he also found brain activity preceded the reported intention to move by around half a second. </p>
<p>This seemed to suggest participants’ brains had already “decided” to move, half a second before they felt consciously aware of it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343978/original/file-20200625-33533-jcincd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343978/original/file-20200625-33533-jcincd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343978/original/file-20200625-33533-jcincd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343978/original/file-20200625-33533-jcincd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343978/original/file-20200625-33533-jcincd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343978/original/file-20200625-33533-jcincd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343978/original/file-20200625-33533-jcincd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Libet’s experiments, participants had to remember where the dot was at the time they made the conscious decision to flex their wrist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tesseract2/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Had neuroscience just solved the free will problem?</h2>
<p>Some researchers have <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dwegner/files/minds_best_trick.pdf">since argued</a> that the intuitive idea that we have a consciousness (or a “self”) that is distinct from our brains — and that can cause things in the real world — might be wrong. Really being the “author” of our actions seemed to suggest, at least for many people, that an “I” is making the decisions, not the brain. However, only brains (or neurons) can really <em>cause</em> us to do things, so should we be surprised to find that an intention is a <em>consequence</em> rather than the origin of brain activity? </p>
<p>Others were less convinced of Libet’s study and have attacked it from all possible angles. For example, it has been questioned whether flexing the wrist is really a decision, as there is no alternative action, and whether we can really judge the moment of our intention so precisely. Perhaps, sceptics suggested, the findings could be a lot of fuss about nothing.</p>
<p>But Libet’s findings have been successfully replicated. By using other neuroimaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in combination with clever new analysis techniques, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2112">it has been shown</a> that the <em>outcome</em> of decisions between two alternatives can be predicted [<em>several seconds</em> before the reported conscious intention]. </p>
<p>Even Libet himself did not seem comfortable claiming our “will” does not matter at all. What if we could still say “no” to what the brain wants to do? This would at least give us a “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6672190/">free won’t</a>”. To test this, one study asked participants to play a game against a computer that was trained to predict their intentions from their brain activity. The research found participants <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/113/4/1080">could cancel their actions</a> if the computer found out quickly what they intended to do, at least up to around 200 milliseconds before the action, after which it was too late. </p>
<p>But is the decision <em>not</em> to do something really so different from a decision to do something?</p>
<h2>It depends what you mean by free</h2>
<p>Another way to look at Libet’s study is to recognise it might not be as closely related to the “free will” problem as initially thought. We might be mistaken in what we think a truly free decision is. We often think “free will” means: could I have chosen otherwise? In theory, the answer might be no — being transported back in time, and placed into exactly the same circumstances, the outcome of our decision might necessarily be exactly the same. But maybe that doesn’t matter, because what we really mean is: was there no external factor that forced my decision, and did I freely choose to do it? And the answer to that might still be yes.</p>
<p>If you are worried about “free will” just because sometimes there are external factors present that influence us, think about this: there are also always factors inside of us that influence us, from which we can never fully escape — our previous decisions, our memories, desires, wishes and goals, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763414002693">all of which are represented in the brain</a>.</p>
<p>Some people might still maintain that only if nothing influences our decision at all can we be really free. But then there is really no good reason to choose either way, and the outcome might just be due to the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/e2904">random activity of neurons</a> that happen to be active at the time of decision-making. And this means our decisions would also be random rather than “willed”, and that would seem even less free to us.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327601/original/file-20200414-187049-1ob4ywd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327601/original/file-20200414-187049-1ob4ywd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327601/original/file-20200414-187049-1ob4ywd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327601/original/file-20200414-187049-1ob4ywd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327601/original/file-20200414-187049-1ob4ywd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327601/original/file-20200414-187049-1ob4ywd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327601/original/file-20200414-187049-1ob4ywd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There are always things influencing us that are beyond our control.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Victoriano Izquierdo/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most of our decisions require planning because they are more complex than the “spontaneous” decisions <a href="https://www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences/fulltext/S0166-2236(18)30112-7">investigated in Libet-style studies</a>, like whether to buy a car, or get married, which are what we really care about. And interestingly, we don’t tend to question whether we have free will when making such complex decisions, even though they require a lot more brain activity. </p>
<p>If the emerging brain activity reflects the decision <em>process</em> rather than the <em>outcome</em>, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763419300739">we might not even have a philosophical contradiction on our hands</a>. It matters a lot what we call “the decision” — is it the moment we reach an outcome, or the entire process that leads to reaching it? Brain activity in Libet-style studies might simply reflect the latter, and that suddenly does not sound so mysterious anymore.</p>
<h2>Where to from here?</h2>
<p>While Libet’s classic study might not have solved the problem of free will, it made a lot of clever people think hard. Generations of students have argued long nights over beer and pizza whether they have free will or not, and researchers have conducted increasingly innovative studies to follow in Libet’s footsteps.</p>
<p>Exciting questions have arisen, such as <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00221-013-3472-x">which brain processes</a> lead to the formation of a voluntary action, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2017.14">how we perceive agency</a>, what freedom of will <a href="https://www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences/fulltext/S0166-2236(18)30112-7">means for being responsible for our actions</a>, and how we change our mind <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cercor/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/cercor/bhz160/5557769?redirectedFrom=fulltext">after making an initial decision</a>.</p>
<p>Researchers had to acknowledge they might not be able to provide a definite answer to the big philosophical question. But the field of cognitive neuroscience and voluntary decisions is more alive, interesting and sophisticated than ever before, thanks to the bold attempts by Libet and his successors to tackle this philosophical problem using science.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stefan Bode receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>In 1983, one study by an American physiologist set off an explosion of research about free will and the brain.Stefan Bode, Associate Professor and Head of Decision Neuroscience Laboratory, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1476192020-10-19T18:32:53Z2020-10-19T18:32:53ZThe history of oath ceremonies and why they matter when taking office<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364018/original/file-20201016-15-16p6muc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is sworn in Oct. 12 for her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/APTOPIXSupremeCourtBarrett/84957f0f66364503a02770b7643b1e8f/photo?Query=Amy%20coney%20BArrett&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=2982&currentItemNo=18">Leah Millis/Pool via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/21/politics/amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court/index.html">confirmation hearings for</a> Amy Coney Barrett have <a href="https://www.deseret.com/faith/2020/10/15/21517518/judge-thomas-griffith-amy-coney-barrett-catholic-faith-supreme-court-mormon-lds">drawn much</a> notice for her religious worldview.</p>
<p>Barrett’s <a href="https://peopleofpraise.org/about/who-we-are/covenant/">alleged commitment</a> to a small Christian religious group, People of Praise, has raised concerns. This <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/covenant">covenant</a> is a formal pledge to remain a member for life, following its authority structures, religious beliefs and expectations for service or charitable activities.</p>
<p>Barrett must take an oath – both governmental and judicial – swearing impartiality if she is approved for the post of a Supreme Court justice. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/us-supreme-court-amy-coney-barrett-archive-courts-social-issues-7407908faa001844bcf835bb53bb0731">Some commentators have questioned</a> this apparent permanent commitment to an ultraconservative “fringe” group and whether that might interfere with her ability to <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/amy-coney-barrett-conservative-anti-catholic-complaints.html">genuinely practice this impartiality</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.holycross.edu/academics/programs/religious-studies/faculty/joanne-pierce">scholar of medieval Christian liturgy and ritual</a>, I believe this is a moment to understand why oaths are so important, as well as how they came to be such an important tradition. </p>
<h2>What is an oath?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/speech-act-theory-1691986">Some philosophers</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=8NLm78cziU4C&pg=PA319&dq=oath+ritual+act&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZp4eAmrbsAhUJd6wKHasiD0U4ChDoATAHegQICRAC#v=onepage&q=oath%20ritual%20act&f=false">anthropologists</a> define an oath as a <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech-acts/">ritual act</a>, or more specifically a “<a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/speech-act-linguistics-1692119#:%7E:text=In%20linguistics%2C%20a%20speech%20act,or%20any%20number%20of%20declarations">speech act</a>.” </p>
<p>An oath is one kind of speech act. Taking an oath expresses a specific intention to others, using words like “I promise to” or “I swear that.” The intention when taking an oath is not limited to the moment someone articulates the words of the oath. </p>
<p>Oath-taking is also about the intention in the future to commit to act in a certain way. One example is the vows taken by couples during their wedding in front of witnesses. </p>
<p>British philosopher <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/aust.htm">John L. Austin</a> <a href="http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes/f09/semprag1/austin56.pdf">called oaths</a> “<a href="http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Performative">performative utterances.”</a> The engaged couple, for example, declare their act of marrying each other by speaking their vows to each other. They make a deliberate choice of their own free will. </p>
<h2>Roman soldiers and allegiance</h2>
<p>The ritual of taking oaths goes back centuries in Western Europe.</p>
<p>In antiquity, oaths were often demanded of religious and governmental leaders, as well as those in certain professions. In ancient Rome, oaths were also demanded of soldiers. </p>
<p>The most solemn military oath – directly invoking the Roman gods – was the “<a href="https://oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-5653">sacramentum</a>.” By this oath, soldiers swore allegiance to their specific general or commanding consul and, later, to the emperor. Disobedience could earn <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Conflict_in_Ancient_Greece_and_Rome_The/npNUDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=roman%20soldier%20punishment">severe punishments</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364019/original/file-20201016-23-1om2x7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364019/original/file-20201016-23-1om2x7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364019/original/file-20201016-23-1om2x7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364019/original/file-20201016-23-1om2x7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364019/original/file-20201016-23-1om2x7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364019/original/file-20201016-23-1om2x7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364019/original/file-20201016-23-1om2x7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364019/original/file-20201016-23-1om2x7x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A tapestry scene showing swearing oath on holy relics to William, Duke of Normandy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Bayeux_Tapestry_scene23_Harold_sacramentum_fecit_Willelmo_duci.jpg/1024px-Bayeux_Tapestry_scene23_Harold_sacramentum_fecit_Willelmo_duci.jpg">Myrabella via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On some occasions, oath-breaking was tested by resorting to divine intervention. The virgin goddess Vesta was one of the most important in Roman religion. Her priestesses, <a href="https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1099&context=his">the Vestals, or Vestal Virgins</a>, therefore took an oath of chastity for their 30-year term of service tending to the ever-burning sacred fire of Rome, Vesta’s sacred hearth, as well as other rites.</p>
<p>Vestals accused of breaking that oath were judged by the high priest of Rome. Since a priestess was a sacred person, her blood could not be shed. If found guilty, the priestess was buried alive, with a lamp and a little food, and left to the judgment of Vesta. If any condemned Vestal were innocent, it was believed that surely the <a href="https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1099&context=his">goddess would free her</a> from her living death. </p>
<h2>Oaths in the Middle Ages</h2>
<p>In medieval Europe, Christians continued to take oaths. The religious and secular worlds were closely interconnected for most of these centuries, and most oaths referred to Christian beliefs. </p>
<p>In the early Middle Ages, Christians <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Oaths_and_the_English_Reformation/Al4gAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=medieval+oaths&pg=PA31&printsec=frontcover">took oaths</a> in the name of God, often while holding a religious object like a <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/feud-fief1.asp">relic of a saint</a> or a book of the Gospels. </p>
<p>In most cases, oaths were not strictly person to person, but involved the wider community in some important way. Kings took <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/old-english-coronation-oath">coronation oaths</a>, swearing to rule justly and safeguard the people of the kingdom; lesser nobles took <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Shorter_Cambridge_Medieval_History/mcI8AAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=oath+fealty+medieval&pg=PA418&printsec=frontcover">oaths of fealty</a> to greater nobles, often for protection and material advantage. </p>
<p>Religious leaders like bishops and abbots also became part of this oath-based system, since they, too, had secular jurisdiction over important tracts of land. Breaking an oath was believed to bring down the wrath of God in time, but other than that, upholding one’s personal honor and reputation within the local community was a key consideration. </p>
<p>Until the early 13th century, Christian rites would <a href="https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3387&context=mlr">accompany</a> the earlier Germanic practice of trial by ordeal. In these earlier centuries, most local people accused of a crime could be found not guilty by compurgation – that is, through oaths made by other respected members of the community <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Jury_State_and_Society_in_Medieval_Engla/McDIAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=medieval+oath+compurgation&pg=PA77&printsec=frontcover">testifying to the accused’s honest character</a>. </p>
<p>In other cases, often involving strangers to the local community, the accused could be cleared only by a divine intervention. </p>
<p>After a night of fasting and prayer, the accused would undergo a physical ordeal, like carrying a heated block of iron over a set number of steps or by being thrown into a pond to sink or float. </p>
<p>If the accused did not develop blisters or was “accepted” by the water and sank, that was understood as God’s declaration of his innocence. As time went on, scholars and ordinary people increasingly <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=LgTzXwdJKUoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=criticism+medieval+trials+ordeal&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwipyKPpzLnsAhWBGc0KHWmaBeUQ6AEwAHoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=criticism%20medieval%20trials%20ordeal&f=false">criticized the reliability of trials</a> by ordeal. </p>
<p>By the 13th century, the procedures of the court trial were defined and adopted, both in canon law – that is, the church law – and in secular law.</p>
<h2>Why oaths matter</h2>
<p>When drafting the U.S. Constitution in 1787, the Founding Fathers rejected some of the legal practices of the British system of law. One such rejection was of the “<a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/article-vi/clauses/32#:%7E:text=After%20requiring%20all%20federal%20and,as%20the%20No%20Religious%20Test">religious test</a>.” </p>
<p>In Great Britain, all office holders had to affirm the religious doctrines of the Church of England. But in the independent United States, there was to be no such religious restriction placed on federal officeholders. Preserving religious liberty was a primary concern protected by the Constitution.</p>
<p>One of the British legal practices the Founding Fathers did include in the Constitution was the swearing of oaths upon entering federal governmental service. However, these oaths were not taken to pledge loyalty to a single monarch, but to “protect and defend” the Constitution itself. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364022/original/file-20201016-19-i9c991.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364022/original/file-20201016-19-i9c991.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364022/original/file-20201016-19-i9c991.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364022/original/file-20201016-19-i9c991.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364022/original/file-20201016-19-i9c991.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364022/original/file-20201016-19-i9c991.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364022/original/file-20201016-19-i9c991.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364022/original/file-20201016-19-i9c991.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sandra Day O'Connor being sworn in as a Supreme Court justice by Chief Justice Warren Burger in September 1981.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/1696015">Series: Reagan White House Photographs, 1/20/1981 - 1/20/1989 Collection: White House Photographic Collection, 1/20/1981 - 1/20/1989</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But “swearing-in ceremonies” communicate far more. Supreme Court justices <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/oath/oathsofoffice.aspx">take two oaths</a>, one judicial, and the other constitutional. The oath ceremony is still a serious performative utterance.</p>
<p>The appointees take these oaths in front of witnesses, who are themselves representative of the entire community the appointees will serve. </p>
<p>Appointees to the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/oath/oathsofoffice.aspx">commit themselves</a>, not to a partisan political agenda, and not to a cult of personality or to the judgment of popular opinion. They commit themselves to “protect and defend the Constitution” and “administer justice without respect to persons … faithfully and impartially.” </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Justices might be <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII_S1_2_1_3/">impeached by Congress</a> for failing in “good behavior.” But in practice, justices serve for life, until death or retirement, and are bound in good conscience to carry out their “duties” as they have sworn to do. </p>
<p>The conscience of appointees, not the preservation of their personal reputations, has been the focus of these “oaths of office” for almost 250 years. This is as true today as it was in 1787.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanne M. Pierce does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Taking oath is an important tradition before assuming charge of a public office. It entails a commitment to the future. What is the history of oath-taking?Joanne M. Pierce, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1417832020-10-18T19:06:42Z2020-10-18T19:06:42ZHey Google … what movie should I watch today? How AI can affect our decisions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349783/original/file-20200728-33-4dru5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5973%2C3988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-science-of-free-will-88888">series on the science of free will</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Have you ever used Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri or Amazon Alexa to make decisions for you? Perhaps you asked it what new movies have good reviews, or to recommend a cool restaurant in your neighbourhood.</p>
<p>Artificial intelligence and virtual assistants are constantly being refined, and may soon be making appointments for you, offering medical advice, or trying to sell you a bottle of wine.</p>
<p>Although AI technology has miles to go to develop social skills on par with ours, some AI has shown impressive language understanding and can complete relatively complex interactive tasks.</p>
<p>In several 2018 demonstrations, Google’s AI made <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5VN56jQMWM">haircut</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RHG5DFAjp8">restaurant</a> reservations without receptionists realising they were talking with a non-human.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/D5VN56jQMWM?wmode=transparent&start=67" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Would you let Google Duplex make phone bookings for you?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s likely the AI capabilities developed by tech giants such as Amazon and Google will only grow more capable of influencing us in the future.</p>
<h2>But what do we actually find persuasive?</h2>
<p>My colleague Adam Duhachek and I <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797620904985">found AI messages are more persuasive</a> when they highlight “how” an action should be performed, rather than “why”. For example, people were more willing to put on sunscreen when an AI explained <em>how</em> to apply sunscreen before going out, rather than <em>why</em> they should use sunscreen.</p>
<p>We found people generally don’t believe a machine can understand human goals and desires. Take Google’s <a href="https://deepmind.com/research/case-studies/alphago-the-story-so-far">AlphaGo</a>, an algorithm designed to play the board game Go. Few people would say the algorithm can understand <em>why</em> playing Go is fun, or <em>why</em> it’s meaningful to become a Go champion. Rather, it just follows a pre-programmed algorithm telling it how to move on the game board.</p>
<p>Our research suggests people find AI’s recommendations more persuasive in situations where AI shows easy steps on how to build personalised health insurance, how to avoid a lemon car, or how to choose the right tennis racket for you, rather than why any of these are important to do in a human sense.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A robot hand playing the ancient Chinese boardgame called Go" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349805/original/file-20200728-25-1mvlqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People tend to think of AI as not having free will and therefore not having the ability to explain why something is important to humans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Does AI have free will?</h2>
<p>Most of us believe humans have free will. We compliment someone who helps others because we think they do it freely, and we penalise those who harm others. What’s more, we are willing to lessen the criminal penalty if the person was deprived of free will, for instance if they were in the grip of a schizophrenic delusion.</p>
<p>But do people think AI has free will? We did an experiment to find out. </p>
<p>Someone is given $100 and offers to split it with you. They’ll get $80 and you’ll get $20. If you reject this offer, both you and the proposer end up with nothing. Gaining $20 is better than nothing, but <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51993135_Foundations_of_Human_Sociality_Economic_Experiments_and_Ethnographic_Evidence_From_Fifteen_Small-Scale_Societies">previous research</a> suggests the $20 offer is likely to be rejected because we perceive it as unfair. Surely we should get $50, right?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/do-social-media-algorithms-erode-our-ability-to-make-decisions-freely-the-jury-is-out-140729">Do social media algorithms erode our ability to make decisions freely? The jury is out</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But what if the proposer is an AI? In a research project yet to be published, my colleagues and I found the rejection ratio drops significantly. In other words, people are much more likely to accept this “unfair” offer if proposed by an AI.</p>
<p>This is because we don’t think an AI developed to serve humans has a malicious intent to exploit us — it’s just an algorithm, it doesn’t have free will, so we might as well just accept the $20.</p>
<p>The fact people could accept unfair offers from AI concerns me, because it might mean this phenomenon <em>could</em> be used maliciously. For example, a mortgage loan company might try to charge unfairly high interest rates by framing the decision as being calculated by an algorithm. Or a manufacturing company might manipulate workers into accepting unfair wages by saying it was a decision made by a computer.</p>
<p>To protect consumers, we need to understand when people are vulnerable to manipulation by AI. Governments should take this into account when considering regulation of AI.</p>
<h2>We’re surprisingly willing to divulge to AI</h2>
<p>In other work yet to be published, my colleagues and I found people tend to disclose their personal information and embarrassing experiences more willingly to an AI than a human.</p>
<p>We told participants to imagine they’re at the doctor for a urinary tract infection. We split the participants, so half spoke to a human doctor, and half to an AI doctor. We told them the doctor is going to ask a few questions to find the best treatment and it’s up to you how much personal information you provide.</p>
<p>Participants disclosed more personal information to the AI doctor than the human one, regarding potentially embarrassing questions about use of sex toys, condoms, or other sexual activities. We found this was because people don’t think AI judges our behaviour, whereas humans do. Indeed, we asked participants how concerned they were for being negatively judged, and found the concern of being judged was the underlying mechanism determining how much they divulged.</p>
<p>It seems we feel less embarrassed when talking to AI. This is interesting because many people have grave concerns about AI and privacy, and yet we may be more willing to share our personal details with AI.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A phone featuring Google Assistant" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C0%2C5431%2C3645&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349781/original/file-20200728-23-1xoq6cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As AI develops further, we need to understand how it affects human decision-making.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>But what if AI does have free will?</h2>
<p>We also studied the flipside: what happens when people start to believe AI <em>does</em> have free will? We found giving <a href="http://abotdatabase.info/">AI human-like features</a> or a human name could mean people are more likely to believe an AI has free will.</p>
<p>This has several implications:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>AI can then better persuade people on questions of “why”, because people think the human-like AI may be able to understand human goals and motivations</p></li>
<li><p>AI’s unfair offer is less likely to be accepted because the human-looking AI may be seen as having its own intentions, which could be exploitative</p></li>
<li><p>people start feeling judged by the human-like AI and feel embarrassed, and disclose less personal information</p></li>
<li><p>people start feeling guilty when harming a human-looking AI, and so act more benignly to the AI.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>We are likely to see more and different types of AI and robots in future. They might cook, serve, sell us cars, tend to us at the hospital and even sit on a dining table <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Robot-Sex-Social-Ethical-Implications/dp/0262036681">as a dating partner</a>. It’s important to understand how AI influences our decisions, so we can regulate AI to protect ourselves from possible harms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>TaeWoo Kim does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Leading tech companies are increasingly using AI to influence our behaviour. But how persuasive do we find virtual assistants?TaeWoo Kim, Lecturer, UTS Business School, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1337512020-10-15T19:07:40Z2020-10-15T19:07:40ZDo criminals freely decide to commit offences? How the courts decide<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352081/original/file-20200811-14-112xwwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C5447%2C3448&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence, and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-science-of-free-will-88888">series on the science of free will</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Are criminals responsible for their actions? It’s a question philosophers, criminologists and jurisprudence experts have grappled with for centuries.</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNqjR33gGNU">philosophers</a> and <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbqwjx/you-have-no-free-will">scientists</a> argue no-one has free will and no-one is ever responsible for any crime, no matter how serious. They suggest the impact of genes and formative social environments on us mean there’s no room left for free will.</p>
<p>This radical view, however, is not held by the majority of philosophers working on free will, nor is it held by the courts.</p>
<p>The criminal justice system presupposes people generally are free to decide whether or not to engage in criminal behaviour. If they do choose to commit a crime, it is presumed that they are responsible for what they’ve done.</p>
<p>However, the courts acknowledge not everyone has free will. For example, those who are very <a href="https://ngm.com.au/doli-incapax-child-arrested-charged">young</a>, or <a href="https://www.gotocourt.com.au/criminal-law/vic/automatism/">sleepwalking</a>, or severely <a href="https://www.gotocourt.com.au/criminal-law/vic/mental-impairment/">mentally ill</a> may not be held responsible for an offence. You might think of these people as lacking free will because they are unable to reason properly about what to do.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/my-brain-made-me-do-it-will-neuroscience-change-the-way-we-punish-criminals-57571">My brain made me do it: will neuroscience change the way we punish criminals?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Fit to stand trial?</h2>
<p>But even before getting to the question of whether a defendant in a criminal proceeding deserves to be punished for an offence, there can be doubt about whether they are sufficiently rational to be tried at all.</p>
<p>Though the law sees most defendants as able to properly participate in their trial, it recognises others <a href="https://www.lawreform.vic.gov.au/content/4-unfitness-stand-trial">cannot</a>.</p>
<p>A defendant’s mental condition may deprive them of the free will needed to properly instruct their lawyers, present their version of events, or follow court proceedings.</p>
<p>This was one of the issues in relation to James Gargasoulas, who is currently serving at least 46 years in prison for killing six people and injuring 27 others in Melbourne’s 2017 Bourke Street massacre.</p>
<p>Gargasoulas’ actions in driving a car into a busy mall, and his conduct in the run-up to the trial, raised significant questions about his <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1402093/Jimmy-Gargasoulas-inside-church-two-days-Bourke-St-rampage.html">mental health</a>.</p>
<p>Expert witnesses were <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-29/james-gargasoulas-accused-bourke-street-driver-trial/10434246">reportedly</a> divided on whether Gargasoulas had the capacity to properly participate in his trial, despite suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and delusions.</p>
<p>A psychiatrist for the defence <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-23/accused-bourke-street-driver-james-gargasoulas-phone-calls/10419502">said</a> Gargasoulas’ delusional belief system “overwhelms him”; the psychiatrist expressed concern Gargasoulas was using the court process as a platform to voice his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/13/bourke-street-driver-dimitrious-gargasoulas-believes-he-is-messiah">belief</a> he is the messiah.</p>
<p>A second forensic psychiatrist <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/bourke-st-accused-not-bothered-about-fitness-to-plead-court-told-20181024-p50bp9.html">agreed</a> Gargasoulas was “not able to rationally enter a plea”.</p>
<p>However, a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-29/james-gargasoulas-accused-bourke-street-driver-trial/10434246">psychologist for the prosecution</a> assessed him as fit and the prosecution argued there was evidence from recorded phone calls that he was capable of rational thought.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the opinion of the majority of expert witnesses, the jury found Gargasoulas was fit to stand trial, and later he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.</p>
<p>Working from media reports, it is difficult to be sure precisely what happened in court, and we cannot know why the jury favoured the evidence suggesting he was fit to stand trial. However, it is interesting to consider whether research into the psychology of blame and punishment can shed any light on their decision.</p>
<h2>Questions of consequence</h2>
<p>Some <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.376.970&rep=rep1&type=pdf">psychologists</a> argue judgements of blame are not always based on a balanced assessment of free will or rational control, as the law presumes. Sometimes we decide how much control or freedom a person possessed based upon our automatic negative responses to harmful consequences. </p>
<p>As the psychologist Mark Alicke <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1047840X.2014.902723">says</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>we simply don’t want to excuse people who do horrible things, regardless of how disordered their cognitive states may be.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When a person has done something very bad, we are motivated to look for evidence that supports blaming them and to downplay evidence that might excuse them by showing that they lacked free will.</p>
<p>Were the jurors who found Gargasoulas fit to stand trial influenced by how horrendous his actions were? Would their decision have been different had they not known what he’d been charged with?</p>
<p>We may never know. What is clear, though, is that questions about free will continue to challenge the criminal justice system — and will likely continue to do so in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The criminal justice system presupposes people generally are free to decide whether or not to engage in criminal behaviour. However, the courts acknowledge not everyone has free will.Jeanette Kennett, Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie UniversityAllan McCay, Lecturer in law, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1343302020-10-13T18:47:54Z2020-10-13T18:47:54ZHow much do our genes restrict free will?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323448/original/file-20200326-133012-i1r0g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2660%2C1967&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence, and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-science-of-free-will-88888">series on the science of free will</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Many of us believe we are masters of own destiny, but new research is revealing the extent to which our behaviour is influenced by our genes.</p>
<p>It’s now possible to decipher our individual genetic code, the sequence of 3.2 billion DNA “letters” unique to each of us, that forms a blueprint for our brains and bodies.</p>
<p>This sequence reveals how much of our behaviour has a hefty biological predisposition, meaning we might be skewed towards developing a particular attribute or characteristic. Research has shown genes may predispose not only our <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2955183/">height</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28533464">eye colour</a> or <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00438-015-1015-9">weight</a>, but also our <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23933821?dopt=Abstract">vulnerability to mental ill-health</a>, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/genetic-factors-associated-with-increased-longevity-identified/">longevity</a>, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104">intelligence</a> and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/tp201495">impulsivity</a>. Such traits are, to varying degrees, written into our genes — sometimes thousands of genes working in concert.</p>
<p>Most of these genes instruct how our brain circuitry is laid down in the womb, and how it functions. We can now <a href="http://www.developingconnectome.org/">view a baby’s brain as it is built</a>, even 20 weeks before birth. Circuitry changes exist in their brains that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-38957-1">strongly correlate with genes</a> that predispose for autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They even predispose for <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-38957-1">conditions</a> that might not emerge for decades: bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/genes-shown-to-influence-how-well-children-do-throughout-their-time-at-school-102520">Genes shown to influence how well children do throughout their time at school</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Increasingly we are faced with the prospect that predispositions to more complex behaviours are similarly wired into our brains. These include <a href="https://experts.umn.edu/en/publications/genetic-and-environmental-influences-on-religiousness-findings-fo">which religion we choose</a>, how we <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2015.1360">form our political ideologies</a>, and even how we create our <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/111/Supplement_3/10796">friendship groups</a>.</p>
<h2>Nature and nurture are intertwined</h2>
<p>There are also other ways our life stories can be passed down through generations, besides being inscribed in our DNA.</p>
<p>“Epigenetics” is a relatively new area of science that can reveal how intertwined nature and nurture can be. It looks not at changes to genes themselves, but instead at the “tags” that are put on genes from life experience, which alter how our genes are expressed. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3923835/">One 2014 study</a> looked at epigenetic changes in mice. Mice love the sweet smell of cherries, so when a waft reaches their nose, a pleasure zone in the brain lights up, motivating them to scurry around and hunt out the treat. The researchers decided to pair this smell with a mild electric shock, and the mice quickly learned to freeze in anticipation.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/epigenetics-what-impact-does-it-have-on-our-psychology-109516">Epigenetics: what impact does it have on our psychology?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The study found this new memory was transmitted across the generations. The mice’s grandchildren were fearful of cherries, despite not having experienced the electric shocks themselves. The grandfather’s sperm DNA changed its shape, leaving a blueprint of the experience entwined in the genes.</p>
<p>This is ongoing research and novel science, so questions remain about how these mechanisms might apply to humans. But preliminary results indicate epigenetic changes can influence descendants of extremely traumatic events.</p>
<p>One study showed the sons of US Civil War prisoners had an <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/44/11215">11% higher death rate by their mid-40s</a>. Another small study showed survivors of the Holocaust, and their children, carried epigenetic changes in a gene that was <a href="https://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(15)00652-6/abstract">linked to their levels of cortisol</a>, a hormone involved in the stress response. It’s a complicated picture, but the results suggest descendants have a higher net cortisol level and are therefore more susceptible to anxiety disorders. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/extreme-stress-in-childhood-is-toxic-to-your-dna-99009">Extreme stress in childhood is toxic to your DNA</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Do we have any scope for free will?</h2>
<p>Of course, it’s not simply the case that our lives are set in stone by the brain we’re born with, the DNA given to us by our parents, and the memories passed down from our grandparents.</p>
<p>There is, thankfully, still scope for change. As we learn, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/consciousness-a-ladybird-expert-book-9780718189112">new connections form between nerve cells</a>. As the new skill is practised, or the learning relived, the connections strengthen and the learning is consolidated into a memory. If the memory is repeatedly visited, it will become the default route for electrical signals in the brain, meaning learned behaviour becomes habit.</p>
<p>Take riding a bike, for example. We don’t know how to ride one when we are born, but through trial and error, and a few small crashes along the way, we can learn to do it. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-brain-plasticity-and-why-is-it-so-important-55967">What is brain plasticity and why is it so important?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Similar principles create the basis for both perception and navigation. We make and strengthen neural connections as we move around our environment and conjure our perception of the space that surrounds us. </p>
<p>But there’s a catch: sometimes our past learnings blind us to future truths. Watch the video below — we’re all biased towards <a href="https://archive.org/details/intelligenteye0000greg">seeing faces in our environment</a>. This preference causes us to ignore the shadow cues telling us it is the back end of a mask. Instead, we rely on tried and tested routes within our brains, generating the image of another face.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pH9dAbPOR6M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">You probably won’t notice that Albert Einstein’s face is the back side of a mask, rather than the front, because our brains are biased towards seeing faces in our environment.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This illusion illustrates how difficult it can be to change our minds. Our identity and expectations are based on past experiences. It can take too much cognitive energy to break down the frameworks in our minds.</p>
<h2>Elegant machinery</h2>
<p>As I explore in my latest book published last year, <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/hannah-critchlow/the-science-of-fate-the-new-science-of-who-we-are-and-how-to-shape-our-best-future">The Science of Fate</a>, this research touches on one of life’s biggest mysteries: our individual capacity for choice.</p>
<p>For me, there’s something beautiful about viewing ourselves as elegant machinery. Input from the world is processed in our unique brains to produce the output that is our behaviour.</p>
<p>However, many of us may not wish to relinquish the idea of being free agents. Biological determinism, the idea that human behaviour is entirely innate, rightly makes people nervous. It’s abhorrent to think that appalling acts in our history were perpetrated by people who were powerless to stop them, because that raises the spectre that they might happen again.</p>
<p>Perhaps instead, we could think of ourselves as <em>not being restricted</em> by our genes. Acknowledging the biology that influences our individuality may then empower us to better pool our strengths and harness our collective cognitive capacity to shape the world for the better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah Critchlow has received funding from the Medical Research Council, GlaxoSmithKline, Wellcome Trust and University of Cambridge. </span></em></p>Scientists are revealing the extent to which our behaviour is influenced by our genes, calling into question our capacity for free will. But there is still scope for change.Hannah Critchlow, Science Outreach Fellow at Magdalene College, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1407292020-10-11T19:00:09Z2020-10-11T19:00:09ZDo social media algorithms erode our ability to make decisions freely? The jury is out<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343092/original/file-20200622-75500-1hvp0yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C2118%2C3488%2C2134&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Charles Deluvio/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence, and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-science-of-free-will-88888">series on the science of free will</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Have you ever watched a video or movie because YouTube or Netflix recommended it to you? Or added a friend on Facebook from the list of “people you may know”?</p>
<p>And how does Twitter decide which tweets to show you at the top of your feed?</p>
<p>These platforms are driven by algorithms, which rank and recommend content for us based on our data.</p>
<p>As Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, Boston, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-04-30/how-the-internet-tricks-you-out-of-privacy-deceptive-design/9676708">explains</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you want to know when social media companies are trying to manipulate you into disclosing information or engaging more, the answer is always.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So if we are making decisions based on what’s shown to us by these algorithms, what does that mean for our ability to make decisions freely?</p>
<h2>What we see is tailored for us</h2>
<p>An algorithm is a digital recipe: a list of rules for achieving an outcome, using a set of ingredients. Usually, for tech companies, that outcome is to make money by convincing us to buy something or keeping us scrolling in order to show us more advertisements.</p>
<p>The ingredients used are the data we provide through our actions online – knowingly or otherwise. Every time you like a post, watch a video, or buy something, you provide data that can be used to make predictions about your next move.</p>
<p>These algorithms can influence us, even if we’re not aware of it. As the New York Times’ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/podcasts/rabbit-hole-prologue.html">Rabbit Hole podcast</a> explores, YouTube’s recommendation algorithms can drive viewers to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/02/how-youtubes-algorithm-distorts-truth">increasingly extreme content</a>, potentially leading to online radicalisation.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1258196846545002497"}"></div></p>
<p>Facebook’s News Feed algorithm ranks content to keep us engaged on the platform. It can produce a phenomenon called “<a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788/tab-article-info">emotional contagion</a>”, in which seeing positive posts leads us to write positive posts ourselves, and seeing negative posts means we’re more likely to craft negative posts — though this study was <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/111/29/10779.1">controversial</a> partially because the effect sizes were small.</p>
<p>Also, so-called “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-04-30/how-the-internet-tricks-you-out-of-privacy-deceptive-design/9676708">dark patterns</a>” are designed to trick us into sharing more, or <a href="https://econsultancy.com/three-dark-patterns-ux-big-brands-and-why-they-should-be-avoided/">spending more</a> on websites like Amazon. These are tricks of website design such as hiding the unsubscribe button, or showing how many people are buying the product you’re looking at <em>right now</em>. They subconsciously nudge you towards actions the site would like you to take.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sludge-how-corporations-nudge-us-into-spending-more-101969">Sludge: how corporations 'nudge' us into spending more</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>You are being profiled</h2>
<p>Cambridge Analytica, the company involved in the largest known Facebook data leak to date, claimed to be able to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cambridge-analytica-and-the-perils-of-psychographics">profile your psychology</a> based on your “likes”. These profiles could then be used to target you with political advertising.</p>
<p>“Cookies” are small pieces of data which track us across websites. They are records of actions you’ve taken online (such as links clicked and pages visited) that are stored in the browser. When they are combined with data from multiple sources including from large-scale hacks, this is known as “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-12-03/data-enrichment-industry-privacy-breach-people-data-labs/11751786">data enrichment</a>”. It can link our personal data like email addresses to other information such as our education level.</p>
<p>These data are regularly used by tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, and others to build profiles of us and predict our future behaviour.</p>
<h2>You are being predicted</h2>
<p>So, how much of your behaviour can be predicted by algorithms based on your data?</p>
<p>Our research, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0510-5">published in Nature Human Behaviour last year</a>, explored this question by looking at how much information about you is contained in the posts your friends make on social media.</p>
<p>Using data from Twitter, we estimated how predictable peoples’ tweets were, using only the data from their friends. We found data from eight or nine friends was enough to be able to predict someone’s tweets just as well as if we had downloaded them directly (well over 50% accuracy, see graph below). Indeed, 95% of the potential predictive accuracy that a machine learning algorithm might achieve is obtainable <em>just</em> from friends’ data.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343234/original/file-20200622-54989-bo83l3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343234/original/file-20200622-54989-bo83l3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343234/original/file-20200622-54989-bo83l3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343234/original/file-20200622-54989-bo83l3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343234/original/file-20200622-54989-bo83l3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343234/original/file-20200622-54989-bo83l3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343234/original/file-20200622-54989-bo83l3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Average predictability from your circle of closest friends (blue line). A value of 50% means getting the next word right half of the time — no mean feat as most people have a vocabulary of around 5,000 words. The curve shows how much an AI algorithm can predict about you from your friends’ data. Roughly 8-9 friends are enough to predict your future posts as accurately as if the algorithm had access to your own data (dashed line).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bagrow, Liu, & Mitchell (2019)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our results mean that even if you #DeleteFacebook (which trended after the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/deletefacebook-calls-grow-after-cambridge-analytica-data-scandal">Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018</a>), you may still be able to be profiled, due to the social ties that remain. And that’s before we consider the things about Facebook that make it so <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-so-hard-to-deletefacebook-constant-psychological-boosts-keep-you-hooked-92976">difficult to delete</a> anyway.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-so-hard-to-deletefacebook-constant-psychological-boosts-keep-you-hooked-92976">Why it's so hard to #DeleteFacebook: Constant psychological boosts keep you hooked</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>We also found it’s possible to build profiles of <em>non-users</em> — so-called “<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0513-2">shadow profiles</a>” — based on their contacts who are on the platform. Even if you have never used Facebook, if your friends do, there is the possibility a shadow profile could be built of you.</p>
<p>On social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, privacy is no longer tied to the individual, but to the network as a whole.</p>
<h2>No more free will? Not quite</h2>
<p>But all hope is not lost. If you do delete your account, the information contained in your social ties with friends grows stale over time. We found predictability gradually declines to a low level, so your privacy and anonymity will eventually return.</p>
<p>While it may seem like algorithms are eroding our ability to think for ourselves, it’s not necessarily the case. The evidence on the effectiveness of psychological profiling to influence voters <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/cambridge-analytica.html">is thin</a>.</p>
<p>Most importantly, when it comes to the role of people versus algorithms in things like spreading (mis)information, people are just as important. On Facebook, the extent of your exposure to diverse points of view is more closely related <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6239/1130">to your social groupings</a> than to the way News Feed presents you with content. And on Twitter, while “fake news” may spread faster than facts, it is <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146">primarily people who spread it</a>, rather than bots.</p>
<p>Of course, content creators exploit social media platforms’ algorithms to promote content, on <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-just-blame-youtubes-algorithms-for-radicalisation-humans-also-play-a-part-125494">YouTube</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-just-blame-echo-chambers-conspiracy-theorists-actively-seek-out-their-online-communities-127119">Reddit</a> and other platforms, not just the other way round.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, underneath all the algorithms are people. And we influence the algorithms just as much as they may influence us.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-just-blame-youtubes-algorithms-for-radicalisation-humans-also-play-a-part-125494">Don't just blame YouTube’s algorithms for ‘radicalisation’. Humans also play a part</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140729/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lewis Mitchell works for the University of Adelaide, and is an Associate Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS). He receives funding from the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions and DST.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Bagrow is an associate professor in Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Vermont. He receives funding from the US National Science Foundation, CA Technologies, US Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, and Google Open Source.</span></em></p>Have you ever watched something because YouTube recommended it to you? You’ve probably been influenced by an algorithm. But at the end of the day, underneath all the algorithms are people.Lewis Mitchell, Senior Lecturer in Applied Mathematics, University of AdelaideJames Bagrow, Associate Professor, Mathematics & Statistics, University of VermontLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1328982020-10-07T19:09:59Z2020-10-07T19:09:59ZWe might not be able to understand free will with science. Here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327448/original/file-20200413-4907-wsg7jf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C0%2C6240%2C4156&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/sOK9NjLArCw">Gabriel Crismariu/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence, and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-science-of-free-will-88888">series on the science of free will</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Suppose you are thinking about doing something trivial, such as moving your index finger a little to the right. You are free to do it. You are free not to do it. You weigh up the pros and cons, and decide to do it. Lo and behold, your finger moves. Congratulations! You did it.</p>
<p>This is a case of free will. Clearly it’s not a momentous case. Nothing much depends on whether you move your finger.</p>
<p>But imagine if something did. Imagine someone would be executed if you did move that finger. Then you’d be morally responsible, because you did it freely.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327443/original/file-20200413-134587-1vqeb0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A hand holding a gun with the finger on the trigger." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327443/original/file-20200413-134587-1vqeb0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327443/original/file-20200413-134587-1vqeb0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327443/original/file-20200413-134587-1vqeb0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327443/original/file-20200413-134587-1vqeb0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327443/original/file-20200413-134587-1vqeb0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327443/original/file-20200413-134587-1vqeb0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327443/original/file-20200413-134587-1vqeb0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">If you freely choose to move your finger, knowing someone would be executed as a result, you would be morally culpable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/l7p3DUKaFrk">Alejo Reinoso/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>It seems as obvious as anything that we have <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/">free will</a>. But lots of philosophers and scientists will tell you free will doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>The starting point of this argument is that free will is incompatible with determinism, a worldview that dominated science in the past and remains influential today.</p>
<h2>Is everything predetermined?</h2>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/">Determinism</a> says everything that happens now is entirely determined by factors that were in place well before you were even born.</p>
<p>Maybe these factors concern your upbringing or culture. Or they concern the initial conditions of the Universe and the laws that govern how it unfolds. Either way, you had nothing to do with them. And if they determine what you do, you aren’t free.</p>
<p>US philosopher <a href="https://philosophy.nd.edu/people/emeritus/peter-van-inwagen/">Peter van Inwagen</a> provides a vivid illustration of this argument, in his book <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/an-essay-on-free-will-9780198249245">An Essay on Free Will</a>. If determinism is true, the laws of nature and the past together guarantee you will move your finger. It therefore follows that if you have the power not to move your finger, you would also have the power to change the laws or the past.</p>
<p>But that’s ridiculous. You don’t have such powers.</p>
<p>An initial reaction is that, while determinism was important historically, it now seems false.</p>
<p>Quantum physics <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature20119" title="Certified randomness in quantum physics">shows</a> the occurrence of some events to be literally random. It’s a concept the Australian National University used to develop a <a href="http://qrng.anu.edu.au/index.php">random number generator</a>.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this only makes matters worse. If moving your finger were just a random act, you wouldn’t be responsible for it and so you still wouldn’t be free.</p>
<p>This gives us the full-blown argument against free will. Either determinism is true or it’s not; that’s just logic.</p>
<p>If determinism is true, your acts are a consequence of things that happened before you were born; so you have no free will. But suppose determinism is not true; then it’s easy to think everything would be random, including all your actions (such as raising your finger!). But in this instance, there would be no free will either.</p>
<p>You might side with British philosopher <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/philosophy/faculty/profile.php?eid=gs24429">Galen Strawson</a> who, in his book <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/563023/things-that-bother-me-by-galen-strawson/">Things That Bother Me</a>, argues free will is “provably impossible”.</p>
<h2>Is there a middle ground?</h2>
<p>Another option is to try to understand free will so it works with a limited form of determinism, that applies to your actions rather than to everything in the world. </p>
<p>One version of this view, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/aristotelian/article-abstract/118/3/347/5116368" title="XV—Intelligent Capacities">developed</a> by ANU’s <a href="https://philosophy.cass.anu.edu.au/people/victoria-mcgeer">Victoria McGeer</a>, involves defining free will as whatever explains our social capacities to hold each other morally responsible. As a deterministic process could in principle do that, free will and determinism may coexist.</p>
<p>But while a deterministic process may explain these capacities, it would not in that case be free will, because free will is fundamentally incompatible with determinism. </p>
<p>At this point, things look bleak. But there is a small ray of light, pointed out by US linguist and philosopher <a href="https://chomsky.info/">Noam Chomsky</a>, who says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We just can’t abandon believing it (free will); it’s our most immediate phenomenologically obvious impression, but we can’t explain it. […] If it’s something we know to be true and we don’t have any explanation for it, well, too bad for any explanatory possibilities. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Noam Chomsky on free will.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Suppose again that determinism is incompatible with free will. If so, when you freely moved your finger, that event was not fully determined by the initial conditions of the Universe and the laws of nature. </p>
<p>Does it necessarily follow that it’s random? On the face of it, no. To be random is one thing; to be not fully determined is quite another. There’s a logical space between determinism and randomness, and perhaps free will lives in that space.</p>
<p>Chomsky goes on to say it may be impossible for humans to understand free will. In science, people develop models or theories of the systems they are interested in. He suggests in his book <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Language_and_Problems_of_Knowledge.html?id=hwgHVRZtK8kC">Language and Problems of Knowledge</a> the only models we can understand are those in which our acts are either determined or random. If so, we will never develop scientific models of free will, for it is neither of these things.</p>
<p>I am not sure Chomsky is right about the limits of human understanding. But I think he’s right about free will. We are free to move our finger. That is neither determined nor random — it’s a choice we can feel in our bones.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132898/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Stoljar receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Is everything predetermined, or is it all random? Or is there something in between that we call free will that defies our attempts to explain it?Daniel Stoljar, Professor, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1375072020-04-30T11:46:07Z2020-04-30T11:46:07ZDevs: explaining the philosophy at the centre of Alex Garland’s mind-bending TV show<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331715/original/file-20200430-42908-1y7x9nw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/FX Networks/Raymond Liu</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Devs, the new TV series from writer and director Alex Garland, is a cracking show. It has an engaging storyline, great acting, gorgeous cinematography and a thumping soundtrack. But it also has the potential to baffle some viewers thanks to the centrality of quantum mechanics and metaphysical philosophy to its plot.</p>
<p>The show features a fanatical tech billionaire named Forest, who is convinced that science proves that the events of our lives are predetermined and that, as a result, we don’t have free will to choose or moral responsibility for our actions.</p>
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</figure>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/">Philosophers tend to agree</a> that the answer to whether the future is fixed does depend on what science tells us about the universe. But what science tells us (and quantum mechanics in particular) turns out to be far from clear.</p>
<p>Quantum mechanics is a way of describing the universe at the atomic scale that is widely believed to be true. But whether it tells us that the universe (and so our lives) are predetermined is a hotly contested matter. There are different interpretations of quantum mechanics – and the different interpretations tell us different things.</p>
<p>One interpretation that gets mentioned briefly in Devs is called the <a href="https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation">von Neumann–Wigner</a> interpretation. According to this view, the laws of nature are indeterministic, meaning they have true randomness built into them. This would mean the future is open and our lives are not predetermined.</p>
<p>But the two main interpretations considered in the show are the <a href="https://www.wikiwand.com/en/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory">de Broglie–Bohm</a> interpretation and the <a href="https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Many-worlds_interpretation">many worlds (or Everett)</a> interpretation. According to both these theories, the laws of nature are fixed and deterministic. Everything has a specific cause and nothing happens randomly. </p>
<p>And so, you might think, that settles the matter. If the laws of nature are both fixed and deterministic, so the thought goes, then everything that has ever happened and will ever happen flows from these laws, and the universe and our lives within it develop along a single inevitable path (or “tramline”, as Forest calls it).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331716/original/file-20200430-42935-q0mj2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331716/original/file-20200430-42935-q0mj2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331716/original/file-20200430-42935-q0mj2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331716/original/file-20200430-42935-q0mj2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331716/original/file-20200430-42935-q0mj2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331716/original/file-20200430-42935-q0mj2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331716/original/file-20200430-42935-q0mj2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Forest believes the future is fixed in a single path.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/FX Networks/Raymond Liu</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But things are a bit more complicated than this. The many worlds interpretation implies that the universe actually follows a multitude of inevitable paths, splitting into different versions of itself at every point that quantum mechanics means something could potentially occur in different ways – with each version being as real as every other. As the universe splits, so do you. On some paths you might be an astronaut, on others a hairdresser. </p>
<p>But, crucially, this view of the universe is still consistent with the laws of nature being fixed and deterministic. The laws produce multiple different futures for each of us rather than a single future, but each of these futures is produced just as inevitably as if there were only one path.</p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that determinism is different <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=fatalism">from fatalism</a>, the belief that some events will happen no matter what you do because of fate or destiny. This view denies the deterministic view that present events have a causal effect on future events.</p>
<h2>Free will</h2>
<p>It’s tempting to think that these two visions of a deterministic universe provide a simple answer to the question of whether we have free will. If there is only a single future that we cannot alter then we must lack free will. If there are multiple futures then each of us can and will do many different possible things – and so free will does exist. But this simple answer is highly problematic, for two reasons.</p>
<p>First, it isn’t clear that the multiple future view really allows for the possibility that we could act differently from the way we do. If you pick a cheese sandwich over a tuna sandwich, this choice arguably only represents free will if you could have gone with the tuna instead. If there’s only one predetermined future then that possibility is ruled out. </p>
<p>But if there are multiple futures that all occur in different versions of the universe, one in which it is determined that you pick tuna and the other in which it is determined you pick cheese, then you couldn’t really have chosen the other option in either of them. And so it seems that even the multiple future view robs us of free will.</p>
<p>Second, it isn’t clear that free will actually requires us to be able to act differently. If your actions aren’t determined, some argue, then they must be random. And random actions cannot be free.</p>
<p>An <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/">alternative view</a> is that free will consists in our being able to translate our desires into action. For example, some drug addicts in some sense do not really want to take drugs but find themselves doing so anyway. Or you may want to get out of bed and yet find yourself continuing to lie there as the clock ticks on. In this way, all of us may lack free will at those moments when we are not able to do what we really want to do.</p>
<p>Crucially, with this account of free will, whether we are able to translate our desires into action may or may not be predetermined. So the issue of whether there is a single inevitable future or multiple versions becomes entirely irrelevant to the debate. </p>
<p>It also means that you are morally responsible for your actions if they come from your desires, not whether or not we live in a deterministic universe in which the future can be predicted. In which case, Forest has a lot to answer for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Curtis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If every action spilts the universe into different versions, what does that mean for free will?Benjamin Curtis, Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1290332020-03-12T12:41:12Z2020-03-12T12:41:12ZFree thought: can you ever be a truly independent thinker?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320108/original/file-20200312-111261-12h724o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Who thought that?'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-beautiful-young-woman-on-yellow-412026961">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>‘It’s important to me that I make my own decisions, but I often wonder how much they are actually influenced by cultural and societal norms, by advertising, the media and those around me. We all feel the need to fit in, but does this prevent us from making decisions for ourselves? In short, can I ever be a truly free thinker?’</em> Richard, Yorkshire. </p>
<p>There’s good news and bad news on this one. In his poem <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51642/invictus">Invictus</a>, William Ernest Henley wrote: “It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”</p>
<p>While being the lone “captain of your soul” is a reassuring idea, the truth is rather more nuanced. The reality is that we are social beings driven by a profound <a href="https://theconversation.com/would-you-stand-up-to-an-oppressive-regime-or-would-you-conform-heres-the-science-124469">need to fit in</a> – and as a consequence, we are all hugely influenced by cultural norms. </p>
<p>But to get to the specifics of your question, advertising, at least, may not influence you as much as you imagine. Both advertisers and the critics of advertising like us to think that ads can make us dance any way they want, especially now everything is digital and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/05/targeted-ads-fake-news-clickbait-surveillance-capitalism-data-mining-democracy">personalised ad targeting</a> is possible in a way it never was before.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313328/original/file-20200203-41485-1foofme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313328/original/file-20200203-41485-1foofme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313328/original/file-20200203-41485-1foofme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313328/original/file-20200203-41485-1foofme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313328/original/file-20200203-41485-1foofme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313328/original/file-20200203-41485-1foofme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313328/original/file-20200203-41485-1foofme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/lifes-big-questions-80040?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=LifesBigQuestionsUK">Life’s Big Questions</a></em></strong>
<br><em>The Conversation’s new series, co-published with BBC Future, seeks to answer our readers’ nagging questions about life, love, death and the universe. We work with professional researchers who have dedicated their lives to uncovering new perspectives on the questions that shape our lives.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In reality, <a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/effective-advertising/book11407">there is no precise science of advertising</a>. <a href="https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/clay-christensens-milkshake-marketing">Most new products fail</a>, despite the advertising they receive. And even when sales go up, nobody is exactly sure of the role advertising played. As the marketing pioneer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wanamaker">John Wanamaker</a> said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>You’d expect advertisers to exaggerate the effectiveness of advertising, and scholars of advertising have typically made more modest claims. Even these, though, may be overestimates. Recent studies have claimed that both <a href="https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/gordon_b/files/fb_comparison.pdf">online</a> and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3273476">offline</a>, the methods commonly used to study advertising effectiveness vastly exaggerate the power of advertising to change our beliefs and behaviour.</p>
<p>This has led some to claim that not just half, but perhaps nearly all advertising money is wasted, <a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13228924500-22d5fd24">at least online</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309426/original/file-20200110-97183-3azfxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309426/original/file-20200110-97183-3azfxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309426/original/file-20200110-97183-3azfxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309426/original/file-20200110-97183-3azfxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309426/original/file-20200110-97183-3azfxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309426/original/file-20200110-97183-3azfxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309426/original/file-20200110-97183-3azfxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When the ads don’t work…</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are similar results outside of commerce. One review of field experiments in political campaigning argued “the best estimate of the effects of campaign contact and advertising on Americans’ candidates choices <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3042867">in general elections is zero”</a>. Zero! </p>
<p>In other words, although we like to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/15/what-we-learned-about-the-media-this-election">blame the media</a> for how people vote, it is surprisingly hard to find <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3042867">solid evidence</a> of when and how people are swayed by the media. One professor of political science, Kenneth Newton, went so far as to claim <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.12732">“It’s Not the Media, Stupid”</a>.</p>
<p>But although advertising is a weak force, and although hard evidence on how the media influences specific choices is elusive, every one of us is undoubtedly influenced by the culture in which we live.</p>
<h2>Followers of fashion</h2>
<p>Fashions exist both for superficial things, such as buying clothes and opting for a particular hairstyle, but also for more profound behaviour like <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262/">murder and even suicide</a>. Indeed, we all borrow so much from those we grow up around, and those around us now, that it seems impossible to put a clear line between our individual selves and the selves society forges for us. </p>
<p>Two examples: I don’t have any facial tattoos, and I don’t want any. If I wanted a facial tattoo my family would think I’d gone mad. But if I was born in some cultures, where these tattoos were common and conveyed high status, such as traditional Māori culture, people would think I was unusual if I <em>didn’t</em> want facial tattoos.</p>
<p>Similarly, if I had been born a Viking, I can assume that my highest ambition would have been to die in battle, axe or sword in hand. In their belief system, after all, that was <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/how-do-you-get-to-viking-valhalla/z7s747h">surest way to Valhalla</a> and a glorious afterlife. Instead, I am a liberal academic whose highest ambition is to die peacefully in bed, a long way away from any bloodshed. Promises of Valhalla have no influence over me.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309428/original/file-20200110-97126-3mp2b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309428/original/file-20200110-97126-3mp2b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309428/original/file-20200110-97126-3mp2b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309428/original/file-20200110-97126-3mp2b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309428/original/file-20200110-97126-3mp2b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309428/original/file-20200110-97126-3mp2b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309428/original/file-20200110-97126-3mp2b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vikings had different beliefs to most modern liberal academics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/medieval-scandinavian-warrior-viking-full-outfit-641585887">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately, I’d argue that all of our desires are patterned by the culture we happen to be born in.</p>
<p>But it gets worse. Even if we could somehow free ourselves from cultural expectations, other forces impinge on our thoughts. Your <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25961374">genes can affect your personality</a> and so they must also, indirectly, have a knock-on effect on your beliefs.</p>
<p>Sigmund Freud, the founder of <a href="https://psychoanalysis.org.uk/our-authors-and-theorists/sigmund-freud">psychoanalysis</a>, famously talked about the influence of parents and upbringing on behaviour, and he probably wasn’t 100% wrong. Even just psychologically, how can you ever think freely, separate from the twin influences of prior experience and other people?</p>
<p>From this perspective, <em>all</em> of our behaviours and our desires are profoundly influenced by outside forces. But does this mean they aren’t also our own?</p>
<p>The answer to this dilemma, I think, is not to free yourself from outside influences. This is impossible. Instead, you should see yourself and your ideas as the intersection of all the forces that come to play on you.</p>
<p>Some of these are shared – like our culture – and some are unique to you – your unique experience, your unique history and biology. Being a free thinker, from this perspective, means working out exactly what makes sense to you, from where you are now.</p>
<p>You can’t – and shouldn’t – ignore outside influences, but the good news is that these influences are not some kind of overwhelming force. <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24232240-200-its-not-an-illusion-you-have-free-will-its-just-not-what-you-think/">All the evidence</a> is compatible with the view that each of us, choice by choice, belief by belief, can make reasonable decisions for ourselves, not unshackled from the influences of others and the past, but free to chart our own unique paths forward into the future.</p>
<p>After all, the captain of a ship doesn’t sail while ignoring the wind – sometimes they go with it, sometimes against it, but they always account for it. Similarly, we think and make our choices in the context of all our circumstances, not by ignoring them.</p>
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/happiness-is-feeling-content-more-important-than-purpose-and-goals-131503?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=LifesBigQuestionsUK">Happiness: is contentment more important than purpose and goals?</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/could-we-live-in-a-world-without-rules-128664?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=LifesBigQuestionsUK">Could we live in a world without rules?</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/feelings-whats-the-point-of-rational-thought-if-emotions-always-take-over-128592?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=LifesBigQuestionsUK">Feelings: What’s the point of rational thought if emotions always take over?</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/death-can-our-final-moment-be-euphoric-129648?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=LifesBigQuestionsUK">Death: can our final moment be euphoric?</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/are-humans-still-part-of-nature-or-is-it-now-just-our-dominion-128790?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=LifesBigQuestionsUK">Nature: have humans now evolved beyond the natural world, and do we still need it?</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/love-is-it-just-a-fleeting-high-fuelled-by-brain-chemicals-129201?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=LifesBigQuestionsUK">Love: is it just a fleeting high fuelled by brain chemicals?</a></em></p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129033/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Stafford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The captain of a ship, or a soul, doesn’t sail while ignoring the wind – sometimes they go with it, sometimes against it, but they always account for it.Tom Stafford, Lecturer in Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/971932018-07-02T10:21:56Z2018-07-02T10:21:56ZThe psychology of believing in free will<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221364/original/file-20180601-142069-1om0oxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can you choose not to?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/kuala-lumpur-malaysiaseptember-30-2011-base-322225706?src=iBnnVGUPEgZnZo0qfkakmQ-1-0">Muslianshah Masrie/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From coffee table books and social media to popular science lectures, it seems it has has become <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g">increasing fashionable</a> for neuroscientists, philosophers and other commentators to tell anyone that will listen that free will is a myth. </p>
<p>But why is this debate relevant to anyone but a philosophy student keen to impress a potential date? Actually, a growing body of evidence from psychology suggests belief in free will matters enormously for our behaviour. It is also becoming clear that how we talk about free will affect whether we believe in it.</p>
<p>In the lab, using deterministic arguments to undermine people’s belief in free will has led to a number of negative outcomes including <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02045.x">increased cheating</a> and aggression. It has also been linked to a <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167208327217">reduction in helping behaviours</a> and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167214549322">lowered feelings of gratitude</a>. </p>
<p>A recent study showed that it is possible to diminish people’s belief in free will by simply <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0173193">making them read a science article</a> suggesting that everything is predetermined. This made the participants’ less willing to donate to charitable causes (compared to a control group). This was only observed in non-religious participants, however. </p>
<p>Scientists argue that these outcomes may be the result of a diminished sense of agency and control that comes with believing that we are free to make choices. Similarly, we may also feel less moral responsibility for the outcomes of our actions. </p>
<p>It may therefore be unsurprising that some studies have shown that people who believe in free will are more likely to have positive life outcomes – such as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09515089.2014.996285">happiness</a>, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915300659">academic success</a> and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550609351600">better work performance</a>
. However, the relationship between free will belief and life outcomes may be complex so this <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00623/full">association is still debated</a>.</p>
<h2>Disturbing dualism</h2>
<p>Language and definitions seem linked to whether we believe in free will. Those who refute the existence of free will typically refer to a <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/">philosophical definition</a> of free will as an ability of our consciousness (or soul) to make any decision it chooses – regardless of brain processes or preceding causal events. To undermine it, they often couple it with the “determinism” of classical physics. Newton’s laws of physics simply don’t allow for free will to exist – once a physical system is set in motion, it follows a completely predictable path. </p>
<p>According to fundamental physics, everything that happens in the universe is encoded in its initial conditions. From the Big Bang onward, mechanical cause-and-effect interactions of atoms formed stars, planets, life and eventually your DNA and your brain. It was inevitable. Your physical brain was therefore always destined to process information exactly as does, so every decision that you are ever going to make is predetermined. You (your consciousness) are a mere bystander – your brain is in charge of you. Therefore you have no free will. This argument is known as <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/cultural-animal/200902/just-exactly-what-is-determinism-0">determinism</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221373/original/file-20180601-142072-11am310.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221373/original/file-20180601-142072-11am310.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221373/original/file-20180601-142072-11am310.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221373/original/file-20180601-142072-11am310.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221373/original/file-20180601-142072-11am310.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221373/original/file-20180601-142072-11am310.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221373/original/file-20180601-142072-11am310.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Descartes mind and body: Inputs are passed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But this approach is absurdly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism">dualistic</a>, requiring people to see their consciousness as their true self and their brain as something separate. Despite being an accurate description of the philosophical definition of free will, this flies in the face of what <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13164-009-0010-7">ordinary people</a> – and many scientists – actually believe.</p>
<p>In reality it seems that the functioning of our brain actually affects our consciousness. Most of us can recognise, without existential angst, that drinking alcohol, which impacts our physical brain, subsequently diminishes our capacity to make rational choices in a manner that our consciousness is powerless to simply override. In fact, we tend to be able to accept that our consciousness is the product of our physical brain, which removes dualism. It is not that our brains make decisions for us, rather we make our decisions with our brains. </p>
<p>Most people define free will as simply their capacity to make choices that fulfil their desires – <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13164-009-0010-7">free from constraints</a>.
This lay understanding of free will doesn’t really involve arguments about deterministic causation stretching back to the Big Bang.</p>
<p>But how could we learn about the arguments for and against the existence of free will without feeling threatened and having our moral judgement undermined? One way could be to re-express valid deterministic arguments in language that people actually use. </p>
<p>For example, when the determinist argues that “cause-and-effect interactions since the Big Bang fashioned the universe and your brain in a way that has made your every decision inevitable”, we could replace it with more familiar language. For example, “your family inheritance and life experience made you the person you are by forming your brain and mind”.</p>
<p>In my view, both arguments are equally deterministic – “family inheritance” is another way of saying DNA while “life experiences” is a less challenging way of saying prior causal events. But, importantly, the latter allows for a greater feeling of freedom, potentially reducing any possible negative impacts on behaviour. </p>
<h2>Quantum weirdness</h2>
<p>Some even argue that the notion of scientific determinism is being challenged by the rise of quantum mechanics, which governs the micro world of atoms and particles. According to quantum mechanics, you cannot predict with certainty what route a particle will take to reach a target – even if you know all its initial conditions. All you can do is to calculate a probability, which implies that nature is a lot less predictable than we thought. In fact, it is only when you actually measure a particle’s path that it “picks” a specific trajectory – until then it can take several routes at once.</p>
<p>While quantum effects such as these tend to disappear on the scale of people and everyday objects, it has recently been shown that they may <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/jim_al_khalili_how_quantum_biology_might_explain_life_s_biggest_questions">play a role in some biological processes</a>, ranging from photosynthesis to bird navigation. So far we have no evidence that they play any role in the human brain – but, of course, that’s not to say they don’t. </p>
<p>People using a philosophical definition and classical physics may argue convincingly against the existence of free will. However, they may want to note that modern physics does not necessarily agree that free will is impossible.</p>
<p>Ultimately, whether free will exists or not may depend on your definition. If you wish to deny its existence, you should do so responsibly by first defining the concepts clearly. And be aware that this may affect your life a lot more than you think.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97193/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Gooding receives funding from the ESRC.
University of Essex </span></em></p>Your beliefs about free will can have a powerful effect on how you behave.Peter Gooding, PhD Candidate of Psychology, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/922342018-03-13T15:44:28Z2018-03-13T15:44:28ZHow to build a computer with free will<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209899/original/file-20180312-30994-1y87ram.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/big-brother-electronic-eye-concept-technologies-662058799?src=76blPi7Vk0aWklO1qkJAUw-1-5">Valery Brozhinsky/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Do you have free will? Can you make your own decisions? Or are you more like an automaton, just moving as required by your constituent parts? Probably, like most people, you feel you have something called free will. Your decisions are not predetermined; you could do otherwise.</p>
<p>Yet scientists can tell you that you are made up of atoms and molecules and that they are governed by the laws of physics. Fundamentally, then – in terms of atoms and molecules – we can predict the future for any given starting point. This seems to leave no room for free will, alternative actions or decisions.</p>
<p>Confused? You have every right to be. This has been one of the long outstanding <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/freedom-and-neurobiology/9780231137539">unresolved problems</a> in philosophy. There has been no convincing resolution, though speculation has included <a href="http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/cogito/">a key role for quantum theory</a>, which describes the uncertainty of nature at the smallest scales. It is this that has fascinated me. My research interests include the foundations of quantum theory. So could free will be thought of as a macroscopic quantum phenomenon? I set out to explore the question.</p>
<h2>Quantum free will</h2>
<p>There is enough philosophy literature on the subject to fill a small library. As a trained scientist I approached the problem by asking: what is the evidence? Sadly, in some ways, <a href="http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/98581/">my research</a> showed no link between free will and fundamental physics. Decades of philosophical debate as to whether free will could be a quantum phenomenon has been chasing an unfounded myth.</p>
<p>Imagine you are on stage, facing two envelopes. You are told that one has £100 inside and the other is empty. You have a free choice to pick one – yet every time the magician wins, and you pick the empty one. This implies that our sense of free will is not quite as reliable as we think it is – or at least that it’s subject to manipulation, if it is there.</p>
<p>This is just one of a wide variety of examples that question our awareness of our own decision making processes. Evidence from <a href="https://books.google.co.ma/books/about/How_to_Think_Straight_about_Psychology.html?id=3dlXAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y">psychology</a>, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/4-reasons-you-should-never-listen-to-your-gut-a6713931.html">sociology</a> and even <a href="http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/libet_experiments.html">neuroscience</a> all give the same message that we are unaware of how we make decisions. And our own introspection is unreliable as evidence of how our mental processes function.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210060/original/file-20180313-30989-h0kj45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210060/original/file-20180313-30989-h0kj45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210060/original/file-20180313-30989-h0kj45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210060/original/file-20180313-30989-h0kj45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210060/original/file-20180313-30989-h0kj45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210060/original/file-20180313-30989-h0kj45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210060/original/file-20180313-30989-h0kj45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Magicians often trick us by manipulating our perception of free will.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/magic-gambling-casino-people-show-concept-334451111?src=giraorxVTTm0Wo9edlv7sw-1-99">Syda Productions/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So, what is the evidence for the abstract concept of free will? None. How could we test for it? We can’t. How could we recognise it? We can’t. The supposed connection between our perception of free will and the uncertainty inherent to quantum theory is, therefore, unsupported by the evidence.</p>
<p>But we do have an experience of free will, and this experience is a fact. So having debunked the supposed link with fundamental physics, I wanted to go further and explore why we have a perception of being able to do otherwise. That perception is nothing to do with knowing the exact position of every molecule in our bodies, but everything to do with how we question and challenge our decision making in a way that really does change our behaviour. </p>
<h2>Artificial free will</h2>
<p>For me as a scientist, this meant building a model of free will and testing it. But how would you do this? Could I mimic it with a computer program? If I were successful how would my computer or robot be tested?</p>
<p>The topic is fuelled with prejudice. You would probably assume without evidence that my brother has free will, but my computer does not. So I will offer an emotionally neutral challenge: if an alien lands on Earth, how would you decide if it was an alien being with free will like us, or a sophisticated automaton?</p>
<p>Strangely, the philosophical literature does not seem to consider tests for free will. But as a scientist, it was essential to have a test for my model. So here is my answer: if you are right handed, you will write your name holding a pen in your right hand. You will do so predictably almost 100% of the time. But you have free will, you could do otherwise. You can prove it by responding to a challenge or even challenging yourself. Given a challenge you may well write with your left hand. That is a highly discerning test of free will. And you can probably think of others, not just finely balanced 50:50 choices, but really rare events that show your independence and distinguish you from an automaton. </p>
<p>Based on this, I would test my alien with a challenge to do something unusual and useless, perhaps slightly harmful even, like putting its hand near a flame. I would take that as evidence of free will. After all, no robot would be programmed to do that.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210059/original/file-20180313-30979-uyq079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210059/original/file-20180313-30979-uyq079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210059/original/file-20180313-30979-uyq079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210059/original/file-20180313-30979-uyq079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210059/original/file-20180313-30979-uyq079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210059/original/file-20180313-30979-uyq079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210059/original/file-20180313-30979-uyq079.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What robot would be programmed to put its hand in a flame?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hand-on-fire-527432188?src=6foVZn741pI2vMFjnuD9Nw-1-21">Mr.Exen/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A computer with free will?</h2>
<p>And so I tried to model that behaviour in the simplest most direct way, starting with a generic goal seeking computer program that responds to inputs from the environment. These programs are commonly used across disciplines from sociology, economics and AI. The goal seeking program is so general that it applies to simple models of human behaviour, but also to hardware like the battery saving program in your mobile phone. </p>
<p>For free will, we add one more goal: to assert independence. The computer program is then designed to satisfy this goal or desire by responding to challenges to do otherwise. It’s as simple as that. Test it out yourself, the challenges can be external or you can generate your own. After all, isn’t that how you conclude that you have free will?</p>
<p>In principle the program can be implemented in today’s computers. It would have to be sophisticated enough to recognise a challenge and even more so to generate its own challenges. But this is well within reach of current technology. That said, I’m not sure that I want my own personal computer exercising free will though …</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92234/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Hadley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If an alien landed on Earth, how would you decide if it had free will like us, or was a sophisticated automaton?Mark Hadley, Visiting Academic in Physics, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/906692018-01-31T13:36:36Z2018-01-31T13:36:36ZGod is an algorithm: why we’re closer to a Black Mirror-style reality than we think<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204230/original/file-20180131-131721-1baq0cc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black Mirror</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>This article contains spoilers about Black Mirror, season four</em></p>
<p>Do we have free will, or are we controlled by a higher power? The capacity to act and determine one’s own actions in an increasingly technologised world is the most prominent theme in the latest season of <a href="https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/what-is-netflix/">Netflix’s</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/feb/06/black-mirror-charlie-brooker-box-set-review">Black Mirror</a>. And the question writer <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0111765/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm">Charlie Brooker</a> addresses in his bleak sketches is as old as human consciousness itself.</p>
<p>Before the <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/publications/online_research_catalogues/paper_money/paper_money_of_england__wales/the_industrial_revolution.aspx">Industrial Revolution</a> and the first sci-fi narrative (Mary Shelley’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/13/frankenstein-at-200-why-hasnt-mary-shelley-been-given-the-respect-she-deserves-">Frankenstein</a>, 200 years old this year) warning us of the dangers of replacing an inscrutable ancient god with a scientific one, people tried to determine two opposing but closely related things: how much agency they had, and whether they could rely on miraculous help from above in a time of difficulty. For free will is both a burden and a blessing. While we are imperfect, our vision limited by our perception, surely God is omniscient, omnipotent and wise? When we’re in trouble, he can save us and redeem our mistakes. </p>
<p>Isn’t technology a better god than the previous god? In the past, people asked deities about weather patterns, love, luck, and everything else. Their predictions worked, at best, 50% per cent of the time. Now we have weather forecasts delivered to our mobiles, predictive dating apps and GPS trackers. Don’t we all want to live in a world in which our fallible agency is replaced by technological perfection?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U2YPxSDIoPE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">YouTube.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Brooker’s answer to this question is a resounding “no”. Technology is certainly a more efficient god since it has turned magic into reality, but the human issue of free will is still a big part of our relationship with it. Seeing how clever, precise, omniscient and infallible this new god is, we have decided to entrust it with a range of mundane tasks we previously used to perform ourselves: counting, translating, finding our way, even expressing emotions and, of course, shopping.</p>
<h2>A mirror to reality?</h2>
<p>This is a tendency Brooker particularly despises. In his view, human laziness is what is going to destroy civilisation. Brooker predicts a world in which the scope of action for free will – our error-prone but nevertheless important decision-making capacity – becomes so narrow that we forget how it feels to be human, how to feel pain and to make mistakes. Thanks to smart phones, tablets, <a href="https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/what-is-alexa-what-is-the-amazon-echo-and-should-you-get-one/">Alexa</a> and Google, we have cognitively unloaded anything requiring an effort or possessing a margin for error to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zq376fr">artificial intelligence</a> (AI). All these functions will now be taken care of by the god of technology, by the All-Seeing Algorithm.</p>
<p>Even the more optimistic episodes of the latest (fourth) season – Hang the DJ and Black Museum – show that the human desire for an all-controlling, all-knowing supreme being does, indeed, result in exactly this kind of supreme being, but not in a good way.</p>
<p>In Hang the DJ, we are shown a world in which finding a mate no longer involves going through a series of disappointments and bouts of happiness. An app finds a person’s perfect match while their “copies”, trapped within what is called “the system”, make mistakes and suffer broken hearts instead of their “originals” who are waiting for the result in real life.</p>
<p>Although the episode’s finale is unexpectedly uplifting and positive, its overall message is not: as people, we have gone too far in shielding ourselves from any errors in the decision-making process. We wanted more perfection and less agency, and that’s exactly what we got.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204247/original/file-20180131-131727-x5my5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204247/original/file-20180131-131727-x5my5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204247/original/file-20180131-131727-x5my5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204247/original/file-20180131-131727-x5my5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204247/original/file-20180131-131727-x5my5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204247/original/file-20180131-131727-x5my5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204247/original/file-20180131-131727-x5my5h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In an episode from the new season of Black Mirror, a woman uses a surveillance implant to monitor her daughter’s safety with disastrous consequences as the girl gets older.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This perfection, however, comes at a price. In Arkangel, a mother implants into her baby daughter a tracking device which monitors her well-being and detects her location. The device also allows the mother to see the world through her daughter’s eyes and to blur out any disturbing information. However, the daughter fights for her right to make mistakes and to handle the unpleasantness of the world. Keen to break up the unhealthy attachment aided by technology, the girl ends up taking drugs and having sex. Instead of the flawless child, the mother is faced with a rebellious teenager who ends up beating up and leaving her over-protective parent.</p>
<h2>When good technology goes bad</h2>
<p>Instead of being helpful and protective, technology becomes terrifying in Metalhead – a stark black-and-white vignette reminiscent of The Terminator – in which a sole female survivor is pursued by a robotic dog-like creature after a failed warehouse raid. The dog is autonomous, relentless and problem-solving. It does not make mistakes. Although the protagonist manages to outsmart the canine terminator on a number of occasions, in the end the technology is so powerful and ubiquitous that killing herself is her only escape.</p>
<p>Those hoping to survive the onslaught of technological precision must look for rare flaws in it. This is what happens in USS Callister – probably the best episode in the series. Copies of real people trapped inside a private version of a space video game attempt to escape from it through a wormhole which temporarily appears, only to find themselves in the commercial version of the same game. Although they have more agency, they are still not entirely free.</p>
<p>And again, in Crocodile, the technology does not fail, but the human being does, try as she might. The recently invented memory-retrieving device prevents Mia from concealing the murders she has committed. Interestingly enough, Brooker makes us sympathise with the murderer as we witness her struggle to evade the relentless power of technology. Her agency is thwarted by the device, leaving her with no chance of escape. </p>
<p>In all episodes, Brooker shows the inevitable end of human agency as daily routines are taken over by artificial intelligence. Technology leaves only a small margin for human error. This is an excellent god. It has realised so many of our dreams, but is it the god we wanted?</p>
<p>Perhaps we should trust ourselves more and rely less on unfailing and dependable technology. Surrendering to it means losing that vital element that makes us human: the ability to make mistakes and to grow by learning from them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90669/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helena Bassil-Morozow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>By surrendering to technology are humans sleepwalking into a future where free will is less and less of an option?Helena Bassil-Morozow, Lecturer in Media and Journalism, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/763372017-04-25T18:15:58Z2017-04-25T18:15:58ZDo you really choose what you eat – or do your gut microbes decide for you?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165819/original/image-20170419-6395-1pj6awi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.eurekalert.org/multimedia_prod/emb/media/137775.png">Illustration by Gil Costa, with elements from Servier Medical Art</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most of us believe in free will, particularly when it comes to our eating habits. That’s why most people don’t regard obesity as a disease but rather a moral weakness or lack of willpower. But the free will argument has been taking a bit of a beating lately.</p>
<p>For example, we showed in studies <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17903115">using twins</a> and others <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21831991">using families</a> that the reason some people are overweight and others aren’t could partly be down to food preferences. Our food likes and dislikes are not just determined by the horrors of school food (beetroot for me) or family meals. Whether we prefer salads to fries or enjoy garlic or chillies, surprisingly, is more <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26412323">down to our genes than our upbringing</a>. This makes the concept of pure free will, when it comes to eating healthily, increasingly hard to accept. </p>
<p>While our own genes play a role in picking what foods to eat and then metabolising them in a unique way, we are now discovering that <a href="https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9781780229003">other processes or microbes could also be involved</a>.</p>
<h2>Bacteria-controlled fruit flies</h2>
<p>A study from Lisbon and Monash, <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2000862">published in PLOS Biology</a>, further expanded our insight into nutritional choice and free will by manipulating the microbes inside fruit flies to see how it affected their eating habits. The experiment involved studying the trillions of gut microbes that all animals contain (the “gut microbiome”). </p>
<p>We recently realised that these microbes are crucial for our digestion of foods, such as complex carbohydrates, and are key to regulating a normal immune system and making many essential hormones and vitamins that the body cannot produce. </p>
<p>Microbes also produce brain chemicals, such as serotonin, and there are an increasing range of studies in humans showing associations between a dysfunction of gut microbes and brain and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-gut-bacteria-ensure-a-healthy-brain-and-could-play-a-role-in-treating-depression-33041">mood-related disorders</a> like depression, anxiety and autism. Some animal studies have shown these traits can be “transmitted” to sterile animals via microbial transplants, suggesting the microbes themselves produce chemicals that may be causal.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165887/original/file-20170419-2418-ej277e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165887/original/file-20170419-2418-ej277e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165887/original/file-20170419-2418-ej277e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165887/original/file-20170419-2418-ej277e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165887/original/file-20170419-2418-ej277e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165887/original/file-20170419-2418-ej277e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165887/original/file-20170419-2418-ej277e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fruit fly (drosophila melanogaster) – not so in control.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/473159152?src=Rwf2R9tCnkpiXmJn06hTGA-1-0&size=medium_jpg">Sebastian Janicki/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What also has been suspected is that individual microbes could influence the behaviour of their host to improve their own chances of evolutionary survival. There are several examples in nature of this, including the many species of fungus that can <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-enemy-of-killer-fungus-that-turns-ants-into-zombies-21398">infect the brains of ants</a>. These fungi make the ants climb certain trees helping the microbe to survive at the cost of the poor zombie ants whose heads explode, spreading the fungal spores in prime leafy locations.</p>
<p>As you can guess, it is very hard to test the “selfish microbe” theory in humans, so the Portuguese researchers used fruit flies – a much simpler animal which is used to establish the rules of nature, especially for many genetic studies. As with all animals, fruit flies contain microbes in their primitive intestines which coexist and help them digest food. During stressful periods, and mating (which may be stressful or fun, I guess) fruit flies vary in whether they prefer protein or carbohydrates.</p>
<p>By manipulating the microbes inside the fruit flies, using special flies brought up in germ-free conditions, the researchers found they could alter the flies’ choices of food, especially for protein intake. This directly involved two microbes (in this case, <em>acetobacter</em> and the yogurt <em>bacteria lactobacillus</em>) acting together. </p>
<p>When one type of essential amino acid protein was depleted in the flies’ diet, these microbes sent signals to the fly to eat more yeast (the main source of protein) and at the same time signals to stop them reproducing for a while. This means the two microbes, which benefit from eating some of the amino acids from yeast protein, can proliferate at the expense of other microbes and win their evolutionary arms race.</p>
<p>How this translates into humans is still speculative, but we all have thousands of microbial species and sub-strains all highly specialised and all competing for food and their byproducts inside us. Like us, they are driven to want to pass on their genes to their descendants. </p>
<p>We know that restricted diets can dramatically alter the balance of our microbes. For example, ten days of only eating high fat and sugary junk food severely reduced the number of species surviving in my son after his <a href="https://theconversation.com/your-gut-bacteria-dont-like-junk-food-even-if-you-do-41564">McDonald’s ten-day eating experiment</a> (and he still hasn’t fully recovered). </p>
<h2>Food zombies</h2>
<p>If one species of gut microbe only reproduces well when it has access to a particular type of fat and otherwise would die out, for example, it could mutate one of its genes to produce a chemical to make its host eat more of that fat. And as some microbes reproduce every 30 minutes, the required mutation could happen quickly. </p>
<p>Indeed, many of us have experienced changes to our taste and appetite when we take antibiotics. These could be due to changes in our microbes <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3448545/Think-ve-got-good-nose-health-remedies-antibiotics-actually-RUIN-sense-smell.html">rather than the direct effect of the drug</a>. </p>
<p>Although we have no direct evidence for this microbial signalling in humans, and we don’t yet know the chemicals involved, it could be a factor in explaining why habits are so hard to break. For example, why it’s so difficult for hardened meat eaters to become vegetarians. Perhaps it’s because their microbes won’t allow it.</p>
<p>The good news is that, unlike our genes, we can modify our gut microbes. By having a varied <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-frequent-dieting-makes-you-put-on-weight-and-what-to-do-about-it-69329">high fibre and high polyphenol diet</a>, we can maintain a diverse and healthy gut microbe community and prevent one group taking over the community and running it like a dictatorship. </p>
<p>And as we learn more about ourselves, we also have yet another excuse for eating that extra piece of cake: “It’s not just my genes, my upbringing or slick marketing – my microbes made me do it.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76337/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Spector receives funding from the MRC, Wellcome Trust and EU. He is co-founder of the not for profit British Gut Project, and co-founder of MapmyGut Ltd (a microbiome testing company). He is also author of The Diet Myth- the real science behind what we eat- by W&N 2015 </span></em></p>A new study with fruit flies suggests that we may have less free will when it comes to choosing what we eat than we like to think.Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/625842016-09-02T01:31:56Z2016-09-02T01:31:56ZBelieving in free will makes you feel more like your true self<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136002/original/image-20160830-28235-1xkam7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Believing in free will makes us feel more like ourselves.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-286490927/stock-photo-young-confident-businessman-portrait-walking-in-brooklyn-dumbo-park-with-manhattan-bridge-in-the-background-new-york-city.html?src=QmnL-hMoR2blqq8pu8GQ8A-1-7">Man walking via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Do we have free will? This is a question that scholars have debated for centuries and will probably continue to debate for centuries to come. </p>
<p>This isn’t a question I can answer, but what I am interested in is “what happens if we do (or do not) believe in free will?” In other words, does believing in free will matter in your daily life?</p>
<p>My colleagues and I at the <a href="http://existentialpsych.tamu.edu/">Existential Psychology Lab</a> at Texas A&M University study the psychological outcomes of belief in free will. While contemplating my next research project, I realized at some point in our lives, we all want to understand who we are – it’s human nature. So, we decided to explore how believing in free will influences our sense of self and identity. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136001/original/image-20160830-28260-1nizb82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136001/original/image-20160830-28260-1nizb82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136001/original/image-20160830-28260-1nizb82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136001/original/image-20160830-28260-1nizb82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136001/original/image-20160830-28260-1nizb82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136001/original/image-20160830-28260-1nizb82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136001/original/image-20160830-28260-1nizb82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One way or another?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-298294610/stock-photo-top-view-of-businessman-legs-choosing-his-way.html?src=ikL-7HT18gjeRkJEHlcU2g-1-78">Feet image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span>
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<h2>What is free will?</h2>
<p>Free will is generally understood as the ability to freely choose our own actions and determine our own outcomes. For example, when you wake up in the morning, do you hit snooze? Do you put on your workout gear and go for a run? Do you grab a hot cup of coffee? While those are simple examples, if you believe in free will, you believe there are a limitless number of actions you can engage in when you wake up in the morning, and they are all within your control.</p>
<p>Believing in free will helps people exert control over their actions. This is particularly important in helping people make better decisions and behave more virtuously. </p>
<p>For instance, research has found that promoting the idea that a person doesn’t have free will makes <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02045.x">people become more dishonest</a>, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167208327217">behave aggressively</a> and even <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103112001825">conform to others’ thoughts and opinions</a>. And how can we hold people morally responsible for their actions if we don’t believe they have the free will to act any differently? Belief in free will allows us to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0035880">punish</a> people for their immoral behaviors. </p>
<p>So, not only is there a value to believing in free will, but those beliefs have profound effects on our thoughts and behaviors. It stands to reason that believing in free will influences how we perceive ourselves.</p>
<p>You might be thinking, “Of course believing in free will influences how I feel about myself.” Even though this seems obvious, surprisingly little research has examined this question. So, I conducted <a href="http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/06/10/1948550616653810.abstract">two studies</a> to suss out more about how believing in free will makes us feel.</p>
<h2>What believing in free will makes us feel about ourselves</h2>
<p>In the first study, I recruited 304 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk and randomly assigned them to write about either personal experiences reflecting a high belief in free will, like changing career paths or resisting drugs or alcohol, or experiences reflecting a low belief in free will, such as growing up in poverty or working under an authoritative boss. Then, they were all asked to evaluate their sense of self.</p>
<p>Participants who wrote about experiences reflecting low belief in free will reported feeling less “in touch” with their true selves. In other words, they felt like they did not know themselves as well as the participants who wrote about experiences reflecting high belief in free will. </p>
<p>Then, I conducted a follow-up study testing one’s sense of authenticity, the feeling that one is behaving according to their own beliefs, desires and values. </p>
<p>I recruited another group of participants from Amazon Mechnical Turk, and like the first experiment, randomly assigned them to write about personal experiences demonstrating high belief in free will or low belief in free will. Then, they all completed a decision-making task where they had to make a series of choices about whether to donate money to charity or to keep the money for themselves.</p>
<p>Afterwards, participants were asked how authentic they felt while making their decisions. Participants in the low free will group reported feeling less authentic than participants in the high free will group.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136003/original/image-20160830-28235-dh13yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136003/original/image-20160830-28235-dh13yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136003/original/image-20160830-28235-dh13yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136003/original/image-20160830-28235-dh13yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136003/original/image-20160830-28235-dh13yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136003/original/image-20160830-28235-dh13yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136003/original/image-20160830-28235-dh13yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Up and at it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-385057642/stock-photo-young-fitness-woman-runner-athlete-running-at-road.html?src=SKGeVTRQhu2ZVFi62fKcVw-1-1">Female runner image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span>
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<h2>So, what does this all mean?</h2>
<p>Ultimately, when people feel they have little control over their actions and outcomes in life, they feel more distant from their true, authentic selves. They are less in touch with who they are and do not believe their actions reflect their core beliefs and values. </p>
<p>We believe this is because belief in free will is linked to feelings of agency, the sense that we are the authors of our actions and are actively engaged with the world. As you can imagine, this sense of agency is an important part of a person’s identity.</p>
<p>The importance of feeling like you are in charge of your life applies to significant actions like moving or getting a new job or pondering the big questions in life. But it also applies to the minor decisions we make throughout the day.</p>
<p>Here’s one simple, though relatable, decision I am faced with every morning. When I wake up in the morning and decide to put on my workout gear and go for a run instead of hitting snooze, I might feel like I am the primary decision-maker for this morning routine. Additionally, I am most likely acting on the part of me that values physical health. </p>
<p>But what if I wake up, and I feel like I can’t exercise because I have to go to work or some other external factor is making it difficult to go? I might feel as if someone or something else is controlling my behavior, and perhaps, less like my true self. </p>
<p>So, do you have free will? Do any of us? Remember, the question isn’t whether it exists or not, but whether you believe it does.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Seto does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If you believe that you are in charge of your life and your actions, does that mean you also feel more like yourself?Elizabeth Seto, Ph.D. Candidate in Social and Personality Psychology, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/502922015-11-13T10:52:36Z2015-11-13T10:52:36ZHow existentialism can shield us from the free market’s dark side<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/101759/original/image-20151112-9400-1gh4kp6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sartre could probably resist, unless he was hungry.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cinnabons via www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The smell of cinnamon wafts through the air. My guard is down; resistance is futile. Like a zombie, I roll my luggage across the airport food court and stand in line to pay too much for what I don’t even want, a diet-killing Cinnabon.</p>
<p>I have been phished, at least that’s how two Nobel laureates would describe my experience in their new book <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10534.html">Phishing for Phools</a> and in their article <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-dark-side-of-free-markets-48862">The Dark Side of Free Markets</a>. That is, a company has manipulated my weak will to get me to buy something sweet.</p>
<p>George A Akerlof and Robert J Shiller are concerned about the unrealistic depiction of the rational consumer found in economics textbooks and classrooms. This may indeed be a problem for the study and practice of economics. But it is not a problem for the average person, for whom the discovery that there is manipulation and deception in the marketplace is on par with Captain Renault being “shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on” in Casablanca. </p>
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<p>What is to be done? Akerlof and Shiller paternalistically <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-dark-side-of-free-markets-48862">praise</a> “a whole raft of individual heroes, social agencies and government regulation [that] puts limits on this downside of markets to phish us for phools.” </p>
<p>In my new book <a href="http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1119121280.html">The Free Market Existentialist: Capitalism without Consumerism</a>, I put responsibility back on the individual, who is smarter and more capable than Akerlof and Shiller recognize. As an average individual, I realize that I am not fully rational and that my will is weak. Beyond that, I know that the marketplace is lousy with hucksters and scam artists looking to take advantage of my irrationality and weakness. </p>
<p>But I can’t expect – or rely on – the government to protect me from myself and my nature. It’s up to each of us to recognize the attempted manipulation and make smart choices. </p>
<p>While free markets do have a dark side, it’s more helpful to consider this through the eyes of individual consumers, not the government and its role as regulator. We are better equipped to do something about it, and existentialism can be our guide and shield.</p>
<h2>Sartre, socialism and the Cinnabon</h2>
<p>Manipulation and deception in selling baked goods can’t make me do anything that I don’t want to do. All it can do is create the situation in which I regrettably, but freely, change priorities, ignoring the long-term goal of losing weight in favor of satisfying the short-term goal of experiencing the sugar high of a Cinnabon. </p>
<p>As the existentialist <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/sartre-ex/">Jean-Paul Sartre</a> says, “there is freedom only in a situation” and “there is no situation in which [a person] would be more free than in others.” </p>
<p>Existentialism is a philosophy that reacts to an apparently absurd or meaningless world by urging the individual to overcome alienation, oppression and despair through freedom and self-creation in order to become a genuine person. Curiously, Sartre and most of the French existentialists were socialists. </p>
<p>In my book, I argue that there are sociological reasons for this – just as there are sociological reasons why they smoked stinky cigarettes and drank red wine – but there are no logically necessary reasons. (One need not be a socialist to be an existentialist.)</p>
<h2>Freedom and responsibility</h2>
<p>Indeed, to be an existentialist is first and foremost to recognize one’s own freedom and responsibility. </p>
<p>Existentialism calls for us to define ourselves as individuals and to resist being defined by external forces. Thus, the self-defining existentialist may find consumer culture crass without necessarily rejecting the free market that makes it possible.</p>
<p>Fear of free markets is just fear that people can’t be trusted to think and act for themselves. Dealing with consumer culture may be difficult, but it is just the kind of challenge the free market existentialist relishes for the opportunity to exercise responsibility and to grow through challenge. Indeed, capitalism provides a large array of choices and opportunities conducive to self-definition.</p>
<p>Because consumer culture may be in tension with one’s ideals and long-term goals, it is up to the individual to recognize this and take control of her own desires and spending. Don’t buy a Hershey bar as you pass through the candy gauntlet at the supermarket checkout. Tear up that credit card application you received in the mail. If you can’t afford something, don’t buy it. Resist consumerism. </p>
<h2>What drives consumer culture</h2>
<p>Consumerism is ugly. It is the drive and desire for the newest and latest goods and services for the sake of deriving self-worth and signaling one’s worth to others. Shopping and showing off can be intoxicating, but each of us needs to monitor our own consumption and be mindful of whether we are consuming or being consumed. </p>
<p>One way to counteract consumerism is by practicing voluntary simplicity. Rather than indulge in consumption for the sake of keeping up with the Joneses, we can simplify our preferences and possessions. </p>
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<p>I offer myself as a highly imperfect example. I have the cheapest possible cellphone and I keep it in the glove compartment of my car for use only in case of emergency. And I drive a simple, plain car, nothing fancy. My clothes are basic, not chosen to impress. </p>
<p>These are my authentic choices. It’s hard for me to imagine, but someone else might authentically choose to wear a Brooks Brothers suit while talking on an iPhone and driving a BMW. In any event, voluntary simplicity is not mandatory. </p>
<h2>Free market mantra: buyer beware</h2>
<p>The fact that ordinary deception occurs in the marketplace is unfortunate, but in a free society there is nothing to be done except to become aware of it as a general occurrence and to be on the look out for it in specific cases. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. </p>
<p>Because of the dissemination of personal information, big companies know more about me than I know about them. Retail stores precision target me with individualized ads, and Facebook eerily entices me to buy the book I was just looking at on Amazon. </p>
<p>For the moment this is unnerving, but with the passage of time, in my view, it will seem as routine as the salesman’s pitch to get the rust-proofing on the new car. Government intervention would be unnecessary and intrusive. Ordinary deception seems to be becoming more difficult to pull off thanks to the proliferation of information available for free on the internet. Scams and manipulation are <a href="http://www.ripoffreport.com/">regularly reported and categorized</a>. </p>
<p>We need the government to protect us from fraud, because fraud is tantamount to theft, but we do not need the government to regulate the free market. Of course there is a fine line between deception and fraud, but we should have good reason for classifying an act as fraud before allowing government involvement. </p>
<p>In a free society, regulation can come without force in the form of private citizens like Akerlof and Shiller anticipating and documenting the phishing that occurs in the marketplace. </p>
<p>Information, self-knowledge and self-definition will not always save us from being phooled, but they will preserve dignity, freedom and choice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50292/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Irwin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The best guard against a free market’s downsides and consumer culture is for individual consumers to take responsibility for their choices.William Irwin, Professor of Philosophy, King's CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/400382015-04-12T15:16:53Z2015-04-12T15:16:53ZDo our genes tell us how to vote? Study of twins says they might<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77678/original/image-20150411-2078-1mgnixd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C540%2C2490%2C1751&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The citizens came in two by two.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/figgenhoffer/3662160468/in/photolist-6zBwHJ-hVjEPp-hVKJ4R-dAr1Fn-hVipJt-nJRA-hVKHK4-hVjFqp-hVJL1R-hVKDKa-AtCF2-6Bqwd8-6fQFSk-nJRD-gHK61e-nJRF-dm6VH8-nJRC-53WZgV-4ThSDD-GddEf-hVjnvB-fPxNm2-hVK653-9M2DZZ-9NBBMn-9NGKrb-9NAsCc-2v">D.C.Atty</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a society we believe that our political allegiance depends on which party best marries up with our needs and values – and that these are shaped by our life experiences. But research with twins suggests picking who to vote for in an election might have more to do with your genes than the policies of the parties.</p>
<p>At the Department of Twin Research, which hosts <a href="https://twinsuk.ac.uk">TwinsUK</a>, the biggest adult twin registry in the UK, we recently performed a poll of voting preferences. The twins were all born in the UK and were broadly representative of the UK population. The aim was to explore how much nature and nurture influence our party political allegiances and potential voting preferences so we can draw broader conclusions about people’s voting habits. </p>
<p>Twins provide a unique natural experiment for research. Identical twins share 100% of their genes, while non-identical twins – like non-twin siblings – share about 50%. Both identical and non-identical twins normally share the same environment while growing up. By comparing the differences and similarities between them we can identify how much of a quirk, disease, or trait is due to a genetic predisposition or environmental and cultural factors. Because twin studies adjust for culture and upbringing they are an ideal way to study political allegiances.</p>
<p>We analysed surveys completed by 2,355 twins (comprising responses from 612 full pairs) in March 2015 between the ages of 18 and 80 – most of whom were middle aged. They told us whether they intended to vote, what their political party of choice was and provided their personal rating of the main party leaders.</p>
<p>We found that voting Conservative (or not) is strongly influenced by genetics. When it came to voting Tory, we found that 57% of the variability (differences or similarity) between people’s voting preferences were due to genetic effects. This percentage is called <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-heritability-21334">heritability</a>. That means the identical twins were more likely to vote the same way than the non-identical twins – suggesting an underlying genetic influence was stronger than environmental or random factors. </p>
<p>For UKIP voting preferences, there was also a moderately strong heritability of 51%. This was closely followed by Labour and the Green Party both with 48%.</p>
<p>The exception seemed to be voting for the Liberal Democrats, which was affected entirely by environment, with no genetic influence. Identical twins showed exactly the same level of disparity in preference for the Lib Dems as non-identical twins. Geography also played a possible role – as voting for the SNP in Scotland was also completely environmental. </p>
<p>These latest results from UK data confirm the trends found in <a href="https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/funk-genetic-and-envrionmental-transmission-of-political-orietntation.pdf">previous research</a>, mainly carried out in the US. A 2008 survey of 682 pairs of middle-aged twins from the Minnesota Twin Registry showed that self-reported political ideology and right-wing authoritarianism were consistently more similar in the identical twins than the fraternal twins.</p>
<p>Previous studies have also shown strong genetic influences on right-wing views – be they for or against. </p>
<p>We and others have demonstrated consistent genetic influences on all measurable aspects of our personalities. The consensus is that these political leanings are mainly due to the genetic makeup of our underlying personalities.</p>
<h2>Will you vote?</h2>
<p>Despite this, our survey shows that whether we intend to vote or not does not seem to be influenced by genes and personality. That decision appears to be entirely shaped by environmental factors.</p>
<p>The question of whether a leader would make a good prime minister produced mixed responses. David Cameron had the stronger genetic influence on opinions, with 50% heritability, followed by Nick Clegg at 37%. Views on all the other party leaders were purely environmental.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/on-the-face-of-it-the-psychology-of-electability">Psychology studies</a> have shown our sub-conscious biases for leaders who are tall and with round symmetrical faces so maybe this also plays a role in our choices.</p>
<p>But even if we do see party leaders differently, the findings of this study suggest that our choices at the polling booth may not be as free or rational as we would like to believe. Something to think about when you approach the ballot box.</p>
<p><em>Victoria Vazquez also contributed to this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40038/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Spector is the author of Identically Different and the Diet Myth</span></em></p>Study finds identical twins more likely to vote the same way – unless they back the Lib Dems.Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.