You think you’re in control – and there’s your problem.
Hit pause right now. Can you tell what you’re going to think next?
We think we think our thoughts. We think we’re starting each moment in the driver’s seat. But if you consider that all of our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and choices come from previous thoughts, feelings, beliefs and choices, and that all of these lead us back eventually to prior causes that we had no part in, or at least no conscious memory of, you will realise that this belief has no foundation. Our thoughts, as it were, think us.
Previously, I wrote about Hofstadter’s “Strange Loop” phenomenon. To sum it up roughly: because we humans tend to process the happenings of the world in wholes rather than parts (for the sake of manageability, at the very least), we perceive that there is a hierarchy of “big stuff” (the wholes) over “little stuff” (the parts). We then infer downward causality – i.e. the big stuff makes the little stuff happen. Finally, since we – our complex, conceptual Selves – are “Big Stuff”, we assume we are at the top of the hierarchy, and hence make sense of the world with ourselves in the driver’s seat. We take ourselves to be the main actors; we assume we are in control.
Free will is a difficult topic because it inevitably brings up intellectual and moral dilemmas. (Are human rights not predicated on free will? Are human rights, in fact, universal? Are we not all created equal? And, of course, are we responsible for our actions? And so it goes.) But for the moment, here’s a question: Do you think in a straight line?
I’ll put my own messy head on the chopping block and say that I certainly don’t, not by any means.
Of course, we know that useful thought doesn’t always happen in a straight line, proceeding logically from A to B, and on to C. We know that insights happen seemingly out of nowhere; that innovation happens in fits and starts; that creativity is about connecting seemingly unrelated things, and that incubating ideas is as valuable a part of the process as picking apart and tackling them head-on. But what I’m talking about here is not so much what our thinking processes look like, but whether we can even accurately map our own mental territory – and confidently claim responsibility for the steps we take.
Does free will mean you can think – or that you know when you’re thinking?
At its most basic, free will implies agency: I choose what I do. Whereas with my question, “Do you think in a straight line?”, I am perhaps implying that free will must also include the rational thinking processes that precede choice; and assuming that being in control means being able to think clearly about what we choose to do. The trouble, of course, is that our thinking is often anything but rational. And taking rationality as a prerequisite for free will is, of course, a minefield of ethical dilemmas – for example, who defines what’s rational? And when, if ever, may we make decisions on behalf of others whose thinking capacities don’t make sense to us or even to themselves?
My question also assumes that free choice presupposes free thinking. Of course, not all of what we do comes about through conscious deliberation. But leaving aside the things we do that we don’t have to think about (and in fact can’t, thankfully – like breathing and other unconscious reflexes) on one side, and the things we’re forced to do against our will on the other, there’s a lot in between that we assume we are doing because we’ve thought about it (or can blame habit for).
Maybe what I’m considering here is whether we can truly claim to be in control only if we know when we are being rational and clear-thinking, and when we are not – and were able to act accordingly. That would make free will responsible (assuming we were ethical – which is another topic). But it would also assume that we know when we’re in control of what’s going on under the bonnet, so to speak.
Of course, we hardly know how the engine works, as I’m sure any neuroscientist will tell you. It’s funny, then, how we’re nevertheless able to look at the brain as a subject of our careful and supposedly objective examination and analysis. What we’re taking for granted is that we can somehow trust the instrument of examination to understand something completely elusive, when they are one and the same thing.
Perhaps what I’m trying to say is, if the Strange Loop phenomenon – that presumed downward causality – applies to how we perceive outward phenomena, surely it also applies to internal processes as well? We can’t see all the processes that amount to what we perceive as “thinking”, so how can we presume they are going in an orderly straight line, even on good days when we’ve had our coffee and a good night’s sleep? We think that thinking is happening in our minds and that we are making it all happen – we think we’re proceeding calmly from premise to conclusion – but how true is this?
Where do thoughts come from, and can we even call them our own?
Any thought you have has a precedent – right? Let’s leave coherence aside and assume that even if you feel like that eureka moment came out of the blue, it was still the product of some previous thinking, sensory input, forgotten memory, or even unconscious association. In other words, let’s assume every thought has a thought that led to it.
Do we know what those precedents are? How much of what we do – given that our thoughts lead to our actions – is based on actual, current data, and how much of it based on precedents – on data that’s old, established and programmed to run in the background?
Sam Harris, in one of his talks debunking free will as an illusion, points out that our beliefs – and hence our thoughts, feelings and choices – are formed in a “perfect crucible of prior causes”, most if not all of which happened through no choice of our own. On the assumption that rationality proves that we have free will, he says: “Reasoning is possible not because you are free to think what you want, but because you are not free. Reasoning makes slaves of us all.” This makes sense to me, if only because our reasoning can be judged as accurate only against the laws of nature, or that which is commonly accepted to be true. As Harris illustrates, you are not “free” to understand that 2+2 = 4, much less not to understand it; and anyone who thinks they are free to believe that 2 + 2 = 5 will have no end to their troubles.
Leaving aside questions of rightness and wrongness, if we’re put on the spot, we cannot predict what we’re about to think next. On the other hand, we can all usually trace our thoughts backward, at least a short way, to see how we got to what we’re thinking right now. Retracing your thoughts might seem like a sort of arbitrary exercise that might amuse people given to daydreaming (guilty), but actually it’s a mental operation we perform all the time when we need to “show our working” to others – and to ourselves. Most importantly, it demonstrates how our thinking only really makes sense, and therefore only really can be considered purposeful, in retrospect.
Or, to put it differently, it makes sense because we make it make sense.
Fate happens in retrospect – obviously…
“Life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards.”
Soren Kierkegaard
Your choices, naturally, have precedents too – chosen and unchosen. They are determined by your previous choices, by your sense of self, and by “luck” – or the stuff that happened that you chose to pay attention to, in line with your worldview – and, most importantly, your need for it all to make sense.
But then, is it you that’s actively choosing in each moment, or is it… whatever is playing out based on unconscious processes? And does “fate” mean what happens which we presume we are out of control of, or is it just how we tell the story afterwards? Fate, then, and also not-fate, could be a case of: It was either meant to happen or I made it happen. It was meant to happen because I made it mean to happen.
Coming back to thought retracing – if you were able to keep doing this continuously and beyond the short-term memory horizon, where would you end up? Outside yourself, of course.
The (un)conscious curator
“You are a mashup of everything you let into your life”
Paula Scher
When I was a kid, my dad used to wind me up by saying: “Where did you get that idea?” – implying, as I saw it, that my thoughts weren’t original, that I must have gotten them from somewhere or someone; in short, suggesting that I must be some sort of imitator. In my mind I’d protest something along the lines of: “But I chose to accept the idea, Dad – I shopped around for it, I used my special judgment!”
We all believe we are the ones doing the letting in; the ones deciding what we let in. Then we construct a personality around that – or perhaps the personality came first? Chicken or egg? – and the most important thing of all is that it needs to make sense to us and to others (or how we think others will read it). Whereas what we let in, if we’re honest, is the product of tendencies, preferences, biases, and even moods, most of which was shaped by the circumstances of our, and others’, history.
We like to take credit for all the things that make up our identity, as items we have carefully selected and “curated” (I love how that term has been popularised. It’s the perfect solution to the problem of increased consumerism; a reflection of, and comforting distraction from, the increasing and embarrassingly accurate algorithmification of our age. You don’t have to be creative, you just have to consume more, believing that your creative agency exists in choosing more from more options. The algorithms have already predicted what you’ll like; you don’t have to search at all, you just have to accept).
Actually, none of it is original. We didn’t come up with anything new. We’re a product of everything.
Data and change
How much do we let in, anyway – biologically speaking? According to this TED Talk on mindfulness, Sam Chase says we are exposed to an estimated 11,000 bits of information daily through our senses. However, we only attend to about 60 bits at a time. In other words, 99% of sensory stimuli are ignored.
Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World and The Doors of Perception, spoke of the brain and nervous system as a sort of reducing valve, letting through only a “measly trickle” of sensory information into our conscious awareness. Our brain does this, of course, to conserve energy and enable our survival.
What does the brain filter out and what does it attend to? What sort of “programming” does it run on? You would think the brain would be constantly on the lookout for new information, but what actually seems to be the case is that, leaving immediate threat-scanning aside, it’s mostly searching for missing puzzle pieces.
Our thinking is tempered by expectation and reward. The brain gets a dopamine reward whenever we predict something and it happens. It’s like a little “Aha!” high, but in response to a sense of resolution rather than discovery. And interestingly, I once read that researchers have found that the high comes with the anticipation of an outcome, not the outcome itself (a concept known as limerence, or related to it). I think this is why we enjoy watching movies we’ve seen before – it feels good when we know what’s coming next.
But the so-called anticipatory dopamine response also has important implications for addiction and substance abuse, and the feelings of withdrawal associated with loss. As is well known, the brain adjusts its reward baseline, needing more and more of a hit to fulfil its high(er) expectations. It readjusts its expectations all the time, updating the holes in the puzzle and seeking the pieces that will fit its frame.
The thing is, for any positive change or learning to occur, things have to happen that violate the brain’s expectations. The frame and the circuits have to be broken. Things have to happen that the brain does not predict. We have to get it wrong sometimes.
We like to think we’re in control, but if that were really the case – if it were true that we’re able to consciously work with real and current data and update our models as required in each moment – you’d think we might be better at change. Maybe the above-mentioned chemistry lesson, rough and incomplete as it is, helps explain why we’re terrible at it.
Can we still assume we’re in control, if 1) so much of what we do is habitual, 2) we’re almost chemically programmed to pay attention only to what fits our expectations and ignore what doesn’t, and 3) we don’t even know we’re doing this? Certainly, we can “hack” habit formation to our advantage, but what percentage of “on autopilot” is an acceptable minimum, especially if we don’t even know we’re on autopilot?
Ego consistency, our stories and judging the first person
Finally, the way we think about free will and being in control has implications for how we judge ourselves and others. And as it turns out, we seem to use double standards.
We assume our own agency; therefore, we criticise the actions of others as resulting from a poor use of their own agency. We also assume we somehow have a better understanding of others and their actions than vice versa. This is a bias formally known as asymmetric insight (see this article), which I rather like to think of as the “smart-ass-know-it-all-who-totally-gets-everyone” illusion. We hence attribute others’ actions to their characters (“They did it because of who they are”), while disregarding or discounting their circumstances. Conversely, we attribute our own actions to our circumstances. Why? Because we’ve been with us the whole time so we know – or believe – we could have behaved differently had we chosen to.
So, do we judge ourselves as ourselves – as we would judge a close friend, with known mitigating circumstances – or as any other responsible adult, held to the highest possible expectations, with no accommodations made for where they’ve been or where they are at? Either way, in many instances, it rounds out to “I could have done better” (and, maybe, “They should have known better.”). Is this a sort of face-saving illusion, because the alternative – believing that you couldn’t have done better, that you couldn’t have done anything differently at all – would mean that you’ve lost control or never had it in the first place?
To assume we could have done differently is, once again, to assume we are in control. Needing to explain why we did what we did is part of needing to be in control. Having an opinion that makes sense, but more importantly is consistent with our personal narrative, is part of needing to be in control. We may even fear that taking on other people’s points of view makes us incoherent, insubstantial, almost permeable. We tenuously believe that we can understand and predict others’ feelings and behaviour – but what if we can’t even understand or predict our own?
To put it all another way, everything we do is because of how we want to look, and how consistent we want that to be. But I think the most important takeaway is that the assumption of control creates a sometimes vicious bind of judgment and fault-finding.
Giving everyone a break so we can all get better
The point Harris makes is not that our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and choices don’t matter – obviously they matter, because they determine our actions. Neither does he suggest we should take no responsibility for our actions or stop trying to do better – that “free will” is now replaced by “free-for-all”. Rather, the key insight seems to be, very simply, that we cannot claim so much credit for everything we think, feel and believe. More importantly, he offers that this realisation could be a great relief; in fact, it could be the antidote to so much of humanity’s arrogance and hatred. It could move us forward from shame and blame, and be a basis for compassion and common humanity.
To dumb it all down massively, we should be easier on ourselves and others – after all, we are all deluded in our positions at the top of our respective imaginary pyramids. And this, in turn, could leave us “free” to choose our actions more skilfully.
“We hardly understand what we are working with, so we would do well to take a learning stance of humility.”
Chris Heurtz, in The Sacred Enneagram
All & None of the Above 