"The illusion of free will helps make us happy. Otherwise, consciousness would feel like a prison."


http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/asses_and_free_.html

I don't get it.

OK, now I get it.

Being able to hijack someone's decision making ability and showing that someone is not always making a decision consciously is not the same as proving all decisions are made this way.

no free will makes us angry.

not having the illusion of free will makes us sad.

Scott has seriously lost it.

He draws comics for a living.  He makes a good living.  Now he's doing a 'blog', trying to be funny, and succeeding more often than not.

In what way has he "lost it"?

original article:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/81bc32e4-d5e3-11db-99b7-000b5df10621.html

no, the illusion of free will IS free will.

Oh all his pseudo-scientific ramblings of stuff he does not know anything about.

> The illusion of free will helps make us happy. Otherwise, consciousness would feel like a prison.

It sounds deep because he's cheating. He doesn't say what the 'otherwise' refers to. There are are really two statements in the first sentence:

(a) free will is an illusion.

(b) this illusion makes people happy.

What is the counterfactual in the 'otherwise'? Is it ... if free will was not an illusion, then consciousness would feel like a prison?

Or is it ... if the illusion of free will did not make us happy, consciousness would feel like a prison?

If we KNEW "free will" was an illusion, THEN we would not be able to be happy, because we'd feel trapped.  I think that's the "otherwise".

But since we don't know that, we can be happy.  Even though it may be an illusion, in fact.

So Scott Adams is not happy?

Scott Adams just got married, is an optimist, and has a successful comic strip, which is making him lots of money.

I think he's deliriously happy.

"So Scott Adams is not happy?"

He is not free to be unhappy, dispite his hypothesis :)

even if we "knew" our free will was an illusion, we'd still feel it was real.  it's how our brains are wired.  it's part of our learning process.

So he must not think his free will is an illusion. Ie, he must actually believe he has free will.

Yes, Strawberry, I think you've hit the nail upon the head.  His entire argument is for humor purposes -- I think he thinks he has free will, too.

But no, I think he's serious. He's repeated the same argument with various thought experiments before. His humor feels different than this ... this is like his arguments for peace in the Middle East (he's not kidding with those).

This is the whole issue with funny. No one believes you when you play it straight.

I'm not sure he'd get a too high grade on a philosophy paper though.

What Kenny and Rick say is interesting as well. I like Kenny's double knowledge formulation idea to get out of the paradox.

"(a) free will is an illusion.

(b) this illusion makes people happy."

Basically he is saying free will, whether it is an illusion or not, makes people happy.

Otherwiss means:

Free will does not make people happy!

I guess I am deadly wrong...

the double knowledge whosit what?

I hoped this would be a dildo thread.

It's funny how people aren't in crisis because they can't run as fast as a lion. But their brain has limits and a nature, which means they don't have perfect free will and the sky is falling. Not having perfect free will is not the same thing as determinism. You are not determined, yet you aren't free either.

WTF - SOP you are sounding like Rickbot - don't understand anything you are saying...

You don't understand me so I am Rickbot? Quite convenient that.

both rick and sop are lovely people.

"His entire argument is for humor purposes -- I think he thinks he has free will, too."

I, too, think Scott thinks he has free will. I think in addition to humor he tries to take it up again and again to see if he can find an intellectually honest argument that says we have free will.

> both rick and sop are lovely people.

actually rick is a gay-basher and sop will say anything to avoid losing an argument.

>  sop will say anything to avoid losing an argument.

That usually means someone had the temerity to disagree with you when you were clearly right.

She at least practices what she preaches:

"I now have no feeling of acting with free will, although the feeling took many years to ebb away. ... So perhaps giving up free will is not as dangerous as it sounds..."

-- SUSAN BLACKMORE

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_8.html#blackmore

He throws a couple of these things in at the end of The Dilbert Future.

One is about time travel and the other is his "hunch" that the theory of evolution will be disproven pretty soon.

Also, his brain decided to stop being able to talk one day, so there's some evidence his wiring is a little off.

Very good point.  And there's nothing like your body betraying you to start to crumble that illusion of "free will" the perfectly healthy think they have.

Come to think of it, if giving up free will is as liberating as Susan Blackmore says (I take her word for it, even if I don't know what exactly she means when she says she has done so), and the evidence of all the people queueing up to relinquish theirs to a church, cult, ideology or tribe seem to support her, I wonder why evolution would come up with such an expensive illusion. Overall, I think I agree with sop on this one.