WaveCore t1_jbm6eo2 wrote on March 10, 2023 at 1:01 AM

Reply to comment by WrongdoerOk6812 in I just published an article in The Journal of Mind and Behavior arguing that free will is real. Here is the PhilPapers link with free PDF. Tell me what you think. by MonteChristo0321

I would probably start from the classic Schrodinger's Cat example. Let me introduce time into the scenario, say the cat has a 50% chance of dying in the box after 10 seconds have passed. Per your common sense, you would think that after 10 seconds, there will have been an outcome, the cat is either alive or dead.

But here's the weird part, there actually won't be an outcome after 10 seconds, unless you actually open the box to observe an outcome. 20 seconds can have passed, and the cat is actually still either alive or dead. And it will continue to be in this limbo until it's actually observed. It's weird right? You would think that simply observing is a passive action on your part that shouldn't affect or influence any outcomes.

So one theory to explain this is that reality branches into two different timelines, one where the cat dies and one where it doesn't. And this may very well relate to the concept of the 4th dimension.

Uncivilized_Elk t1_jbnf6sd wrote on March 10, 2023 at 8:01 AM

Schrodinger's thought experiment makes the point that a cat being simultaneously dead/alive is stupid and therefore there's aspects of physics involved that are not being understood.

Pop culture media constantly misrepresents this and frames it as if Schrodinger literally thought the cat is in a limbo state when the dude was saying such a thing is ridiculous.

It's one of my biggest pet peeves because Schrodinger basically was going "if we use your logic, look at this stupid cat in a box shit that we would get," and yet now people think Schrodinger held the very view that he was calling out as dumb.

WrongdoerOk6812 t1_jbmfiqy wrote on March 10, 2023 at 2:11 AM

That last part helped me get an idea about the connection between these 2 concepts. And to bring this back to the original topic of free will brings a lot of extra questions to think about. Like if we are our own observers constantly deciding freely in which timeline we continue to exist, and if this would count for both the sum of our parts and consciousness, or only for te latter. And so on... 🤕

This gave me a lot to think about for a while 😅

WaveCore t1_jbmnoq7 wrote on March 10, 2023 at 3:15 AM

Read about the Young/Double Slit experiment. The whole reason why the Schrodingers Cat thought experiment and quantum mechanics came up in the first place was because they were able to cheat the observing condition, in other words they managed to "observe" something without that something knowing it was observed. It also demonstrates the concept of superposition, or having all the possibilities exist at the same time and even interfering and interacting with each other.

Really makes you think about what it exactly means for something to be observed and for all those possibilities to resolve themselves to one outcome. Or if we're the ones that simply branch off to another timeline that represents one of the outcomes.