Free Will

These days I'm reading a collection of Sci-Fi short stories (Year's Best SF-11). One of the stories (Second Person, Present Tense by Daryl Gregory) began with the following quote.

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this. -- Emo Phillips

Actually, I'd saved this same quote, often spit out by the Fortune program on Unix systems, many moons ago in my "odd" file because I found it quite fascinating.

I'm also listening to the RadioLab podcasts during my work-outs. Last night I listened to the show titled Beyond Time and somewhere around the 30min mark, they started talking about the fact that the universe is a collection of "now"s, and there's really no past and future, and that the free will is nice to think about, poetic and stuff, but it really isn't there, physics-wise. When you listen further down the podcast, the "finger wiggle" experiment (which, I think, must have been the basis for the above sci-fi short story) talks about how the brain is not really in control. It thinks it is making up its mind and issuing commands to the finger to wiggle, but the wiggling happens, get this, before the brain makes up its mind.

A week or so ago, I'd also listened to this other RadioLab podcast The (Multi) Universe(s); an argument about how there's only a finite number of particles in the known universe and there could be an infinite number of possibilities; so there are identical you's and me's at another universe doing exactly the same thing. I think, you can hear this Brian Greene guy in both shows--but there are other people also with this same idea--who claims what the universe really is is a collection of things happening that can be predicted accurately, including what you and I will do at any given time.

So, is there really no free will? And, is the fact that me coming across all these references to it in two or three separate ways simply that the universe trying to tell me something?

Then what's the point of even trying to do things differently? What will happen, will happen. What's the point in trying at all? I guess, the universe is trying to get me to quit!

Aha, then I'll do an one-up on the universe and try even harder to establish my own free will and ... but wait, perhaps, the universe was counting on me trying to do that one-up thing and, perhaps, I should give up trying at all, which brings me back to square one, which the universe must have known that I'd do after going around this one time, so I should ... Aaarrggghhhh ... my head hurts!

But, but, there was that Heisenberg dude with his uncertainty principle who said you can't know the exact location and the exact speed of something at the same time. So, if you add up all the uncertainties of all the particles that make up a human body, doesn't that amount to a set of large error bars ... which you can think of as "free will?" Or, does that make as much sense as the free will of a drunk who is trying to figure out which way is up while laying on the floor?

Ugh, after thinking of this stuff, I like this better -- The Heineken Uncertainty Principle: You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.