The Fabric of Reality was David Deutsch’s first book, written in 1997. Some discoveries, in particular the acceleration of universal expansion, have made certain parts of the book out of date, but it is still a fascinating read. It wasn’t as world-shattering as Beginning of Infinity, possibly simply because I read BoI first. But there was one section on free will that made me almost jump up and down (quite a trick, as I was on an airplane when I read it).
One of my biggest concerns with the multiverse view has been that literally everything that can happen must happen in some universe. The shorthand for this is that in some universe we are all psychopaths. But Deutsch made me see that this problem is actually the salvation of free will. How?
Consider the problem of free will in a classical universe. It can’t exist, because classically everything is predetermined. On some level everything is atoms and forces, and once you have the initial conditions of atoms and forces nothing can change. There’s no room for free will in such a universe. This is not only because the future must be determined precisely by the past, but also because there is no sense in which we have a choice about anything. All our choices are the result of atoms and forces, and no amount of special pleading about our consciousness can change the fact that we ourselves are atoms and forces. In a classical universe, what happens is what must happen.
Adding randomness, whether quantum randomness or some other kind, helps this situation not at all. We would never define our free will based on randomness, but rather on deliberate choices that we make. If all our choices are really just rolls of some non-classical (and therefore truly random) die, then free will is just as much an illusion as it was classically. Who cares if the result of the die roll is random? It’s still not in any sense a free choice we’re making. It’s just an unpredictable one.
But, as Deutsch points out, the multiverse is of a wholly different character. Consider a basic multiverse, with nothing in it that we might call alive. Indeed, in this universe, everything that can happen will happen. A splits into A and B, which then split into A, B, C, and D, and so on, a forever-branching tree with no differentiation whatever.
Now insert a living thing into this multiverse. Life is knowledge, and (as Deutsch said in BoI) “(K)nowledge is information which, when it is embodied in a suitable environment, tends to cause itself to remain so.” (BoI, p 123) What can this possibly mean in a multiverse? It means that we no longer have an evenly branching tree! Knowledge causes itself to remain embodied. Once you have knowledge, for instance a living thing, that living thing makes choices. How? Living things that aren’t people do it through variation and selection. Once you have plants in the multiverse, you’re going to have more than the expected number of universes in the multiverse in which plants survive and thrive. Variation and selection ensures that plants develop good survival strategies (because those are the ones that survive).
As a result, multiverses that otherwise would have gone their separate ways become more similar than they otherwise would have been. It’s not random that plants survive. It’s due to their choices, via variation and selection.
We know that people can create knowledge, too. Unlike plants and non-human animals, people create knowledge via conjecture and criticism. Our choices are much more like what we think of as choices, since they happen within an individual. We can let our theories die in our place.
So consider an individual human faced with a choice (whether or not to jump off a cliff, for instance). It is true that every possibility will happen in some universe, including that in some universe the human chooses to jump. But (and here is the point) in a much larger number of universes the human chooses not to jump. These universes, in which the human chooses to stay at the top of the cliff, will resemble each other more than could be expected. And it was the human’s choice, the human’s free will, that did it.
So now we see the true power of free will in the multiverse. By exercising free will, by making good choices, we make large sections of the multiverse resemble each other more than they would have. It’s almost so simple that you miss the beauty of it. With no embodied knowledge, the universes in the multiverse are non-descript playings out of possibilities, with the maximum possible spread between universes. With embodied knowledge, however, first in the form of living things and finally in the form of people, great swaths of the multiverse tend to look like each other. The knowledge-creators in those universes make the difference. By exercising their choices, they alter the very structure of the multiverse. Free will changes the world!
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April 21, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Many Worlds and Free Will « Turtle Universe
[…] this last entry on many worlds, I want to revisit free will. In The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch gives the best argument in favor of free will I’ve […]
January 11, 2014 at 6:24 am
Micah
You misunderstood the multiverse theory. The guy on top of the cliff not jumping doesn’t prove anything. There must be a universe in which he jumps and one he doesn’t(in addition to infinite variations) so what makes you conclude that he actually made a choice and isn’t just playing out the path he was on. The fact that there are multiple outcomes doesn’t prove free will or a choice.
It seems like you pretty much debunk free will and then just gloss over your earlier writing to suddenly consider a choice-made to be requisite of multiple outcomes. Seems a bit like wishful thinking
January 12, 2014 at 2:09 pm
stephenwhitt
Thanks for the comment, Micah. I don’t think I misunderstand Deutsch’s description. He’s quite clear in Fabric of Reality. Perhaps my synopsis is not so clear, and that’s my failing.
The point is this. In a universe without embodied knowledge, events play out in an even spread of possibilities. A rock, for instance, either falls off a cliff or doesn’t strictly in accord with the conditions and the laws of physics. The wind, the water, etc, that affect that rock will either blow it off the cliff or not. Throughout the multiverse conditions will be different enough that in some versions the rock tumbles down the cliff and in some versions it does not.
A living thing, which is the embodiment of knowledge, is different from a rock. That living thing will most of the time (i.e. in most universes) resist falling off the cliff, so that in some versions of the multiverse where a rock (or a dead body) would have tumbled down, the living thing will not because it resists. Those living things that do a better job of resisting these sorts of events are the ones that survive to pass on their “knowledge” (whether instantiated in genes, brains, or whatever) to the next generation. This, incidentally, is precisely why living things resist death – because their ancestors did.
It is true there are some versions of the multiverse in which both the rock and the living thing would have fallen off the cliff, and even some versions in which the rock remained in place but the living thing fell (or jumped). But statistically it is far more likely that the living thing resisted the fall while the rock did not. If this were not the case, we would not see the proliferation of living things in our version of the multiverse.
Surely you don’t believe that the proliferation of life on this planet is just random, no different than rocks strewn across a landscape? Life, in fact, is the opposite of random – it is the creation of order from disorder, and this requires an explanation. That explanation, according to Deutsch, is the instantiation of knowledge, information that tends to preserve itself. In this view, even the existence of a single plant, reaching its leaves up toward the Sun as opposed to down into the dirt, is a demonstration of the existence of free will. We don’t see plants in all states of being, half reaching their leaves up, the other half bending their leaves down. We see the vast majority of plants actively trying to survive, and making good choices due to their instantiated knowledge. This is free will.
July 7, 2014 at 5:17 pm
Vivek narain
Even if you are determined not to kick the bucket,still, destiny gets you,whether its lupus or cancer or any other goofy killer.Jack london didn’t kill himself but lupus did,Frank c mars didn’t want to die but he had to.May be those who live on fast track use up their quota of life quickly but meaninglessly going on to exist should be worse by all logic.That makes lupus cancer and such like,a divine will or design for a particular universe.
July 8, 2014 at 12:22 am
stephenwhitt
Hi. Thanks for commenting. I don’t understand what you’ve written. Free will, as defined by Deutsch, is not immortality. It’s making good choices. Living things make choices that cause them to exist more often in the multiverse. Could you explain more how cancer or lupus refutes that argument?
July 8, 2014 at 3:46 am
Vivek narain
With lupus or cancer i meant dying young and that is akin to forced suicide,as against dying in rash accident or predictable disease due to indulgence,these catch you unawares,the only commonality i found was the zest for life in those individuals but they died young,london at 40 and mars at 50.May be they had finished their agenda in this universe quickly and are now living in other universe a more placid and laid back life,that should be the meaning of quantum immortality and reason for such darned diseases.
July 8, 2014 at 11:52 am
stephenwhitt
I see. Of course I don’t believe there is in that sense a reason for disease. In the multiverse view cancer, for instance, might be caused by a cosmic ray or a radioactive isotope that strikes or decays in one part of the multiverse and not another. I don’t know what caused London’s or Mars’ diseases, but it is probable that in some other version of the multiverse they didn’t die young.
All this has little to do with free will. I think the question of free will is an important one. What do you think? Do we have the free will to, for instance, choose to make the world a better place? Or do you believe we’re just playing out a pre-ordained destiny?
July 8, 2014 at 12:41 pm
Vivek narain
Humanity is certainly the most endowed race as far as introspection and free will is involved.But the prosaic reality is that majority of us mostly do,what we have no choice but to do.The doctrine of expediency is the driving force in most of our endeavours,free will is limited to minor insignificant matters giving a connotation of affectation rather than free will.There are many who opt for genuine free will in their lives and ironically these people might be the very persons who jump off the cliff in frustration.
July 9, 2014 at 2:29 am
stephenwhitt
OK. I understand your point of view. I disagree with it. I’ve presented David Deutsch’s argument for free will, based on the multiverse. What is your argument against? Maybe you’ll convince me.
July 9, 2014 at 3:36 am
Vivek narain
There was a king David and he had a son Solomon who said,All is vanity and vexation of spirit;striving after the wind.Life, when it knows it must cease to exist will always rebel,it can’t help itself,for a living dog is better than a dead lion.But there are situations when death is preferable to life,like catatonic schizophrenia,i have personally worked out that Kafka in his “metamorphosis” alluded to this disease when he described gregor samsa’s condition of cockroach like existence,of course these things are very rare but still you have to see the angle.i have no argument against David Deutsch,am just broadening the discussion.
July 10, 2014 at 12:47 am
stephenwhitt
I am certain there must be conditions of living that are so horrible that death is preferable. And I thank you for broadening the discussion.
To me, the most important thing in life is the ability to choose. Perhaps free will is an illusion, perhaps it is not. But I will live my life as if I have the power of choice; it’s really the only power that matters. I decide. As Whitman wrote “That you are here. That life exists, and identity. That the powerful play goes on and you will contribute a verse.” It’s my verse. That matters to me.
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September 21, 2019 at 12:30 pm
Johan
Thanks for broadening my mind. A world in which we never choose and only observe is, to me, a world without meaning, as I find meaning in intention. For this reason, Peter Ulric Tse’s The Neural Basis of Free Will filled me with meaning, as it gives a scientific explanation that supports the existence of choice and so the possibility to be free to have an intention. Maybe free will is an illusion, but I’m not completely convinced that this is so. I think it would be unwise to say that determinism is right in every sense, so we give up, that’s our best idea, we’ve got nothing left to do, nothing more to think and no more tests that can disprove or alter the nuance of our empirical line of thought. I think it’s valuable to consider other ideas rather than to be dogmatic and cling to paradigms that don’t allow us a shift in perspective. A different perspective in this case could be about what intention means. Intention is that which I love most in others, like the intention we find in kindness and self-sacrifice. Tse’s book showed me that intention isn’t a trick of the mind, which means that acts of love, which prompts love in the receiver, are freely given and not just like instincts that happen automatically. It is rather an inner effort, like using mental muscles, that requires both emotions and rationality. To be able to explain rationally why we do have a choice and can deliberate with ourselves, which is to guide ourselves through our imagination in which we imagine any number of futures and pick the one we’d most like to live in, this, for me, means that I can choose my purpose life. I can use the guided unpredictability of imagination and give my life meaning of my own choice. But that’s just me and where my rational thoughts have taken me. I fully understand the argument that leads people to come to the conclusion that their ability to choose is an illusion and that they could never have chosen or thought otherwise. And maybe I live in an illusion when I think that I am free to choose anything in life. If so, it’s an illusion that, for me, is like a story that I can easily lose myself in and believe to be true while I’m part of it.
Also, what I took away from what you wrote about how universes that survive through our choices tend to mirror the universe in which they originated, and how we sculpt the multiverse through our choices, this gave me a new idea. Elaine Scarry, inspired by the Greek philosophers, wrote that beauty incites deliberation, that beauty is unprecedented, life-saving, life-altering, and, most importantly, it makes the world new. What’s more, Wittgenstein said that when the eye sees something beautiful, the hand wants to draw it. And so beauty, as Scarry elaborated in On Beauty and Being Just, “brings copies of itself into being.'” She also writes, “Beauty, as both Plato’s Symposium and everyday life confirms, prompts the begetting of children: when the eye sees someone beautiful, the whole body wants to reproduce the person.” Evolution, as Geoffrey Miller elaborated in the best scientific book I’ve ever read, The Mating Mind, is mainly driven by choice, and the power of sexual selection means that we weren’t created to be who we are but that all the traits which make us unique, all we love about ourselves and others, all this was chosen by ourselves, by other versions of us, that live on in our genes, our ancestors. Free will, if it exists, could then be the moment when the universe of our choice splits and copies that which appeals to us and mirrors that which we deem worthy of being reproduced and seen in new angles and variations, which long before we arrived on the planet has taken careful deliberation, an effort made by our ancestors, or we wouldn’t be here.
Thanks again for giving me much food for thought!