11 April 2006

Dilbert

I have been a reader of the Dilbert blog (http://www.thedilbertblog.typepad.com) ever since it first came out. Scott Adams brings up some fairly random, but interesting, topics.

His most recent query into the universe has been about the question of wether we have free will. I think the answer is an astounding no myself, but what caught my attention was how many different peoples view of free will could be so completely different, could people please comment their view of what Free Will actually is?

The dictionairies tend to phrase it as choice made without any previous or external influence.

Personally i tend towards it being forced to choose something you wouldnt want to, of forced not to do something that you would like to do. I think previous actions could change your decision, but i dont think they effect free will.

A simple example would be a candle, first time you see one it looks pretty, you want to touch it, but you soon learn not to, you freely decide not to do it, in teh same way when your at school you also freely decide to put your hand quickly through the bunson burners flame, only if the teacher stopped the student putting his hand through the flame would the student lose his free will.

So what would you class free will as?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Free will:

Something non-random and not pre-determined.

Something like a random number generator but the graph would not come out as a bell-curve, but rather as a skewed curve.