Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Red Expendable · 09-08-2002, 09:56 PM

I always associated free will with the ability to choose without another entity forcing your hand.

For example: I can go into a ice cream shop and choose chocolate over vanilla. Mainly because I like chocolate more than vanilla. But there may be times when I want some other flavor of ice cream. Depending on my mood, what I desire at that time. No one is forcing me to choose one flavor over another - nor are they forcing me to eat ice cream. This to me is free will.

No one forces me to go to work, I choose to go on my own accord. I know if I don't go, I won't earn any money and won't be able to pay bills and buy essentials. But it is still my choice. To me this is free will.

There are plenty of events that happened to me in the past the influenced or 'programmed' by brain to into certain patterns of thinking and habits. But at any given moment I am able to change or break those habits/cycles or at least begin a process of change.

At age 18 I chose to start smoking. At about age 24, after a near experience with death, I stopped. I could have continued smoking, like so many people do, but I decided to quit. This is free will to me. I had a choice and made it based on my WILL to live. I was free to live or die. I chose life over the slow suicide of smoking cigs.

I suppose someone could say that I made this choice based on the instinct to survive. But that IS bunk. There are plenty of people that do things that harm the health (drugs, smoking, eating unhealthy) - knowing that it will or is killing them - and do it anyway.

When I took up smoking I knew that it would slowly kill me - but did it anyway. It was my choice to ignore the facts of what smoke does to your lungs.

My past epxerience with one of my aunts who died from smoking was firmly implanted in my brain when I lit my first cig. But I did it anyway. My choice, made freely. After I finally quit, it was because I ewalized that if I wanted to live a long healthly life, I would have to quit smoking.
This too was done of my own free will.

Keith Russell · 09-09-2002, 08:08 AM

Free will is a social product?

Do you folks really do things (anything) only because you see (or have seen) others do them?

Do you buy a CD only because you know others like it, but have never given any consideration to whether or not you yourself like it?

Do you buy a car only because you think others buy similar cars, but give no thought to your own individual needs when making such a purchase?

What does it mean to say 'free will is a social construct', and does the meaning of that phrase really describe what you do when you shop for clothes, get home at night, or begin choosing a pet--or a spouse?

I know in my case it certainly does not.

Keith.

Kent Stevens · 09-09-2002, 11:35 AM

I suppose there are two main ways of considering free will. The first way would be to consider that other things besides us have free will. Then there might be certain things that act as if they had free will, but their actions are not sufficiently complicated enough to have true free will.

The other interpretation is that there is no such thing as free will. No system has the property of free will.

I have kind of dabbled with the first interpretation but I now prefer the second interpretation. The kind of problems I have with the first interpretation is when I start constructing phrases that involve entities other than humans having free will. Maybe cats having free will is only partly weird, but what about snails having free will. Then you could have crabs or insects having free will. Cats are more flexible in their actions but they also respond to instincts as well. Do you want to have vertabrates such as mammals having free will, but other animals not having free will?

It starts sounding unusual when you start crediting robots such as Data or the Terminator with free will. At what developmental point do you start crediting Hal or Skynet with free will? Did Skynet only have free will only after it's huge increase in knowledge after which it became self aware?

Then if you play a computer game it may appear as if it has free will. The computer game is unpredictable to you and it acts in a rational manner. At what point does a computer game get unpredictable enough or complex enough for it to be credited with free will.

Free will seems more of an all or nothing kind of attribute. You can have creatures with lesser degrees of intelligence, rationality, or language. But it seems unusual to talk about entities having lesser degrees of free will. This makes it hard for free will to gradually develop in animal species the same way the degree of intelligence develops in animal species.

We have freedom to do a lot of things but this is not the same as free will. If someone is threatening to kill you with a gun unless you comply, then your freedom has been taken away. It is more problematic to say that your free will has been taken away when you are threatened with your life. I suppose you could say that someone was made to act against their own free will. But I think we can say similar things without implying the metaphysics of free will. We could say that someone was forced to do something against their will, or that they were forced to do something that they did not want to do.

We can do a variety of different things but so does a computer game or the weather. Does a computer game or the weather have free will because it could have done things differently then what actually occured?

People are free to smoke or not to smoke. There is no one forcing them to smoke. People have alternatives but so does the weather. We do not need to confuse this freedom of choice with this nebulous concept of free will.

I think that it is clearer to say that there is no such thing as free will. Then the problem of saying that millions of different systems have this property disappears. Then the problem of deciding when systems develops free will from simpler predecessers vanishes.

[ September 09, 2002: Message edited by: Kent Stevens ]

Keith Russell · 09-09-2002, 12:09 PM

Greetings:

A computer doesn't have free will, IMO, because it does not choose its actions based on a desired outcome. A computer cannot evaluate which option out of several is 'better' or 'worse' for it.

If a certain situation arises, if certain data are present, the computer must respond in a certain, preprogrammed, fashion--period.

But, human beings are able (and I believe other animals are as well, to a lesser extent) to make decisions based on our understanding of future events.

If I do action 'A', then event 'B' will occur. But, if I do action 'C', event 'D' will occur. It seems that only human beings can ask the question "do I prefer event 'B', or event 'D' ", and this ability to evaluate the consequences of chains of events projected (in some cases far) into the future, is what I mean by 'free will'.

Keith.

1sec · 09-10-2002, 08:21 AM

Kent!

You're smoggy again, man.

Quote:

People are free to smoke or not to smoke. There is no one forcing them to smoke. People have alternatives but so does the weather. We do not need to confuse this freedom of choice with this nebulous concept of free will.

Let me get you out of the smog.

The cloud releases the water willy-nilly.

You can put it off if you chose to.

And you know it.

Kent Stevens · 09-10-2002, 11:40 AM

Quote:

A computer doesn't have free will, IMO, because it does not choose its actions based on a desired outcome. A computer cannot evaluate which option out of several is 'better' or 'worse' for it.

If a certain situation arises, if certain data are present, the computer must respond in a certain, preprogrammed, fashion--period.

When you play computer games this is not necessarily the case. Say someone plays a game of Chess against the computer. The computer can evaluate alternative moves and depending on the outcome of this evaluation pick one of the best moves.

The Computer can evaluate the long term consequences of moves. The more powerful the computer the more that the machine can potentially see the consequences of certain moves.

When you play Chess the computer does vary it's moves. When you start a game of Chess you have a certain situation occuring again. But the computer depending on whether it is Black or white does not play the same moves all the time. The computer has a degree of randomness built into it. If we are placed in identical circumstances then we would be caused to do the exact same thing. In this way we are not unlike a machine or any part of nature.

There are alternatives available to almost any system. There are alternatives for computer programs, traffic lights, the Earth, bacteria, plants, animals, and people. There are also alternatives open to the Sun, the Earth, and the weather. Only in retrospect do all systems must do what they do for certain reasons. The weather is just one example of the many systems that have alternatives open to them.

K · 09-10-2002, 11:47 AM

Not to mention that there have been checkers games that don't just evaluate every move. They have certain things that they observe about the game such as number of kings, relative number of pieces, etc. They then build up an expertise from playing many games as to which of the observed game traits are important to winning and which moves tend to aid in maximizing those traits. The computer program got pretty good at winning. This technique has a lot in common with genetic algorithms.

I can't remember who was working on this. I'll dig it up and post references if anyone is interested.

Red Expendable · 09-11-2002, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Kent Stevens:


When you play computer games this is not necessarily the case. Say someone plays a game of Chess against the computer. The computer can evaluate alternative moves and depending on the outcome of this evaluation pick one of the best moves.

The Computer can evaluate the long term consequences of moves. The more powerful the computer the more that the machine can potentially see the consequences of certain moves.

When you play Chess the computer does vary it's moves. When you start a game of Chess you have a certain situation occuring again. But the computer depending on whether it is Black or white does not play the same moves all the time. The computer has a degree of randomness built into it. If we are placed in identical circumstances then we would be caused to do the exact same thing. In this way we are not unlike a machine or any part of nature.

There are alternatives available to almost any system. There are alternatives for computer programs, traffic lights, the Earth, bacteria, plants, animals, and people. There are also alternatives open to the Sun, the Earth, and the weather. Only in retrospect do all systems must do what they do for certain reasons. The weather is just one example of the many systems that have alternatives open to them.

I don't agree with this last paragraph in particular. You are talking about things that are not thinking. They have no 'alternatives'. That word implies that they have a 'choice'. How can the earth, sun or the weather 'choose' anything, without having a brain? Even a computer would, in some far fetched way be closer to choosing than the Earth or the weather - because of the programming, which could simulate the act of choosing.

According to Merriams-Webster's online:

Main Entry: free will
Function: noun
Date: 13th century
1 : voluntary choice or decision 
2 : freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention

I agree with this definition. And thing based on this definition, human beings have free will. Particulary in regards to entry #2 - because since there is no such thing as 'divine intervention'. But also in regards to entry #1 - because when presented with any choice at any given moment in life - whether it be to put on a jacket, get out of bed, to what I eat - I am the one ultimately making the decision.

Sure I might be basing my choices on past experiences, even if I do the opposite of conventional wisdom (like NOT putting on a rain coat if it's raining outside, before I go outside) - that decision too - is based on knowledge I have obtained. I do it knowing that my clothes will get wet. But none of this makes it any less FREE WILL.

I guess the controversy arises when people tend to redefine that phrase to fit their own purposes.

RedEx

Kent Stevens · 09-11-2002, 11:43 AM

I do not think that I am abusing the word "alternative". If I say there are alternative possibilities for next week weather I am not making the word alternative nonsensical. If I say that the computer considers alternative moves in playing a game of Chess I am not stretching the alternative to breaking point. Words like alternatives, options, or possibilities can apply to any system.

However you get into word abuse if you start saying that the weather chose to be fine today. Personally, it starts getting weird if you say that the computer chose to play certain moves in a computer game.

This weirdness and inappropriate usage of words is the main reason I want to dump the phrase "free will" along with other religious words such as soul. Maybe free will can be used to just be used to mean freedom. Unfortunately, when I try expressing the viewpoint that many systems have freedom, using the term free will I tend to get into word abuse.

I can say that a complex robot such as Data from Star Trek is free in that he is not coerced nor restrained. If Data is captured or threatened with lethal force he is not free.

But if I say that Data has free will, when all he is just free, I am getting into word abuse. Similarly, to say that a snail has free will, when the snail is just free to move around, I get into word abuse.

The end result of this is for me to give up on trying to rehabilitate this term free will altogether. It is clearer just to say that free will does not exist. Free will is bunk. Free will is an imaginary property of a system.

Free will in a theological sense is a great thing for God. I am sure there are many managers and engineers who would like a free will clause in their contracts that resolves them of all responsibility. Then if a manager is negligent in their supervision and does not intervene, which causes mistakes, he can claim free will. Similarly, for the engineer if they construct a bridge that falls down on it's own accord, then it is free will on behalf of the bridge. For the engineer to have made the bridge so that it did not fall down would have been violating the cosmic law of free will.

Under the traditional bible we are not free. If we sin too much then various plagues or flood may befall us. If we reject a particular conception of god then our fate is eternal agony in hell. God is in effect holding a gun to our heads to make us believe or do whatever. God is thus intervening in our lives.

Free will does not exist. To use the term free will in any sense usually results in word abuse. Consequently, I am dumping the use of free will as a legitimate term along with the word soul.

[ September 11, 2002: Message edited by: Kent Stevens ]

Kent Stevens · 09-13-2002, 01:41 AM

My take on free will is that it is similar to the imaginary property of mojo. Both mojo and free will do not in fact exist. What Santa Claus is to God, mojo is to free will. To more clearly illustrate my viewpoint I will now satirise the use of mojo in the place of the term free will. Yet, another imaginary property that could have been used instead of free will would have been spunk.

Mojo is believed to be the magical property of an intelligent and unpredictable entities such as humans. Mojo is used in each decision that we make. Without mojo we are powerless. Without mojo we are like simple robots. Mojo is part of what distinguishes us from other animals and all other systems. There are some attempts to say the more complex animals have mojo, but it would be impossible for a physical system such as the weather to have mojo. Without mojo we have no justification for punishing anyone. Even if there is no scientific evidence for mojo we still have to assume it’s existence in order to make valid moral judgements. Having a world where there is no mojo is even more unthinkable than having a world without Santa Claus. The existential angst of having no mojo is terrible.

There are three main ways of looking at how we do things. That is with no mojo, standard mojo, and random mojo. For illustration purposes we will speculate what happens if you have certain magical powers over time. The magical power being that you have a magical video camera which you can film something happening over the same set period of time over and over again. So, this magical video camera means that you could film what happens to someone from 9pm to 10pm on the same day, over and over again. This would be about the only practical way of getting initial conditions that were identical each time. Depending on what you believe about mojo you may get the same or different results happening on the different videos taken.

If you do not believe in mojo, then if shoot different videos of the same events over and over again, we get the same results. There may be only a very small change due to quantum uncertainty but this constitutes neither a major nor a meaningful difference. The person concerned could not really have done anything different. So if someone is filmed going into an ice cream store many times for the exact same time interval, they always choose the same ice cream flavour.

This changes with the magical property of mojo. When you take different videos of the same time interval you get different events happening. There are two major different types of mojo. First of all you have standard mojo where videos differ for a reason, and then you have random mojo where videos are unpredictably different from each other. If someone is filmed over the same time interval going to an ice cream parlour with standard mojo the ice cream chosen differs in a predictable and reasonable way. So one time a person might have a vanilla ice cream, the next time they have a chocolate ice cream. Both of these ice cream flavours constitute some of the person’s favourite ice creams and are chosen for certain reasons. If you look at the different videos taken you see that people could have done something different from what they did do. With random mojo there is also different videos produced but the choices are at least partly random. With random mojo if you film someone going into a ice cream parlour they end up picking ice cream in a random manner. So they pick a variety of different flavours for no reason at all. This random mojo is what would happen if quantum effects altered human behaviour in a significant way. This random mojo is not particularly meaningful to most people even though it demonstrates how things could have been done differently.

Mojo is also the major excuse for Santa Claus aka God to duck responsibilies. If you get a defective present from Santa it is due to mojo in Santa elves. Santa though mightily powerful cannot mess with the universal mojo conservation law, that means that entities cannot be forced to do anything against their mojo. The only problem with this is that Santa does seem to be messing with different peoples mojo by rewarding them for doing certain things. However, if you get a bad present from Santa it is due to your own mojo and not his. It might be noted that there are people who do not believe in Santa Claus aka God, but who do believe in mojo.

Free will does not exist the same way that mojo does not exist. Though a large portion of the world believes in mojo aka free will, this does not mean that we have to. Likewise, just because a lot of people believe in Santa Claus aka God does not mean that we have to.

09-09-2002, 11:35 AM	#163
Kent Stevens Regular Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Wellington, New Zealand Posts: 484	I suppose there are two main ways of considering free will. The first way would be to consider that other things besides us have free will. Then there might be certain things that act as if they had free will, but their actions are not sufficiently complicated enough to have true free will. The other interpretation is that there is no such thing as free will. No system has the property of free will. I have kind of dabbled with the first interpretation but I now prefer the second interpretation. The kind of problems I have with the first interpretation is when I start constructing phrases that involve entities other than humans having free will. Maybe cats having free will is only partly weird, but what about snails having free will. Then you could have crabs or insects having free will. Cats are more flexible in their actions but they also respond to instincts as well. Do you want to have vertabrates such as mammals having free will, but other animals not having free will? It starts sounding unusual when you start crediting robots such as Data or the Terminator with free will. At what developmental point do you start crediting Hal or Skynet with free will? Did Skynet only have free will only after it's huge increase in knowledge after which it became self aware? Then if you play a computer game it may appear as if it has free will. The computer game is unpredictable to you and it acts in a rational manner. At what point does a computer game get unpredictable enough or complex enough for it to be credited with free will. Free will seems more of an all or nothing kind of attribute. You can have creatures with lesser degrees of intelligence, rationality, or language. But it seems unusual to talk about entities having lesser degrees of free will. This makes it hard for free will to gradually develop in animal species the same way the degree of intelligence develops in animal species. We have freedom to do a lot of things but this is not the same as free will. If someone is threatening to kill you with a gun unless you comply, then your freedom has been taken away. It is more problematic to say that your free will has been taken away when you are threatened with your life. I suppose you could say that someone was made to act against their own free will. But I think we can say similar things without implying the metaphysics of free will. We could say that someone was forced to do something against their will, or that they were forced to do something that they did not want to do. We can do a variety of different things but so does a computer game or the weather. Does a computer game or the weather have free will because it could have done things differently then what actually occured? People are free to smoke or not to smoke. There is no one forcing them to smoke. People have alternatives but so does the weather. We do not need to confuse this freedom of choice with this nebulous concept of free will. I think that it is clearer to say that there is no such thing as free will. Then the problem of saying that millions of different systems have this property disappears. Then the problem of deciding when systems develops free will from simpler predecessers vanishes. [ September 09, 2002: Message edited by: Kent Stevens ]</p>

09-11-2002, 11:43 AM	#169
Kent Stevens Regular Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Wellington, New Zealand Posts: 484	I do not think that I am abusing the word "alternative". If I say there are alternative possibilities for next week weather I am not making the word alternative nonsensical. If I say that the computer considers alternative moves in playing a game of Chess I am not stretching the alternative to breaking point. Words like alternatives, options, or possibilities can apply to any system. However you get into word abuse if you start saying that the weather chose to be fine today. Personally, it starts getting weird if you say that the computer chose to play certain moves in a computer game. This weirdness and inappropriate usage of words is the main reason I want to dump the phrase "free will" along with other religious words such as soul. Maybe free will can be used to just be used to mean freedom. Unfortunately, when I try expressing the viewpoint that many systems have freedom, using the term free will I tend to get into word abuse. I can say that a complex robot such as Data from Star Trek is free in that he is not coerced nor restrained. If Data is captured or threatened with lethal force he is not free. But if I say that Data has free will, when all he is just free, I am getting into word abuse. Similarly, to say that a snail has free will, when the snail is just free to move around, I get into word abuse. The end result of this is for me to give up on trying to rehabilitate this term free will altogether. It is clearer just to say that free will does not exist. Free will is bunk. Free will is an imaginary property of a system. Free will in a theological sense is a great thing for God. I am sure there are many managers and engineers who would like a free will clause in their contracts that resolves them of all responsibility. Then if a manager is negligent in their supervision and does not intervene, which causes mistakes, he can claim free will. Similarly, for the engineer if they construct a bridge that falls down on it's own accord, then it is free will on behalf of the bridge. For the engineer to have made the bridge so that it did not fall down would have been violating the cosmic law of free will. Under the traditional bible we are not free. If we sin too much then various plagues or flood may befall us. If we reject a particular conception of god then our fate is eternal agony in hell. God is in effect holding a gun to our heads to make us believe or do whatever. God is thus intervening in our lives. Free will does not exist. To use the term free will in any sense usually results in word abuse. Consequently, I am dumping the use of free will as a legitimate term along with the word soul. [ September 11, 2002: Message edited by: Kent Stevens ]</p>

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09-08-2002, 09:56 PM	#161
Red Expendable Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Austin, Texas Posts: 791	I always associated free will with the ability to choose without another entity forcing your hand. For example: I can go into a ice cream shop and choose chocolate over vanilla. Mainly because I like chocolate more than vanilla. But there may be times when I want some other flavor of ice cream. Depending on my mood, what I desire at that time. No one is forcing me to choose one flavor over another - nor are they forcing me to eat ice cream. This to me is free will. No one forces me to go to work, I choose to go on my own accord. I know if I don't go, I won't earn any money and won't be able to pay bills and buy essentials. But it is still my choice. To me this is free will. There are plenty of events that happened to me in the past the influenced or 'programmed' by brain to into certain patterns of thinking and habits. But at any given moment I am able to change or break those habits/cycles or at least begin a process of change. At age 18 I chose to start smoking. At about age 24, after a near experience with death, I stopped. I could have continued smoking, like so many people do, but I decided to quit. This is free will to me. I had a choice and made it based on my WILL to live. I was free to live or die. I chose life over the slow suicide of smoking cigs. I suppose someone could say that I made this choice based on the instinct to survive. But that IS bunk. There are plenty of people that do things that harm the health (drugs, smoking, eating unhealthy) - knowing that it will or is killing them - and do it anyway. When I took up smoking I knew that it would slowly kill me - but did it anyway. It was my choice to ignore the facts of what smoke does to your lungs. My past epxerience with one of my aunts who died from smoking was firmly implanted in my brain when I lit my first cig. But I did it anyway. My choice, made freely. After I finally quit, it was because I ewalized that if I wanted to live a long healthly life, I would have to quit smoking. This too was done of my own free will.

09-09-2002, 08:08 AM	#162
Keith Russell Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Overland Park, Kansas Posts: 1,336	Free will is a social product? Do you folks really do things (anything) only because you see (or have seen) others do them? Do you buy a CD only because you know others like it, but have never given any consideration to whether or not you yourself like it? Do you buy a car only because you think others buy similar cars, but give no thought to your own individual needs when making such a purchase? What does it mean to say 'free will is a social construct', and does the meaning of that phrase really describe what you do when you shop for clothes, get home at night, or begin choosing a pet--or a spouse? I know in my case it certainly does not. Keith.

09-09-2002, 12:09 PM	#164
Keith Russell Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Overland Park, Kansas Posts: 1,336	Greetings: A computer doesn't have free will, IMO, because it does not choose its actions based on a desired outcome. A computer cannot evaluate which option out of several is 'better' or 'worse' for it. If a certain situation arises, if certain data are present, the computer must respond in a certain, preprogrammed, fashion--period. But, human beings are able (and I believe other animals are as well, to a lesser extent) to make decisions based on our understanding of future events. If I do action 'A', then event 'B' will occur. But, if I do action 'C', event 'D' will occur. It seems that only human beings can ask the question "do I prefer event 'B', or event 'D' ", and this ability to evaluate the consequences of chains of events projected (in some cases far) into the future, is what I mean by 'free will'. Keith.

09-10-2002, 11:47 AM	#167
K Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Chicago Posts: 1,485	Not to mention that there have been checkers games that don't just evaluate every move. They have certain things that they observe about the game such as number of kings, relative number of pieces, etc. They then build up an expertise from playing many games as to which of the observed game traits are important to winning and which moves tend to aid in maximizing those traits. The computer program got pretty good at winning. This technique has a lot in common with genetic algorithms. I can't remember who was working on this. I'll dig it up and post references if anyone is interested.

09-13-2002, 01:41 AM	#170
Kent Stevens Regular Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Wellington, New Zealand Posts: 484	My take on free will is that it is similar to the imaginary property of mojo. Both mojo and free will do not in fact exist. What Santa Claus is to God, mojo is to free will. To more clearly illustrate my viewpoint I will now satirise the use of mojo in the place of the term free will. Yet, another imaginary property that could have been used instead of free will would have been spunk. Mojo is believed to be the magical property of an intelligent and unpredictable entities such as humans. Mojo is used in each decision that we make. Without mojo we are powerless. Without mojo we are like simple robots. Mojo is part of what distinguishes us from other animals and all other systems. There are some attempts to say the more complex animals have mojo, but it would be impossible for a physical system such as the weather to have mojo. Without mojo we have no justification for punishing anyone. Even if there is no scientific evidence for mojo we still have to assume it’s existence in order to make valid moral judgements. Having a world where there is no mojo is even more unthinkable than having a world without Santa Claus. The existential angst of having no mojo is terrible. There are three main ways of looking at how we do things. That is with no mojo, standard mojo, and random mojo. For illustration purposes we will speculate what happens if you have certain magical powers over time. The magical power being that you have a magical video camera which you can film something happening over the same set period of time over and over again. So, this magical video camera means that you could film what happens to someone from 9pm to 10pm on the same day, over and over again. This would be about the only practical way of getting initial conditions that were identical each time. Depending on what you believe about mojo you may get the same or different results happening on the different videos taken. If you do not believe in mojo, then if shoot different videos of the same events over and over again, we get the same results. There may be only a very small change due to quantum uncertainty but this constitutes neither a major nor a meaningful difference. The person concerned could not really have done anything different. So if someone is filmed going into an ice cream store many times for the exact same time interval, they always choose the same ice cream flavour. This changes with the magical property of mojo. When you take different videos of the same time interval you get different events happening. There are two major different types of mojo. First of all you have standard mojo where videos differ for a reason, and then you have random mojo where videos are unpredictably different from each other. If someone is filmed over the same time interval going to an ice cream parlour with standard mojo the ice cream chosen differs in a predictable and reasonable way. So one time a person might have a vanilla ice cream, the next time they have a chocolate ice cream. Both of these ice cream flavours constitute some of the person’s favourite ice creams and are chosen for certain reasons. If you look at the different videos taken you see that people could have done something different from what they did do. With random mojo there is also different videos produced but the choices are at least partly random. With random mojo if you film someone going into a ice cream parlour they end up picking ice cream in a random manner. So they pick a variety of different flavours for no reason at all. This random mojo is what would happen if quantum effects altered human behaviour in a significant way. This random mojo is not particularly meaningful to most people even though it demonstrates how things could have been done differently. Mojo is also the major excuse for Santa Claus aka God to duck responsibilies. If you get a defective present from Santa it is due to mojo in Santa elves. Santa though mightily powerful cannot mess with the universal mojo conservation law, that means that entities cannot be forced to do anything against their mojo. The only problem with this is that Santa does seem to be messing with different peoples mojo by rewarding them for doing certain things. However, if you get a bad present from Santa it is due to your own mojo and not his. It might be noted that there are people who do not believe in Santa Claus aka God, but who do believe in mojo. Free will does not exist the same way that mojo does not exist. Though a large portion of the world believes in mojo aka free will, this does not mean that we have to. Likewise, just because a lot of people believe in Santa Claus aka God does not mean that we have to.

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