Free will and the nature of time

A recent discussion based on a post about a book on time brought up this issue, which I'll use as a starting point:


The "Block Universe" theory states, briefly, that time does not exist in the sense that we experience it, but rather as a sort of spatial dimension. It's called a "block" because, if you can lay out all events in time on a coordinate plane, like you can points in a spatial dimension, then the future is fixed, free will is an illusion, and in fact the whole universe is a sort of stasis, or "block." If this view is right (and it gets circumstantial support from relativity, as well as from Kant and other philosophers who think about metaphysics) then this is a pretty profound subversion of our everyday experience of the world. If time itself, that is our experience of it, is created by the brain, how utterly strange must be the "real" reality underneath!


Then again, the theory isn't quite as far from conventional reality as that summary implies, related to this quote from the post about the book, and based on the author's own explanation:


Still, he says, that argument ultimately “rests on a big confusion about what the block universe theory is saying.  Even the block universe theory agrees that … the only experiences I’m having are the ones I’m having now in this room.” The experiences you had a year ago or 10 years ago are still just as real, Skow asserts; they’re just “inaccessible” because you are now in a different part of spacetime.


Those two takes, the post author's, and the book author's proposing the block universe theory, seem far enough apart that the first may need some adjustment, or could be extending the same ideas to unrelated conclusions.  They really seem to be discussing two different versions of a block theory of time, one that sees the past and present as real and existent with an uncertain future, and one that sees it all as in a sense already fixed (a growing block theory of time versus a different version, where the future is also part of the block, the reality).

At any rate I intend to discuss the issues here from my own perspective, not track down alternatives of what is being proposed and try to make the most sense I can of that.  Google would turn up more, but I'm more interested in a different sort of post.

Free will is an interesting part of the larger picture here.  If the future exists as well as the past, in some sense, then we are completely conditioned by past events, and have no input about what choices we make, since in a sense it all will be exactly as it will be.  On the other hand, it seems like what I've just said and that intro statement both include a lot of assumptions that might not really hold up, and that completely laying bare what is meant by "free will" might not ever work.  If will and making choices is somehow completely determined, in any sense, then the freedom part seems a bit thin, but that doesn't seem necessary by looking at time a different way.

It's a bit odd, but I'll quote my initial take as a comment on the Facebook post (in a philosophy group there, which in general aren't worth looking into, but a couple aren't so bad):


This was standard stuff in metaphysics classes back in philosophy study, but it goes nowhere. We experience reality in the form of moments of time, or a flow, and it doesn't change based on describing it different ways. It doesn't make any sense to describe time outside the framework that we experience it in, other than as a thought model, to consider if there are any alternatives. Maybe there are, maybe there aren't, but even if so it wouldn't mean anything to us.



It's not based on much study of theories on my part but my understanding is that our common sense take is called presentism, the idea that only the present is somehow real.  I was saying that embracing something other than that common sense perspective wouldn't end up making any sense, even if this experience of time is somehow a function of us more than of the physical universe.

credit dilbert.com, also referenced in this blog post on free will

To cut to the crux of all this, even if we see the whole universe, past and future together, as one larger whole, I don't see that as necessarily entailing there is no free will.  Just as there is complex physical cause and effect as part of that universe our own thoughts and inclinations are also an input.  We can change what we do in the present, to the extent that we evaluate external factors and thought and choice are also factors.  A thought model might help where I'm going with all this.

Consider a number of dominos set up to knock each other over as those are arranged to.  Each individual domino action is completely caused; there is no choice, no way a domino could "decide" to fall sideways and break that chain.  Even if we are a product of our own past and generally conditioned by external inputs (immediate circumstances, and also culture, influence of others, etc.) to some extent our will is the activity of our own thought as an input.  We can define that as being externally caused, and try to model even our own thought and judgement in some vaguely mechanistic, determined way, versus seeing us as special for having a different type of judgment as an input, most often expressed as being well beyond the extent to which animals also do.  Both approaches seem to just describe the same thing in different ways, more a judgment about importance of some mental function than a change in modeling some real aspect of reality.

photo credit

But lets consider further.  The issue of free will and determinism seems to hinge on the extent to which we could do the equivalent of a domino falling sideways; could we initiate actions that are not caused by the past or external factors?  It almost doesn't make sense, as if somehow that framing doesn't work.  How could I wake up and quit my job for absolutely no reason, or do anything more reasonable, limited, and positive without any prior cause instead?  We experience our existence and selves as a continuity of the past, and exist along with the rest of reality as a related input.

Other thought models come to mind as options, like the alien character in the one Men in Black movie who could somehow experience alternate realities at the same time.  But that sort of didn't make sense; conditions are what they are moment to moment, so working out how they might be slightly different doesn't work.  All the talk of other possible universes, like the Star Trek episode where Kirk and Spock are evil instead, are also meaningless.  Those people (characters) were the product of all the other moments of their lives, and there couldn't be an identical universe where they shared all the characteristics except being evil, and presumably an entire past.  So many things would be different there wouldn't be genetically identical opposites to only be different in that way.  A movie or television show based on a related but different premise that sets up a fork in time, based on some external change, does sort of work, but it takes careful writing to make up a plausible external event or source of change.  Time travel works, if that can somehow be written in.

So moving into fiction as a reference doesn't seem to shed much light.

Alternate experiences of time are more promising than defining free will out of existence.  We definitely have free will, it's just not so easy to define what that means, to somehow grasp the limits of external factors, or leave space for any freedom from those.  It seems to just boil down to a matter of use of terms, of definition.  But it's vaguely conceivable a different type of organism wouldn't experience time as we do.  How would that be possible?  Based within our own frame of reference, on how we experience things, it's absolutely impossible, but then I am talking about possible range beyond that.  We are based on a certain type of physical reality, on a physical make-up, on chemical processes and physical reactions firmly grounded in our experience of time.  Could a different type of life form not be?  Again, not that we can clearly imagine, but what about beyond that.

Even imagining what that means, or could mean, gets tricky.  The obvious description might be to compare how a three dimensional being might interact with a two dimensional being (not that we have any example of such a thing; again it's a thought model).  Limitations of that being possible aside, experienced reality would be in a very different form.  Any interaction at all would entail some sort of projection, limitation of three dimensions to interact with two.  It kind of makes no sense, but thinking it through gets one a feel for the level of problems.

So the idea is to imagine what a fundamentally different type of experience could be like, not exactly based on a three dimensions + time worldview.  Beyond being impossible it's interesting.  Such a being could only communicate with us by projecting into a form identical to our own, in the same way we could only "talk" to a two dimensional, sheet of paper world type being by somehow being represented in theirs.

Maybe this all goes too far, still based on the input of sci-fi, imagining that a character like the one in Men in Black would be necessary for a different experience of time, or like Q in Star Trek.  Premonition would be an unusual case where someone could experience time differently, not that it's a given anyone actually experiences that.  In such a case or experience scope knowledge of the future is given as a vague input, completely outside normal sensory perception.  It would work better as an example if there were more acceptance of it, or at least one standard model for how people would experience it.

But then I'm kind of drifting off the subject of free will with all this.  These ideas do circle back towards considering, from that first discussion  "If time itself, that is our experience of it, is created by the brain, how utterly strange must be the "real" reality underneath!"


That seems to sweep in a bit more assumption than is necessary, that we are creating the the experience of time, when we might instead just be structured to exist within such a context.  Synapses firing, thoughts occurring, these are our mental reality, in the same way I digest breakfast from this morning now, not from last week.  We are organic and time-bound in both ways.  Separating perception and choice from the immediate moment is impossible, to free up will more than it is free now, without that being based on a fundamentally different form of experience, of life itself.  I would agree that it would be quite strange to have a different kind of experience, but I don't see why it would have to be impossible, it would just have to be based within a different format of being, the kind of thing we couldn't really imagine in detail.  Premonition would fall outside normal experienced scope, if it really ever did occur.

About the physics, the way such theories connect to philosophical explanations, people seem to take all that the wrong way.  Experience is one thing, the first person sense and thought based nature of reality, and physics is another, a model for how reality works, a description.  Under the model of either Newtonian gravity or relativistic gravity an apple still falls to the ground, the latter just describes things better in some subtle ways that don't really matter at the level of apples falling.  If there are really 20-some dimensions to this reality and we experience three physical dimensions plus time it doesn't matter, unless it somehow turns out to matter.  Maybe ghosts live in a different related dimension, and then it really does matter, but only if your house is haunted.  Or maybe astral travel is real, and that somehow ties in;  speculation could go in lots of bizarre directions.

In any case the real-real nature of reality would make absolutely no difference to us, unless it was somehow relevant.  If we can someday, somehow travel across time then that scope becomes relevant, otherwise it's not.  Maybe that's not the best example since it's still interesting to consider, especially since time moving at different rates is really standard stuff.  Going somewhere via "wormhole" and coming back much later poses no problem at all, in relatively ordinary interpretations of physics, but coming back earlier may be completely impossible, to the extent our take on physics says anything at all about it, per my very limited understanding.

Getting to be a bit of a tangent, but related to that time-shift in the movie Insterstellar one might wonder if those gravity fields really could slow time that much, them aging so slowly due to time differences due to being near a black hole.  But how could one tell, who can do calculations related to gravity fields and the flow of time?  Not many people, but I wasted a bit of time reading up, and answers were all more or less similar to this one:


If you find a way to keep a watch working circling around on the rarefied 'surface' of the Sun (where gravitational acceleration is a respectable ~ 28g), and that watch will count about a minute less per year compared to the distant observer.


28 times normal Earth gravity is way more than any person could live to experience, and one minute per year difference is essentially almost none.  It's quite a real difference, and it's the kind of difference that we have to take into account to keep our GPS system working well, but it implies that movie-character astronaut could not experience gravity that causes him to come back when his daughter is old, at least not without being killed by the effects himself.

Someone else might argue that personal experience of gravity or speed could be relative, for example that someone travelling at 99.99% the speed of light related to us is just existing in a normal framework to them, not experiencing any special forces.  To a far lesser extent the same could be true of gravity; someone could orbit a very massive object and feel nothing, they would only get flattened by trying to stand on it.  But in actual practice this wouldn't seem to work.  A gravitational field 28 times that of the surface of the earth is not even close to enough to change time experience, and being exposed to a place experiencing hundreds of times as much gravitational influence as we do on Earth wouldn't be practical, there would be reasons it just wouldn't work.

makes for some cool ideas and images though (credit)

Back to the original point, the "free will" problem has no space to change, at all, unless something in the model of reality shifts.  Free will is either defined as a basic part of us making decisions, a description of an aspect of thinking, or else we might not accept there is anything interesting enough about that for a special term.  Maybe we just do something more similar to what dogs do, react to circumstances, and explaining that as something extra special makes no sense.  Or else maybe dogs have free will too.

About premonition, a friend once mentioned making a decision based on knowing something of non-local events, something he couldn't know anything about, which makes you wonder.  Maybe...  It sounds sketchy, but there is something to that as a possibility for a non-linear experience of time and causation, it's just not much to go on.  Astral travel is a close parallel case.  I'm too agnostic about most things to go in for all that but who knows.  I have experienced things I can't explain but this post isn't about that.

Internet trolls, jesters, squares and worms, and real-life creepy clowns

Not so long ago I ran across a really interesting short summary of character types related to internet communications, related to authenticity and seriousness:

The article is well worth a read, probably much clearer than anything I'm going to add to it in commentary.  There are no references.. It would seem odd that guy came up with that just based on writing a one page blog post, but likely that he did.  Nice!

The terms seem obvious enough, especially given that "troll" is already familiar, but I'll go through the spelling it out here anyway:

squares:  sincere and serious, they say what they actually think.  The categories don't assume that they are actually nice but it somehow seems that might connect, just not always.

trolls:  insincere and unserious (not serious), they just say whatever will get a reaction.  Some of it might actually be based on what they think but that's not the point.

jesters:  sincere but unserious, they're just being silly, not provocative.

worms:  serious and insincere, seemingly the worst combination, essentially, someone out to deceive others but more likely to seem genuine as a result of being serious.

A lot of the rest in the article is about how to tell who is who, how each changes to express a "diagonally" corresponding character, as in that diagram:

Trolls, when cornered, often excuse themselves as Shakespearean fools of the modern age, as jesters, serious and sincere...

He goes on to explain why their own explanation doesn't work, why that's a different category, and why when pressed they revert to the straight or "square" type instead:

So, when scrutinized in ways that require sincerity, they stop being unserious as well... Instead of proving themselves to be Jesters, they become Squares... 

Maybe that doesn't come across well in brief citation, but the point is that trolls tend to equate themselves with someone who is just joking (the "jester" type), but unlike them they are not sincere.  When pressed they revert to being both serious and sincere to defend and explain themselves.  Not really all the time, but maybe.

Does it work?  I'm not so sure, but at a glance it might.  It would seem that just as people are complex and vary according to what they express in public they might also not follow such a clear pattern in reverting to a secondary type when pressed.

I'm somewhat active on Facebook groups and forums related to being an expat (I'm American but live in Thailand) and I see people communicate in different ways, but never really that reverting to another communication paradigm, changing type.  In one rough-edged Facebook Bangkok expat group members find ways to steer almost every subject to comments that the poster should kill themselves, relating to suicide being common among expats, or deaths arranged to look like suicides.  They never say anything like "I was just joking."  To a large degree the kidding around is good natured, with everyone clear on nothing being serious, but typical subjects of ladyboys / transvestites, prostitution, and expat suicide wouldn't be for everyone, as that style of discussion also might not be.

In the main Thai expat website-based forum, Thai Visa, "flaming" other members is really common, but again people explaining that behavior is unheard of.  If someone objects to being insulted they tend to just get insulted again.  All the same there really could be something to it, that explanation about the types, and this doesn't necessarily refute that someone who is "trolling" there couldn't revert to being serious and sincere if pressed.  Any online groups have limits, even those that seem to be set up for people to insult each other, and the other spin-off groups for banned members can really be rough-edged places.

The deeper issue seems to be why people move off being serious and sincere so readily.  Joking is one thing, and a bit of the "jester" approach makes sense, but how did that "troll" behavior get as common as it is?  And what about those "worms"?  Surely there are deceitful people out there, but so many they can be seen as a common internet-interaction type?  Perhaps.  In the case of internet trolls, definitely.

I've read that in the early history of the internet, before the world wide web, before file conventions that enabled use of graphics came into play, trolling meant something else altogether.  This article examines the origins of the modern form, people just insulting others, often using irrational statements or insults to do it.  But there is another origin story cited, related to trolling starting from a reference to fishing, with a version described in a Wikipedia article:


Commonly, what is meant is a relatively gentle inside joke by veteran users, presenting questions or topics that had been so overdone that only a new user would respond to them earnestly. For example, a veteran of the group might make a post on the common misconception that glass flows over time. Long-time readers would both recognize the poster's name and know that the topic had been discussed a lot, but new subscribers to the group would not realize, and would thus respond. These types of trolls served as a practice to identify group insiders.


So not at all what we mean today.  What a nice online world that must have been, although per reading up on the history of trolling "flaming" did also start up pretty early.  I'm not sure when comments sections became the wasteland they are today.

Why troll?  

Another post in the main blog I write about tea, about labels tea drinkers give themselves, reminded me of this subject.  People can see themselves as tea specialists, or enthusiasts, even connoisseurs or sommeliers, and take on any number of nicknames.  But no one ever claims to be a "tea troll," and the actual behavior is limited.  In general people don't insult others just to get a reaction.  Maybe that's just what one would expect, that anyone taking that particular beverage so seriously wouldn't be adopting the same antagonistic role one sees in discussions of politics or sports.  Some few people are still genuinely unpleasant and insulting but at least they're sincere and consistent about it, so they'd be a "square" on that types-listing, just not so nice.

Odd as it might seem to be interested in a completely unrelated subject, along with following tea and Buddhism I like to watch mixed martial arts fighting (UFC and such).  This subject of types reminds me of ideas on this subject by the main MMA commentator and podcast host interviewer, Joe Rogan.  His theory is that internet trolls lead unsatisfactory lives, and they take that out on everyone else by being as negative as possible about any subject that comes up.  It's also obvious enough that behavior is about seeking attention, essentially part of the general type definition for being a "troll."  But then really, they could be just like everyone else, working in a cubicle doing whatever, or higher level professionals, just inclined to be unpleasant.

I suspect that he's right though, that if you meet those people that are at their worst in a comments section posts they'd seem that type, coarse and unpleasant in real life too, in general living out unfulfilling biographies.  It might be more interesting if they were really living out a complete split in relating to others, nice in real life and horrible online, and that does seem possible.

In a recent podcast segment Joe Rogan explored another unusual idea related to people "trolling," that they might pass on ideas they know are false, not just insults or unlikely opinions, such as the flat earth theory.  The idea is that the earth is flat, not round, and some people actually believe this.  According to his theory some of the most outspoken advocates may not actually believe it, but may only express the idea to put people on, or to draw Youtube traffic to videos on the topic to earn revenue.  This video drew 1.7 million views; the creator earned money speculating that maybe the earth isn't a sphere, and then others copied that and did the same.

"proof" the earth is flat; NASA pictures vary  (photo credit)

It's interesting how anonymity might change things related to being genuine, or actually does.  In the Facebook groups related to tea people tend to really be who they are, in profiles.  In other places where tea is discussed they're not, like Steepster, a review site and forum.  On expat forums related to Thailand people are generally careful to isolate their online personas from who they really are, going well beyond not posting a real picture or name, and never mentioning details that link to them.  The separation enables distance from responsibility for online comments, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the reason for the practice.  In Thailand free speech isn't quite the given that it is in the US, so that could be one reason, that someone could speak more freely hidden behind an alias.  Of course one wouldn't want to test the limits of that, finding out how well an alias works as protection related to breaking the law.

Self-expression in the internet age, extended to real life

I probably deal with some degree of personal repression, completely aside from any concerns about free speech limitations.  I live within the narrow confines of being an employee, within a family-life role, all in a foreign country and culture.  In part I deal with all that by taking up hobbies, a lot of that online, by discussing tea, or less so through writing about Buddhism.  Arguing or being insulting online is a completely different thing, but that is still a form of self-expression, or in an odd sense entertainment.  The general point is that I do intentionally extend what I experience in real life in a different online direction, just not in any negative form, nothing to do with insulting people or misleading them.

like an alien clown (photo credit)

But lets go a step further, considering how someone might extend acting out a character "in real life." This relates to a recent bizarre series of "scary clown" incidents, in the sense that people extend a break with reality and antagonizing others to dressing up in costumes.  WTH, really?  That can't end well.  An article about someone dressing up as a clown to scare people, and then getting shot, ended with a catchy observation:


People better take those clown masks off… before the coroner does


Maybe it's not surprising that a few people that spend half their waking lives on the internet are finally losing touch with reality.  Maybe now it's not just the odd person that snaps and shoots up a movie theater, but the separation of behavior from reality could finally become more mainstream.  This is where someone might link a connection to watching too much television, or to the reality distorting effects of video games, but those sorts of linkages would be hard to determine.

real risk, or more trolling?  (credit)

On a different subject, I just happened across a comic-con convention a couple weeks back, at a local university; that seems another way the two mix, fantasy life and real life.  But then maybe these subjects really do span some sort of continuum.  Ordinary online discussion with strangers could naturally transition to some people being rude online, or leaving social conventions behind, then somehow on to dressing up in costumes (although that last connection isn't so clear).


Dressing up as a Star Trek character or Japanese anime character among other fans or stalking people in parks dressed as a clown don't necessarily seem closely related, but they may somehow connect.  Reality itself somehow seems more changeable now, more whatever someone defines it to be.  People were making that claim about television long ago, before trends seemed to actually bear out any risk, but maybe we're somehow finally getting there.

Back to Buddhism; not so related

To get back to the theme of this blog, we are way past Buddhism actually being able to help these people.  Even among people interested in Buddhism it seems to me that few enough get headed in any direction remotely connected to original teachings, but these people using insults as a hobby have taken many steps in a different direction.

This being a blog that's supposed to be about Buddhism, if there were some remotely common ground, what would it be?  Living any sort of fantasy life doesn't seem to overlap with Buddhism much; it's all about being grounded in immediate reality, not adding layers to that.  Even video games or online chatting may or may not sync well with such an approach to immediate experience.  Or then again maybe there is no conflict with the latter; there was never really any limitation on verbal discussion in Buddhism, until an outlier sect like Zen added that, a good millennium or so after Buddhism first came up.  Of course video games and television are new as well.  It doesn't seem a stretch to claim that Buddhism advocates being sincere and serious, a "square."  It also tends to reject mixing with people of opposite inclinations (not that I'm going to cite a passage in support of that), so a recommendation to avoid a lot of online negativity might be stated clearly enough, it would just take some interpretation to extend it to internet scope.

A Buddhist monk once gave me some interesting advice relating to how to avoid negativity in ordinary life, just not within the scope of online concerns.  He said don't read the newspaper; it's all just bad news, stories about crime and disasters and such.  His point was that in reading that you just take on mental noise; soak up negativity.  Related to something like the US elections this would seem a bit odd, since a lot of Americans will vote for the next President, and he would be advising they do so without closely following debate points and such.  Of course being a monk it seems unlikely he was voting in Thai elections.  The conventional equivalent might be unfollowing people that post in support of Trump, or Trump supporters doing the opposite.

There's really no conclusion for all this.  Buddhism probably does imply that people shouldn't be wasting time online, chasing random ideas and looking at pictures of attractive women or men and whatever they want buy, building up a sense of lacking things.  But it's not so obvious how to firm up that connection, to cite that link from early teachings.  I guess a case could be made for Buddhism advocating being sincere and "unserious," so maybe the part about needing to be a "square" isn't even a given.  It seems clearer that people shouldn't be a troll or a worm, or dress up as a clown to scare people, or shoot someone for being dressed as a clown, but then all of that is just common sense.