Why Your Decisions Are Meaningless And Choice Is An Illusion - Today's Topic 

It's kinda scary how simultaneously, 'Acted Katie' is trying to prove that free will exists by moving freely, stating that no one can control her, but we all know that's just part of the script.

The Ancient Greeks used to say, even if you are not responsible for your actions you should act like it.

"Look at your liver!" is something I really need to work into more conversations.

I wish I had a friend with whom I can have such convos. Most ppl are just boring.

REALITY IS AN ILLUSION THE UNIVERSE IS A HOLOGRAM BUY GOLD BYEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Freewill exists in the freedom to pursue your will, but you will never act out of your own will. Every decision you make is one that you would make, you can't decide something you wouldn't decide.

"The chemistry kit that is earth plus millions of years equals magic" Perfect

Long answer: 0:00 Short answer: "Reality is an illusion the universe is a hologram, Buy gold bye!" ~ Bill Cipher

the lack of free will doesn't mean the release from responsibility

I like how people argue about things we can't prove, using arguments we can't prove either.

Boss walks in: I was preordained to fire you two for goofing off.

The only real answer to this question is, "It doesn't matter." The idea of free will or predetermination only exists in retrospect.

I can predict the future...I'm going to post a comment on a cracked video on youtube.

Im all for philosophy, but some of your fans' heads might explode. You did a good job explaining it though, I'm down for the cracked school of philosophy

"choice is just an illusion that we see when we look back down the road we have traveled" max payne

I'm too high for this

My two cents: everything you just talked about is confined within the human mind. All the connections and contradictions that you bring up are the products of a very complicated bio-computer, that has evolved for one purpose only: reproduce. As soon as we try to back away from the human experience, philosophy becomes meaningless. The concept of free will is a human construct, that most likely loses its meaning when try to apply it to the grand scheme of the universe. The same applies to the laws that we base our logic on.

The Stanley Parable

Explaining "Reality" with a Science Fiction movie.. So we live in a Movie reality now. lol

This is absolutely fantastic writing and a great summary of the most important arguments aswell. Whoever conceptualized and wrote this does really know the topic well. Im impressed.

According to that neuroscience paper they showed and other new studies, scientists have discovered that our 'choices' are just a list of commands dished out by the brain before we even make a conscious decision. It is a list of prioritised actions in queue that your brain will roll out from time to time, and it overrides whatever action you are currently having, making you think that you have suddenly made a decision.

The fact that you have no free will is not really relevant to the question of responsibility. If a bear attacks you and wants to murder you, he is just acting on his basic instincts. It's not the bears fault, it didn't choose to be a bear, it's not really *responsible* for its actions in any meaningful way. But is that really a consideration worth making anyway? Aren't you going to kill or lock the bear up to prevent the vessel you call yourself from dying, regardless of whether or not the bear is responsible for its actions? Therefore, whether psychopaths have free will or not, we are going to lock them up either way, so it doesn't really matter.

George Carlin said we're alive to make plastic.

Only if I could have these types of conversations in real life

So...free will doesn't exist but believing in it makes you a better person? Interesting.

So my porn addiction isn't my own fault? Thank fuck!

Whos the "we" or "i" that chooses? Choices are made , but you'll find no individual controller. Do what you wiil, but you have no understanding what wills the will.

I love that face he makes when he says "IT IS MY DESTINY" 😂

All of time is like a set movie, and our consciousness is a personal play button.

The laws of physics are a model not a definite thing, and often things come down to probability there's no certainty in the vast majority of things, even when broken down to specific areas. Radioactive decay for example. Also either way it doesn't really matter, free will and the illusion of free will makes no difference, you feel the experience of free will, whether that's an illusion or not doesn't really have any effect on our lives. Determinism basically is probably true but also it doesn't matter that it is, just like our total lack of ability to truly know anything, we can never know the truth but we can build models of the way our group perception of reality works which is all we really need.

"Identity" is ego and the illusion of separateness. "I ams" forged by the I Am That I Am.

Every choice we make is predetermined by things we have previously experienced, which were influenced by other things that influenced those events, and so on. Its basically a domino effect. The thing is thats incredibly obvious. And I dont say that to sound smart or intelligent, I mean people are over complicating what is such an obvious idea. Whether consiously or subconsiously, all of our choices are influenced by previous experiences, which were influenced by previous previous experiences. But by the very definition of what free will is, we still have it. We dont have the inability to make choices, but as living creatures our past experiences influence our character. When people refer to free will they refer whether you want to order a salad or a soup at a resteraunt, for example. Not if technically speaking you act on nothing you have ever witnessed, thought or experienced. Sorry for the overuse of the word "experience." I cant find an efficent synonym

i was pre determined to make this comment

"Either you believe God is Omniscient and can see everything that your going to do for the rest of your life, in which case you have no free will..." This is wrong. The two are not mutually exclusive. Just because God knows WHAT choice your going to make, doesn't mean he forces you to make that choice. It's still yours to make. You have to keep in mind that God exists outside of time. If time were like a river, God is standing on the bank of that river watching it. He's not standing in the river directing it's flow. Pre-determination and Free Will are actually mutually exclusive.

"A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants." Arthur Schopenhauer

As long as I can make my body do what I want, I am ok, thats free will enough for me!

So I didn't choose to watch this video?

Aaaaaand all this is incorrect. The subatomic level exists probabilistically, so determinism cannot foresee specifically which event will occur, rather it must foresee the ever branching could-be's that can happen whenever one of two states may randomly occur. This property of the subatomic is already being toyed with in labs. Being able to somehow use it advantageously is the goal. Who is to say that a synapse, something we still don't understand well, doesn't already utilize this subatomic randomness. P.S.: I make no claims that this proves free will. I do make claims that determinism, how we previously viewed it, does not hold up. And so the assumption that free will must prove itself against the previously accepted concept of determinism is false. We still don't know enough, on either side, to place one concept as accepted, and the other as requiring the burden of proof.

Destiny chooses you. You do not choose destiny. Always lived by this.

This got me questioning life

wow hilarious the ad before this vid was the coke choose ad and we all know its original coke you take

TLDR: whatever you want. Unless you were supposed to want that all along

What a great video guys, keep it up! Loved the whole thing and especially the ending

The best organized convo I have ever heard ever........I love this convo like crazy.....You guys should continue it

The writing and acting on this are superb.

Bit more deep than the usual today's topic but I'm down haha

My personal, half-educated opinion. Even if we live in a 100%-deterministic universe, the fact that we don't and CAN'T know all the variables means that we're unable to predict with absolute certainty what the outcome of anything will be, so for all practical purposes we have free will even if we technically don't.

the problem with 'free will is just an illusion' is that it's impossible to deny because you can literally handwave everything as "that was predetermined to happen" no matter what.

Best "Today's Topic" ever! :)

Realizing there is no free will releases us from guilt, hate, anxiety, etc, and makes any notion of "self" an illusion. It's just another way to define enlightenment. But it doesn't matter how well you can logically prove it to be true, no proof will ever seem complete enough because the only reason we think there is a free will is because it makes our lives seem at least a bit meaningful. It's a belief entirely based on rationalizations.

I won't accept that all of my actions are predetermined simply because there is always more than one choice to a situation, determined by an individual. We all have an effect on determining what the future will look like

I can't believe Cracked is giving me stuff for philosophical debate. Can't count how many times I've seen this video...

If you think of the universe as a giant computer and everything in it as variables then what we perceive as choice is actually just variables reacting with each other in the only way they possibly know how. Given a set of circumstances the human brain only ever knows one way to react to it and while each brain may be unique there is nothing unique about the way each brain reacts to a particular scenario

here's the point that I'm stuck on: let's leave out anything mystical or spiritual, if I am the result of my experiences, then isn't it still me who makes choices? like if I am my brain and my brain tells my muscles to do stuff, that sounds like me making a choice. even if it's predetermined it's still freedom. like when someone says "you didn't decide that your brain chemistry did" I hear "you didn't decide that you did"

"You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill I will choose a path that's clear I will choose freewill"

The argument that you can't alter the 4th dimension (time) because you can perceive it, like the other 3, makes no sense. You can see the ground next to you, then dig a hole, altering its depth. You can see the sky above you, then build a house with a roof and live in it, changing the apparent amount of height. You can alter elements within the three dimensions you perceive, as well as having other events alter things within those three dimensions. Being able to perceive a 4th dimension doesn't preclude altering it. Interstellar, the movie they use as the main example, has the protagonists interacting across time and altering the timeline. Predestination as an argument also has no requirement that you be able to perceive time as a dimension. They're unrelated concepts.

1) Consciousness isn't a force, it's a theater. it's essentially a stop gap that allows decision making to be observed before the consequences are enacted. However even here the decision making isn't a conscious process, it's merely the observation that a decision was altered. Consciousness is essentially a way to record decisions we don't make. It's a useful tool for creative behavior, but not a causal force. 2) Free Will as a scientific concept is not possible for most of the reasons stated herein. It's unnecessary for cause and effect. It doesn't explain anything we can't better explain in another way. And if we add it into our understanding it makes things needlessly more complicated. 3) Free Will is a necessary social construct. Society is not possible without consequences for action. Consequences aren't acceptable unless they are deemed beneficial and fair. punishment for behavior that one has no control over is neither beneficial nor fair. Free Will is hence necessary for society to function. The human organism does not deal with the world as it exists, it deals with a narrative that functions to tie up the details of our lives. we have to include free will and the sense of self in that for our world to function, even if objectively they are hocus pocus.

Look up compatibilism. Not only can free will exist in a deterministic framework, freewill in any meaningful sense can ONLY exist within a deterministic framework. But yeah, arguing against an actress playing a straw man is a great way to build a philosophical case. NOT!

First off, the cinematography here was CHOICE! Editing was immaculate! Color timing, pacing, reaction shots... BRAVO!!!! Secondly, the young lady here was gorgeous, and when she was dancing I think I fell in love.... Props to all the crew involved with this!! and no disrespect to her husband/man/boyfriend/girlfriend... :)

This is low key my favorite Cracked video

Time is not what you think. People think of time as a strict line of cause and effect, but it's more like a big ball of... wibely wobely... timey wimey... stuff.

I always explain this by referring to 'nature and nurture', or genetics and circumstances. Your brain forms initially based on your genetics, and then is 'shaped' (For lack of a word) by the events/circumstances you experience. The product of the two is what determines your personality and, by extension, the choices you will make. You can't control your genetics and you can't control the circumstances you're born (Or more accurately, conceived) into, which means that the final product (Your personality and choices) must also beyond your control.

I am hooked on this channel for life. :-)

Couldn't see any argument except that if the future can be foreseen, there is no free will. Who can look into the future?

1. free will is resulted from knowledge of outcome. without consciousness, the universe would follow a set state of effect. knowledge of that causality results in the free will of outcome. 2. we can effect physics. ... we HAVE defied the laws of physics. the laws of physics are patterns observed of the universe that change as our perception of the universe changes.

Really demotivated me from studying.

Predeterminism is not the same as determinism. The former says time is written, the latter describes it as a continuation that’s constantly blooming. In either case, we don’t have free will.

Watching this as a philosophy nerd, "this is just entertainment don't um, actually." *raises pointer finger, takes a deep breath and...*

I was pre determined to comment like and subscribe ?! Oh shit...

Goddamn, this is interesting and insightful content.

your best video yet. thank you for sharing

Another fun topic as always!

The argument that an omniscient god isn't compatible with free will isn't entirely sound. Inherent in the notion of a god is the notion of transcendence: that a god can do things that we can't. Perhaps said god can grant us free will without running afoul of determinism, because he sees time and causality in a different way that we can't even imagine. You can't posit the supernatural and then complain that the supernatural can't be supernatural. (Lowercase _g_ because I'm speaking of the notion of gods in general, not any specific conception of god.)

The argument for or against free will never really made any sense to me. If free will exists then we will pick our own destiny that will result in certain situations but if those situations are predestined, we still must complete the actions that lead us to that point. Either way, we don't know what's going to happen or what would have been different if other paths were taken since we call only exist from one perspective and time travel does not and never will exist.

This is like The Merovingian and Morpheus discussing in that one scene except without the black clothes and green filter.

I love you guys. Thank you for the video.

Yes, the argument that you make is that nobody can actually break out of the chains of their future because whatever they do is the future. So, essentially - because determinism. And I supported that for a long time before realizing that it's only a matter of definition. If someone physically ties you up, we can definitely say that you do not have the option to move, and do not have free will. That's because: a) you're physically tied, b) you wouldn't have made the choice to move anyway, or c) both of the above. But usually when we say that a person is incapable of doing something, we assume that even if that person wanted to do that, they wouldn't be able to. And that's the point. Yes, everything is predetermined and yes, I don't get to make real decisions but that's only because I the choices I make are the choices I *want* to make (even though my wish to make that choice was influenced by other things). If I say that I can make the decision to, for example, open my fridge and eat cake right now, It means that *assuming that I wanted to*, I could go open the fridge and eat cake. Me making that decision is a result of a combination of both me wanting to make that decision and being physically able to do that. So now, the only problem is how you define "being able to". You can say that the choices we make are influenced by what we want, which is influenced by other stuff and that the choices we make are definitely going to be determined by past events, but those choices are only made because of the fact that they seemed the most reasonable at the time. The choices you make are determined by something but that "something" is reason. Your thinking and evaluation of options given to you is what causes you to choose one option over the other. What they're basically saying is: In 5 seconds, you are either going to be sitting or not sitting. And you have the option to make both of these choices but in 5 seconds you are definitely going to pick one option and not pick the other. You cannot change which option you pick because as soon as you change it, that becomes what you picked and in 5 seconds you are bound to make a single choice which you cannot change because it's predetermined. You are going to make one of those choices and you cannot escape that or change it in any way. But you don't need to escape it. As long as you made the conscious decision to sit or not sit (most likely sit, unless you're one of those standing desk assholes), it doesn't matter if you were bound to make one of those choices. The choices you make are determined by what is most beneficial to you and the fact that the choice is predetermined isn't important because you made that decision based on your will.Your will that has to be determined by something. You are free and the fact that you have to make choices isn't limiting. Logically, your will is determined by your wishes and as long as you get to make choices based on what you want, we can say that you have free will. Even if your wishes are determined by something that's still free will because even if you try to escape the "bounds" of determinism, that would be going against your wishes. You don't get to control your wishes because to do that you'd need to wish to control your wishes. Even if some evil god-like entity comes along and changes your wishes that's still free will because your choices aren't being changed. What's being changed is your wishes upon which your choices are based and if an alien controls my mind and makes me want to eat the cake in my fridge that's still okay because I can do that. If the choices you make are based on what you want then you have free will. And if your wishes are determined by something else then we just need to change the definition of having free will to... Well, you can't have free will because in order to do that you'd have to take multiple opposite choices and if you can't sit and stand up at the same time you're always restricted by not being able to make the other choice. *THE PROBLEM IS A MATTER OF DEFINITION.*

What ever is going on I doubt its simple enough for a mortal to understand

This might not be the perfect video to watch on a lonley friday night

The last two lines of this crack me up every time I watch it.

🤔I was predetermined to be lost in all this 🤔

I used to think this then I did a lot of thinking in jail. The past does not control the future. The past got you to where you are right now. You woke up in the bed that you did today because of the past. However, the future isn't written buy the past It dosen't matter where you woke up today. That you can't change. It matters where you wake up tomorrow. And the only why to change that is by changing yourself today.

Thank you. That was so much fun!

It is possible to have free will and predeterminism. But only if the future has not been determined yet. This does not mean there are multiple futures, only that we can not predict the future, only make good guesses... unless the following is true: if there is a god who knows the future, then he/she is basing that on knowing what our choices are before we make them, but not interfering with our choices. The god might use those choices to their advantage (or ours) but allow them. A teacher or parent does this to some extent with kids. They might give a kid a choice or question in the full knowledge of what choice the child will pick in order to arrive at a lesson or conclusion. One could argue that there is no choice as the options are usually directive to one option, but that does not preclude the alternative. A good challenge is to ask about the story of Mount Sinai in the Bible/Torah. Here God is ready to wipe out the Israelites and go off somewhere else. But then Moses convinces God to give them another chance. The issue is: if God is all knowing then he would know Moses would change his mind and so why bother the whole act in the first place? Especially as he has made promises he can not revoke and therefore can not kill the Israelites. Well, this is a tricky theological as well as philosophical discussion, but basically it revolves around that if God (the adult) knows the future then he chooses to sometimes ignore this future in order to give the opportunity for his followers (the kids) to choose a wise choice... Of course, maybe a god is just a really cunning manipulator who set it all up from the big bang and we cant help but flow with their river.

You're a passenger on the bus of life not the driver you can choose seats change your clothes talk to whoever you want sleep eat jump out the window but you're not driving the bus

Very cool. You touched on most of the bases in an entertaining way. Imo, free will isn't the lack or predictability, just the opposite. People do things based on what they predict to be the best outcome for themselves in someway, but since they can't possible know all the factors there is a bit of uncertainty in their free will. Also, speaking of physics, Uncertainty Principle.

Elaine level moves there, lol. Keep it up!

This makes no sense, just because you cant change the past (debatable) or the idea that the future, present and past all exist at the same time doesn't mean that the choices you make are all predetermined, you still make those choices.

Free Will is one of Rushes greatest songs!

On an unrelated yet interesting note, the actors of apollo 13 had to ride the vomit-comet to film the zero-g scenes.

Literally the best video online

If free will doesn't exist, how can we justifiably be held accountable for our actions? How can we punish a murderer for his or her choice to murder if that person was PREORDAINED to murder without the possible of altering that preordainment? Does that mean that morality doesn't exist? That right and wrong do not exist? I reject such a hypothesis because we live with the free will of ourselves and others every minute of our existence.

You telling me that Trump was predetermined by the universe.....

I began watching the Today's Topic playlist while doing what I anticipated to be a long, boring journey in Elite Dangerous scanning systems for all they are worth between a 7 jump path I had been frequenting. At some point I discovered and subsequently determined to scan a system of more than 45 different astronomical bodies... The distances between the stars of this one system made the task last more than an hour. I rushed back to my home base and turned in the data I gathered. To my horror, that system did not yield even 150,000 credits. Others that I had only passed by and scanned nothing but the bare outline brought it more. The only thing that allowed me to bare the maddening event was the greatness of these people at Cracked and these fine videos they spew out like some sort of video spewing machine. 2 out of 10 stars. That is high rating, I mean... All the life we know of in the entire universe only gets one star.

My liver wants to choose to have free will but I keep pouring beer into it.

nothing is predetermined, quantum mechanics, superpositions, strings and all that. humans may be a collection of chemistry but we have at least some modicum of power to affect the randomness to an extent. just because randomess can be changed does not mean it is no longer random.....damn this is good weed......

super position

what if your choices places you into a universe where the consequences of that choice play out but you didn't notice you moving into a different universe because of how often you shift universes

This is one of the best arguments for determinism I've heard in a while

Your choices are based upon your circumstances. If you did something, but time then jumped back five minutes with nobody knowing, meaning the situation would be identical, and you would make the same choice. So if someone somehow knew your exact psychology, and physical make up, they could predict what you would do, assuming they knew what circumstances you would be in.