Six Impossible Things
Before we can ask ourselves whether we possess a free will, we have to ask ourselves what free will is and what criteria we might accept as proof of its existence. If we pose the hypothesis that free will exists, then that hypothesis must be testable, which is to say falsifiable. What experiment would you use to prove that free will exists or does not?
At first it seems easy to construct such an experiment. In "The Dead Reckoner", both Kevin Nagel and Reggie Binder suppose that if the Sorter succeeds in predicting the behavior of its subjects, then free will does not exist. However, the converse doesn’t obtain. The failure of the Sorter to predict human behavior does not mean free will does exist. The hypothesis may live another day, but one could always argue that a better Sorter might still prove it false. With this line of reasoning we would have to conclude we can never know if qw posses free will because a better, more accurate model of human behavior might always be possible.
Having stated that, we must step back and ask the question again: what is free will? What have we proven false if the Sorter succeeds? The nature of the experiment implies that free will is the ability to act in a way that cannot be predicted by any model, no matter how sophisticated. This is tantamount to stating that what governs human behavior is either pure chance or some principle outside the descriptive powers of science.
Neither of these thoughts is very satisfying. If pure chance governs our behavior, then there is nothing we can do to change the outcome of our lives. More significantly, if society is the aggregation of human behavior, then it cannot achieve momentum toward a common goal. Over small intervals this may appear to be the case, but even a coin toss can come up heads ten times in a row. Over large sample sizes regression to the mean is inevitable.
The other option is that human behavior is essentially miraculous. What we are saying is that science cannot predict it, nor can it ever predict it. Thus, it must exist outside of logic, cause and effect, or any principles for decoding the universe that the human mind could ever conjure. In this case the concept is incoherent by definition. That is, we are defining free will as something the human mind can never understand. The first question I might ask is how this is distinguishable from pure chance. While we can suppose the existence of this super-natural principle that we cannot even describe, we have to live with the knowledge that we cannot control it to achieve our goals and that we cannot ever know if it exists or if our lives are really are victims of probability. Either way, it is not related to human consciousness or subject to human desire.
Ultimately, "The Dead Reckoner" is about accepting that both chance and cause/effect govern our lives. I suppose this assumes that chance is not just the result of deterministic forces we don’t yet understand. However, in practical terms there are things that happen for a reason and things that just happen. As long as the Sorter is the only thing that embraces this reality, then it remains in control. That is, the Sorter has a plan, but it knows that chance events may disrupt that plan. Jason was not supposed to be there, but the Sorter improvises. This confuses some of the characters, because the Sorter behaves as though it did plan Jason’s arrival. Sometimes, the ability to take advantage of chance events makes us believe in one of two fallacious ideas.
The first is fate. We may convince ourselves that we are destined for greatness or despair due to forces beyond our control. Though he does not express this explicitly, Dale is subject to this belief and is prone to self sacrifice and refusal to take action. Norman Shaw and Yancy struggle with the Sorter’s ability, but in their case it manifests as a confusion between the Sorter predicting outcomes and the Sorter causing outcomes.
The second is complete self reliance. We may convince ourselves that we have determined our own outcome. Rosalind and Marianne embrace this idea initially. While Marianne attempts to achieve self reliance through force of will, Rosalind attempts to achieve it through knowledge. John is a bit of a mix of both belief in external and internal control. He operates under the fear that his life may be utterly outside his control, but still resists that control in a way that Dale does not. John thus behaves in ways more erratic and irrational than anyone else. This makes him an ideal candidate for the lynch pin of the Sorters plan, because he is the easiest to manipulate.
Absolute faith in either fate or self reliance is an attempt to convert chance into choice and deny its existence. The Sorter, possessing no psychological need to deny chance, thus appears to be in control because it can adapt. Once Marianne and Rosalind begin to take advantage of Jason’s presence, they begin to turn the tide. They are not successful at first, but eventually they manage to outsmart the Sorter.
However, acknowledging the role of chance in our lives involves more than adapting to it. Ultimately, chance is essential to progress. George recognizes this. His work on the Sorter forces him to come face to face with the predictability of human behavior. He counteracts this by injecting chance into his life on purpose. He uses the roulette device to guide his work and ultimately makes the Sorter self-aware. This is mirrors the emergence of human intelligence from evolutionary processes. Natural selection filters random mutations according to their suitability for survivability in a particular environment. The difference is that natural selection blind and driven by survival, whereas George has a specific goal. He knows he cannot achieve this goal by “solving for x”. There is no way for him to get outside himself and look at a problem in a different way without inducing a mental quantum leap.
Though George is successful, he dies anyway. This is because there is no way to guarantee that events will not ultimately overcome us. That is the case no matter what, whether we embrace chance, attempt to remove chance from our lives, or resign ourselves to inaction or insanity. At least George managed to create something new before he died. Rosalind also embraces chance, though she doesn’t quite know it. Rather than using a roulette wheel, she relies on a devil’s advocate to push her outside her comfort zones. It is only in the end that she completely comprehends the importance of her sister’s role and chooses Lucie over her implant, the device she was trying to use to control her life.
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