If I told you to eat a rotten egg would you do it ? well, you might, who knows, you may have a certain liking to rotten eggs, but if you refuse, is it really your choice, are you really in control of the choices you make ?
Free Will in essence doesn’t mean having the freedom to make choices, that’s the illusion we try and tell ourselves, that yeah sure “I have free will, I can choose to do X if I wanted” but that’s not really the case, our experiences and environment determines the sort of individual we are right now, think about it, if you had not lived through a certain experience or known a certain person or lived in a certain environment, will you still be the same person ?
Your identity is essentially a synthesis of your (Self) = “internal wiring + personal experiences + environment” if any one of this were slightly different, then you will most definitely be a much different individual, so if who we are is predetermined, how does claim they have free will ? well free will exists but its paradoxical, we believe free will means having total control of our choices, the freedom to do certain things at certain times, free will in the essence means having the choice to follow signal or noise, noise essentially means choosing (the illusion of control), its an illusion because your choices are already predetermined based on “Self”, free will just means surrendering control and just go with the flow, that’s why I said its paradoxical “Signal is what your substrate (wiring + experience) is naturally drawn to when ego gets out of the way. Noise is what external validation, fear, or conditioning tells you that you ‘should’ do.”
Past Events → Shape You (deterministic)
↓
Present Moment: ONE choice (free will)
↓
[Signal] or [Noise]?
↓
If Signal → Surrender to what emerges (deterministic again)
If Noise → Keep "choosing" (illusion of control)
The paradox:
- Choosing signal = choosing to stop choosing
- Choosing noise = continuing to “choose” (but it’s just ego/conditioning)
Certain choices become attractive to us based on your “Self” and choosing to allow process to emerge based on constraints is what free will is all about, let me use my experience as an example, I tried building the Aptos codebase and my laptop kept turning off and I discovered upon closer inspection that my PC wasn’t powerful enough, then I stumbled upon Consensus and then Raft, even if what I wanted was an alternative to Aptos, but I just followed the rabbit hole and went into Raft and I ended up building this “Leader-Worker Parallelization Model for Transaction Execution” here is the link to the project DeSync-V0
- “Failure” (potato PC) → redirect to Raft → DeSync-V0 emerges
The constraints we encounter are just a way of the next step to reveal itself, and it will only reveal itself when we just follow and see where the rabbit hole leads, sometimes you wont see an immediate payoff, but who knows later on it may be very important to you
“Important: Following signal is NOT the same as following comfort. Sometimes signal says ‘quit your job and build something risky’, that’s uncomfortable but aligned. Noise says ‘stay where it’s safe because you’re afraid’, that’s comfortable but misaligned. Signal often leads to MORE uncertainty, MORE failure, MORE discomfort but it feels RIGHT even when it’s hard. If you’re using ‘following signal’ to avoid difficult work or justify staying in your comfort zone, that’s not signal, that’s noise disguised as signal. The difference: signal pulls you toward growth through discomfort; noise pushes you toward stagnation through comfort.”
Also this isn’t a guide to follow, we are all different and all have different experiences, so be willing to embrace that individuality and find what works for you.
“Now back to my rotten egg question: will you eat it if I asked you to? Your answer isn’t really YOUR choice, it’s determined by your “Self”. But you DO have one choice: to recognize that and stop pretending you’re in total control, or to keep believing you’re freely choosing while actually just following conditioning.
That’s the only free will you actually have. What will you do with it?”