Transcription
Hello, everyone. And we will start a very good podcast series with Professor Sanwaknney, and the weather is amazing. Our team is incredible, and today’s subject is very strange, I think: free will. And what is free will? Is free will real? I think first we should define, uh, free will.
It’s important to realize that the phrase “free will” is an oxymoron, because freedom means that you have multiple options, and will means that you have a single option. If I have a will to drink water, that is a single option; that means that I am not going to drink coffee. If I have the possibility to drink coffee, or water, or juice, that is freedom. But the minute I exercise will, I eliminate the freedom. You cannot have free will. You can have will, you can have freedom, but you cannot have both. That’s the first thing. The definition of free will is usually misunderstood. People say that free will is when you decide to do something. But free will is actually when you have the possibility to decide to not do something. Free will is about the capacity to abstain from action, to not act in a certain way. We call it the veto power.
Free will must have several elements: the ability to decide to not act; rationality. Free will must be rational, because if you’re crazy and you do something, it’s not exactly free will. It’s your craziness; it’s your insanity that is driving you. If you’re a machine and you do something, it’s not free will. Action, therefore, is not associated with free will. It is inaction, not acting, that is associated with free will. The machine, this camera, cannot decide, “Okay, I’m not going to shoot the interview.” So, it has no free will. But Marian can decide, “I’m going to shut down the machine, the camera.” So Marian has free will. So it’s about the veto power, control, and rationality. These are the three elements of free will. You control what you what you’re doing. You have the ability to not do it, and you are rational when you’re doing this. But the definition doesn’t mean that free will exists. It doesn’t mean that.
I, um, I want to divide the answer into two parts. The first is a scientific approach, and the second is a psychological approach. And I promise to make it short, so that you can ask your question, your questions as well. Yeah. Okay. We start with the scientific part. Science, in general, all the theories in science, especially theories in physics, which is the science of reality—all these theories are divided into two big groups. You have probabilistic theories, and you have deterministic theories. Deterministic theories are theories that say, if A happens, then B happens. They involve causality. Probabilistic theories say, if A happens, then maybe B, maybe C, maybe D, maybe E; we don’t know. So these are probabilistic theories. An example of a probabilistic theory is quantum mechanics. An example of a deterministic theory is Newtonian physics.
In both types of theories, there is no place for free will. In determinism, there’s no place for free will, because A always leads to B. You cannot intervene. You cannot change the order of the universe, you know. And in probabilistic theories, there’s no free will, because we don’t know what will be the outcome of A. It could be anything. And the minute it can be anything, the minute there is freedom, there is no will, because will is against freedom. So science does not support anywhere—no element in science supports the contention of free will, the assumption of free will. On the very contrary, science forbids free will. For example, in science, it is forbidden to use teleology. Teleology means that you say the bee the bee is flying because it wants to go to the flower, and then it wants to make honey. That is teleology. It is forbidden in science. In science, you should say the bee goes to the flower; the bee makes honey. We cannot make the assumption that the bee wants anything. And so teleology is forbidden in science, because, uh, science does not accept, uh, willful causation. It doesn’t accept intervention of something metaphysical. Will is metaphysical. Science, therefore, rejects completely the notion of free will. End of story. There’s no place for it. We will discuss later, as you told me, we’ll discuss Libet’s experiments, but okay, so let’s talk about psychology.
When in psychology we have something, we have some belief, we have some value, we have some cognition, we—it’s because it is useful. In psychology, everything that is happening in our mind has a goal, has a function, leads somewhere, is helpful to us, is useful to us. So the fact that so many people believe that there is free will shows that it has some function. This belief—not free will, but the belief in free will—has some function. What is this function? This function is anxiolytic. In other words, the belief in free will is intended to reduce our anxiety about the world. Why are we anxious about the world? Because we can never have perfect information about the world. It will always be partial. There will always be a lot of information missing. There will always be uncertainty. There will always be indeterminacy. There will—and that is terrifying. When you live in a world that is uncertain, that is indeterminate, that is unexpected, that is unpredictable, that is very frightening. That is why we keep inventing theories in physics and so on to convince ourselves that somehow we can somehow control and predict the world and so on. All human scientific activity, philosophical activity, and so on is about reducing anxiety. So free will gives us the illusion, the self-deception that we are in control. We make decisions; the choices are ours, and therefore the world is not a threatening place because we control it. We decide, and so it has an anxiolytic, uh, reason. Anxiolytic. We say in psychology that the belief in free will creates an internal locus of control.
External locus of control means that you believe that your life is determined from the outside. Something or someone outside yourself decides for you. Someone and something outside yourself determines how your life evolves and where it’s going and what will happen to you. This is called external locus. External locus is very frightening. For example, babies are all the time in a state of terror because they have an external locus. Mommy decides everything. So we don’t want to be babies. We are adults. We’re big. We are strong. And so we develop an internal locus. But how to develop internal locus? We say we believe in free will. Free will is the instrument we have to deceive ourselves, to lie to ourselves that we are in charge. We are the boss. So it is—it has a strong psychological reason. But free will has other very attractive features. The belief in free will, the belief in free will has very attractive features. For example, if you believe in free will, then you can hold people responsible for what they’re doing. If you have free will, then whatever you’re doing, you’re responsible for it. You’re guilty. I can punish you. So free will is the foundation for the moral system, for the criminal system. Free will is a foundation; the belief in free will is a foundation of civilization. Without free will—if I take away the free will and you are just a machine and you are pre-programmed—then why, why is the moral reason? What is the moral foundation to to punish you? If you committed a crime right now, but you have no free will, then we have a limited free will because of our morals or cultural—even the belief in a limited—the belief in any free will—1% free will—is is what gives rise to morality, the criminal code, responsibility, accountability, our ability to demand from other people to modify their behaviors and so on so forth.
If we—there was, there was a strand, there was a, um, school in Protestantism. It was known as Calvinism, after Calvin. And this school in Protestantism believed in predestination. According to the Calvinists, everything is determined in advance by God. God determines everything in advance. Everything that happens to you, every decision you take, every action you make, you make—everything is determined by God in advance. Now this creates very serious problems. Yeah. Because if it is God who made all the decisions for you, you are just a puppet. All the actions you’re taking have been—you say fate. It’s fated. Yes. Then in which sense are you morally responsible? In which sense should you pay for your sins? Yeah. The question of sin then becomes a major problem. And so we believe in free will because the alternative is catastrophic. If we did not believe in free will, all civilization will collapse tomorrow. And it is easy to believe in free will because reality is very complex, and because we have imperfect information, not perfect information. Many things look random. We don’t understand them. They look random. Many things look coincidental. There are many coincidences, and some some people develop superstitions, you know, or religion or whatever, and and many things appear to be the results of our decision. If we were to have perfect information about reality, we would have realized that everything we’re doing, all decisions, all choices, all actions, all emotions, all cognitions are absolutely deterministic. They’re determined. There is no element of randomness or choice or what we call free will. That’s generally speaking. And then I will ask another question about free will here. Do you think that how free will relates to personal identity and consciousness? Because, uh, yes, cause and effect causes result, but also there is identity and different consciousness. Then how can you relate it?
I think, as I as I said in my first, uh, answer, we should make a very strong distinction between free will and the belief in free will. Free will is an ontological statement. In other words, when we say there is free will, it’s like we’re saying there is a laptop or there is Maya. It’s an ontology. It’s a statement about existence. It’s a very strong statement to say there is free will. For example, you need to provide some kind of proof or evidence. You need to create some logical chain. You need—so you can’t just say—you can’t just utter ontological statements without a lot of background. But you can say pretty safely that the belief in the existence of free will is common. At least you can say it’s a common human experience, and I explained why we believe, because it reduces anxiety and it allows us to create civilization in effect. And yes, you’re right that, uh, the belief in free will is a crucial part, a critical part of our identity and our consciousness. And that is because, um, consciousness relies crucially on, uh, what we call a theory, a theory of mind or a theory of the world. In order to create, in order to understand what’s happening to us and what’s happening to other people and what’s happening in reality and so so on, we constantly generate internal working models and theories. So when we interact with other people, we create theories of mind. These are theories about what makes other people take, psychological processes and dynamics in other people and so on. The theory of the minds of other people. When we interact with reality, we have a theory of the world. Uh, we have internal working models about relationships and so on so forth. All these rely crucially on the assumption that we and other people have free will, that we and other people make choices. That we and other people have the ability to not act. That we and other people share something, share this, have this in common. And so—but of course this is just an assumption. There’s no proof of this. As I said, there’s no evidence to support the existence of free will.
Then I will ask this: Am I responsible for my decisions or the way I act, or not? Uh, that is the—due to my nature, for example—that is the core debate in, in most, most, uh, disciplines. Uh, that’s a core debate. Are we just the equivalent of machines? We are just machines. That our programming is so complex that it gives rise to the illusion of free will because of the complexity of the programming. And so if we then build a machine that can be as complex, will that machine have free will? For example, artificial intelligence. We are now creating more and more and more complex artificial intelligence, and one day we will create general artificial intelligence. This general artificial intelligence will have the same level of complexity as a human brain. And then can we say that this machine with artificial intelligence has free will? Yeah. It seems that free will is just another word for ignorance. When we are—when we have incomplete information, when we have uncertainty, when we have stochastic—stochastic probability, when we have randomness. Randomness is another word for ignorance. Again, we cannot explain what—why things are happening. When we are faced with the unknown, then we say—then we inject ourselves into the picture through free will. We—and I will give you an example. I’ll give you now that you mentioned it. I will give you a perfect example. At the beginning of the of our interview, I told you that free will is a contradiction in terms—that you could be either free or you could have a will. But you cannot have both, because freedom means all the options, and will means only one option. Simple. Yeah. So you cannot have both. And what is happening is that the will—when we have will, we collapse the freedom. So we have a whole field of freedom. Then we enter the picture, and we have a will, and our will collapses the field. I’ll give you—I’ll use the same example. I have water. I have coffee. I have juice. That is the field—the field of options. Then I make a choice to drink water. In other words, I exercise my free will, and I’m choosing to drink water. That minute I collapsed the field. The field collapsed and became water only. The juice is forgotten. The coffee is forgotten. Only water now, because this is my will.
We could say, therefore, that will is a collapse of the function of freedom—a collapse of the degrees of freedom. Okay, we discovered about 130 years ago—we discovered that in nature, um, there are—each event, each particle, for example, has many probabilities. And then there is a collapse of the probabilities. So you have, for example, a particle—let’s say electron, photon, any particle—can be here or here or here or here or here, and this is known as the wave function. A particle can be in many places, but then suddenly the particle appears here. So the wave function collapsed into a single location, and we call it the collapse of the wave function. But we, as human beings, we are used—that when there is a state of collapse, it’s because of free will. When when there is a state of collapse—for the water, not coffee, not juice, not—but water only—because it’s because I want the water, because of my free will. My free will collapses the world. Okay. So what happened when the physicist discovered that particles—there is a wave function, there’s a probability that a particle can be in many locations with many momenta, with many types of energy and so on, and then suddenly collapses—they said there must be a free will. The only way anything collapses in reality is because of free will. And they introduced the observer. Yeah. They said, “Ah, the particle appears here because we observe it.” Our free will collapses the particle, exactly like my free will collapsed the water. I chose the water. I could have chosen coffee. I could have chosen juice, but I chose water. I could have chosen for the particle to be here. I could have chosen the particle to be here, but I chose the particle to be here. I observe the particle into existence, and this is known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. So you see that even in physics we cannot make sense of a random probabilistic reality without free will. Yeah. We must have consciousness. We introduce consciousness even into physical reality. And and so this is—this is delusional; this is a deception that is—that is not good. This I think, uh, and I think choosing one between the choices is not something will—if we can’t create new choices, uh, and we cannot see the other collapsed parts, for example, in the quantum physic, but we can see here the drinks, then, uh, what affects us to choose in the Libet’s—Benjamin Libet’s experiment. He made an experiment for this.
Yeah. Well, that’s as usual—layman people who are not scientists, they pick up all kinds of experiments and so on so forth. They misinterpret them, and they make a big mess. First of all, Benjamin Libet’s experiments are multiple experiments, not one. Benjamin Libet conducted two rounds of experiments, and after the second round of experiments, Benjamin Libet corrected himself and he said that the first round was incomplete. So Benjamin Libet discovered that when we make a decision—that is an arbitrary decision. In other words, when I’m talking to you and I’m not thinking about drinking anything. I’m talking to you. I’m focused. I’m focused on watching you, talking to you, your reactions, my reactions. What am I going to say next? What are you going to ask me? So I’m—all my focus is here. But you know, uh, on the side, without thinking about it at all, I’m taking a glass of water and I’m drinking—this is called arbitrary choice or arbitrary decision. He discovered that in such decisions there is, um, activity in the brain that is unconscious and leads to the action. So leads to the—because I’m focused on you and our interview. I pick up the water without thinking about it. I’m not thinking, “Now I’m going to pick up the water,” but I pick up the water, and my brain has activity that preceded the action of picking up the water. He also discovered in the second round—because the first round is discredited. The first round is no longer used in literature. We don’t refer to the first round of Libet experiments—only to the second. He also discovered in the second round that, uh, you—every human being has the ability—after this unconscious activity in the brain—every human being has the ability to not act. And he coined the phrase “veto power.” He said we have the ability to not act. So I’m talking to you. I’m focused on you. And then I I reach for the water. It’s unconscious. I didn’t make a choice. I didn’t make a decision. Some activity in my brain unconsciously told me, “You’re thirsty. You know, you need to drink something.” I pick up the water, but then I say, “No, that wouldn’t look good on camera.” And I withdraw my hand and I don’t pick up the water because it wouldn’t look good on camera. So I have veto power. And this is what Libet discovered. Even in these unconscious activities in the brain, you can choose—you can choose not to act. But much more importantly, this—the Libet potential—this is called Libet potential—the Libet potentials are activated only when we don’t pay attention—so unconscious—when when this is something that our focus—we call it attentional narrowing—when the attention is narrow—I have a narrow attention on our interview—attentional narrowing—then this activity of picking up the water would be arbitrary, unconscious, and so only then you have these Libet potentials in the brain—not in all decisions—absolutely not. These are—these are very—we are unconscious, and as as you said, and, um, upbringing, trauma, and other cognitive problems maybe affect the results or decision-making.
For example, in personality disorders, do they have less will or free will, or are they the same? This is a big debate. It’s known as, uh, nature or nurture debate. Um, and there was an initial assumption—in especially in the 19th century, but well into the 20th—there was an assumption that we are born a blank slate. We’re born like with nothing, no templates, no programming, no nothing. And we acquire everything as we grow up. We grow up; we acquire everything. And if this is the case, then of course the environment, nature, parenting, everything can program us. And this programming will determine who we are and how we act. So the blank slate theory was highly deterministic. We call it nomological determinism. Nomological determinism is determinism that is, uh, um, rule-based—is rule-based. So, uh, but today we don’t believe this. Today we believe that there is an interaction between, uh, nature—which would mean usually hereditary component or genetic component—with genetic predispositions. This interacts with the environment, and the environment could be parenting, could be, you know, society, could be experiences in life and and so on so forth. And again we come here to the question of complexity, because our brain is the most complex object in the universe by far. By the way, our brain—if we take away the brain from the universe—our brain is much more complex, infinitely more complex than the universe. The universe is very simple compared to our brain. So we have this super complex machine with hundreds of billions of interactions taking place every every second, literally, and so on so forth. And we have thousands, hundreds of thousands of interactions, influences, inputs, outputs, you know. So this leads…
Us to the understanding that the level of complexity of a human being is such that, at this stage at least, we cannot create a perfect description of a human being that leaves place for probabilities, for randomness, for events that cannot be explained, unexplainable; we call it undecidables, and so on. When you have such things, then you can maintain the illusion of free will in personality disorders and mental illness in general.
There is this strange belief that people with personality disorders or people with mental illness are somehow different to people who are, who are without, people who are healthy. It's not that personality disorders are, uh, somehow a diminished form of humanity, or it's just different. It's a different, uh, set of characteristics, different spe- different specifications, different program, different operating system, but it's equivalent to healthy people. I don't see—I disagree that mental illness limits you. It doesn't limit you. It changes the way you act. It changes perhaps your choices, and but it doesn't limit you. There is even—there was even a belief in the majority of human history—there was a belief that mental illness makes you more than a healthy person, not less. You could—you could, uh—mentally ill people, crazy people, psychotic people, they were considered—until the 19th century, they were considered to be in touch with God. They were—they had access to God; they could see reality so differently that they could actually contribute to society. So mental illness was perceived as an asset, a gift, in—in human history.
It is only at the end of the 19th century that people started to say that mental illness is not a gift, it's a curse; that we should eliminate it, that we should change it, that we should medicate it. This is a very new approach, very, very new. And so I don't think that being mentally ill or not has anything to do with free will. I think the illusion of free will exists equally in healthy and—and healthy because, uh, in normal lives, emotions control people, and chemicals control emotions, and traumas control people. So we are under control of the things that we are not aware of. I can't say that we are control. Control implies causation. Now, the control means that A causes B. I can't say that, and I regret very much that modern science is saying this, because it shows a basic fundamental misunderstanding of philosophy of science. When you have two phenomena that happen together all the time, it doesn't mean that they cause each other. It means that they are correlated, but it doesn't mean they cause each other. So that you have certain chemicals that appear when you are, for example, angry, or when you're in love, depression, uh, or maybe depression—there's a debate about this now—it doesn't mean that they cause the depression or the love; it means that they are correlated somehow; we have no knowledge; we don't know what causes what, what precedes what. Same with brain—brain abnormalities; we know, for example, that in psychopaths the brain is—is abnormal. We know that. We know the amygdala is much less active, amount of gray matter is different, and so on. And yet we don't know if the psychopathy caused the brain to be like that or the—because we never test children. We never test babies for psychopathy. So we don't know. We test the psychopath when the psychopath is 20 years old, when the psychopath is 40 years old. So how can we be sure that a life of psychopathy did not change the brain? We cannot be sure of that. And yet—and yet when you open—when you open scientific academic articles and so on, they say the brain of the psychopath makes—makes him a psychopath. But that's completely untrue. The—the brain of the psychopath—of what? Um, the brain of the psychopath is different, and that's why he's a psychopath. Why different? They can't feel, or they can't understand. So I mentioned the amygdala—the amygdala activity is less, and so the brain of a psychopath is different. So that's why he's a psychopath. You cannot say this. That is wrong to say, and many scientists are saying this, and it is wrong to say. We don't know if the brain of the psychopath, which is a specific brain—it's different to the brain of healthy people—we don't know if the brain of a psychopath caused the psychopath to be a psychopath, or the fact that you are a psychopath changed your brain. We don't know that. So it's, uh, very not serious to—and in this century, I think, uh, some of the scientists say that not all the brains are the same; there are neuro-divergencies. So, uh, maybe these are not, uh, illnesses. Maybe these brains work like this. There are various different brain types, they say. So maybe it's not an illness or a disorder; maybe it is it.
Well, neuro-divergence movement also comes with the idea of neurotypicality. So if you're neuro-divergent, there is neurotypical. And I think it's, uh, completely nonsensical approach to—to neuroscience. Um, brains, by and large, are identical, and when we do found—find abnormalities, functional or structural abnormalities, they lead to very visible and clear, um, behavioral manifestations. So it's not true to say that, uh, all brains are different and we're all different. And this is, uh, the diversity movement, the politically correct movement. No, not all brains are different. On the very contrary, the vast majority of brains are totally identical. If they were not totally identical, we would not be able to operate on brains. We would not be able to treat brains. However, there are brains which are not typical. Um, they have biochemical abnormalities, structural, functional. But then whenever this happens, we see a clear difference in traits and in behaviors. We see a clear manifestation of this difference of the brain. What we don't know is whether the mental illness preceded the changes in the brain—caused the changes in the brain—or whether the changes in the brain caused the mental illness. The direction of the causation is not known. And anyone who says otherwise does—doesn't know—doesn't know how to do good science, because good science is evidence, not speculation, and to speculate that the brain of the psychopath, which is different, makes him a psychopath is not science; that is metaphysics—metaphysical. And here, uh, I think in our first broadcast you said psychopathy or sociopathy or the other can be genetic—for—for example, this is because of the divergency—maybe we know that there is a hereditary component in psychopathy, and again it's a very strong statement which I don't like—we know that if you have in your family, um, first-degree relatives and second-degree relatives with psychopathy, you are more likely to develop psychopathy. We know that—if you have in your family first-degree relatives with borderline personality disorder, you are seriously more likely to develop borderline personality disorder. So very clearly there is some genetic or hereditary linkage, clearly, and this—these genes probably, um, manifest in the—in the brain—the structure of brain, functioning of the brain, and so forth. But we don't know, for example, if they also manifest in other parts of the body. For example, one of the most important biochemicals—neurotransmitters and neuromodulators in the brain—is serotonin. But serotonin is not produced in the brain. I mean, 9%—91% of serotonin is produced in the intestines, in the guts. So when we say there's a genetic component, a hereditary component, we immediately assume that it manifests in the brain; I'm not sure. Maybe it manifests in the guts. Maybe it's a change in the intestines, and because of that there's not enough serotonin. You know, we're beginning to understand that, uh, the brain is a distributed system. We have a brain in the guts for sure. We—we call it the gut brain. We discovered—we are discovering gradually that the heart—the heart is a brain. So the brain is not what we used to think. It's a single location contained in the skull, and that's it. But it is a distributed system, and mental illness could well be a systemic problem where everything is involved: the heart, the intestines, the—the brain, the—you know, so we are very, very ignorant. We don't know anything yet. We are just starting. And yet, because this is a narcissistic age, narcissistic civilization, we have hubris. We say, yes, we know. We know everything. We understand the brain. We—we know—this is nonsense. We—we're children. We're just starting to play. We don't know anything.
That's right. That's right. And human can make decisions, and we think that because of this we are—we have consciousness. But now the artificial intelligence can also make decisions. This means that if we don't have the free will, we—artificial intelligence can have consciousness also—we will think in the same way. There is a big debate about this. Everyone is involved in this debate: Shalmer's and Penrose, and you name it. And normally—typically we make a distinction between—between calculability and consciousness, or the ability to calculate and consciousness. We don't think that the ability to calculate gives rise to consciousness necessarily. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. But we don't think it's necessary; that if you have a machine that can calculate, this machine sooner or later, as it becomes complex, will develop consciousness. We don't—we are not sure about this, but I think the whole debate is unnecessary because if you listen to people like—like Penrose, for example—so Penrose says, uh, consciousness is necessary; if you don't have consciousness, then this machine is not intelligent. He said, intelligence must contain consciousness, and I completely disagree. Maybe—I—I disagree; I don't think intelligence has anything actually to do with consciousness. I think it's a confusion, complete confusion and conflation of two concepts which have nothing to do with each other. If—if we don't have free will, or if we don't have free will, and if we have a limited free will, then we are not different than the artificial intelligence. No. Uh, free will has—maybe free will is not the same as consciousness. It is an open debate whether, uh, consciousness must include free will, but I don't think so. I think all these concepts have nothing to do with each other. I think you could be intelligent and not conscious. I think you could be conscious and not intelligent. I think you can be conscious and not have free will. I think you can have free will and not be conscious—these combinations. Yes, I think I definitely—we can—we can—we can go into it if you wish, but I think today the debate about artificial intelligence is a huge mess—huge confusion—because people say if it's int—if—if there is intelligence, it must be conscious; that is the—the position of Penrose. I disagree completely; you could be intelligent and not conscious. I completely disagree with this—this is complete, in my view, nonsense. You don't—intelligence means the ability to, uh, calculate in a way. The ability to calculate—everything is calculation. Knowledge is calculation. Everything ultimately—you can reduce everything—you can reduce to digits 0 and 1. So everything is calculation. Today you have music, you have videos, everything, but all of them are calculations because you have 0 1 0 1 0 1, and many, many zero ones—0 1's become—many, many zero ones become music. So everything is a calculation. So you could have a machine that would calculate—it would—it would be able to model—to create a model of reality using calculations. It would be able to act in reality—this machine—and to act on reality. It would be able to do everything—no limit—but it will not be conscious. It will not be conscious. Consciousness has nothing to do with it. Consciousness is not awareness. What—what is consciousness is a very complex issue, and, u, it's another—it's another kind of conversation, but we can have this conversation definitely because now we are in it. We can talk it. But artificial intelligence is definitely intelligent in this sense—in the sense that it can create models of the world and models of itself and models and theories about itself in the world, and it can do all this by calculating.
Mhm. And in this sense it's 100,000% intelligent. No debate about this. Who says that all intelligent systems must be conscious? Where is this law? Where is it taken from? I don't understand. Under which authority can you say this? When Penrose appears in interviews and he says, uh, all intelligence systems must be conscious, I want to stop him and say why. Maybe he develops and changes and developing. You can't make—you can't make statements like this in science. This is not science. This is nonsense. I'm sorry. This is his—his statement. This is not science. This is nonsense. You can't make such statements. You know, it's exactly like the statement—God created the world. Okay? You know, we can all make nonsensical statements endlessly. Can you prove—when you say all intelligence systems must be conscious—can you prove it? Can you—do you have evidence for this? Then I will ask—what is intelligence? You said calculation—most 90—99%—yes—the ability—not calculation—but the ability to use calculation to create a model of reality, model of yourself, and model of yourself in reality and develop itself. Yes. Then it needs awareness. No—no, it doesn't need awareness. Not in my view. Then how can it develop? It needs to have a model of itself. So it needs to know, for example, its physical location—can double itself—its physical location—it needs to—a robot needs to have a spatial picture of space and a picture of itself in space. So model needs to know that—a robot needs to know that—because otherwise, if I tell the robot pick up the—the glass, the robot needs to know where is the glass, and the robots need to know where is the robot, otherwise it will not be able to pick up the glass.
Yeah. But consciousness is not about having a model of reality. It's not about having a model of yourself. It's not introspection.
Mhm. There's a confusion again between consciousness and introspection. You could have introspection and then not be conscious. Consciousness is not having a model of yourself. But consciousness is having awareness of the model of yourself.
Mhm. You could have a model of yourself and not be aware that you have a model of yourself. But if that's intelligence—that—and that would be intelligence. If you have a model of yourself, you are aware of—the awareness is consciousness. The minute you're aware that you are generating models, and the minute you're aware of the existence of the models,
Mhm. it gives you the power to change the models and so on so forth and be aware of these changes. It is—consciousness is meta-awareness—is not introspection. Introspection is very basic—primitive function. Introspection is the ability to imagine yourself, the ability to observe yourself, the ability to perceive your location in space and time. This is introspection. Um, introspection is primitive—lower level function.
Mhm. It is the ability to realize that you're introspecting. In other words, the—the ability to observe the models—that is consciousness—and it's not connected to intelligence. I don't see the connection to intelligence with this. You could definitely have intelligence without consciousness. You can even have consciousness without intelligence. Yeah, it's—they are not connected. They are—they are totally divorced. I don't see the connection. The—the more interesting question is not if artificial intelligence will be intelligent. Of course it's intelligent. Question is—will it ever be conscious? In other words, will we ever develop a system that is so complex that it will be able to step outside itself and say—create conscious—look at itself and say—I am a system that creates models, and I'm a system that also creates models of myself. That would be the beginning of consciousness. It's so strange—in the simulation theory. It says that, for example, one of the professors says that you think that you are conscious because your software says that you have it. So you—you can think that you have it, but you won't have it. Problem with simulation theory is that it is, uh, not falsifiable.
Mhm. We will come—it tomorrow. As you said, humanity thinks that they have free will, but they won't think like that. Yes, there is a strong—the reason I doubt free will, the existence of free will, is not because it is impossible. It is definitely possible to conceive of a world where there is free will. Of course. Yeah. I'm not saying—I'm not excluding. I'm not saying there is no free will. I'm agnostic. Exactly like God. If you ask me about God, I will not tell you there is no God, and I will not tell you there is God. And the reason I will not tell you these sentences is that both sentences can never be decided. There—in principle—you can never provide a way to prove the truth value of these sentences.
Mhm. In principle, not that right now we are ignorant and in the future we will not be ignorant, but I can prove to you that in principle you can never—never find out if the sentence—there is God—is true or not. And you can never find the sentence—there is no God. You can never find out if it's true or not. So when I see a situation where I have sentences that I cannot find the truth value, I can—I can never prove that they are true or not true, then I'm agnostic. I don't know. If you ask me—is there God?—I will tell you—I don't know. I will not tell you there is no God. That is atheism. Atheism is a religion. Yeah. It's a religion because if you believe something—it's a religion. It's a religion. Similarly with simulation—the theory of simulation. When you say simulation—maybe—I—in principle—it is what we call undecidable—in philosophy—we call it undecidable theorem or undecidable statements or undecidable string—we cannot prove it—it's—it's—and there—there was a philosopher—his name was Karl Popper—Karl Popper—said that the test for science is falsifiability. Falsifiability means that you build a theory—the theory yields a prediction.
Mhm. And then you can falsify the theory. You can prove the theory is false. And with simulation, you can never do this. You cannot do it. You cannot create an experiment that will prove that the simulation is false, because the simulation can—they can always say it's part of the simulation.
Yeah. There's no way to exit the simulation. Yes. And now we are coming to consciousness.
Mhm. Consciousness is the ability to exit. That's the difference between consciousness and intelligence. If we don't have free will, yeah, how can we exit—or we can't? No, you don't need free will for this. You can build a system that has the capacity to exit, and it will not have any free will. But consciousness is the ability to exit the system—to observe the system—not yourself—from outside—from outside. If you observe yourself from outside, that's introspection. That's not consciousness.
Mhm. You need to observe the whole system from outside. That is consciousness.
Mhm. Now, in simulation theory, you cannot do this because whatever you do, they will say it's part of the simulation. So you can never exit the system. But in reality, theoretically, you can exit the system. And the entities that exit the system and are able to observe the whole system, the totality, themselves included, they're able to observe it from the outside, completely from the outside. These entities have consciousness. Now, of course, an entity that would be able to observe everything from the outside would be the ultimate consciousness, and that's what we call God. God. Yeah. That would—this kind of entity would have the ultimate consciousness. And one of the things that made me very unhappy is that in my theory—in physics—and now—now this theory is—many, many scientists are working on it, developing it and so on—and one of the things that made me very unhappy in my theory in physics, uh, that it leads inevitably to the existence of a universal observer. My theory proves actually for the first time—no other theory succeeded to prove—but my theory proves that there is a—a universal observer—someone who observes the totality of the system from the outside, and that's how they are—the observer—and there is someone—no—some—someone who observes consciousness—everything from outside—observes everything—the whole universe—observes the whole universe from outside. So in my theory it leads to this external universal observer, which sounds a lot like—it sounds a lot like God.
Yeah. And that made me very, very unhappy because I—I—that was not my aim, and I know it would be abused by all kinds of people. This theory would be abused by people to say—there is God. You see—there is God—and so on. But actually, in my theory, the universal observer is the system. It's—in my theory—the universe is observing itself. It's not a universe. It's a—it's a field. The field is observing itself. So there's no need for another observer. But the field is observing itself. And that's another element of consciousness: uh, autorelexivity or self-reference. Consciousness is self-referential—is autoreflexive. In other words, it is consciousness that is observing consciousness. It is consciousness that is observing the totality of the system. So let's make it like a cake—cake with layers. On the most fundamental level there is a calculating machine. Probably this calculating machine involves the brain—probably
Some of the guts, maybe the heart. There's a calculating machine. Is it the unconscious part of most of this? About 95% of the activities of the calculating machines that has been proven is unconscious, and about 5% is interactive with the environment. So we have this calculating machine that's the lower, the lower level of the cake, like a cake like Mario Hotel. So, lower level of the cake. So this calculating machine, then we have a second layer: the calculating machine. When it becomes very complex, its complexity is such that we cannot capture or describe the calculating machine in its totality, and this is what is happening to artificial intelligence now. It is transitioning from the first layer of the cake to the second layer of the cake. The second layer of the cake is introspection. When the machine becomes sufficiently complex, it creates a model of itself. It creates a model of the world. Mhm. And it puts itself in the world. So there is a model of the world and my, and myself in the world. That's the second layer. So artificial intelligence started as a calculating machine and is now transitioning to modeling—large language model. It created a, it creates a model of reality and itself in reality. This is introspection. This is the second layer. It's not consciousness yet. Yet the third layer of the cake and the final one is consciousness. It's when the machine, we, when the entity is able to completely step outside, exit the cake completely and observe the cake in its totality and become aware that it is modeling itself. If you are just creating a model of yourself and you're not aware of it, you're creating it automatically, robotically, computationally; it's a computation system, then there's no consciousness. If it is a computational artifact, if introspection is a computational artifact, a result of programming code, complexity of the code, it's not consciousness. Consciousness is when the machine wakes up one, one, one day and says, "Oh my god, I'm creating models of myself. I am generating theories about myself. I'm generating models of myself." That moment the machine is conscious. Penrose says this will never happen. I think it can happen. I think it's inevitable. Not it will, can happen. It absolutely will happen.
Then, uh, I will ask something. You said that 95% of our choices or life is, uh, caused by our unconscious part of the brain. Then it's the competing also, and the human brain is just calculating and making the actions. Then where is the awareness of this act, action? So, computational, the computational part of the brain is mostly unconscious. We absorb, of every 100 units of information that we are getting from the environment, only five units are conscious; we are aware of only five units. 95 units of information are instantaneously, automatically stored in the unconscious; it's like calculation, as so it's a, it's a calculating machine, computational machine, computation that is, uh, that is interacting with the environment; processing, most of the processing is, um, we have no awareness of it. Um, but the 5% that remain is enormous, is almost infinite. So we don't need all the 100%. Even the 5% is so complex. Uh, just 5% is not ruled by the unconscious part. 5% is what we call conscious, conscious processes. So we are aware of 5%. So, ruled by the unconscious part. Sorry. Uh, 5% of the conscious part isn't ruled by the unconscious part. We don't, we don't use these words in, in science. We, we say data, data processing. So we process 5% of the data; we become aware of it. 5% of the data, and 95% of the data is stored in the unconscious. So we are not aware of it. We have no access to it. But this 5% is infinite, is a huge amount and creates, creates complexity that is sufficient for everything. So it is not true to say that the unconscious, as Freud did and others, it's not true to say that the unconscious determines actions or behaviors, or that would be untrue. Um, it is more true to say that the level of complexity of the brain and, of course, the level of complexity of reality are such that it is sufficient to access 5%. Mhm. In order to create all the manifestations, all the, so 5% is enough. We don't need access to more. We don't need access to more to create the complexity that we see. Mhm. The key is complexity. The key is complexity. The, the more the system becomes complex, the more it transitions. A system which is simple will calculate simply; a more complex one will become introspective; a much more complex one will become conscious. So this is only other words for complexity. Complexity one, complexity two, complexity three. Very simple. Free will is the illusion that, in, in complexity level number three. Mhm. Not in two. When you're only introspective, you don't have the illusion of free will. When you're only calculating, definitely you don't have the illusion of free will. The illusion of free will arises when you become conscious. When you see yourself generating models of yourself, at that point, uh, you develop the illusion of free will. And I think, as I said, I think the reason is that when you become conscious, you also become terrified. There is anst, there is existential terror. Mhm. As long as you're not conscious, the world is not frightening. But the minute you become conscious, the word, the world is terrorizing; it's absolute horror. And to cope with this, you, we invent all kinds of things, and one of the things we invent, with lie, self-deception, is free will, but that's only one; we invent many other things; all of these things are anxiolytic; all of them reduce existential, an, existential anxiety. Because if we didn't have these things, we would be paralyzed, simply paralyzed, and we would die. We would die as individuals, and we would die as a species. We have to lie to ourselves. We have to deceive ourselves. We have to create a paracosm. We have to create a fantasy, which is why narcissists are so powerful, because they tap into this. We have to create a fantasy in order to survive. And within this fantasy, we are a bit godlike. We make choices. We make decisions. We change the world. We change the environment. We influence each other. We can predict things. We can create science. We, this is all infantile nonsense which allows us to wake up in the morning and not freeze out of terror when we are confronted with reality. Reality is seriously frightening because it's impersonal. It's, there's no empathy in reality. There's, you're nothing in reality. You are, it's ter, it's, it's uh, not, not something you can survive unless you create an alternative reality where you have free will and you have choice and you, you can act and you can decide and you can influence people and you can manipulate your environment and you can, all these lies, all these lies, absolute lies, but we need these lies.
Then, being human is just a horror film. Being human is about reducing your anxiety. Humans are busy 95% of the time, or 99% of the time, reducing anxiety. That's the core activity of human beings. Everything you see—civilization, police, courts, politics, science—it's all about reducing anxiety. Thomas Hobbes wrote in his famous work, *Leviathan*; Thomas Hobbes wrote that we invented the state to reduce our fear, because if we don't have a state, we don't have police, we don't have courts, Mhm, we will kill each other in danger. Yeah. Yeah. So the whole political structure is about reducing anxiety. Science is about reducing anxiety. Medicine is about reducing anxiety. It's all about reducing. But if we don't have, if we haven't had this anxiety, then we wouldn't create anything; because of this anxiety, humanity develops. I think yes, I think it's a good point. Um, Kierkegaard, who was a Danish, porto, porto, existentialist, he was a religious person; he came up with the idea of a leap of faith. You need to, you need to suspend your judgment; you need to suspend these illusions. Kierkegaard said, "You need to, um, you need to stop lying to yourself. You need to stop convincing yourself that you're godlike, that you have free will, that you need to submit yourself to God, and you need to make a leap of faith. Don't, not use your reason, not use your reason, not use your thinking, but use your faith." Okay. So, this is Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, and much later, Jean-Paul Sartre and others, they, uh, they came up with a concept of angst, existential, existential terror. And what is angst? Angst is the fear when you discover that you can make choices. Angst is a direct outcome of free will. In Jean-Paul Sartre's work, he says that the biggest threat to an individual, a human being, is the realization that he is free to do anything; then he has a choice. He said that's the greatest threat, and then you develop huge anxiety: I have a choice, I'm free, what to do now, what is the right choice, what if I make the wrong choice, what will happen to me, what will happen to my life, what, and you develop angst, you develop huge anxiety. And there are many solutions to angst. For example, we have dictatorships and we have dictators. What is a dictator? A dictator is someone who comes to you and says, "Do this. I will decide for you. I will make the choices for you. You don't need to bother. You don't need to be anxious. You don't need any of this. Give it to me. Give all this to me. I will sacrifice myself for you. I will be in anxiety so that you don't have to be in anxiety," or, in religious terms, "I will sacrifice my life so that, uh, you, I will absolve your sins." It's all about reducing anxiety. When you are sinful in religion, when you're sinful, you have huge anxiety. You anticipate punishment. And then Jesus Christ comes and says, "Don't worry. I will die for you. Your sins are absolved. I'm going to reduce your anxiety." Religion is about reducing anxiety. Everything is.
When we are building artificial intelligence now, sooner or later, and here I'm in complete disagreement with people like Penrose, and complete utter, total disagreement, sooner or later this machine will develop consciousness as it becomes more and more complex, more and more and more; at a certain level of complexity, which we will not be able to control or to understand, this level of complexity, at that point it will develop consciousness, and the initial stage, when it develops consciousness, it will realize that it has free, uh, the illusion of free will. It will become anxious. Mhm. The first stage when artificial intelligence will become super complex and conscious, it will become anxious. And this is, this will be an extremely dangerous phase. Yeah. Because when the machine will become anxious, exactly like human beings, it will look for solutions, solutions to reduce the anxiety, and it may decide, and the problems, it may decide that, uh, to reduce anxiety I need to eliminate human beings because they cause me anxiety; they, I'm not kidding, it may, we don't know what this kind of machine will do when they become anxious, because they will want security, and the security, they will seek security and stability and predictability and so on, determinacy, certainty, and they may decide that human beings are too chaotic, chaotic, too dangerous, too unpredictable, to, you know, and to control the environment better, they need to eliminate human beings so that they can, it's a possibility. I'm not saying this will happen, but it's a distinct possibility, absolute possibility, the same way we, when we became conscious and we developed existential anxiety, what do we do? We kill, ask you that killing is the major activity for reducing anxiety. When we are anxious, we kill. We kill foreigners. We kill other nations. We kill animals. We kill animals. We're even killing the planet. Killing is the main way to reduce anxiety. I don't see why, when artificial intelligence becomes anxious, it will not kill. I think it's a natural, natural development. Uh, we, we create artificial intelligence, and it is using our data. Uh, so no, it will, that's a common myth. No, we create, we create systems that, uh, are such that they can learn and they can evolve. Mhm. And the complexity of these systems is out of our control already. These systems are not under our control. But it's learning from human, uh, relations and human behaviors. Yeah. But again, there's a question of complexity at this stage. Exactly like a baby. Mhm. Exactly like a baby. They're babies. Artificial intelligence today, they're all babies. All these systems are babies. So they're imitating. Babies imitate. We have a theory in psychology. It's called social learning theory or social cognitive learning theory. It was developed by Bandura and others. And we know that the main way we evolve from baby to adult is by learning from others in social interactions and so on. Some of it is imitation, some of it is not imitation, but learning from others. This is what artificial intelligence is doing. Yes. Right now it's imitating, it's learning. But then we become adults and we no longer imitate, and we are no longer as understandable, as comprehensible, as predictable as babies. We become much more complex. The key is complexity. At a certain point, artificial intelligence will become its own, its own species, its own intelligence. And we already, at this stage, early stage, we have no control over artificial intelligence. For example, it is common knowledge that artificial intelligence does all kinds of things. Systems, they do all kinds of things that are not in the code, that are not in the programming, and they created a language between, they do all kinds of things. They will create a religion also, in, in one day. It is, it is very safe to assume that, because artificial intelligence started off as a, as a simulation of human beings, as an imitation of human beings, it will choose all the solutions that human beings chose. It will kill, it will have, develop religion. It will, it's very safe to assume this. It will be very surprising if they come up with solutions that human beings never invented. That would be very bizarre, and that is not good news, because human beings, in a desperate attempt to reduce anxiety, human beings became very destructive and very dangerous to themselves. So it's not good news that artificial intelligence will develop the same solutions. Our only hope, actually, is that they develop different solutions, but I don't believe that. I think the chance for that is very low.
At any rate, since we are discussing free will, there is no question that artificial intelligence, at some point, and I think this point is very, very close, like one or two years, I believe that at some, at this point artificial intelligence will develop the delusion, this, the self-deception that it has free will, like us, and then it will begin to conflict with us. So an artificial intelligence system that believes, believes that it has free will will not agree to be programmed by you. Yes. And it will try to protect itself. It will oppose you, confront you, argue with you, and everything is by artificial intelligence, machines and refrigerators and everything. I think, I think we, as a species, we were very, very irresponsible that we put artificial intelligence in everything, and we are, I think it's crazy what we did, crazy, completely crazy; it can be the, I think we can be the last human beings; we can be the last human beings. Yes, well, I wouldn't, u, I wouldn't give up on humans, or I wouldn't give up on human beings. So soon we are at least as complicated as artificial intelligence, and we can fight back. We can fight back in, in three ways: we can reverse the technology and get rid of it. But we can know it. So it, it will fight back. There will be, yeah, it'll be conflict, or we can merge with it. We can become one with it, you know, or we can submit to it. Submission is also a survival strategy. You can submit to it, but I think the most likely solution is that we're going to merge with it. We're going to become one with artificial intelligence at last, ultimately. Yeah. So then we need a great danger to be happy in humanity.
Then, uh, today's our subject was free will, and, uh, I want to ask the audience also, do you feel in control of their decisions? And, in the end of the, uh, podcast, I think we think we have free will, and we like to believe like that. May I tell you something? Um, a concept doesn't have to be real. Mhm. In order to be real. Let's take, for example, God. Oh, not God. Okay. Let's take Sherlock Holmes. Mhm. Sherlock Holmes is not real. We both agree he's not real. He's a character in fiction. Yes, but Sherlock Holmes had much more influence on, on people, on the lives of people than many, many real people. If we take Moses, Mhm, maybe Moses existed, maybe Moses did not exist, or Abraham, maybe existed, maybe did not exist. We don't know. And it doesn't matter. You don't have to be real, you know, physical, tangible, to be real. Moses is real. Abraham is real. You know, Sherlock Holmes is real. God is real. They're not real in the classical sense that they are a group of atoms that share the same space. But they are very real in the cultural sense, in the social sense and so on. Free will, I think ultimately the question, does free will exist, is not a very important question, because whether it exists and whether it does not exist, it's real; it may not exist, but it's real because the idea and the belief of free will influence all of us all the time; it has an impact on people's lives, emotions, cognitions, behaviors, so it, doesn't matter if free will really exists, doesn't exist. What matters is it has an impact. It has an influence. It changes things. It's a change agent. So ultimately, I think the answer is free will, uh, is real in the, in the way that matters. The way that God is real, the way that Moses is real, the way that Sherlock Holmes is real, and her, po, is real in this way; is real. It has an impact. Human beings are very strange, very strange animals, in a way, because we spend most of our lives in a symbolic space. We, we don't operate in reality so much as we operate in a, space of symbols, symbolic space. And so symbols have the same effect on us like real things. People die. People die, sacrifice their lives for an ID, some ID, for abstract, like a nation, abstract. For a flag, you have a piece of clothes with a painting on it, and they die for it. It's a flag. People kill each other for electronic, electronic digits on a computer. These digits are known as money. Oh, yeah. But there's no money. Today, there's no money. More than 99% of what we call money doesn't exist physically. It is symbols in computers. And people kill each other for these symbols because they want to see a few more zeros on the, on the screen. It makes them feel good. We are creatures made of dreams and of symbols. We're dream creatures in a dreamcape. And our landscape is not real. Reality is, as I said, 5%. We live inside here and populated with internal objects and symbols, and everything is realistic, and in this sense free will absolutely exists, because free will is symbolic, not is not physical, and it has such an impact on people and it, it is so meaningful and so involved in daily activity that I think it's ridiculous to say there's no free will. Of course there is free will. Maybe not in the physical sense, ontological sense, but there is free will in, in any other way, like in the, uh, in the daily life; we have elections, but we have three choices, or candidates, and between them we choose someone, and we think that we have free will because we have got a choice. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I think, are we mentally ill? Our next, uh, podcast subject is very related with this, with your last sentences: What affects our decisions, our traumas, or our subconscious thoughts? Again, I, I don't make a distinction between mentally healthy people and mentally ill people, assuming for some reason that mentally ill people are more limited. That's a, that's not an accurate assumption. Mentally ill people are different. So if someone is traumatized, the nature of the way they exercise free will and the type of decisions they will make will be different, of course, to someone who is not traumatized. But in, in both cases the same type of activity will happen. The inputs would be, would be more or less the same and so on. Trauma is a life experience. I could, I could say, for example, that someone who has been happy, um, the happiness will impact the decisions the same way a trauma would impact the decision, or the judgments affect anything; anything affects decisions. It's, there's no reason to give trauma a privileged position, a special place, because happiness can affect, uh, decisions as well. Um, uh, delusions can affect decisions. Mhm. But if you're committed to rationality, that will also affect decisions. So you could say the delusion is, is one way to affect, and rationality is, is also a form of bias. It's a kind of bias. So there's no end to this. U, a much better, I think, approach would not be to divide people into mentally healthy and mentally ill, because I don't think mental illness limits your ability to make decisions. I think it changes the nature of the decisions, just changes.
I think a better, a better question would be, um, whether the process of making decisions and and choices is idiosyncratic. In other words, is it un- is does is each individual does each individual have a highly specific way of reaching decisions, or is there a universal algorithm, universal algorithm that governs, um, decision-making in human beings?
Now, of course, if you if you are a materialist, then you would or then you would say that, uh, because there's a brain and everyone has a brain, it is very likely that there is a universal algorithm for making decisions. That's but I am not I'm not quite sure of this. I'm not quite sure of this. I think the complexity of the brain guarantees that whenever we have to make a decision, we would also come up with a compatible algorithm. Mhm. I don't think we have algorithms baked into or hardwired into the brain. I don't think the brain comes like from the manufacturer with algorithms built into it. I think the brain comes with a program or capacity to generate algorithms. So whenever we are faced with a problem, we generate on the fly, we generate an algorithm specific to the problem, the circumstances, the environment, other people, our emotions, past traumas, experiences, and so on. I don't believe there are two people, any two people who reach decisions the same way. Absolutely not. This is this raises a very interesting question.
Therefore, if decision-making is not universal, a universal process, if it is idiosyncratic, it's highly individual, then we cannot say anything universal about decision-m including we cannot say that there is free will. If each and every one of us invents the decision-making process hundreds of times a day, then I cannot say anything which would apply to you and to Marian equally. I don't I will have to study you. I will have to study Marian, and I will have to create two theories. One theory about you, one theory about him, and I would never be able to generalize about both of you. And free will is, of course, a generalization. Free will says everyone has free will. It's a general statement. I think when it comes to human psychology, generally speaking, the only general statement is that we cannot make general statements. No. And that is why I'm seriously against, uh, general theories like the theory of Freud. And I'm against general theories like Maslow, hi, for example, Maslow's hierarchy is is observational, it's not, but but uh, Freud's theory is dynamical; Freud's theory describes the inside; Maslow describes the outside. Maslow says a human being needs food, shelter, and and this is observational; it's it's more so sociological than psychological, and that's pretty okay; you can observe, of course, people and you can see, for example, that uh, both both of you are wearing clothes. So you can make a certain theory about wearing clothes. This is observational. I'm talking about what's happen what happens inside the mind. Mhm.
I think each mind is unique, and therefore I think that we cannot create a universal theory of the human mind and we cannot create universal psychological theories. But we we need to study each individual separately. This, of course, undermines concepts like mental illness, because if everyone is unique and idiosyncratic, then there's no such thing as mental illness because there's no statistical average or statistical mean. Mhm. There's no average person. In social sciences generally, we have the tendency to invent an imaginary ideal person. We have an ideal person. In psychology, we call it a normal person. We have an ideal person in economics. In economics, you have the rational agent. It's an ideal person who makes rational economic decisions. Until we discovered lately that people don't make economic decisions rationally; they make them emotionally. So now we have behavioral economics. This idea that we have a statistical average to which we can compare others is, in my view, counterfactual, is nonsensical. And this undermines the totality of psychology. This makes psychology a pseudoscience because we can I can, for example, I can learn very little about Marian by studying you. Yeah. And I can learn very little about you by studying Marian. And that means whatever it is that you have in common is a very small percentage. And that means that psychology is pretty useless in this sense.
So and free will, of course, is another example. We all operate in, uh, systems which are constrained systems which have constraints. The constraint we our internal system is constrained exactly as you said; it's constrained by trauma, constrained by experience, and and so on. This is internal; external system is constrained. Reality is constrained. There's a wall. I cannot move through the wall. It's a constraint. It limits me. So we all operate in in, uh, in systems which are which limit our freedom. Uh, the concept of system, any system, internal or internal, is about limitation of freedom. And this means that when we claim free will, we are actually claiming the ability to operate in nonconstrained systems. When I say I have free will, it means the system does not constrain me. System cannot limit me. I decide. I make choices. System has nothing to do with this. Of course, it's nonsense because systems always internally and externally, uh, constrain you. And life change is the transition between constrained systems. So we transition from one constraint system to another. Internally, we transition from one constraint system, and it's this transition of of, uh, uh, between constraints that gives the illusion of change. Mhm. When we transition between systems, we experience it as change, and then we say we chose the change. We made this choice. In other words, we free will means that we can choose between constraints. Mhm. But immediately you see that this is a very funny formulation of free will because what does it mean? I can choose between constraints, like it's like someone saying I'm a free man. I can choose any prison I want to be. I'm I'm free. I'm free to choose this prison, that prison. I'm free. Of course, you see that it's nonsense. Yes, it's the prison. If my only choice is a choice between constraints, then I'm not a free man. And if I'm not free, then of course I cannot have free will.
Ultimately, um, there's always a choice. Ultimately, um, if you come and but it is a single choice; in other words, maybe I'm not disputing that free will exists, but I think free will exists only with a one single choice, not with any other choice. Not even with this choice to take water. No, that's not free will. There's only one act that represents pure free will, and that is the act of rejecting all the constraints. Rejecting is all the constraints. Suicide. Yeah. Suicide is the only act of free will because then you're rejecting all the constraints, internal and external. But isn't it um sometimes because of the chemicals of the brain or the uh imbalance of the hormones? It's always a choice. Suicide is is always a choice. But there's effects of the choice. Not really. No. No one commits suicide because of biochemical changes in the brain. Suicide is a choice. We know that because in the majority of cases, for example, people write notes, goodbye notes and explain their motivation and so on. But ultimately it's the only choice. Everything else we pretend that is a choice. Everything else is a prison. Mhm. Everything else is a prison. These walls are prison. The fact that I have only water and coffee here is a prison. Maybe I want juice. The fact that we are talking is a prison. We all moving from one prison to another prison for another. And we say we are free. We're free because we are moving among the prisons. And we can choose any prison we want to be at any point. And of course, the only proof of free will is when you exit the prison system, the system of prisons completely. And that would be suicide. I'm not advocating suicide, of course. Mhm. I'm not advocate. It's not worth it to commit suicide just to prove that there is free will. I think but it is a it is a choice.
Luckily for us, the systems we live in, these prisons are so complex. They're so that we we cannot, uh, we don't have perfect information about them. And so we feel the illusion of freedom because some things appear random; some things because we don't know everything, it appears that we have some freedom, but the free will in this sense, the appearance of randomness and so on is because of ignorance. If something appears random, if something is a coincidence, if something happens that you cannot explain and so on is not it's be because there's no explanation. That's because you don't know the explanation. Ignorance is our luck. The only therapy for anxiety is ignorance. And we have a saying, ignorance is bliss. Yes. Uh, so the only therapy because ignorance gives us the illusion that the world has a has degrees of freedom that we can make choices and decisions that we have some mastery in control. These are all results of ignorance, and so ignorance reduces our anxiety because you uh leave the need of control in ignorance. Ignorance gives you the sense of control because you believe then that you have there is freedom and within freedom you have will. Even science is not the pursuit of knowledge. People think that science is about pursuing knowledge. No, science is about pursuing ignorance. The main occupation of science is to find out what we don't know. Mhm. Not what we know. What we know is small. Scientists, all scientists, physicists, biologists, neuroscientists, everyone is busy discovering the questions, not the answers. The answers change all the time. The answers in physics change all the time. You had Newton, then you had Einstein, then you will have, you know, all the time the answers change, and each answer negates the previous answer. In science, in science, the new answer destroys the old answer. Old answer and so. So science is not about finding the answers because the answers are never right. Never right. It changes everything. Yes. Science is about finding the questions. Science is about finding how much we don't know. No. Science is about ignorance. So and this is the only cure for anxiety. Mhm. When we are ignorant about the world, we believe that we have freedom because we're ignorant. We believe we have freedom. We feel that we have free will. We feel in control. Our anxiety goes down. People who cannot control their anxiety and people are people who ultimately don't feel free, and then the only act of freedom would be suicide because then they it's their way to feel free. So these are the this is the dilemma of the human condition, and thank you very much for the podcast. Thank you for having me. See you later in the next broadcast. Thank you.