The Physicist Who Proved Free Will Using Thermodynamics Physicist and philosopher Jenann Ismael joins to unveil a radical idea: free will isn’t an illusion, it’s a physical reality grounded in thermodynamics and relativity. In this conversation, Jenann explains why no system, not even a perfect computer, can predict its... own future, and how this inherent unpredictability opens the door to real agency. We explore the paradox of identity, the limits of determinism, the role of memory in selfhood, and why your choices truly come from you. This is the clearest, most rigorous defense of free will in the age of physics.show more

Try it. You'll never look back.

@WiringTheBrain has been saying this for years! Curt you should read his book Free Agents its great, really up your street.

Her explanation reveals no escape from determinism; rather, it emphasizes the limitation of a local observer in obtaining all initial conditions for future events. Consequently, I perceive no causality as truly separate from a determinist perspective. The self, then, is simply a very complex brain state, and what we call skills, passions, economic needs, and goals are merely descriptive terms for its intricate physical manifestations.

Free will also implies that you can change your decision at the last moment, and so Jenann is right to link free will to the unpredictability inherent in natural laws. However, natural laws themselves would not be possible if there were no causality or determinism of events in nature. This leads to a certain paradox between causality and predictability, where causality, although it exists, cannot be proven due to the absence of complete predictability. In this sense, we can say that with our free will, which we exercise in everyday life, we do not prove indeterminism but only prove unpredictability, thereby proving that determinism is unprovable. As for relativity, it can also be understood as the impossibility of influencing natural events without causation. Just because you changed your state of motion in relation to an event is not a sufficient reason for that event to change as long as you are in the role of a passive observer. And we can see this in Einstein's relativity as well. In the introduction to his Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies (Special Theory of Relativity), Einstein takes the example of an induced electric current in a conductor due to the relative motion of the conductor and the magnet. And he correctly notes that what the ammeter measures, namely the induced current, is a consequence exclusively of the relative motion of the conductor and the magnet, although classical electrodynamics gives two different explanations depending on whether the magnet is at rest while the conductor moves relative to it, or vice versa. In this way, as Einstein says, classical electrodynamics introduces an asymmetry in viewing that is not inherent in the phenomenon itself, and therefore he postulates the invariance of the laws of electrodynamics with respect to all reference frames in uniform motion. Anyway, if we understand the measurement of electric current or the reading of an ammeter as a specific event that happened in nature, we can say that that event must happen for all observers regardless of the reference frame in which they are at rest, only the space-time coordinates of that event will not be the same for all of them. We can also say that thanks to Lorentz transformations there is a complete correlation of these events in the space-time continuum, thus satisfying the cause-and-effect relationship. But the problem is that the space-time continuum itself is a four-dimensional space, which therefore has one dimension more than the real, three-dimensional space, in which events are realized and in which we, as real three-dimensional beings, observe them. In other words, causality and determinism are placed in a 4-dimensional space that we do not have complete insight into, which in a 3-dimensional real space may look like the absence of determinism or probabilism that quantum mechanics introduces as a fundamental property of nature. What we experience in real space is only a projection of the complete image from 4D space-time, while for similar reasons as in cartography, a projection can never be a faithful image of what is happening in a one-dimensional higher space. The incompleteness of quantum mechanics, which was Einstein's main complaint, could therefore be consistent with a certain incompleteness that his special relativity also brings, and as we now know, this consistency has come to full expression within quantum field theory. However, to prove that causality is not provable even though it exists, we do not need to go so far as to invoke quantum mechanics. Classical mechanics also confirms that full predictability is limited to the two-body problem. Therefore, even within classical mechanics we can only believe in causality, but in the general case we cannot prove it.

She seems to be confusing randomness for free will?!

Fake

You can’t understand “free will” with physics alone. Not by a long shot. Neuroscience is only just starting to scratch the truth. We drive determinism at its core and consciousness is a byproduct of chaos. She didn’t prove shit. All she proved was her lack of knowledge of cause and effect.

She's objectively and provably incorrect. Being unable to determine the future due to lack of access to variables does not make it indeterminable.

I like the idea of this. This may be naive, but I feel like free will, if real; would have to begin from at least birth. If not before. Example: I would not choose to be adopted into an abusive family. Am I wrong in how I'm looking at this?

Great discussion! I’m skeptical, though—false memories from dreams (e.g., dream-reality confusion) can act like a tiny geometric deviation, diverging life choices over time. If undetected, they undermine free will more than entropy might save it.