All language subtitles for Through the Wormhole S04E09 Do We Have Free Will [pseudo]

Freeman:
Do we control our destinies...

Or are we prisoners of fate?

We may all be at the mercy
of our biological programming.

Our actions may not determine
the future.

And the future might reach back
to change the past.

Is freedom of choice
just an illusion...

Or do we have free will?

Through the Wormhole

With Morgan Freeman

Space, time, life itself.

The secrets of the cosmos
lie through the wormhole.

Subtital By RA_One
Do We Have Free Will?

The ancient greeks believed

everyone's path is set at birth.

No matter what we do,

there is no escaping the fate
the gods have chosen for us.

Freedom of choice
is an illusion.

Today, some scientists believe
the greeks were right.

Our courses
really are predetermined,

not by the will
of celestial beings,

but by the workings
of our brains

and the fundamental laws
that govern time and space.

Do we have free will?

Or are we just puppets dangling
from invisible strings?

When I was in grade school,

I got into trouble
in class one day.

Morgan!

Freeman:
I fled the classroom

and ran full-tilt
into a teacher,

who then introduced me
to my first drama teacher.

Where you running off to, son?

It was the beginning
of my acting career.

It might have happened
differently.

Or was it meant to happen?

The answer may lie
in the heavens.

[ Thunder crashes ]

Like many athletes,
Dennis shaffer wants to know

what makes his opponents tick.

And as a research psychologist
at Ohio state university,

he's finding the answers.

Dennis studies the hidden forces
that control the way we move.

I started studying how baseball
outfielders catch fly balls,

and from there,
it was just the confluence

of my love for visual perception
and of sports,

studying how people navigate
in the environment.

Freeman:
Few of us are conscious

of the underlying mechanisms
that guide our behavior.

Most of the processes
that we use

to catch and throw a baseball,
we're unaware of.

So, where I put my arm
when I throw it,

how exactly I get my glove

to a certain spot
to catch the ball,

we're not aware of.

And it's very important

to get as many processes
automatic as possible.

That way,
you have to spend less time

actually with it
in your consciousness,

thinking about it,
trying to remember
what you're supposed to do,

and that sort of thing.

We like to think
our conscious minds

have the final say
over our actions,

but is the conscious mind
really in charge?

Does what you think
you are doing

match up
to what you actually do?

Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Oh, geez!

Dennis and his students have set
up an experiment to find out.

Today,
they have rigged nine cameras

to track the movements of a man,
a woman, and a dog.

Okay,
you'll want to face it in

a little bit more
toward the field

where they'll be running.

Each will take turns
chasing a frisbee.

They all have different
strategies to catch it.

Jason plans to rely on speed.

Once I catch the frisbee
in my sight,

then I slow my speed down
accordingly

or speed it up
a little bit faster.

Freeman: Jamie plans
to run parallel to the frisbee.

I tried to stay under
the frisbee when I was running

to catch it

so I could be ahead
when it started to come down.

Freeman:
Presumably, Merlin the dog
does not have a conscious plan.

Using the data from the cameras,

Dennis plots the movements
of the chasers and their target.

He chooses a background point
for reference,

then maps how
the flight path of the frisbee

appeared to the chasers.

A familiar pattern
begins to emerge.

So, what we're seeing now
is the view of the frisbee

from the perspective
of the chaser,

and what we see

at each point in time
from this perspective

is that the frisbee is rising

relative
to the background scenery.

And you can see it moves
in relatively a straight line

and at a constant speed

until the pursuer gets
close enough to catch it.

Freeman: No matter what
they believe they're doing,

all three pursuers follow
the same pattern.

Dennis has seen this happen
in trial after trial.

What was most surprising
about that

is that dogs use the
same strategy to catch frisbees

that baseball outfielders use
to catch fly balls,

which shows that
the basic, underlying mechanism

that guides behavior
is kind of a universal.

It's not species specific.
It's not target specific.

So, with a baseball or a frisbee
or something like that,

it seems to be universal
across these domains.

Freeman: When you try to catch
a flying object,

you believe you're in charge.

But beneath
the level of consciousness,

your body executes
dozens of programs

that control your actions.

We think we consciously control
our movements,

but we do not.

Shaffer: My findings show

that we have no free will
when we pursue targets.

People think
they're great at it,

and they're awful at it,
and the reason is because

their conscious awareness
doesn't lock up

with the mechanisms
that guide their behavior

while they're intercepting
flying objects.

Freeman: Imagine if you had
to consciously control

all the muscles
you need to move --

to take a step or draw a breath

or to eat
and digest a piece of food.

Your brain is able to do all of
this and more simultaneously,

without it commanding
your attention.

But how many of the actions

we think
we consciously decide to take

are actually automatic
and predetermined?

What if the belief
that we have any control

is just an illusion?

Until recently, Berlin-based
neuroscientist John-Dylan haynes

would've rejected this idea.

Then he began scanning
people's brains,

looking for
the roots of free will.

What he found made him question

everything he took for granted
about his life.

Humans tend to be dualists,

meaning that they think

that the mind and the body are,
to some degree, independent.

What modern brain scanners show

is that there seems to be
a one-to-one correlation

between what happens in our mind
and what happens in our body.

Freeman:
Today, John is going to scan
the brain of a man named Dennis

while sets of three random
letters flash on the screen.

Dennis will respond
to the letters

by pressing a red button,
either right or left.

It's up to him.

The scanner will show when
he decides to press the button,

and a computer will record

exactly when the button
gets pressed.

The subject is doing the task.

This is what they're seeing on
the screen.

So, they're seeing
a sequence of letters,

and at some point,
they can freely decide

to press
either a left or right button,

and then they have to tell us

which letter was on the screen
when they made up their mind.

So, here, the subject is now
seeing this letter stream.

They haven't made
their decision yet.

Now they've just made
a decision,

and now they have to tell us
which letter was on the screen

when they made up their mind.

Freeman: The brain scans show
that again and again,

Dennis decided to push
the right or left button

about a second before he acted.

But there's another pattern
of brain activity here,

unconscious activity that occurs

even longer before
he makes a conscious decision.

So, what you can see here
is brain images coming in.

The decisions begin to arise
here in prefrontal cortex

and in this medial
parietal region here,

and then what happens

is the information seems
to stay there for a few seconds

and then moves on
to a supplementary motor area

located here,

and then from there
goes into the motor cortex,

where it directly controls
our movements.

So, we can see a whole cascade
of processing steps.

First, the unconscious activity
in these areas here,

and then the conscious activity
in these other brain areas.

Freeman: Dennis is supposed
to be making a random decision,

but it appears

that up to 10 seconds before
he decides to push a button,

his subconscious mind
has already made its choice.

So, we think,
"when I make my decision now,

I'm free to choose
one or the other alternative,"

but if my brain
has already become active

and started preparing
my decision 10 seconds before,

this suggests
that this is an illusion,

that we're making up
our decision now.

It's actually the brain activity
leading up to this

that has made the decision.

Freeman:
You can make decisions,
but you can only choose

what your unconscious
already decided for you.

So we control ourselves,

but we can only
control ourselves in one way.

That's the way in which our
brain was destined to behave.

Freeman: John concedes
that exceptional decisions,

such as whether to get married
or buy a house,

aren't easily tested
in brain scanners.

Nonetheless, he believes
the experiment leads

to an inescapable conclusion.

We are not in control.

We have this impression
we make a decision,

that we're completely free
to take different options,

and what our experiments show

is that this idea,
this is an illusion.

We're not free to make
one or the other decision.

We're already preprogrammed
by our brain activity,

and it's already clear what's
gonna happen, to some degree.

We're running around
with an illusion.

Freeman: Is free will
nothing more than a fantasy?

This neuroscientist believes

there is more to us
than automatic systems.

And if we take things
to the next level,

we can find
an escape route to freedom.

2 1/2 thousand years ago,

an Indian man
named Siddhartha Gautama

had an idea.

The idea is captured
in the word anatta --

"not self."

It means
that our brains and bodies

are just a collection
of physical parts,

and the self is an illusion

that emerges when all
those parts work together.

Siddhartha was later given
another name --

Buddha, or "enlightened one" --

and his way of looking at things

is strikingly familiar
to modern neuroscientists.

Mike gazzaniga has been called

the father of cognitive
neuroscience.

After four decades of exploring
the workings of the mind,

Mike has concluded the inner you

is the product
of electrical impulses

coursing through neural tissue.

Nothing more, nothing less.

It is the brain that
is producing our mental life.

There's no question about that.

It's coming from this stuff.

The relationship
of the mental life

to the stuff that produced it
is interactive.

A metaphor
that helps thinking about it

is the hardware/software
distinction.

The computer hardware
is nothing.

It just sits there
unless there's software,

and the software then makes
the computer hardware

work to produce function.

And the argument that I think
for the brain is similar --

that the mental
and the physical layers

are interacting in some way
to produce

these wonderful things
of consciousness and cognition.

Freeman: So, we're all
just biological machines.

The worst word
in the English language

is "just," right?

Just machines.

We're fabulous machines.

Freeman:
But can machines,
biological or mechanical,

control their fate?

Mike believes so.

We may be filled
with automatic systems,

but at a higher layer
of brain function,

we are capable of making
free choices.

To understand how,

Mike says we need
to look at ourselves

the way physicists look
at nature --

as a set of complex systems
that emerge

from the layers
of systems beneath them.

Knowing how one layer works

won't necessarily help you
understand another layer.

The concept of emergence
is how physical entities,

such as water,
at one level can't explain

the next level of organization,

which is how water at the sea
forms into waves.

That is a different sort of set
of principles that are involved,

and no way
by understanding water

are you gonna understand
wave formation and execution.

Freeman:
And our multilayered brains
are not isolated systems.

In fact,
our brains are like cars.

Cars are machines filled with
networks of precision parts,

each with a specific function,

but together forming
one complete system.

But cars are not meant
to be stand-alone objects.

[ Engine revs ]

They are meant to share the road
with other vehicles,

just as our brains are designed
to interact with other brains,

and this, Mike feels,

is the layer
where free will exists --

the level
of personal responsibility.

If you were
the only person in the world,

there's no concept
of personal responsibility.

What's it mean?
It doesn't mean anything.

There's no one else
to be personally responsible to.

So it is developed
out of the interactions

that occur when
there's more than one person.

Freeman:
Whenever we make a decision,

our choice has a ripple effect
on the people around us,

and those people
will punish us

if we fail to follow
the rules of society.

We may not have many options,

but we are responsible
for our actions.

Gazzaniga: Any network,

the elements have to be held
accountable for their actions

or the whole thing doesn't work.

Freeman:
We follow sets of rules,

but are free to make choices
within those boundaries...

Or to completely ignore them.

[ Horns honking ]

Gazzaniga: Freedom means
getting more information

so we get smarter and smarter
and wiser and wiser

about all the things
that are going on around us.

That's how
you can define freedom,

but it's done through this very
beautiful, mechanistic machine

that accomplishes
all these things.

It's pretty cool.

Freeman: But what happens
when we go beyond

one-to-one,
personal interactions

and out to the next layer,

the layer
of mass social behavior?

A new kind of science is finding
the societies we live in

follow rules
as predictable as those

guiding
the movements of the planets.

This man is using them
to see the future

and to see whether we have
any hope of changing it.

Many christians say

God gives us freedom to choose
between good and evil.

We are all responsible
for our actions.

But some denominations believe
God sets our course from birth.

How much freedom
do we really have?

Society puts limits
on our free will.

In fact, a new science contends
that we can use equations

to accurately predict

what groups of people will do
in the future.

Are we all prisoners of fate?

Sean gourley is a two-time
New Zealand decathlon champion.

He understands that mastering
certain fundamentals

leads to a desired outcome.

Sean is also a physicist.

After working in nanotechnology,

he turned his keen mind

to the troubled world
around him.

Why do we have
disease and epidemics

that spread across the globe?

Why do we have
financial market crashing?

You know, why do we have
conflict and insurgency

that we can't seem to wrap
our heads around?

So, those, for me, were the
really, really big questions,

and I guess
it was just coming at a point

when there was enough data
coming online

that we could start

to actually take the techniques
from experimental physics

and apply them to understanding
the world around us.

Freeman:
Physicists describe nature

using the language
of mathematics.

Human behavior may seem
to live outside of this realm,

but Sean says it, too,

can be reduced
to mathematical predictability.

Gourley: So, you know,
when you're out running hurdles,

you're obeying
a set of physics equations.

It's very predictable.

If you measure the force

at which
you drive across the hurdle,

you'll be able to predict

the time
that you finish the race in.

And so on the track,
there's newtonian physics.

When we work
into the world of insurgency

or financial market crashes,

it's the world
of nonlinear physics.

It's chaos, and it's a different
type of physics,

but it's a physics nonetheless.

Freeman: Up close,

the behavior of birds
seems chaotic.

But when we stand back,
we see patterns at work.

The same applies
to groups of people.

Gourley: So, when you look
at people moving in the crowd,

they've got a few basic
equations they want to optimize.

Now, they're not necessarily

consciously aware
of these equations.

It's things like they want
to get from "a" to "b"

as quick as possible

or they want to do it in a way
that avoids obstacles,

so they tend to follow
people in front of them

and let the person in front
sort of act as a buffer.

So, we start
to see these channels form

of people kind of almost forming
little trains

as they move through
the environment,

and these trains last
for maybe a few seconds

or maybe a few minutes
and then they break apart again.

So, when you put the variables
of reaction,

speed,
and kind of a goal in mind

and you put a large
group of people together,

you can
kind of start to model this

with three or four variables.

And with those
three or four variables,

all of a sudden that swarm of
people ceases to become random

and starts to become
predictable.

Freeman:
The way Sean sees it,

simple social rules
give rise to global patterns.

If you can understand
the patterns,

seemingly chaotic events
become predictable,

and you can find ways
to change the patterns.

[ Glass shatters ]

[ Crowd shouting ]

Wars have plagued humanity
for the whole of human history,

but what if
we could see them coming?

What if we could predict
a flash point

and take steps
to stop it from happening?

Sean and his colleagues at
the data analytics company quid

collect
all available information

about conflicts
around the globe,

then they look for patterns

that emerge
from the seeming chaos.

They gained a reputation
in the defense community

tracking the growth
of the insurgency in Iraq.

Gourley: So, you've got
the collective actions

of literally tens of thousands
of different individuals

and, also, on the U.S. side,
as well,

coming together to create
a statistical signature

that none of them are aware of.

Freeman: Sean has found a strict
mathematical relationship

between the number of attacks
and their size.

Gourley: It's a very,
very clean, straight line.

Out of all the different things
that it could be, it chose this.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

Freeman: And the same patterns
of violence

show up in armed conflicts
around the world,

from Iraq to Colombia
to Afghanistan to Indonesia.

Gourley:
We can actually start to

very accurately predict
the likely size of an attack

for any given time period
within the conflict.

It's almost as if somebody came
and placed every dot,

but, of course,
no one's placing every dot.

This is people
that are out there

to try and kill each other.

Freeman:
But once you see this pattern,
when you know

what the future will bring,
can you change it?

Gourley: If we want
a different kind of future,

we want to engineer the conflict

to end up
in a different direction,

we, as humans,
need to make decisions.

We need to
target different groups.

We need to think,

is it normal to attack
big groups or small groups?

Should I take things
out of the top level

or should I take things
out of the bottom level?

We've found patterns
that show how the world is.

What we really want to get to
is patterns that show

how the world will be,
based on the decisions we make.

Freeman:
The more data we have,

the better we can control
our fate.

But will we ever
have enough data?

Over the course
of human history,

empire after empire
has discovered

that altering the course
of world affairs is not easy.

It may be that,
as the ancient greeks suspected,

we can change small things
about our lives,

but ultimately we are all in
the grip of an unavoidable fate.

I think
when you've got free will,

it's not an either/or.

It's a "yes, but,"
and you have free will,

like I had free will
at the running track

to move the hurdles up or down.

I can choose
what hurdle I want to go over,

but I can't choose
to turn off gravity.

And when I go into a war,
I can choose, on some level,

my actions within,
you know, Iraq,

but I can't change
the mathematical signature

that underlies
the way I'm likely to die.

And I think
that's a really difficult thing

for us, as humans,
to wrap our heads around,

because on the one hand
I can choose

and on the other hand
I have no choice.

Freeman: No matter how wild
we might be at heart,

individual actions
can rarely change

the course of human history.

The power of free will
depends on

what layer of existence
you examine --

society or the individual.

There are layers
in the natural world, too.

The motions of galaxies,
stars, and planets

follow strict laws
of cause and effect,

with no room for free will.

But down at the subatomic layer
of existence,

is the universe
also wild at heart?

Isaac Newton saw the universe
as a giant clock,

beautifully intricate
but utterly predictable.

With enough information,
you could know

everything that will happen
until the end of time.

In the 20th century,

as we dug down
into the subatomic world,

the predictability of
Newton's universe fell apart.

In the quantum world,

nothing is determined
until you look at it.

[ Rapid ticking ]

[ Rhythmic ticking ]

But what if there's
an even deeper layer

on a scale far smaller
than the quantum world,

a layer just as predictable
as the universe Newton imagined

but following laws
we don't yet understand?

Dutch physicist Gerard 't hooft
suspects it might be true.

Gerard won the nobel prize
for his part in developing

the standard model
of particle physics,

our best description
of the quantum universe.

If physics
is like a game of chess,

Gerard is a grand master.

But if you don't know the game,

chess pieces seem to move in
completely unpredictable ways,

and the same can be said
of quantum objects.

Quantum physics suggests
it's impossible to ever know

the precise location
of a particle

and the movement of a particle
at the same time.

This effect is called
quantum uncertainty.

A particle can be here or there
or there but not in between,

or a particle is here
or it isn't here.

That's fine,
but there is another aspect

to quantum mechanics
which is very strange,

and that is that you can have
what you call interference.

So, particles can be
in a position like this

or in a position like this
or here,

and then they also say
the particle can be

in all these positions
at the same time.

It is in an undecided position.

Freeman:
As strange as this sounds,

quantum uncertainty
has been tested

and proven again and again.

Quantum mechanics
is a superb theory,

but it's not good enough
to my taste,

and that's because it somehow
defies ordinary logic.

Freeman: To find logic
in the quantum world,

Gerard is probing

the mathematical fundamentals
of quantum theory.

Working at a level
few can comprehend,

he has come to believe

that despite
the seeming unpredictability

of quantum particles,
the whole of existence

follows a strict,
unbending set of rules,

and the universe really does
control our fate.

I like to view the universe
as a computing instrument,

as a gigantic computer,

a computer not different
from your laptop

or from any other computer
except its size and its speed.

The universe calculates
extremely fast

and with extremely,
gigantically big memory,

unlike any man-made object.

Freeman:
Computers here on earth

operate using a binary code
of zeroes and ones,

so where do we find the zeroes
and ones of the universe?

It's a matter of scale.

With normal vision, most of us
can spot a penny on the ground.

But for Gerard to spot
a miniature coin

on the sidewalk
of this miniature street

is nearly impossible.

And Gerard towers above

something exponentially smaller
than this miniature coin,

a scale trillions upon trillions
of times tinier

than the width of an atom.

This is the planck scale,

the basic level of measurement
of the universe.

It's here at the very bottom
layer of existence

that Gerard believes
we will find

the basic bits of information
at the heart of creation --

what he calls
beables and changeables,

binary particles that can
only give yes or no answers,

not maybes.

This layer exists far beneath
the quantum layers we see today.

'T hooft: So, I believe that

is the scale where
everything actually happens,

where everything becomes
deterministic.

Freeman:
Gerard's calculations indicate
that at the planck scale,

the universe
is not a game of chess,

where pieces move
in strange ways

and jump across vast terrain.

The universe
is a game of checkers,

a binary world where one frame

can only affect
an adjoining frame.

'T hooft:
Think of a checkerboard

with billions and billions
of squares,

and now you look
at a checkerboard

from a great distance.

You can no longer
follow in detail what happens.

It looks to you
as if chaos takes over,

as if things are undetermined.

So, I believe that's
the origin of quantum mechanics.

We can no longer predict things
with infinite precision

because you're not under control
at all

of what happens
in all extreme details,

as we would like it.

Freeman:
At its deepest level,

the universe may be
an enormous checkerboard,

and everything happening in it
is a product of its moves.

But at the layer of reality
we perceive,

these basic patterns
can't be seen.

Although our actions

are ultimately determined
by the universe,

it feels like we have free will.

But one physicist feels

the fuzziness
of quantum mechanics

allows for genuine free will.

He says cause and effect may not
be what we think they are,

because the future
can reach back in time

and affect the present.

The hindu concept of karma
maintains every act,

good or bad,
no matter how insignificant,

will eventually return to
the doer with equal impact.

Karma is the moral law
of cause and effect.

What if this works in reverse?

What if the things we will do
in the future

affect what happened
in the past?

This physicist has a new way of
looking at quantum mechanics,

a way that shows free will
is written into

the fundamental structure
of the universe.

Ken wharton is a Professor

at San Jose state university
in California.

Since he was a little boy,
he has been fascinated

by the idea that
fundamental laws of nature

can explain nearly everything
in our day-to-day existence.

When I was a kid,
my parents took home movies,

and we watched them
on actual film,

and the thing about actual film
is after you play it,

you have to rewind the film.

And you could
leave the projector running

while you did this,
and we often did,

and we laughed at

how funny everything looked
running backward.

But my father was a physicist,
and he would tell me --

I distinctly remember --

"Ken,
everything you're seeing here

"still obeys
the same laws of physics,

running either direction."

And I've always tried
to grapple with this question

of how something
that can look so different

might still obey
the same laws of physics.

Freeman:
Can the laws of physics

also predict
the choices that people make?

Are there fundamental rules
that,

when everything is set in motion
from a given starting position,

lead us inevitably to one
and only one possible outcome?

Einstein thought so.

His theory of relativity
tells us

we live in something called
a block universe,

in which all of space
and all of time

are laid out
like a roll of film,

where the past, present,
and future all exist at once.

This, Ken says, means
the future can affect the past,

just as the past
affects the future.

The future is not just
some series of random events.

There are correlations
between the present

and the future
that we can predict.

That's what science does.

And in the course of
making these predictions,

it's more natural
to think of the universe

as being
one continuous structure

rather than being
a bunch of frames cut up

and spread all over the floor.

Freeman:
Ken believes that all events --
even quantum events --

have a definite starting point
and a definite ending point,

but there is uncertainty
in what happens in between.

The way to make sense of this
is retrocausality,

the idea that it is
our future choice

that causes that uncertainty.

Freeman: Retrocausality means
the future affects the past.

The beginning and ending
of events are fixed in time,

but Ken argues quantum physics

creates flexibility
in the middle,

and that flexibility offers us
the chance to control our fate.

In the newtonian clockwork
universe,

the initial state and the laws
determine everything there is.

There's no freedom,
given the initial state.

In a time-symmetric universe,

it's not obvious that
that's true,

because
if something is dependent

not only on the initial state,
but equally on the final state,

now those intermediate events
aren't predetermined

in the sense they're not
determined by the initial state.

They might eventually be
determined,

but there's more wiggle room
for free will.

Freeman: In other words,

the end points of our fates
may be fixed,

but we don't know how precisely
we will reach them.

Wharton: I don't know what
I'm gonna decide in one minute,

and yet that decision
will be made.

It will be determined.

So, there is a perfect example
of something that I don't know

and is not possibly
not determined just by the past,

but nevertheless
will eventually be determined.

Freeman:
As we sail into the future,

do we really have the freedom
to set our own course?

This man thinks the fate of
humanity hangs on how you, me,

and everyone else
answers this question,

because
if we give up on free will,

humanity could be doomed.

The debate over just how much

or how little freedom
we have to choose our fate

has raged
for thousands of years.

It may go on
for millennia to come.

No matter who is actually right,

it certainly feels like
we have free will, doesn't it?

What if
believing we have a choice

is necessary for
the survival of the human race?

In 1994, a young man named
Jonathan schooler picked up

a book by nobel prize-winning
scientist Francis crick.

In it, crick wrote,
"you are, in fact,

"no more than the behavior of
a vast assembly of nerve cells

and their associated molecules."

Jonathan schooler eventually
became a neuroscientist.

Today he's a star Professor

at the university of California,
Santa Barbara,

but he's still troubled
by crick's book.

I was really taken with
Francis crick's

"the astonishing hypothesis"
for several reasons.

First off,
he said in absolute terms

that science
had conclusively ruled out

the existence of free will,

and I just wasn't
really persuaded that

that degree of certainty
was merited.

Freeman:
Crick's beliefs have only become
more popular over time,

so a few years ago,

Jonathan began
running experiments

to see how this message
of strict determinism

affects people's behavior.

In today's experiment,

a series of students
will have their morality tested,

but only after
they are exposed to

messages about the nature
of fate and free will.

At the end of the experiment,

they will fill out
a short survey and then be paid

with a dollar coin
taken from this jar.

Some of the students
read statements

designed to induce a feeling

that they are pawns
of biology and fate.

Other students read statements

that bolster
their belief in free will.

Then all of the participants
are given a cognitive test,

but before they can finish,

Jonathan pretends
to be called away.

Oh, dear, I'm late.

I'm gonna need you
to grade the test yourself.

I'll give you the key,
and then score yourself $1.00

for every one
that you got correct, okay?

Will the messages
the students saw earlier

affect their behavior?

Most students only get
a question or two correct.

Some pay themselves accordingly.

But other students
take more than their share.

Schooler:
Those people who were told

there's no such thing
as free will

consistently took more coins

than those who were not
given that information.

In other words,

telling people there's
no such thing as free will

to some degree
undermines their capacity

to act in a moral manner.

Freeman: Jonathan suspects

believing you are just a pawn
in a cosmic chess game

gives people an excuse
for bad behavior.

"Don't blame me.
I don't have free will."

Schooler:
Another possibility is

it kind of pulls the rug out
from underneath them,

that they have this experience
of will normally,

but when you tell them they have
no such thing as free will,

they just don't have the oomph
to be able to prevent themselves

from resisting the temptation
of avoiding cheating.

Freeman:
Like all thinking people,

Jonathan has
his own views on free will.

He accepts that we are shaped
by genetics, society,

and the deep workings
of the universe,

but he also sees a place
for conscious choice.

From my vantage,
free will is a lot like sailing.

When you sail, you're buffeted
around by the currents,

by the weather, by the wind.

Nevertheless,
you're able to set a tack,

and even though
you can't control

where you are
at any given moment necessarily,

if you set your tack right,

you can end up largely
where you want to go.

Freeman:
This is what Jonathan believes,

but neither he nor anyone else
can prove it.

Schooler: Although we've learned
a great deal

about the nature
of human consciousness,

about the nature of reality,
about physics and so on,

given what we don't know,

I think
we need to be very cautious

about ruling out
the existence of something

that's so fundamental
as free will.

And keeping that option open,

allowing people to be free to
believe in free will,

seems to be a really good idea,
because free will --

at least
the belief in free will --

seems to be of great value
to people.

Whether or not
the universe controls our fate,

humans will always
be compelled to ask,

why is this happening?

We will always work for change,

because even if our courses
are predetermined,

we don't know them
and probably never will.

For us, every day
is a new chance for discovery,

a new opportunity to
take control of our destiny...

Illusion or not.