Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire. She is certainly the most influential, if not the most powerful woman alive. She has a personal chef. She has a personal physician. She has a personal trainer. She has built her empire in large part on the promotion of self-improvement. Her magazine and television programs are filled with inspiring stories of people who summoned the will and energy to make positive changes in their lives.
Recently, Oprah admitted that she had, once again, lost her personal battle with her weight, gaining over forty pounds over a couple of years, going above 200 pounds. She did this while daily being viewed by millions of admirers and true believers. She asked in a related article, “How did I let this happen again?”
I’m considering that she “let that happen” because she had no choice. Oprah doesn’t lack willpower, she lacks free will. We all do. I’m writing this sentence because it was ordained that I do so, back during the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang, back at the only time in the history of time where indeterminacy made a big difference in the stuff from which we’re made.
Cosmology is a science always in flux, but there appears to be consensus that some period of time after the Big Bang, the universe cooled down (a “phase change” is a term often used) and more-or-less locked in what we call the Laws of Physics. Today, when we look back in time, using telescopes to see the universe as it was billions of years ago, we don’t see anything that indicates that the laws of motion and energy have changed over that time. Mass has gravity. The spectrum of burning sodium has remained unchanged (since the initial creation of sodium). Entropy has always increased.
If it wasn’t for the behavior of the super-small, it would appear that the universe acts totally in lockstep with entirely predictable physical laws–a Newtonian clockwork. (This old philosophy states that if, somehow, for an instant, you could determine the motion and inertia of every atom in the universe, you could, in principle, deduce the future behavior of all of those atoms, in the same way that an expert billiards player can determine from the position of the balls on the table how they will fall when she takes her shot.)
Two Twentieth Century discoveries undermined this deterministic view of nature. Einstein introduced relativity, which proved that time and space are not constant, but are perceived in a relative fashion affected by speed and mass. Atomic physics revealed the reality of indeterminacy.
Take at close look at a group of 100 atoms of uranium 235 (take your time, you’re gonna need it). Every once in a while, you’ll see an alpha particle buzz off and in doing so, change the atom from where it came from uranium into lead. Wait around about 704 million years (I warned you), and half of the atoms will have changed identity. Here’s the rub: During that entire time, no matter how hard you tried, you’d never be able to accurately predict which of those atoms was going to emit the alpha particle. All the evidence we have (and it seems pretty unequivocal) says that this inability to predict isn’t our fault, for not knowing enough about some hidden forces bouncing around in the atom, for example. No, this is just how it is. We can, with 100% confidence, know that, after 704 million years, half of the uranium will have turned into lead, but we can never, I repeat, never, know when and which atom will transmute during that time.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle proves that how we choose to observe an object determines how much we can know about it. Gödel showed that there are some propositions that cannot be proved. Chaos theory, though still young, reinforces that there are some initial conditions that preclude predictions of subsequent behavior.
However, we, as humans, don’t appear to be subject to, say, quantum effects. Way before we get up to the size of organic cells, the quantum statistics have accumulated overwhelmingly toward a state of matter that makes up the stuff we can manipulate. (In somewhat the same way we can absolutely know the half-life of a radioactive element, by stepping back from observing the behavior of single particles or atoms, to observing how they are assembled into molecules, we can unquestionably determine not just their momentum and direction, but how they interact with other molecules to make, say, plastic and chocolate milk. Another analogy: look at a photograph in the newspaper with a powerful magnifying glass. You see tiny dots of ink, but can no longer see the picture. It’s only when you remove the lens that the dots coalesce into a comprehensive image. The world we live in is one of images, not the tiny dots that form it.)
So I, along with every respected scientist (perhaps the only time I’ll be able to make the comparison) believe that quantum effects have virtually no effect on our being. (The only exceptions being random events such as cosmic rays, X-rays or other stray high-energy particles that may knock around bits in the DNA molecules that determine physical characteristics.) Again, by the time you “step back” to the size of the cells that make up our bodies, quantum effects can be ignored.
Here’s the deal: When you get past the unpredictable stage of reality (the super small), you’re left with the predictable. You’re left with Oprah.
Predictability is a good thing. It lets you do…oh, I don’t know…everything. (I even predicted that I would write that previous sentence, before I actually wrote it.) Because levers and pulleys and inclined planes and Bernoulli effects work the same way, every time, we get to build bridges and omelets and airplanes. When it comes to manipulating the stuff around us, we rely totally on predictability. We even rely on the predictability of reality when we want to end our reality–that’s why the suicidal jump off high places on to hard surfaces.
However, for some very persuasive, but – I contend – very misleading reasons, we make a special exception from this physical predictability. We make the exception for ourselves.
For no scientifically valid reason that I’ve discovered, we have this ephemeral thing within our brains (exactly where remains a mystery) that we believe directs every voluntary movement of our body. (I won’t get into here the dualism of mind and body vs. a more coherent view of human consciousness because, for this discussion, it doesn’t matter. Whether you’re the Pope or the Dali Lama, you still believe “you” decide to pick up the remote control and change the channel.)
“I” don’t believe you have a good reason to think you determine what to think and how to act. “I” speculate that what you’re thinking right at this instant is an inevitable result of all the events that preceded it. Indeed, there is really no “you” (or “I”) in the equation. What you’re experiencing is no more or less than the movement of the billiard balls, first set in motion fourteen billion years ago, and destined at that time to respond according to the laws put in place at that time.
Why the deception? Why the absolutely undeniable perception of this “ghost in the machine” that seems to pilot our bodies? I contend that it is a result of another inevitability of nature: evolution. Everything we know about life indicates its remarkable ability to adapt and move itself forward in time. (I don’t mean to imply in any way that life or its evolution has a “direction.” It is simply a characteristic of this particular assemblage of matter to avail itself in a way that tends to preserve its existence through time. Time, being defined here as the direction pointed to by the “arrow” of entropy.)
In other words, consciousness and the accompanying conviction that free will exists, is nothing more or less than an adaptation that has evolved in response to environmental pressures. Our ancestors who first conceived of the “I” tended to survive at a greater rate than their competitors. Look around at the genuinely astounding permutations of life that have developed over the past 3.5 billion years or so, from octopus suckers to hummingbird beaks to lichen (a weird combination of algae and fungus). Given that extraordinary range of adaptations, it suddenly doesn’t seem as far-fetched that the form of consciousness we experience is just another evolved characteristic.
I’ll be the first to admit that such a conclusion brings forth feelings of disappointment and (literal) disillusionment. But I can’t seem to find a way around it. Perhaps it’s something like Göedel’s model (which I don’t pretend for a moment to comprehend beyond the most basic level) where, since we are part of the “set,” we can’t get “outside” the formula to observe and ultimately know. We are incomplete.
What such a situation does to issues such as ethics and the concept of sin, I don’t care to get into right now. Maybe later.
But it does one thing for certain. It answers Oprah’s question.
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