My Freeness

So free will is something I'm probably not qualified to talk about, at least when compared to modern-day philosophers and philosophy students. So all the shortcomings of this post are the fault of my more science- and math-oriented friends, with whom I was associated randomly by my college dorm, and who, after I said I was considering majoring in philosophy, snickered cruelly, and suggested I do something worthwhile. (Ten years later I work for oil, and they for tech companies - who's impractical now?)

Whether humans have free will is something people philosophize about lots. I think Newton's conjecture that if somebody knew the exact position and velocity of every particle in the universe, then he would be able to predict the future exactly, kind of brought the debate up. Heisenberg had something to say about that.

But I will keep this pretty macro-scale. Has anybody ever done anything that's truly altruistic? I don't think so. People give to charity, if not to save on taxes, then at least to feel good about themselves. People leave the last nacho on the plate not because they truly want some hungry soul to take it but because the shame they would feel in pigging out in front of their urbane fiends would outweigh the pleasure of eating the nacho. People run into burning buildings and save babies, I'm not joking, because risking death by fire outweighs a lifetime of ashed baby corpse nightmares.

The key is outweighing. In everything we do, we weigh the anticipated outcomes, to the best of our abilities (which certainly vary wildly from person to person), and choose the option that has the greatest overall personal benefit. Of course sometimes there are time limits, and when forced to think quickly we have a greater chance of calculational error.

The concept was introduced to my by a friend who learned it in an economics class (you faithful 'dlog readers know how qualified I am to talk about this). If a man has five dollars, he will spend it on whatever he wants to spend it on. Beer or the electric bill? He thinks - Beer. No - the wife will chew my ass off. Electric bill. The key is my ass. He saw his two options, calculated the ramifications for himself, and went with the better choice.

When a coworker, on Monday morning, claims he'd rather be in Aruba, I call him a dirty liar, because he has the money and access to an airport. He's at work because he wants to be at work. An inmate in a jail cell can say he'd rather be in Aruba because that option is not physically available to him. He'd better get digging, anyway.

So I draw two conclusions. As for free will, man is paradoxically bound by it; he cannot help but do whatever he most wants to do at any given time. So the non-existence of free will and the ubiquity of free will are two sides of the same coin.

As for altruism, it doesn't really exist. People don't do anything that doesn't have something in it for themselves. I think it is advantageous to associate with people who, for whatever reason, take pleasure in helping others, and who are pleased when the people around them are happy. I like to be around those people. Now if only I were one . . .