Free Will
- artifactorrs
- Oct 5
- 3 min read
Eve and Adam, (Adam in Hebrew stands for Man) transgressed by consuming the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. Because of their sin, the Almighty stripped them of their immortality and cast them out of the Garden of Eden in disgrace. Despite the penalties imposed on humanity, the Almighty left them with the gift of discernment, allowing them to differentiate and choose between right and wrong. This endowment of Free Will empowers humans to ponder the question of "what if" and to seek genuine answers to moral dilemmas, practical problems, discover and innovate.
Free Will was debated through millennia by philosophy, religions leaders and common people (in Hebrew people split into two words that translates as children's of Adam). The debate in 20 century took unexpected turn as leading physicist pull Free Will in the middle of heated debate..
The debates begun with advancements in classical physics and new branch in physics studding elementary particles called Quantum Mechanics. In 1930 debate intensified and reached climax in 1964 with work of physicist John Bell.
In 1985 Bell gave interview to BBC addressing his theorem.
“...There is a way to escape the inference of superluminal speeds and spooky action at a distance (“spooky action at distance” coined by Einstein) . But it involves absolute determinism in the Universe, the complete absence of free will. Suppose the world is super-deterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined, including the "decision" by the experimenter to carry out one set of measurements rather than another, the difficulty disappears. There is no need for a faster than light signal to tell particle A what measurement has been carried out on particle B, because the universe, including particle A, already "knows" what that measurement, and its outcome, will be...” Bell acknowledged that his description is loophole around the difficulties supper-determinism resolves all problems.
Bell's theorem doesn't directly "resolve" the speed-of-light limit (as imposed by special relativity); instead, it exposes a fundamental tension between Quantum Mechanics (QM) and classical intuitions about locality and realism. Let me break this down step by step to address Problems, and why super-determinism (the idea that the universe "knows" everything in advance because all events are predetermined or "frozen" into spacetime from the Big Bang) isn't the only escape—though it is one possible way out.
Recap of Bell's Theorem and the Core Issue:
Bell's theorem (proven mathematically in 1964) shows that if the world obeys local realism—meaning particles have definite, pre-existing properties (realism) that are independent of measurement, and no influence travels faster than light (locality)—then certain statistical correlations in entangled particle experiments should satisfy "Bell inequalities."
However, QM predicts (and experiments confirm, starting with experiments in 1982 and many since) that these inequalities are violated. This means local realism can't explain the results.
The "speed-of-light problem" arises because entangled particles (e.g., two photons separated by light-years) show correlated outcomes instantly when measured, as if one "knows" the other's state right away. This looks like faster-than-light (FTL) influence, which relativity forbids for causal signals or information transfer.
Bell's proof doesn't fixes that above, instead it focus us on a choice : Give UP Locality & Realism Or find a Loophole that compatible (Satisfices Bell theorem and make Bell inequalities to fail) i.e., Loophole like supper-Determinism.
Experiments continue to close loopholes (e.g., "freedom-of-choice" loopholes to rule out super-determinism by using distant quasars (Truly Random scourge generating Truly Random sequences) to randomize measurements, but super determinism is hard to fully disprove because it's so all-encompassing.(No Paradoxes No confrontations) Let's hope that Free Will will stay with us!
Modern physics accepts that Quantum Mechanics works, and the "resolution" is that Universe is weirder than classical physics: Correlations can be stronger than local causes allow, yet without breaking relativity's no-FTL-info rule. Bell's proof just quantifies that weirdness mathematically!
Unless Quantum Mechanics will be reconciled under a Unfired Theory the weirdness will prevail
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