A friend of mine was thoroughly impressed with the book: Homo Deus, A Brief History Of Tomorrow. He strongly recommended that I read it too.
The book mentioned that what we think is freewill is actually not so, that it is our genes which control our actions. Or something to that effect. I had been telling my friend that we do not have freewill, even before either of us had read this book.
My friend called me up the other day and asked me: if we do not control our behavior and if our behavior is controlled by our genes, then the genes must be running some kind of program or algorithm.
- Does the algorithm cover every eventuality? How can it?
- If it does not (which is more likely), then how is behavior determined in a case which is not coded or covered in the algorithm? How is our behavior determined in such a case?
- Next, our behavior also changes with experience. How does the algorithm learn to behave differently with time?
I did not have any nice answer for his questions. I thought about them and here is my attempt.
That we don't control something (don't have freewill) does not translate exactly into "there is some other agency that has a 100% well defined algorithm (for determining our behavior."
Our behavior is at best only known to (as against determined by) us. The S1 - from Daniel Kahnemann - which decides what we do, takes necessary decisions and actions which at best we only come to know of but not control.
So now who decides how we behave?: it's the S1. On what basis does S1 decide our behavior? S1 has access to our memory bank and to our heuristics engine. The latter, I guess, is encoded or is derived from our genes and perhaps also undergoes modification after birth based on our experience.
Now when confronted with a situation, how exactly does the gene deal with our memories, with any logic / shortcuts / heuristics etc and result in a course of action from S1 - which is what my friend asked me - I have no idea. :(
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