Perplexity has a misapplied word. Less. Should have been least. Does it simply copy paste?
The only place I see “less”, at least in Reg’s post, is in the word “tenseless”.
The free will and compatibilism was not very deep or convincing.
I admit to not being able to fathom the whole block universe concept, much less its significance. Concluding free will’s existence vs nonexistence is where I can’t decide if it’s actually a relevant or meaningful question.
If I presume it exists, I’ll just “act naturally”. If I presume it does not exist, I’ll still just “act naturally”. It’s the same “me” inside, either way, and regardless of how we each define “me” for ourselves. I say this knowing that, in spite of many people believing God gave them free will, they’re often also believing that God influences them and/or determines all futures. In the end, no matter what we discover or decide, what difference does fw vs no fw make?
I asked Perplexity Pro (PP). Most typographical emphases are mine. None of it says anything that would seem new to most of us us. PP leaves behind links to sources, practically every paragraph. Exporting it to a PDF file looks nice, and puts all the links at the end of the document.
ME:
what difference does it make for any of us to choose to believe or to not believe in “free will”?
PP:
Believing or not believing in free will doesn’t just change a philosophical label; it tends to shift how people feel about themselves, how they behave, and how they judge others, even if the underlying physics of the universe is exactly the same either way.
Below are the main ways this shows up in actual humans, based on psychology and philosophy work.
Effects on your own motivation and mood
Studies in social and personality psychology suggest that people who believe they have real choice and control tend to function with higher motivation and well‑being. In longitudinal data, stronger belief in free will predicts higher life satisfaction and “flourishing” a couple of months later, even after controlling for other traits.
When experimenters temporarily weaken people’s belief in free will (for example, by having them read deterministic arguments), people show reduced intrinsic motivation and effort on tasks. Self‑determination theory more broadly says that feeling autonomous and self‑directed is a basic psychological need; when that sense of autonomy is undermined, mood and fulfillment tend to drop.
A nice way to put it: whether or not we “really” have metaphysical free will, living as if your choices matter seems to support better mental health and engagement with life.
Effects on behavior and ethics
There is a body of experimental work where researchers nudge people toward either “you have free will” or “everything is determined and you have no real choice” and then look at behavior. Across many of these studies:
- Stronger belief in free will correlates with higher self‑control, self‑efficacy, and job satisfaction.
- People who endorse free will more strongly tend, on average, to report higher ethical standards and to perform better academically or at work.
- When belief in free will is experimentally weakened, some studies find more cheating, more prejudice, and harsher attitudes toward others, though these effects are not always huge and some have been contested or failed replications.
So for many people, believing “my choices are up to me” encourages them to act as if their choices matter, which nudges behavior in pro‑social and disciplined directions.
Effects on how we judge and punish others
Belief in free will also matters for how we think about moral responsibility and punishment. People who strongly believe in free will are more inclined to say that wrongdoers are fully responsible and deserve punishment, because they “could have done otherwise.”
Psychological work suggests that one reason belief in free will is so widespread is that it supports holding others responsible and justifying punishment of harmful behavior. On the other hand, skeptics worry that if people en masse come to see everyone as “complex biochemical puppets,” that might erode moral concern or accountability.
Interestingly, when ordinary people are given deterministic scenarios (future actions predicted from genetics and environment), many still say the agent acted of their own free will and is morally responsible. That suggests everyday thinking often adopts a “compatibilist” stance: even if causes stretch back before we were born, we still treat people as responsible when actions flow from their own values and character.
Consequences of denying free will
People on all sides of the philosophical debate worry about what happens if belief in free will collapses socially. Empirically:
- Short‑term “no free will” primes can nudge people toward more selfish or unethical choices and reduce effort or persistence.
- Seeing yourself purely as a machine driven by outside forces can make activities feel less meaningful and less worth struggling for.
At the same time, some thinkers argue that letting go of a strong, libertarian free‑will picture can promote compassion: if you see behavior as heavily shaped by genes, upbringing, and environment, you may become less vindictive and more focused on prevention and rehabilitation rather than retribution.
So the “no free will” stance isn’t automatically nihilistic; its effects depend a lot on how it is integrated—whether it becomes “nothing matters” or “causes matter, so let’s change the causes.”
How this cashes out for an individual
For a single person trying to live a decent, meaningful life, the practical upshot of the research is roughly:
- Acting as if your choices and efforts matter tends to support motivation, self‑control, and well‑being, regardless of the ultimate metaphysics.
- Belief in total powerlessness (“I literally couldn’t do anything differently, ever”) tends to be associated with worse outcomes, especially if it undermines any sense of agency or responsibility.
- You can hold a fairly hard‑nosed, naturalistic view of causation and still preserve a working sense of agency: “Given who I am, my reasons and values, I deliberate and then act—and those processes matter.”
In practice, what seems to matter most is not whether your free‑will view would satisfy a metaphysician, but whether your stance preserves a robust sense of agency: that what you choose and work toward genuinely shapes your future and the lives of others.
—– —– —– —– —– —– —– —–
My conclusion: The feeling of free will is natural, and it takes work to deny it. I like knowing that “I” still make choices, and all that matters is how “I” define “me”, with the input of course of my environment and other people in it. And where almost all people’s experiences are sharable, largely thanks to natural abilities, and usefully invented constructs.
As for the existence of past, present, and a moving Now, I have no clue why that should matter, unless it somehow simplifies or characterizes theories. (I do understand that locality matters in how one experiences time and space.) Maybe a timeless, quantum tunnel is created every time two entangled particles separate, I just don’t understand how, unless maybe a “dimension” is created or already exists that keeps them “connected or unitary at one point”.
But what difference would that even make, until we learn how it predicts a subsequent behavior?
