Free will and determinism
Free will has always been a meaningless concept to me.
It's hard to even define free will in the first place. If your definition somehow revolves around the ability to make a spontaneous choices, then you have to consider what a truly spontaneous choice is in the first place.
Choice and the ability to make decisions don't suddenly emerge out of nowhere. Macrocosmic and microcosmic events are bound by hard determinism.
I'd like to share a parable which further demonstrates the deterministic nature of the universe;
Imagine a man named Bob sitting at a table.
Suddenly, a button appears in front of Bob.
Bob is curious so he pushes the button.
It turns out, the button is a time-reseter that rewinds time by 10 seconds.
The universe is now trapped in that 10 second time loop forever.
When time is reset, all matter and energy in existence is changed back to how it was 10 seconds earlier, meaning everything will always happen the exact same way and Bob will always push the button.
Bobs brain, and the brains of every living thing in the universe, are not magic. They're made up of matter and energy just like everything else, and they obey the laws of physic just like everything else.
Bob will never suddenly choose not to push the button no matter how many times it loops, because his brain is always reset to the exact same state, and will always react in the exact same way.
Now imagine extending the time reset from the beginning of Bobs life to the end. Everything in Bobs life will always play out the exact same way. Bob will always "make the same decisions" every time in the exact same way. Is he truly making the decisions at all then? It's more like he's on a track, experience every moment as it happens thinking it's a dynamic experience, but the course has actually be predetermined since the beginning of time.
The entire universe is on that track. Everything is made of matter and energy, from inanimate objects to the human brain, and they all obey the laws of physics the same way.
Interesting theory.
I don't think we've discovered enough about the laws of physics/math, or the world/space to determine what the full scope of science is and how our reality is made. I think our knowledge is so small that trying to claim we know the way the world is a reflection of our own hubris.
Computers can't generate random numbers yet, but computers were created by us and our idea of how everything should be working. Perhaps there are such things as truly random events in our physical world that we don't know how to replicate (yet).
If so:
When Bob pushed the button to go back in time, if a truly random event changed the course of his life, he might not find himself infront of that button, or might find himself making another decision with the button.
The question we'd need to ask ourselves is if the random event occurs within Bob that changes his trajectory, or if the truly random event is something that our world possesses. If within Bob, perhaps we have free will. If external, perhaps we don't, but something external to us does.
Deep thoughts, either way. Thanks for taking the time to write that.
You are making the assumption that there is a past to which you could travel.
There is no evidence that time is linear, or that there is even a past to travel back towards.
I don't know how the brain works so it's magic to me. Dilbert pretty funny tho