It occured to me the other day that there seem to be some substantial problems with free will that are desided by the fundamental rules of the universe. I would like to believe that I have free will and that I can make my own choices but it seems to me that this might not actually be possible. Here's the problem as I see it. The universe is either deterministic or quantum and random at it's most basic level.

If the universe is deterministic then, in theory at least, it would be possible given the state of everything in the universe to determine exactly what would happen at any future time. This is basically a Newtonian universe and it has been proven that the universe is not Newtonian but that doens't mean it isn't deterministic (I think). If the universe is deterministic then we have no free will as the universe is acting just like a computer. If we could step outside the universe and pause it we could calculate what would happen one second, one year or at any point in the future when we unpaused the universe.

If the universe is quantum and random then things aren't much improved. In this case we can't make any predictions about the future at all since at its most basic level the entire universe is random. Tiny quantum fluctuations would change the state of an atom which in turn would cascade and thus change the state of the whole universe in an unpredicatable way. These changes would also affect the decision making process and thus free will. Although the quantum fluctuations are random they are described by a probablity function which means most of the time things stay roughly the same. Could it simply be that human free will is nothing more than an energy minima? The problem with the universe being based on quantum fluxuatiosn though is that we can't be sure that we can make a decision for ourselves - it could just be a random event.

I think I'll put this problem in the realm of philosophy. This is the sort of thing that drives people to religion. If I had to choose I think I'd choose quantum fluxuations at least then you don't (in fact can't) know what is going to happen. If someone out there has a better understanding of the quantum world and can prove this theory to be complete rubbish I'd love to hear from you.