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)