The Illusion of Choice: How I learned to stop worrying and shirk responsibility

A friend of mine (a passionate Newcastle fan, although not from around there, I should maybe point out) recently observed how good it was to see Newcastle win at Old Trafford and how the Man United fans revealed their true colours by leaving the ground a whole five minutes before the whistle was blown, giving up on their so-called team before the fat lady had sung. Perhaps they should start supporting Arsenal, as they’re alright now aren’t they, and most United fans probably live closer to the Emirates than Old Trafford anyway (I assume he meant the home ground of Arsenal, although the comedians among you might want to point out that this could even be true in relation to the actual Emirates, famous for bringing untold riches to the blue side of Manchester) You would never see the passionate, bare-chested Geordies North do something as despicable as that, he declared. Tempted as I was to direct him towards footage of Newcastle supporters pouring out of the St James’ Direct Arena at half time, their team four-nil down to Arsenal, and to thus miss their team perform what many would describe as one of the greatest comebacks in recent premier league history, I instead contemplated the illusion of choice.

I began supporting Man United when I was six, in 1996, as they were beginning their ascent towards being the undisputable (for a time) kings of the Premier League. Now don’t get me wrong, I say this as though I remember it, of course I don’t, supporting United was just a thing I did and that’s roughly the earliest age I can remember doing so. I have vague memories of Cantona, talked about in reverence, but can’t really remember much about him retiring or even playing. I’m pretty sure I have a distinct memory of Beckham’s half-line goal vs. Wimbledon, but who knows whether those are false memories implanted by countless montages.

Anyway, I was probably around six when I began supporting them, but did I actually choose to support them? I guess in some ways I did; looking at it now, and performing some amateur psycho-analysis, I go to the fact my older brother supported them. But then, that doesn’t mean I automatically should support them; if I were of a kind, if I had a particular dislike for my brother, or merely a slight rebellious streak, surely I would choose their fiercest rivals? Even if I didn’t hate my brother, which I didn’t, most of the time, surely I had some modicum of independence, even at six, to choose a team for myself. But alas no, perhaps as the youngest of three and always eager to impress my big brother, I duly followed in his steps. But is this a choice I ask you? it wasn’t my fault that I was raised in such a way that as the younger of two brothers I was inclined to follow his lead on a lot of matters such as this and it certainly wasn’t my choice that it was United that he chose.

In fact whose fault was that, that United were the team he chose? I have no idea, it wouldn’t have been our father, who for one wasn’t into football when we were that age and anyway had spent some time of his life in Kent and some of it Liverpool, so United would have been far from the natural choice. I suspect it was a combination of my brother’s friend being a United fan (oh god this chain could go on forever) and the fact they were winning… “Aha! Glory Supporter, I knew it!” You might say. But I mean, come on, he was eight for god’s sake – what do you expect, him to be some sort of football hipster, rejecting the fashionable choice at the time and instead choosing a team languishing mid-table (Newcastle, say)? Any team in the PL would have been glory supporting for us, in the Premier League desert that is the mid-South West (Swindon, who I do vaguely follow are the nearest team to set foot in the top tier). Well, yes you might say, support your local team, but again, he was 8! He wanted to be able to watch football every week, and as mentioned the only way he could do so was by picking a PL team, and from there, the only logical choice is United. Any other and I’d label him a football hipster and a fake.

So is it basic cause and effect then, classic determinism, in which case, it wasn’t a choice at all, as appears to be one philosophical response to determinism:

 “if an action was caused or necessitated, then it could not have been done freely, and hence the agent is not responsible for it.” Paul Russell; Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility

In fact in that same breath, Russell then argues that events are either causal or random, but neither imply any responsibility:

“...then it is inexplicable and random, and thus it cannot be attributed to the agent, and hence, again, the agent cannot be responsible for it....Whether we affirm or deny necessity and determinism, it is impossible to make any coherent sense of moral freedom and responsibility”

So according to Russell, we can’t really take any sort of responsibility for our choices. But then, free will is one of the never-ending philosophical debates, so quotes from one, or even countless philosophers on the subject may not be helpful. Also, these were the quickest ones I could find, and make the most relevance for, so maybe especially these ones are useless. Instead let’s look to the cold hard facts of Science.

After a quick wiki, you’ll find that apparently, early science assumed the world and universe as deterministic. Excellent, nothing’s ever our fault, done. But no, inevitably it’s going to get more complicated than that and, enter everyone’s favourite buzzword, Quantum Mechanics. Which actually make sense on a lot of levels, not least of which the fact that if we do make decisions, it happens somewhere in the recesses of the brain, and likely on a quantum level.

As a physics student, I have a fairly decent grasp of QM and all you really need to know is that everything comes down to probability – that chair your sat on will support you an incredibly high percentage of the time but there is a chance that all the particles could line up perfectly and you’ll end up on the floor. That chance maybe ridiculously small, once in a number that is more than the age of the universe in seconds. But importantly it’s not a zero chance. For all intents and purposes it may as well be though. Anyway, it’s a stochastic system; different events are labelled with different probability. Its non-deterministic, in that two different systems with the exact same preceding events could have different outcomes, maybe 70% one way and 30% the other.

So QM is telling us that the universe isn’t deterministic, but this doesn’t mean I, or you, have what we might call traditional free will, because we’re still following these probabilities – 70% of the time I will support United, and 30% of the time I’ll choose Arsenal, but it isn’t up to me which path I follow, it is quantum randomness. This idea is picked up by no other than Stephen Hawking in his book Grand Designs:

"the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets...so it seems that we are no more than biological machine and that free will is just an illusion”

So the most famous living physicist doesn’t believe in free will and philosophers can’t agree, after centuries of debate, but obviously, as a United fan lacking the Mancunian drawl,  I am a glory supporter.

P.S.

If like me, the discovery that Stephen Hawking thinks we are all biological machines following natural laws slightly shocked you, maybe made your life and all its choices seem insignificant, fear not, I leave you with Erwin Schrödinger, of cat fame and one of the founding fathers of Quantum Mechanics, and his thoughts on the matter:

“So let us see whether we cannot draw the correct, non-contradictory conclusion from the following two premises:

(i)My body functions as a pure mechanism according to the Laws of Nature.

(ii) Yet I know, by incontrovertible direct experience, that I am directing its motions, of which I foresee the effects, that may be fateful and all-important, in which case I feel and take full responsibility for them.

The only possible inference from these two facts is, I think, that I — I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt 'I' — am the person, if any, who controls the 'motion of the atoms' according to the Laws of Nature.” Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life (1944)

Rust

He picked up his car keys, careful not to touch the metallic blade and left the house, listening for the satisfying click of the lock as he slammed the door behind him. Of all the difficulties he encountered in his life, Anthony had always found locks and keys some of the more distressing. One of the few devices that had evolved independently in all of the worlds most advanced civilizations and its parts were almost exclusively made of metal. 

He hadn't had time to grab breakfast, so he headed for the drive through of his nearest place. He could've gone in and got served for free, but it was a hot day and he could already feel the sweat on his temples, so he decided not to risk any encounters. He wound down the window to press the telecom, but shook his head. Metal buttons. He remembered a meeting about this, somewhere in the depths of his mind. Cheaper to produce a whole unit out of metal than to create rubber buttons to fit in it. He hit reverse, and headed for the office.

The lack of food made Anthony irritable, and the traffic into town wasn't helping. He decided to head the long way round, past 56th and 9th. He'd rather be moving than sitting behind some asshole taxi driver, and probably wouldn't take much longer anyway. He pulled across the next lane and headed away from town.

He realised he hadn't been along this way for sometime, and at first the new developments made him worry he'd taken a wrong turn. His sat-nav looked good though, so he carried on. Hell, who cared if he was a bit late today. It came to him now why it had all changed anyway, a recent initiative by the new mayor to develop the - what was the phrase he used? - artistic integrity of the city. This area had been targeted for redevelopment anyway, and new colleges, galleries and studios must have sprung up before anyone could question what the fuck artistic integrity even meant.

He could have lifted the city beyond the shit-hole it had become, given the chance. His father had owned small cinema, and as long as he could remember he'd sit next to him in the projection room, watching his Dad change the reels, and waiting till he was old enough to do it himself. And he had, a couple of times, when he was a teenager, before any of the problems started. He had it all worked out. Business College beckoned, then he'd breeze his twenty's honing his skills. Eventually his father would retire, handing him the cinema, by which time he'd have the knowledge and business acumen his father never did. He'd raise the cinema far and beyond its station.

The plan had gone well at first. He'd aced college, and had worked his way into middle management in a small building developers. But by then, his problems had begun. He could still remember looking at his hole-punch. It was as if it were a plasticine model, that had been squeezed slightly too aggressively. He shrugged it off at first, and moved on, but more and more situations began to arise. Staples would work at first, but then, after he'd find the papers falling away from each other when he got home. He'd find himself with coins that were decaying almost before his eyes. And his key. He'd have to get a new one cut almost weekly before he had worked it out.

Twenty, even ten years ago his problem wouldn't have been so bad. The climate was different back then, not so hot, a man could spend months without having to worry about sweating like an SOB. Then again, ten or twenty years ago, his sweat wouldn't have been so... potent. With the worlds population exploding, the megacities sprawled. It had become easier and cheaper to live off takeaways than to shop in a cramped supermarket and cook in a cramped kitchen. Anthony had never been one to worry about his health, and knew what he liked, so he probably had takeaways more than most. All the salt and other electrolytes in these foods were more toxic than most people knew. The body, being cleverer than most people, did know about this, so tried to get rid of them. Mostly through sweat. Electrolytes accelerated the rusting of metals. Anthony's sweat was abrasive, and in a world of iron and steel, this could cause problems.

Whether he had some underlying problem to compound this, Anthony didn't know; he didn't want to go to a Doctor to become their specimen, to bring out at conferences for them all to pontificate over. He'd read that his underlying heart problems might not have helped, and could induce excessive sweating, but in the end it didn't matter why it happened, just that it did.

At first, he couldn't cope. He stopped going to work, and sat around all day afraid to touch anything, after he managed to dissolve his fridge door handle, and then short circuit his lamp. Slowly though, he began to handle things better. But he couldn't face his former colleagues and decided to move back with his Dad, help out at the cinema now, so no one would know. This had turned out to be a bad idea. He could just about cope with everyday life by then, but handling projectors and film reels was a different matter. The business wasn't doing well anyway, and Anthony was just making things worse. Changing a reel mid-film was difficult with gloved hands. His fathers patience broke one day when the glove got caught in the projector on the opening night of their Sean Connery weekend, for a showing of Goldfinger. It had been his favourite film on release, and his old age had made him ratty.

He broke it to Anthony the next day that he was selling the cinema. The usual bullshit arguments reared their heads, peace in my old age, you need to go and find your own path, but Anthony knew it was so he couldn't drag the business through the mud. When he'd walked out the house that day, it was the last time he saw his father, who had a heart attack on holiday to see Fort Knox, paid for by the sale. Anthony wasn't saddened by the news. He'd found ways to blame his father for most things in his life by then, and was glad to be rid of the old man. No, by then, Anthony had grander plans for his life.

Anthony’s mind had wandered, and he was surprised to find himself almost at work. The bright golden arches over the car park stood like a depressingly forced smile over the lifeless industrial estate. Not unlike the smile on the receptionists face as he walked in.

"Good Morning Mr Wilson, how are you today?” - And before he even had time to answer –“The months investment reports are waiting on your desk."

"Thank you Amy", he managed, before entering the elevator. It was Amy, wasn't it? He thought to himself, before realising he didn't really care.

He walked to the desk and allowed a smile to himself. The investments were all looking healthy. He himself had pushed the idea of marketing in film, and by buying out the food vendors as well, it had paid off well. Combined with the Olympic sponsorship, the summer was set to be a record breaker, with millions upon millions of the public set to have little choice but to purchase their food. The stage was set. 

Along with the investment reports were the most recent chemical analyses of their products. To conform to the masses, they had had to bring their salt levels right down. Anthony saw this as a set-back at first, as salt was the basis of his idea, but it led to innovation. He had investigated others, as well as increasing levels of potassium nitrate. As long as they had low-salt plastered all over their advertising, it was assumed that their food must be healthy. 

As Anthony read the main analysis, he realised they had discovered what he had been looking for: Sample Electrolyte 4578. Combined with a particular fat, it had the addictive properties of nicotine, enough to get people hooked, but not noticeable enough to be caught by the food regulators. The body, after processing the compound would then reject 78% of the electrolytes, anyway it could. And most importantly, when mixed with urea in sweat, the liquid produced would burn through metals quicker than stomach acid.

Anthony glanced back at the sales projections again, smiled, unlocked the bottom drawer, and pulled out the wooden handled revolver.