The way I've kind of been picturing it is that the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing. If there is a strange information buffer, then perhaps two ends never meet in time. If you factor in instinct based solely off of thermodynamics, from hundreds of billions of out of sync buffers and synapses, perhaps it amalgamates into a perpetual cycle of never knowing where something starts and where something ends.You might be on to something. However, free will (if it exists) is something fundamentally different than mere information transfer. Even if there is essentially an informational buffer, that still wouldn't explain how it seems that there is a "self" that makes seemingly real decisions. While it might be possible that the experience of consciousness is created due to the complexity of the brain's interactions, the making (or not making) of real decisions is something entirely different.
In the last few days I have actually been pondering what free will is, scientifically. I started thinking about what the observer's role actually is in the universe of probability. If E = MC^2. And energy can not be destroyed or created. Only borrowed and returned, then perhaps what the brain is actually capable of doing, is borrowing, or coming in to contact with energy, and causing it to delay before it is returned. The brain is capable of stupid amounts of information transfer. Enough to make me believe that once energy is in contact with the brain (via our senses), it rattles around the endless (100 billion Neurons, and synapses) for such a long time that it creates a tiny buffer that puts energy transfer slightly out of sync. The illusion of free will.
Like information falling into a black hole. Some believe it is destroyed permanently, others believe the wave function is not destroyed, but just delayed until the black hole evaporates. Maybe the brain is causing a similar wave function delay. Taking ordinary wave functions, and temporarily giving them a "pending" status. And from our own perspective, making them exist through the buffer, instead of being a probability that they exist.
Ok, ok, so now the point of this rant. If we are suddenly able to transmit information on the level that this new wifi can, perhaps we are slowly approaching the speeds or the complexity that the brain can. Perhaps consciousness is nothing more than a limit. Once you can take in, and buffer information beyond a certain limit, perhaps that's all you need to be conscious. All you need to become an "observer".
If we make AI that is capable of becoming an observer, is it even possible to imagine what the outcome would be?
End rant.
Do you have a concept for how it appears that real decisions are made? In other words, supposing that consciousness is an illusion, how would one also explain the additional phenomenon of free will?
There has to be factors to the human brain that we are unaware of. My need to scratch an itch is seemingly voluntary, but perhaps it is the result of mechanical energy creating a reason to itch. My need to try and explain this could also be caused by some bizarre portion of my brain that is creating a metaphorical itch that must be scratched.
If I think about all the physics that go on in an ocean of crashing water, I can't help but think the brain is doing so much more to cause disarray to the particles. They do not follow uniform motion in the brain, because of the buffer.
I still don't know how it amounts to free will outside of saying, there are lots of functions to the brain that are still not known. But perhaps mechanical energy, total conservation of energy, and the addition of billions of buffers are some how a catalyst for the unexplainable.
