Escaping Bane’s Prison
Breaking Causation and Finding Free Will
Consider this charming quote from a Stanford University Professor:
“we are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment.”- Dr. RS
As the son of M.D.’s, we can safely say: the good doctor is out of control 😂.
Robert seems like a nice bloke — but all things considered, the stakes are quite high here!
Humanity-draining ideas like ‘science shows us we have no free will, and only the uninformed think otherwise’ should energize you into action.
Especially when you see them propagated on the public at scale, without proper rebuttal. Where are the lawyers of old?
These are ancient philosophical matters, and they should not be conflated with science.
But they are indeed important: they do effect people, and people are charged with building our future.
There is no future without hope.
While I’m not a professional, today’s debate is pretty demoralizing.
One way the conversation is frequently framed: the Universe (or Multiverse) is either deterministic or indeterministic.
IF the world is deterministic, there is no free will.
IF the world is indeterministic, there is no free will.
If it’s heads, they win. If it’s tails, we lose.
And it’s not totally silly: IF something is caused by something else, in whatever sense, is it really free? Not in the maximal sense.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, un-winnable games lead to deranged prizes. We have a crisis of meaning in the World. We should therefore not be surprised that there are companion doubts about the prospects of a quality future.
Soul crushing ideas like ‘the universe is meaningless’, ‘we have no free will’, ‘our brains didn’t evolve the capacity to answer our deepest questions’, and ‘only modern idiots that never grew up believe in the Divine’, don’t help.
At the time I write, there is a majority consensus amongst leading intellectuals with many of these nihilistic interpretations and conclusions. This is a multi-100 year trend. Notwithstanding, I’ve long admired many of these people and sought their counsel as I’ve made the case.
As a responsible adult, I am supposed to say: it’s disappointing when these philosophical speculations are done under the veil of settled scientific fact. And especially when under the allure of prestige (re: Stanford is one of our great places). The public deserves better!
But as an adventurer and artist at heart who loves making arguments on behalf of worthy causes: What a time to be alive! The status quo’s nihilism couldn’t be any more ripe for disruption.
I write with Good news:
Because there is never a magic jump from absolute Nothing to Something, IF there ever is something there always was something.
In the EP Conjecture, it’s realized that the base case is always.
In this a priori condition (discovered not invented), we understand where necessity comes from and find a uniqueness argument.
Always is satisfied by existing as un-caused and un-beginning, before all time, as the global origin.
“Un-caused” means that its 1st identity is not the result of any time or process or computation (path-less). It’s not self-caused, it’s un-caused.
This Always Source is Nature’s “0”: the exclusive 1st.
Always is not Nothing: they are eerily similar but strikingly different.
Nothing “is” unique, but it is non-existent and not encoded.
Always is unique, existing, and un-encoded. It’s an existor with identity before all time, and without our space or bits (i.e. the inherent original identity which is intrinsically necessary; it has no parts and there has been no difference).
Before all time (always) is not infinite past time. You don’t think backwards to the identity of the Source (see fun ready player 1 analogy in f.n. 5).
This same existor which is 1st (always) is also forever, un-ending, beyond all time: last.
Infinite future time doesn’t arrive at or satisfy forever, no paths do.
Just like always, forever too is un-caused or path-less.
So, 1 Eternal instance un-caused in “both” directions (always & forever).
IF what’s 1st (always) is un-caused and what’s last is also un-caused (forever), then what is “caused” (in the standard conception)?
We’ve broken causation, and escaped Bane’s prison. Free will is ours!
We start with the base case. The base case is Always. We then find forever.
Traditional conversations of determinism vs indeterminism, as determined by us inside of space and time, is thus overly assumptive and non-sequitur.
An un-caused Eternal base case which is infinite in nature — the unlimited Source of the limitless Domain, which is un-beginning and before all time (1st) and un-ending and beyond all time (last)— is exactly what we need for absolute originality, self-authorship, true creativity, and perpetual novelty: the primitives for maximal free will.
The more we learn about the Source of existence, the more meaningful our World appears to be.
Gotham is not beyond saving.
The night is always darkest just before the dawn.