A theory of free will
We’ve all heard about the idea that there are many timelines, many realities that can exist. If you choose to take the bus versus walk, for example, you might be hit by a car or get involved in a shooting or meet your true love. Nobody knows what might happen and, even with all the choices and random events occurring, we cannot even begin to predict the number of alternate realities from every choice and every event.
We don’t even know if our choices are real choices. They might as well be random or the outcomes of algorithms that our unconscious brains cook up. Who’s to say that isn’t choice though? Choice comes down to what sort of person you are, not what you decide at the spur of the moment. Maybe the only choice is to choose what sort of person you are going to be.
If, in every alternate reality out there, you are the kind of person who stands up for your beliefs and is true to yourself, then maybe it doesn’t really matter. And if you are the kind of person who gets embroiled in petty conflicts and is selfish that will play out badly for you.
There is a theory that the universe actually contains all these different realities at once and they all play out at once, at the same time. We just don’t see more than one because for some reason our conscious minds can’t comprehend it all, so our consciousness splits into many, each going down its own path. We walk around experiencing our lives as if we have just one life, but in reality we have many lives and many minds experience each one, all in one body.
Why our minds can’t handle all those different lives at once is a mystery, but maybe, somewhere, someone has managed to evolve to a higher level and reintegrate their minds into one. Such a mind could share knowledge back and forth between the different minds and lives and maybe live better ones.
This is a story about one such person. His name is Wilhelm “Billy” Newcomer and he is the first person to reintegrate his minds. Newcomer is a professor of physics. He studies quantum information theory. His stock in trade are qubits, quantum bits, that form the core of quantum computers.
It isn’t clear how Newcomer came to reintegrate his minds. It may be from thinking about quantum information all the time that his mind just learned to do it. Perhaps it is a skill like calculus or doing a kickflip. All he knew is that one day he was living just one life where he was a professor, lecturing on quantum mechanics, helping students in office hours, going home and making love to his wife. The next day he was living several different lives all at once.
He was aware that most of his lives were very similar to his own. In most of them he was still an academic, although in some he was at a more prestigious university and in others less so. In some he was married to a different woman. In a few he was divorced.
He was aware that the mind that existed within each reality had its own thoughts and feelings as well as history, yet they were also all part of himself. He was one mind but many. Each shared the same parents, name, and similar early childhood. Sometime, however, shortly after his birth, they had started to split.
Some of the realities were disturbing. For example, in one universe he was under investigation for sexually harassing a student. In another, he was fired for misappropriation of funding. One he was a drug addict. Another schizophrenic and another homeless.
Still others he was very political. Oddly enough, in some he was very liberal and marched with protestors on campus, even getting pepper sprayed. In others, he was conservative and criticized those protestors. There were consequences from each stance like run ins with the administration or getting heckled at lectures.
In one of his realities, he even died of a heart attack and that reality simply shut off to his perception. He found that particularly unnerving. What if he died in all of them?
Eventually, these thoughts and feelings started to leak in between his minds, straying outside of their timelines. He would be having a nooner with his wife in one while he was meeting a student in another and find himself with an erection in his office and limp in the bedroom.
He would be writing an angry letter against political correctness on campus in one when suddenly the letter turned into one about providing gender neutral bathrooms.
His minds, by being able to perceive one another, were now trying to form themselves into not only a single consciousness but a single mind with the same thoughts and feelings, but his realities were pulling him in too many directions.
With all this anarchy, all his minds recognized that they had to cooperate. Like disparate states with their own regional problems but nevertheless sharing a common background and purpose, there had to be some consistency in decision making.
His minds drafted a sort of constitution which they worked out between themselves night after night. This constitution stated the basic principles by which the government of the minds of Newcomer would function.
Because the number of minds was effectively infinite, forming a spectrum rather than individual minds, there was no way to count votes. Rather, decisions had to be made by conscious act of will. The choices were reduced by a binary tree method, whereby each set of choices was reduced to a series of binary, yes or no questions. Thus, there could never be a plurality on any decisions.
The vast majority of decisions were left to the individual minds which knew their specific circumstances and history. Only those that involved the interaction between minds or all the minds mattered.
For example, in the case that one mind became intensely emotional, as during a political march, that mind had to maintain focus on their own world so as not to leak into the other minds.
For moral decision making, anything morally abhorrent, such as having an adulterous affair or petty vandalism (as some Newcomers had resorted to) had to be brought to a vote and if the majority voted against, that mind or set of minds would be censured by some invasion from the other minds of its autonomy. One set of minds (in the darker section of his minds) had to put an end to its long term relationship with another faculty member. Others had to make amends for purposely incendiary remarks made at a public lecture.
This had benefits to the minds as well. For example, when one was threatened by a mugger late one night, the minds that had been in the military and were experts at martial arts and self-defense came to its rescue, disabling the attacker and leaving him with a broken arm.
When his minds felt the will to choose something that affected all the minds, such as making a major life change like divorce, remarriage, quitting a job, and the like, they would think the choice they wanted, and the majority carried the day. The minority had to obey or risk invasion.
This worked well for a time and the Newcomers found a new sense of purpose in the many lives and a renewal of free will. Rather than making all possible choices all the time, the number of choices he made reduced to those that were more inline with the majority decisions. The question: who am I? Was answered with a set of values that the majority of his minds held.
Those that were in a bad way: homeless, depressed, or alcoholic were buoyed by the strength of the many other minds who could provide support. All his minds became better and there was a general exchange between best of the best Newcomers and the others that lifted up the worst of the worst.
Improvements to his lives were short lived. As his minds continued to multiply down divers paths, they grew further apart.
It wasn’t clear who fired the first shot, but before long the conflict grew as more and more minds chose to go their own way. Unlike the earlier anarchy, now some had banded together based on their shared history and, before long, it had come down to two parties. There was the Unity party that sought to bring all the minds together to one purpose. And there was the Freedom party, that wanted all the minds to be able to go their own way and do their own thing, perhaps even find a way to end their connectedness forever.
While the Unity party attempted to get all the Newcomers to go along with a single choice of the majority, the Freedom party went the other direction. They became reckless: took drugs, bought fancy cars, met with prostitutes or had affairs, sold all their possessions and became vagabonds. Each possibility that presented itself was taken. Everyone around thought it was a midlife crisis.
The battle lines were drawn. Newcomer now found that he was unable to live any of his lives in peace. One mind would be lecturing in class one day and then find that his slides contained some vile pornography or he would experience an electric shock.
Attacks came while some minds were sleeping and vulnerable. They would experience nightmares and sweating terrors, seeing himself in his minds eyes with instruments of torture, ready to snap his toes off or peel his skin from his flesh.
It was mostly mental warfare of course. Physically, they stayed well apart, but the damage was being done. All his minds were plunged into chaos.
At stake were two different definitions of free will. There was on the Freedom side the free will of the individual mind to do as it pleased despite splitting into many each making a different choice. On the Unity side was the free will of having a singular purpose, and pruning undesirable behavior; thus making the choice to be good and do well.
Amid all this chaos, the Newcomers saw no way out on their own, so they sought out the one person who might understand, a Quantum Philosopher who had published a number of books on quantum philosophy and free will.
The Newcomers, primarily the Unity party, but even those of the Freedom party, hopped on a plane to Oxford, New York, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, etc. where the Quantum Philosopher lived and, setting up an appointment, arrived there at tea time, breakfast, lunch, or late at night.
Newcomer and the QP faced one another in the vast majority of the universes and the Newcomers poured out what had happened to them.
The QPs, although slightly different in each universe, listened intently and, after Newcomers had finished said, “you say you have two groups of you, but each of you wants the same things: free will?”
The Newcomers nodded.
The QPs sat back and considered for a moment, “the key to free will, what separates us from inanimate matter, is neither unity of purpose nor anarchy. These are different ends of a spectrum. On the unity side is classical matter, planets, stars, galaxies, and such. These have found unity by clumping together under forces such as gravity and electromagnetism. These forces have caused the quantum variations to cancel one another out by interference, so that only one way remains. They have found unity but not free will.”
Those in the Unity party frowned. They had been wrong? Those in the Freedom party were gleeful.
The QPs held up a hand. “Yet, neither is it true that each going their own way in each universe is a path to free will. This is the path of the particle. Electrons, photons, ions, and so on all go their own way and follow their own path, but they also have no more free will than the galaxies and planets.”
Those in the Freedom party bowed their heads, for they knew that the QP was correct.
“Then is there no hope?” said the Newcomers.
The QPs again held up a hand. “There is a third way and that is the way that living, conscious beings have done since they first appeared. Free will means the freedom to do otherwise. Yet it also means the freedom to make choices based on the sort of person you are, not randomly. Therefore, you must find the middle way between the unity of the stars and galaxies and the anarchic freedom of the electrons and photons. You must allow yourselves to make the choice you find best but also allow those of you who disagree to do otherwise. For it is in those different choices that your freedom is exercised: in both unity and freedom.”
The Unity Newcomers asked, “but what if they’re wrong?”
QPs shrugged, “what is the point of life if you can’t make wrong choices? We aren’t computers.”
The Freedom Newcomers asked, “but shouldn’t we explore and all make different choices?”
The QPs shrugged again, “if you make every possible choice, then you aren’t making any real choices — you aren’t using your own mind. You might as well be a photon. Free will must live between chaos and order, freedom and unity.”
The Newcomers thanked the QPs for this insight and flew home.
The Unity party tore up its constitution and disbanded. The Freedom party sold the fancy cars, got rid of the drugs, broke off the affairs, and returned to their old lives as best they could and disbanded as well.
Wiser now, the Newcomers understood that nothing had been wrong in the first place and that making opposing choices was fine but that making random choices without thinking it through was no more freedom than a particle had.
The above is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.