Do Humans Have Free Will, Or Are We Programmed By Society? | Joscha Bach | Big Think

Do Humans Have Free Will, Or Are We Programmed By Society?
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For many years, Joscha Bach could not understand why humans flock so strongly towards religion and ideology. Having grown up in communist East Germany and seeing the people around him buy into nationalistic narratives—that were to him obviously untruthful—made no sense. It was only when the wall came down that he came to understand that people everywhere are buying into various false narratives—as of 2015, 34% of Americans still reject evolution completely. The drive to believe whatever instructions come from above you is not a cognitive error, Bach realized then, but an evolutionary feature—as powerful as it is problematic. The ability for large groups of people to follow one set of rules, to cooperate, is how Homo sapiens established agricultural societies, and is ultimately how we outcompeted other now long-gone nomadic hominin groups. We are a programmable species, says Bach, and we need to belong and conform to a larger entity to survive. As such, Bach sees the debate surrounding free will not as a question of determinism or incompatibilism, but of social conditioning. Perhaps the free will relates to decision-making over physics: are you really free to act in a way that is true, or are you bound by a social code of responsibility that runs thousands of years deep in your genetics? Joscha Bach's latest book is Principles of Synthetic Intelligence.
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JOSCHA BACH:

Dr. Joscha Bach (MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics) is an AI researcher who works and writes about cognitive architectures, mental representation, emotion, social modeling, and multi-agent systems. He is founder of the MicroPsi project, in which virtual agents are constructed and used in a computer model to discover and describe the interactions of emotion, motivation, and cognition of situated agents. Bach’s mission to build a model of the mind is the bedrock research in the creation of Strong AI, i.e. cognition on par with that of a human being. He is especially interested in the philosophy of AI and in the augmentation of the human mind.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Joscha Bach: Like consciousness, free will is often misunderstood because we know it by reference, but it’s difficult to know it by content, what you really mean by free will. A lot of people who immediately feel that free will is related to whether the universe is deterministic or probabilistic. And while physics has some ideas about that—which change every now and then—it’s not part of our experience and I don’t think it makes a difference if the universe forces you randomly to do things or deterministically.

The important thing seems to me that in free will you are responsible for your actions, and responsibility is a social interface. For instance, if I am told that if I do X I go to prison, and this changes my decision whether or not to do X, I’m obviously responsible for my decision because it was an appeal to my responsibility in some sense. Likewise if I do a certain thing that causes harm to other people and they don’t want that harm to happen, that influences my decision. This is a discourse of decision-making that I would call a free will decision.

“Will” is the representation that my nervous system at any level of its functioning has raised a motive to an intention. It has committed to a particular kind of goal that gets integrated into the story of myself, this protocol that I experience as myself in this world. And that was what I experienced as will, as a willed decision, and this decision is free in as much as this decision can be influenced by discourse.

So to me, free will is a social notion. It means that this interface of social interaction, of discourse, of thinking about things, about this interface of knowledge, language, conceptual thought, is relevant for that decision. If you have a decision in which it doesn’t play a role, for instance, because you are addicted to something and you cannot stop doing it even if you want to, then this decision I would say is not free.

I grew up in eastern Germany, it was communist eastern Germany and it was a very weird ideological country. A country that believed in stories about how the world works that I, as a nerd, thought obviously not quite true. I had difficultly believing the official stories about how the world works. It was like some weird kind of religion. And then the wall came down and it didn’t surprise...

[WhtetstoneFlunky]

To a lot of people, "free will" simply means that a person makes choices: "he acted on his own free will." I think it might even be a legal term. But to me, "free will", or more simply put: a lack of free will, comes from the infinite and constant factors that decide how each of us thinks, factors that none of us can choose. If we cannot choose these factors, then our thoughts and our decisions are, in a sense, out of our control.

[jamesryantaylor]

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

~Oscar Wilde

Awaken here and now. May all beings be Happy :)

[Symbolicliving]

Society thrives on programming people. Billions are spent on marketing to get people drawn into the illusion of whatever is being sold. Ever see fans (fanatics) at a concert. That's programming by marketing gurus that know exactly how to tap into people's predictable emotional responses.

[empathylessons]

All human behavior is the result of the nature-nurture interaction.
Neither is chosen, both are predetermined.

[Lori_g]

Society is a social construct. We created society. It is a reflection of us. We are society. Therefore we have a symbiotic relationship with it. Change yourself/myself then society will change

[zefypissaki]

Thank you for always putting subtitles and captions to these videos^

[Dittowin]

A problem that can arise is when people in society are programmed to believe things that harms not only themselves, but the people around them too - which leads me to think that cultivating empathy is not only important, but necessary. Further, it's extremely important to be able to question dogma, authority, religion, and theologies since these things effect our mind. My poin is that we should be able to improve the "OS" of society - that is we shouldn't be running Windows XP for the rest of our lives. The major religions can use an update. Cognitive distortions should also not be passed down from one generation to another - cognitive distortions affects our ability to see reality as It is..

[purpledog]

I seems to me that when a certain biological system interacts with a certain environmental stimulus (plus quantum uncertainty) there is only one possible outcome. It does however feel very much that we are making decisions be cause our brains are in fact going through decision making processes.

[davidkatuin]

If I do not have the ability to simply shut off my emotions, then it leaves me with the conclusion that I have them but don't control them. well that's not choice.

[LeonidasGGG]

Free Will comes not from the options but from the ability to choose between them. Don't overthink it.

[danstrett]

simply no we dont have what we would define as free will but the illusion of free will. also its not just society but also biology that helps determine our choices.

[tao_ky]

From a game i used to play allot as a kid called "Soul Reaver" (very good storyline) Kain says "but does one truly have free will, one can only match move, by move. The machinations of fate and thus defy the tirany stars." So, I took that as you create your path/destiny

[d_e_a_n]

We can say you are responsible for your decision. But given your brain state at that exact moment, could you have done otherwise? And if not, where is the freedom? And if it's randomness, like flipping a coin, is that free will? It doesn't seem to be.
I know it certainly feels like we had a free choice. But if we rewound the tape and played it back with everything exactly as it was at that moment, atom for atom, where is the freedom to have done otherwise? If there was some mechanism that provided randomness, where is the freedom in that?

[fsfcvvy]

As many discussions turn out to be a combination or balance both sides, i think the free will discussion is the same. The universe is detemernistic while people have various degrees of free will. I dont Think nobodys life is 100% determined and nobody is 100% free but somewhere in between, and i Think its a fundamental drive to train the degree of ones free will, to transcend

[GoddestPitcher]

(FACTS OVA FEELINGS). Famileye that s the Foundation of Ur Physical Existence eu can think of it where eu acquired ur building blocks it is where ur first famileye experience with relationships took place it is the place were eu were first Programmed this means ur childhood experiences (primarily within ur famileye) is where ur pattern began

[Cryptnan]

This guy explains it in the best way I've heard in a while. A welcome correction from the madness introduced by the free will deniers like Sam Harris and others. We haven't worked out yet whether the Universe is probabilistic but somehow some people seem to have made up their minds that we do not have free will, why because "determinism". First of all determinism only refutes absolute free will and secondly and most importantly we don't even know whether our universe is even deterministic. Quite irresponsible on the free will deniers part if you ask me.

[koraxsan]

This made me feel old, first thing that came to mind was, cool commodore shirt :)

[seneca]

There's a lot, I've learned, of inputs into seriously thinking about free will. One ill mention is, as far as we know, no one chooses if, when, where, to whom, and into what environment they're born.
But regarding this video, he doesn't seem to take into account significant deviations from the norm in mental and physical makeup of people. May not be bit but it takes only one person to perpetuate huge societal change - for good or bad.

[nokoolaid]

It all depends. Someone that is self-actualize, authentic and understands their triggers and open to challenge their assumptions is more likely to experience true free will.

[crimson]

Can someone tell me what the definition of "free will" is?
And give a real life example of human behaviour on how it exists/doesn't exist.