Free Will, Cheap Will, and Expensive Will

In the fixed-universe model we were playing with, the apparent contradiction disappears if will doesn’t mean creating a new universe. The whole structure is already there—including the possible lifelines. Will concerns which line is being consciously traversed.

Then you get something like:

Cheap will — the machine follows the easiest available line. Habit, appetite, fear, conditioning, momentum. It feels like choosing because the machinery says, “I decided to do that.”

Free will — there is enough consciousness present to recognize that more than one trajectory is available and to participate in the selection. Nothing new has to be created. The freedom is in the traversal.

Expensive will — now it costs something. The selected lifeline runs contrary to habit, comfort, identification, social pressure, perhaps even one’s whole established personality. Consciousness has to be maintained in order to stay on that line. The price is attention.

And there may be very expensive will: the essential self inserts itself at the top of the cycle, as we were saying the other day, and selects a trajectory that the ordinary biological machine would virtually never select on its own.

That would make an interesting definition: