Ha…just in case you took my reply seriously, I no longer personally find the free will/determinism debate to be worthwhile, but it does sometimes provide a humor opportunity. 
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Yes!! To me, that is actually a very deep, multi-valent proposition.
It implies for me that free will is relative (to perspective); but may be absolute (in relation to the absolute (perspective)).
I like that view’s idea that free will is at the ultimate level a “foreign concept”:
Free will at the ultimate level is - as such - a paradox since from the perspective of Universal Consciousness, there is no need to change anything.
The concept of will is deeply connected or even defined by “someone” wanting to change “something”, either in the present or in the future. From a Universal Consciousness perspective, perhaps, there is no preference for one or the other outcome and thus no sense in “deciding” and excercise of free will.
That resonates with me.
Perhaps true. Perhaps UC was already self-aware and permutates in different forms since ages. Who knows.
Could be. I personally don’t believe that last particular aspect though, since - one could argue - one should see the manifestations of such an evolution of awareness, but over the centuries one can rather observe a physical and moral decay which I feel is connected to a decline/lack of awareness rather than an increase.
That resonates. If it is a part of the continuing process of evolving awareness at cosmic level (as per Analystic Idealism), or, if it is connected to our essence of already clear awareness, is probably a matter of belief system and not so consequential.
I would add “… depending on our state of awareness including our awareness of conditioning.”
Beauftiful… what comes to mind is that several contemplative traditions maintain that in the state of non-dualism several pure, unconditioned qualities arise. One of them is said to be joy.
When you remember now that you walked toward the sun, were you perhaps connecting with your inner joy through the outer manifestation of the sun?
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One version of Analytic Idealism holds that UC’s awareness, rather than being a self-awareness as we envision, stems from an inherent state of harmonic self-excitation that “allows for the structure and complexity of manifest nature to arise from the undifferentiated ground of universal consciousness” (Kastrup 2017) on a more basic level.
This feels to me like a non-self-aware state.
One way to imagine how that might work is to look at how a Chlandi Plate creates structure from an undifferentiated substrate through harmonic vibration.
I am connecting that way right now thanks to this guidance. Thanks.
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Could this be “choices” rather than “free will?” Is someone with more choices, say having money, have more free will than someone who doesn’t?
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I see those as two different things.
Someone with more resources may have more options within which to exercise their free will but I think that even back 50K years ago when some cognitive scientists think that humans first became aware of awareness our ancestors could decide whether they should fish or cut bait.
Pondering that for a moment…and wondering if that is when the concept of free will began. Scientists do think that some time between 70K and 50K years ago we evolved into the realization that we could make choices rather than just react to stimuli for survival…coinciding with the beginnings of language. Could that be the beginning of free will at the conventional human level of consciousness?
Hmmmmm…wondering now if that is when inherent human suffering began…when Adam used his freshly evolved free will to decide to go ahead and take that first proverbial bite. 
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I think it may be what Buddha sometimes posited as an inappropriate question. It’s non-binary but gradient and perhaps, as B. Allen Wallace says, “We are responsible for our decisions.” Freedom? “The Freedom to make wise decisions for the benefit of others and ourselves,” he says in the above video.
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What I am wondering, though, is when did the human species become responsible for our decisions…and what was the mechanism of that evolution?
I admit that this is a bit of an academic question in nature, but I think it is helpful to gain an understanding of how we became what we are so that we can continue to…become.
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I have heard over (and over) that everyone has been our mother and while that may be an ideal (forgot what Andrew calls it) it suggests a lot longer than 70K years or perhaps other epochs where we existed quite apart from this “reality.”
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I guess that might depend upon your point of reference.
On this particular planet our best science tells us that the human population developed language and meta-cognitive awareness in that time frame.
But this particular planet is just a point in time and space, both of which are constructs of our best science. I’m beginning to wrap my head around the possibility that “this reality” is "the antecedently existing universal consciousness…that is in some sense slowly waking up to itself as evolution of more complex biological forms enables fuller expression of its inherent capacities (Edward F. Kelly 2017)
If that is the case then this human form has likely been evolving on other worlds for far longer than we realize. That recycling of the Dharmakaya single drop at the heart may indeed have given us many mothers.
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After viewing Swami Sarvapriyananda on Youtube and reading Wallace (again), in my mind the distinction became logically clearer for me:
A mind conditioned to follow its passions based on attachments and aversions of mental-sensory impressions, does not have free will and thus cannot exercise it.
A mind trained in dispassionate contemplation, which will not prefer this over that, may act or chose not to act, based on the natural qualites of that state - love, compassion, equanimity, joy.
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Free will vs. free won’t because sometimes it is possible to reject conditioning and unconscious drives or even conscious commands to do something that we just feel is wrong, like troops refusing as ordered to murder non-combatants.
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The undertitle Superdeterminism, a radical quantum hypothesis, says our “choices” are illusory
reminds me of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song: “…Some say it’s just a part of it, We’ve got to fullfil the book”…
Superdeterminsim seems to be a theory, which needs to provide some proof to its underlying premises:
The author agrees:
The arguments seem circular: the world is deterministic, hence quantum mechanics must be deterministic. Superdeterminism doesn’t specify what the hidden variables of quantum mechanics are; it just decrees that they exist, and that they specify everything that happens, including my decision to write these words and your decision to read them.
Hossenfelder and I argued about free will in a conversation last summer. I pointed out that we both made the choice to speak to each other; our choices stem from “higher-level” psychological factors, such as our values and desires, which are underpinned by but not reducible to physics. Physics can’t account for choices and hence free will. So I said.
Invoking psychological causes “doesn’t make the laws of physics go away,” Hossenfelder sternly informed me. “Everything is physics. You’re made of particles.” I felt like we were talking past each other. To her, a nondeterministic world makes no sense. To me, a world without choice makes no sense.
That seems to be yet another form of materialism, which has not been experimentally supported and relies on a theory of unknown (!) hidden variables that superdetermine every single eternal cause-effect-cause chain.
Conversely, if everything is physics, then physics must be able to explain all phenomena like emotions and volition etc.
As of today, physics fails to do that and can only measure vague physical correlates to mental phenomena. Like seeing the condensation trails of a jet plane cannot describe why an airplane flies through the sky. Condensation trails are not the cause of the airplane flying, they only correlate to that phenomenon.
"Physics, which tracks changes in matter and energy, has nothing to say about love, desire, fear, hatred, justice, beauty, morality, meaning. All these things, viewed in the light of physics, could be described as “logically incoherent nonsense,” as Hossenfelder puts it. But they have consequences; they alter the world."
… (!) and since they do alter the world, since they have physical effects - thus - they must (!) be a describable factor in any theory of superdeterminism, if it upholds its claim to describe the world.
… Very inconsistent…
The author makes a very important final point:
“Why does the debate over free will and superdeterminism matter? Because ideas matter. At this time in human history, many of us already feel helpless, at the mercy of forces beyond our control. The last thing we need is a theory that reinforces our fatalism.”
And Bob M. gives a final friendly advice:
"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our mind"
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Yes, that is true for anyone of us… when we are not aware of it.
Shamata and Vipashyana give us the freedom to break out of this mental slavery.
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This is one of the reasons why I joined night club. I watched one of your videos Andrew on youtube and you said something along the lines of 95% of are wake behaviors are habits that dwell in the subconscious. And how that really manipulates are ability to have free will.
That statement rocked my world! It is such a profound truth, and I had never even thought of.
That you for the dramatic paradigms sifts!
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Love this thread, pretty insightful stuff
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