How would not having free will feel to you?

Shmi

Given the spike in free-will debates on LW recently (blame Scott Aaronson), and the usual potentially answerable meta-question "Why do we think we have free will?", I am intrigued by a sub-question, "what would it feel like to have/not have free will?". The positive version of this question is not very interesting, almost everyone feels they have free will most all the time. The negative version is more interesting and I expect the answers to be more diverse. Here are a few off the top of my head, not necessarily mutually exclusive:

Epistemic:

Knowing that someone out there already predicts my behavior perfectly
Knowing that someone out there can predict my behavior perfectly, whether or not they actually bother doing it
Knowing that it is potentially possible to perfectly predict my behavior, even if I know that no one is doing it
Knowing that I am in a simulation
Knowing that I am in a simulation where repeated runs with the same inputs give identical outcomes
...?

Psychological:

Feeling constrained by the environment to act in certain ways
Feeling constrained by the environment to act in certain unsatisfactory ways
Voices in my head compel me to do things
Voices in my head compel me to do bad things
Feeling unable to complete thoughts I would like to think through, as if someone censored them
...?

Physical:

Observing myself act in ways I never intended to act, whether beneficial to me or not
Observing my arms/legs/mouth move as if externally controlled, and being unable to interfere
...?

For me personally some of these are close to the feeling of "no free will" than others, but I am not sure if any single one crosses the boundary.

I am sure that there are different takes on the answers and on how to categorize them. I think it would be useful to collect some perspectives and maybe have a poll or several after.

Epistemic:

Knowing that someone out there already predicts my behavior perfectly
Knowing that someone out there can predict my behavior perfectly, whether or not they actually bother doing it
Knowing that it is potentially possible to perfectly predict my behavior, even if I know that no one is doing it
Knowing that I am in a simulation
Knowing that I am in a simulation where repeated runs with the same inputs give identical outcomes
...?

Psychological:

Feeling constrained by the environment to act in certain ways
Feeling constrained by the environment to act in certain unsatisfactory ways
Voices in my head compel me to do things
Voices in my head compel me to do bad things
Feeling unable to complete thoughts I would like to think through, as if someone censored them
...?

Physical:

Observing myself act in ways I never intended to act, whether beneficial to me or not
Observing my arms/legs/mouth move as if externally controlled, and being unable to interfere
...?

For me personally some of these are close to the feeling of "no free will" than others, but I am not sure if any single one crosses the boundary.

I am sure that there are different takes on the answers and on how to categorize them. I think it would be useful to collect some perspectives and maybe have a poll or several after.

Is there a standard definition of "free will" that everyone is assuming, and for some reason I don't know?

I think you nailed it, actually, there is none. The whole point of my post was to highlight this problem with the definition. Because having free will feels so natural and intuitive to most people, they tend to assume that everyone means basically the same thing by it, even if they have trouble spelling it out. But the complement of free will is not intuitive at all, and requires some thinking and retrospection. As you can see from the replies, the results are all over the map. Some feel that the complement of free will feels indistinguishable from free will, meaning that the whole term is vacuous for them. Others think that the lack of free will feels like knowing what you will do and being unable to change it. Or even wanting to change it. Yet others feel that not feeling the connection between your thoughts and actions feels like lacking free will. Some argue that my tentative classification in the OP is flawed to begin with.

That's the my whole issue with the free will debates: people think that they talk about the same thing, but they do not, so the debate is pointless until at least some basic definitions are agreed upon.

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How would not having free will feel to you?

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How would not having free will feel to you?

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