This must be why children can be so impulsive.

very spooky stuff!!! it is difficult to grasp that the “operator” is not the “me” that I think is “me”

Even if the brain scans can predict our decisions 7 seconds ahead of time, it doesn't mean that we don't have free will. I don't get it. It is still us making the decision

I guess we can't blame them then!

Anyone who says that God has a plan for us, the reason why we are thrown from one path to the next, even if it hurts us badly and we didn't want to leave that path, would then suggest that we do not have free will whatsoever. You know what i mean, the old cliches such as, “If it was meant to be, it was meant to be” But hang on, I wanted it to be so why is my free will being taken away from me. And the other famous one, “Things happen for a reason” So once again we don't have free will. What reason exactly, to tear my heart out? I think the whole lot is a sham. Law of attraction is absolute nonsense and so is God. Love and relationships are a waste of time and only cause great pain and suffering. Thats right it is about 'love', the universe is about 'love'. Tell that to someone who can never love again because his kids were torn from him without his consent, ie free will. Of course your brain thinks ahead, if it didn't we would walk around like zombies, crashing into each other. For instants, a person didn't think ahead so they had an accident. I am thinking what to write before i write it. Free will is non existent. We are bombarded by hypnotic media control, brainwashing, fancy colours to promote something, people who are ugly, using make up to look like super models. There never was any free will.

I think Marcus' strong belief that consciousness ought to be or is divorced from unconsciousness is what is interesting. The experimenter had a more integrated view of a kind of feed back loop where unconscious processes are influenced by conscious choices and beliefs.

Our brain is a modeling machine and what we may be doing is modeling/prototyping any activity we undertake.

That's why I take peyote. I helps shorten that 7 second gap to between 2.375 and 3.125 seconds. I'm more in touch with my “Sub” and make better decisions.

Combine it with some Chocolate Bliss and I bet you can get it down to 1.26… Nice to hear from you Rob!

I'm curious about two aspects of this study:

#1. It seems the participants are posed the question looooong before the button is pushed, and they are only pushing the button one time. It seems this would give considerable lead time for the brain to “formulate” a decision. What about short, reactionary decisions? How long in advance are those detectable in the brain? I would've liked this study more if they had to push the button multiple times, choosing which hand each time, and with decreasing lag time in between each push.

#2. I don't find this at all disturbing, because like the guy said… your brain is in alignment with your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, ideals… so essentially, you are your brain. And your brain (you) have the free will of decision. Just because we make decisions more quickly in our unconscious and it takes longer for our (not-so-intellegent) conscoious selves to realize our decision, doesn't mean we lack free will.

It is very interesting, but I would like to see more in-depth studies on this theory.

So I'm driving along a road in town I haven't been down for a few months. I

quickly turn the corner (because I know it like the back of my hand) only to

be confronted with the road ahead closed off because of roadworks and the

need to choose an alternative route either left or right. My brain

immediately goes into overdrive choosing the best route – I choose left. I

start the turn and see that way is blocked by a parked van so immediatelty

turn wheel the other way and make the turn scarcely having slowed the car

down and I'm on my way again in less than two seconds – job done. Now I'm

expected to believe that my subconscious chose the best alternative five

seconds before it knew there was a choice to be made and also deliberately

made a wrong choice so that I could continue believing in free will.

I can't help thinking that we are not given the details of the experiment in

this little clip only the conclusions drawn for us by scientists; I think there's plenty of room

here for misinterpretation.

This is a great question. I think the research is good, but it is not covering situations where you do not have 7 seconds to decide. This may be why those situations can be so uncomfortable…

When the van got in your way, you immediately made the decision to turn in the other direction because, yes, your subconscious decided it 7 seconds earlier. What it had actually decided was “I have 3 possible routes. Route 1 is closed, so I choose Route 2 above Route 3. The instant Route 2 was blocked, your subconcious instantly directed you to Route 3 (as part of your mind's 'safety' programming.

However, had you turned on to Route 2 and discovered it blocked, but with a choice of Routes 4 & 5, most likely the 7 second rule would have come into play again.

THE BOTTOM LINE —IS YES— YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS IS DOING THE WORK BEFORE YOU CONSCIOUSLY GET THERE, SUBJECT TO YOUR CURRENT KNOWLEDGE BASE + INCOMING PRECEPTIONS + ABILITIES OUTSIDE NORMAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Wow! What a depressing hopeless post. Please don't confuse predestination with self will. I don't believe that I am predestined to do something or be in a specific situation and completely out of control, i.e., “God's will.” It's true that bad things happen to good people, but in all instances we still have our agency to choose – consciously or otherwise. I’m grateful that my brain is on autopilot most of the time – yet I still believe I set the course.
Love and Trust are two of the most important of human attributes. When they are violated – it hurts! One chooses to never love again. One chooses to avoid relationships. One chooses their life’s path to a great extent. It’s a cop-out to think otherwise. Don’t victimize yourself and give up your control (even if it’s only an illusion.) Yes, your brain may know seven seconds before you may be conscious of it – but YOU are the master programmer. Don’t make excuses because life is unfair. Take charge. You have the agency to give up… or make changes. Which do you choose?

I think the task is such a simple decision (which hand to use) that these results do not tell us anything about free will. Using a more complex decision (where to go out for dinner) would be more telling. That decision involves many choices: what do I want to eat, which restaurant would be best, is that place in my price range…

hi i think i have seen it in a movie the last samurai where a young man trying to learn martial arts was keep on failing on till he was told to not think because it slowed him down when he learnt it he became very good .

I recall reading many years back that a famous psychologist (I don't remember which one) said that we don't do things for the reason or reasons which we think we do. He said that we do things and then think of a logical explanation for why we chose that particular action, but that the true reason may have nothing at all to do with the explanation. This experiment seems to possibly support his statement.

No we don't have freewill as I discovered long ago. We are influenced on the conscious
and unconscious level every day of our lives and the 24 hr world of endless marketing
has only made the problem worse. This relentless broadcasting to our minds by all
available means known and unknown has created the chaotic modern world that we
live in today. People like to think that we are all unique individuals but the truth is the
masses roughly 97% is more like sheep lead to the slaughter.

Our society has a structure a hierarchy that is held in place and it enforces conformity
many times at the expense of individual freewill or free choice. Coupled with the relentless 24 hr broadcasting to our conscious and unconscious mind can anyone credibly argue that we have “freewill”. Unless you live in a remote part of the world where there is no mass communication of any kind or human population then it is virtually impossible to live outside of our collective matrix. Many will try to argue
in vain but facts are facts. We gave up our freewill in order to form our modern society
and all the advances that it supposedly offers. This is the trade off of the modern world.
Just think about this when a person has a truly genius idea it is called thinking outside
the box, that statement alone should make it clear about “freewill”. Society demands
conformity and will enforce it at all cost this would not be the case if true freewill
existed. Just another slice most be hold ideas in their heads that they think are facts
but are not they are just pieces of information that is generally accepted from collective
societal influences. This should make it abundantly clear about so called freewill. True
freewill thinkers are always in the minority and opposed by the majority so most subjugate their freewill in order to get along in society! Enforced conformity and true
expressed freewill cannot peacefully coexist!

This is not a “normal” situation. This is an experiment. The subject has no choice, really. The illusion of choice is about which button to press, but really there is no choice. The subject wants to be a good subject so he does not make the choice to press none of the buttons. Nor does he choose to not be put into the MRI tube, etc, etc. The point, he has an illusion of choice. He must press one of the buttons to fulfill his chosen role (good subject), however either button may be equally likely since there is no logical criteria for making a choice. Since he may play in his mind with which button to press the various parts of the brain will become activated. It is known that in order for physical motor activity to occur, the brain must first activate areas specific to the motor activity. There is nothing new here. In order to act one must first have the intention to act or the brain will not initiate the action. Since the subject in this experiment has no real reason for choosing one button over the other, he could be responding to unconscious urges to push one of the buttons (intention initiated in the brain) in order to fulfill his role.
The experiment bears a lot of similarity to early experiments in psychology in which subjects do unusual & unexpected things. For example hypnosis subjects who put their hand into a jar of liquid, which they have been told is acid, in order to get the money in the jar. The explanation is that the subjects believe the hypnosis state emboldens the subjects to take these “risks”.
Reality check: The subjects know it is an experiment & they want to be good subjects. (There are lots of reasons why people might want to be “good subjects”. Thes range from need for approval, self esteem , to desire to be called again for participation in future experiments). They also know that no experimenter is going to risk going to jail just to complete his experiment (consider what would happen to the experimenter if there really was sulfuric acid in the jar & he/she let subjects stick their hands into it).
More realistic experiments along this line need to allow subjects openness of choice. Thus for example the subject decides whether to respond & also why. Thus what is needed is tests which have subjects making choices for logical & / or emotional reasons, not just to please the experimenter.

Very interesting. Perhaps this is telling us that we DO have some ability to see the future, but for most of us this process only looks several seconds ahead. There was a
Nicholas Cage movie out where he had developed the ability for about two minutes ahead, which he was able to use to become a shady fortune teller and successful gambler on the blackjack tables in Vegas.

This suggests that time itself is not nearly so rigid as we think, and that a part of ourselves is not simply limited to the immediate 'now', but is looking ahead for us for immediate danger and, for even bigger dangers, may be looking minutes, hours, days ahead.

Consider how often it happens in a major disaster such as plane or train crash, how unusually small the number of people were on that flight/trip compared to normal.

This suggests that with proper training, meditation, experimentation, we perhaps could develop this ability even further, making a safer and better world. Coupled with logical prediction, we could shape the future the way we want it to be, rather than blindly accept an unacceptable world.

I don't think that the idea of my subconscious making my decisions for me before I know what I've decided means that I am not exercising free will. It might mean that we make our decisions with our subconscious and don't necessarily know what we think for seven seconds, but it's still my subconscious, so it's still my free will. I think.

When asking athletes to describe how they feel when in the zone, they often reply with “they could make reads quicker” or “it was like the game was in slow speed, but I was moving at a faster speed”. Could it be that when they are in this state, they have tapped into an altered state of mind that shortens the 6 – 7 gap in time between the subconscious mine and the conscious mind?

My psychologist hero, Silvan Tomkins (his book: Affect, Imagery, and Consciousness), anticipated such research with his notion of a `conscious report'. Silently mouth the word, conscious, he enjoins. Do you hear an audible `voice in your head' saying “conscious''? This is a conscious report of your lips moving to say, “conscious''. You are not aware of this, as kinesthetic sensations of your lip muscles, but as an audible voice. Thus, you can learn to give yourself a conscious report of something your mind-body-consciousness does in one sense modality, whereas the doing of it uses feedback of another sort. In the visual system, there is the phenomena of the what and where system: one part of the brain can recognize and describing something, while another cannot do this, but can work with a known type of object like a drinking glass. It is not that your brain does it before a conscious `you' knows, but there are different ways to be aware something you decide or do — some more friendly to memory, and explicit, verbal description than others. Presumably, you can train yourself to be consciously aware of the button press decision, earlier using the very apparatus of this experiment, as a biofeedback tool. It is a question of what kinds of consciousness, kick in at what points in time as a mind-body-person does things, decides things, perceives things. People with that “what'' part of their visual brains fryed, can use and drink from a glass fine, without consciously knowing naming what “that thing'' is, or even where it is in the spatial field.
It is true, that what we ordinarily regard as being explicitly aware — our conscious reports — some things — tends to happen late in the temporal sequence of activities of the mind-body. Not a terribly clear explanation — but perhaps evocative?

I'd like to respond to Sandino's comment as to me it touches on the core of what is free will.

In my life I have experienced much pain and suffering. I could relate to much of what was said in this post. I had by this point fallen into depression and wanted to die, I saw no purpose to my life for my inner self talk had become so habitual that I blocked all the wonders that were also happening around me. I was reactive and in fear letting my primitive reptile brain do all my decision making. The idea that no choice is a form of choice. Luckily for me there was still some consciousness in me and I kept enough hope to keep looking and came across little things that kept me believing there was a way out. Of those things that helped me move into consciousness was a book called A Course in Miracles. Slowly it helped me see I had a choice between being reactive or proactive. I discovered that the reactive choice is letting the filtering of the reptile brain to cause me to fall into fight, flight and freeze patterns for almost everything I did. The proactive path helped me get down into my primitive brain and bring questioning into my various fears. This questioning is consciousness. In consciousness I could hear my negative self talk and also see I was ignoring a lot of positives that were also present. I had now questions I could ask like: Why am afraid of this? or Where does this fear come from? or Is this true or am I imagining it? What evidence is there? What am I blocking? and many more. I also found coming from a conscious proactive way that decisions I make from there tend not only to benefit me but others as well. Now I'm not perfect and I still come from reactive a lot but I'm becoming more aware/awake to a real choice between love and fear. At this point I will say that what is love and what is fear also need to go through a conscious review to get rid of common mis-perceptions of what they are.

I don't expect anyone hearing this for the first time to get it. It took me a lot of years to get to the point where I am now. Living with inner peace and seeing more beauty and wonder around me daily. Here in is my concept of God also a term that is too limited to really be understood by those who view from labels rather than openness to Love.

I agree most of our behavior is automatic, scripted and predetermined and this
can easily be proven based on the predictable repeated behavior of the masses
97 % of the society. People become defensive when the learn the truth but it
does not change the truth because one does not like it!

No need to become depressed just unplug from the matrix, all the societal control
and communication devices that flood your mind, and move forward with your
life based on your new uninfluenced choices!

There was freewill about 4000 years ago but with each new technological advance
we gave it up in the name of the benefits of modern society. Individually you can
reclaim yours if you are willing to make the hard choices and unplug from the
matrix. How bad do you want your freedom?

Is this something like “my unconscious made me do it”?!

I think that the subconscious is the hard drive and that has been programmed by you consciously and subconsciously. Your subconscious is your advisor. If you don't like the advice it's giving you, then you have to change the programming through hypnosis. That has to be your freewill. In quiet moments you would listen to your advisor through meditation. For the remaining time you would trust your subconscious to make wise decisions for you, whilst you act in a very present and conscious way. I'm not sure that your subconscious can 'see' the future, but that your conscious mind is taking time to decide whether or not to 'listen' to the subconscious advice.

David Dobson, PhD, a genius on how the mind works came up with Other Than Communication and that the conscious mind is a gift of the other than conscious mind. So much in our life is out of our awareness or not conscious. We have validated that Other Than Conscious Communication works. We still have power of choice. We can choose to run our on brain. It does not run us. We are, however the sum of our experiences and hypnosis from the date of birth, starting with Mom, Dad, and then ministers, priests, teachers and peers. We can become more aware and run our brains more efficiently.

This is oh, so simple…why complicate it??
DO NOT IDENTIFY WITH THE CONSCIOUS MIND BUT WITH THE WHOLE MIND, which encompasses the Unconscious!…
Look: to build a house (or for ANY other creation process) there are 3 levels of activity: a) you think it, have the mental-picture; b) you draw it, have a 2-dimensional picture; c) you create the 3 dimensional one. The 'I' in its reality-creating process has to go through the phases of manifestation in which the conscious mind is the last player. This doesn't mean that YOU don't have free will, because YOU ARE THE WHOLE PROCESS.
[By the way: some day we will learn that before the Unconscious the decision was made 7 seconds before by... ]
We are SO MUCH MORE than the physical because the physical IS THE LAST ASPECT OF THE PROCESS OF the CREATION of who we are.

Hi, Just in case the experiment is not given to the candidates suddenly, and a person is in the process of explaining the experiment, “hi guys, you are free to choose either hand to press this button… blah blah”. What if the decision was taken by the candidate during that time itself? By nature, one can be tilted towards left or right. Is the expt still accurate then?

A while back, I experienced a powerful dream about a close friend, of over 20 years: He was wearing a mask, behind which was a frightening, sinister presence. Crazy dream stuff–I dismissed it, of course. Two years later, it came out that he'd been living a bit of a double life . . . and ripped off another friend for a lot of money . . . then abruptly moved out of town. The conscious “I” was deeply shocked; but obviously, some other part of me knew all along.

Absolutely! We have the potential for free will, but the default “autopilot” is always ready to make the decisions and trigger the action. Sadly, the decisions the “autopilot” (amygdala & associated circuitry) make are, by definition and reality, based on the past. If perchance the past has enough relevant data for the autopilot to make a sound decision, then all will be well. (But we will be in illusion as to our free will…) But even if the past data is not relevant or is too far off subject to give the autopilot enough to make a good decision, the autopilot will make the decision anyway. Then, if we do not interrupt the decision-to-action flow using the frontal lobes/executive function in the moments before the decision is sent to the action mechanism, then the autopilot decision goes through and we are stuck with the results. The only solution is to be present in the moment more and more. Or to reprogram the autopilot. Techniques and psycho-spiritual technologies are available for both. (Some examples are some forms of meditation such as Zen meditation; the Release Technique; Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy; and self- or hetero hypnosis.) Of course, we first have to recognize that most of the time we are walking around as zombie/robots….

[...] clipped from exploringthemind.com [...]

I don't think this means we don't have free will. Just that our decisions tend to be made “intuitively” before we're consciously aware of them. The process of making those decisions still depends very much, I think, on our culture, our upbringing, our preconceptions and pre-dispositions.

[...] is more interesting, if you recall a post from last week, which said that your brain makes a choice 6-7 seconds before you’re aware of it, is that the [...]

I think that more than anything- this article is documenting that what we “put” into our subconscious is what really makes the decisions. We have to watch what we do or listen to unconsciously- tv, dvd's, etc…and realize that these are truly having a profound impact.

Does this mean we really do NOT have free will?
I would say rather that our 'me' is much larger (and efficient) than our 'conscious' me- I feel that my conscious me is the part that can communicate verbally, like an interpreter.

An an interesting experiment, but what to make of it? As another here pointed out the researcher said our subconscious is unlikely lead us to make decisions out of alignment with out beliefs feeling, ideals. I see there is a tendency force some to compare free will when we have time to ponder a course of action, and those times when our brain is required to make fast spur of the moment decisions. In my opinion that would be comparing apples to oranges. As reported I don't find this study alarming at all.

Fantastic comment, succinct and on-target. Start with Napoleon Hill and Jung and end up with the latest neurophysiological research results. Now the trick is to be convinced that each of us have the capability to uplift ourselves and by extension all of humanity.

I think this is perfectly normal, and reflects one of the major responsibilities of our subconscious mind: That is to protect us. The only way we are able to experience life s through our senses. But – our eyes don’t really “see” neither do our ears “hear” Information is transmitted in wave form, which is deciphered by our “conscious” brain – the frontal cortex. But before that information gets there, it is filtered. In the case of sight, I believe 6 times. Along the way, some of that information gets filtered out, not everything reaching the frontal cortex. Those filters are VERY CLOSELY RELATED to our beliefs, thoughts, and experience. Now, here’s the thing, our conscious brain is very slow, can only deal with a few bits of information at a time, and can only transmit a few thousand bits of information at a time WHEREAS the subconscious handles thousands of items at a time and can transmit millions of bits of information at a time. NOW let’s suppose you are walking in the forest, look down as see at your left foot what looks like a snake – what happens? You have already jumped out of the way, or killed the snake, before the snake’s existence has registered in your conscious mind!! Your subconscious mind, sensing the danger, activated the fight/flight mechanism to save your life. But is it worthwhile remembering that your subconscious mind only LEARNED about the danger of snakes FROM YOU whenever you learned about the danger of snakes. Personally, I am quite happy to ALLOW my subconscious mind to get me out of tight spots. But it’s good to be aware, that it is ALWAYS RUNNING IN THE BACKGROUND, just like a computer program.
And with respect to “making choices” it seems to me the experiment did not so much demonstrate CORRECTNESS OR ERROR in the choice making. Rather, that based upon its knowledge of us, and its experience of us it perhaps knew the choice we would make. it didn’t make the choice for us. it only recorded it at the subconscious level before it was recorded at the conscious level by the button being chosen. If you have ever found yourself being angry for no obvious reason, and maybe asked yourself afterwards, why you got angry, and could not come up with an answer. Maybe that was your subconscious in control…. Whether we like to believe it or not, we are creatures of habit, and our habits are controlled by the subconscious.

I think if you didn’t have any time to decide,that would make it more obvious that it wasn’t a decision.Because you didn’t have any time to think things through,to weight the pros and cons,you just picked whatever.You are reacting.They used this particular experiment to show to what extent freewill is just an illusion.The more time we have to make a decision,the more it seems like we chose something.

Ok,obviously conciousness is part of the brain.But did they find freewill in that conciousness or just awareness of what’s happening?

Exactly.

definatly if there were less time available in the decision making process, It would be more likely the decision would be registered (by the scientists ) as a decision totally governed by your sub concious. Which it is anyway?….I think eveybody in this blog is missing the point, forget about the results of this video for one second,*- the fact that we are literally measuring brainwaves that govern our decisions….should be enough to tell us biology is the end of freewill. For a second- assuming you believe in free will….you are insinuating you, somehow control your brainwaves and the chemistry of your brain, you have full absolute control? you can control every equation and chemical influence that your exposed to? I’m sure humans in general are conditioned with this notion of ‘The UNIVERSE was created just for us’ and as you grow up and you hear lines like ‘Make the best of it’ and all people assuming we have have the power to change? The only power we have is to just be.

That is a very interesting point. You’ve got me thinking now. By what you say though everything is made up from science?

[...] lecture. Bakker’s very elegant with his argument and the more I research some of the actual factual experiments done on free will the scarier it [...]

but do these unconcious decisions rule us us we rule those unconcious decisions? Are the unconcious decisions made for our good or what??? can you tell me that???

Twins, lovers, friends and family have been doing this with each other for years and without a MRI machine Hence the saying you can run but you cannot hide cause you will always tell on your self. Be pure of thought/heart because someone close to you really knows your secrets. I think of all science as the study of God, or whatever you Choose (pun intended) to call it

You should check out ”What the Bleep down the Rabbit Hole” they did a similar experiment.

conciousness is the decision to do the physical act using our senses which we use while we are awake. the unconcious mind is a 24 hour system that keep us running.  so the way it works is determind by the physoligical  setting that is inborn as well as the social enviroment we live. free will is not as we think for our unconcious mind is the first and last system that determinds if we live or die.

I can’t understand why people are so reluctant to accept that we have no free will. We still think we have it and act as if we do. it’s like those in the dark ages who would not accept that the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth because it looks as if it does. People seem to think that because we think we have free will that we have it no matter what science reveals. I can only wonder if these people think we can step outside our own brains and make a decision.

 if we dont have free will, den how to fulfil dreams ……how to plan ??

[...] http://exploringthemind.com/the-mind/brain-scans-can-reveal-your-decisions-7-seconds-before-you-deci... [...]

I am a compatibilist, which means that I do not think determinism and free will are necessarily contradictory. The neuroscientist in the video seems to hit the nail on the head: It makes no sense to say your decisions are hostage to your brain activity unless you assume that your preferences and intentions are not themselves aspects of your brain activity, and the evidence shows that they in fact are just that.

On another note, “libertarian” free will would actually require a violation of causality: You would have to be aware of being in the process of making a decision before the process of making the decision had even begun, and if causality holds, one cannot really be aware of any “X” before “X” occurs, but only of things that, due to prior knowledge, you know to likely preceed “X”. You would have to think about thinking a thought before thinking the thought, and before that you would have to have thought about thinking about the thought, and so ad infinitum. Since you cannot have a simultaneous awareness of an infinite number of thoughts, it follows that, in the process leading up to any thought, there must have existed a thought that was not something you planned to think, since that would require having thought about thinking the thought first. Thus, the results of these experiments should come as no surprise.

[...] we feel and think has an outside cause . There is strong evidence that our brains appear to know what we are going to think, before we are concience of thinking it. But the statement above still retains a Cartesian dualism of “inside” someones head and [...]

[...] are multiple lines of evidence to suggest this is true. We initiate actions before we are conscious of them. Many physicists argue that there is no such thing as time, i.e., that everything that has ever [...]

That assumes the researchers knew 100% of the time what was going to happen on many subjects, many times over. If that’s the case this study is of profound significance to humanity.

[...] are multiple lines of evidence to suggest this is true. We initiate actions before we are conscious of them. Many physicists argue that there is no such thing as time, i.e., that everything that has ever [...]

“The only condition was that they had to remember when they made the decision to either use their right hand or left hand.”

No; it does not mean we do not have free will. A person could have made the decision to use their right hand and then randomly overrided their thoughts and used their left hand. That one condition prevented that.

Oh wait, this article is 1 year old.
*goes back to Google*

[...] Originally Posted by Iyace Oh Goodness. Show me this. Hi Iyace, here it is and there is a video below: Brain Scans Can Reveal Your Decisions 7 Seconds Before You “Decide” | Exploring The Mind… [...]

what about theories by evolutionary psychologists which occured prior to this knowledge. For example, being more attracted to women with a particular waist to hip ratio, the closing time effect where we find people more attractive when there is less opportunity for choice/time constraints, and so forth.

Its scary when taken together with the findings of evolutionary psychology that we are not as consciously in control as we think. Men are more attracted to women with a certain waist to hip ratio, brain areas which are designed to increase the probability of an adaptive behavior (like seeking out and eating high calorie food, completing a short or long term goal, engaging in things we are good at, seeking sex, engaging in risky activies which probably a long time ago had some evolutionary adaption) and the fact that drugs can manipulate these leading to a significant probability of reusing such drugs. Its very reductionistic but its hard to ignore the evidence when taken as a whole of our lack of free will

Read the journal articles methodology to better understand how they came to the decision they did from their results not something like this. A lot of times people will read a news article and say why the science is wrong failing to read the scientific journal.

 Even if we have free will, it is largely influenced by unconscious, which is storehouse of mental traits/personalities. The whole science is missing the foundation of spirituality (not religion). Once Science and Spirituality start working together then we will see transformation at every level. Spirituality explains concepts like Soul, Supreme Soul and the time cyclic eternal world Drama. These concepts will solve almost all the world problems.

Through self-inquiry everybody can find out by himself, that there is no free will on any level. But of course no-one can freely decide to make this self-inquiry or not Everything just happens.

what you are forgetting is that the entire process of “you” (your brain) has to obey the laws of physics. your decisions (the first step mentioned in your explanation) are only physical connections that occur based on previous physical aspects. if every action has a reaction then the physical reactions in your brain are “pre-determined” so to speak. therefore your decisions arent really decisions at all. 

 Except he obviously made a choice.  Anyone familiar with playing video games knows that you can make a conscious choice based off of new information in a matter of microseconds if you are not in “auto-pilot” mode.

The lag from your soul, perhaps? Curious, very curious.

Is their any perfect example of freewill. Can mankind ever figure out why we do this and do that. The answer is we decided to do it based off of our passed experiences. I wont go as far to say their isn’t freewill but our conscious is a slave in the illusion of freewill by our subconsious. But we are our subconcious and we are our conscious. The simple fact is the part of us that is concious can almost never control our subconcious unless we take control of our mind. Most of the world has no freewill but If it is somehow possible to master our mind than we should be able to control all of our bodilly functions our thought our vison our sense of smeel and so on. Though humans may use 100 percent of our brain how much do we control? the fact that our subconcious has this much power is probaly for the best because its capacity far exceeds our concious. So in the end you are a slave to your self and in some cases people who easilly allow input to control them or continuely have the same input put into them than they become more than just partially brainwashed by the enviorment they become the enviorments slave. The more we overuse technolog the more we seem to be losing freedom. Not because we create   technology but because we can’t live without it. Right now we already live in the matrix called Advandced civilization we created in the physical world. 70 or so more years we will be living an a one thats actually virtual, Anyway you look at it soon we will be living in a dynostopian reallity.   

The Bible (e.g. Word of God) already told us this “starling” fact. We are born into slavery in our hearts. The word heart in English is translated from “Kor” in Greek, which literally means center. The part of the brain making these subconscious choices is the center. Some have referred to it as the “alligator brain”.

Thoughts are generated there based on genetics, chemistry and the addictive chemicals (e.g. dopamine and other opiates) used both those bio-electric mechanisms. The generation process happens beneath your conscious awareness where you cannot see it, control it, choose it or otherwise participate.

That said — there is your physical, biological, chemical, genetic brain and then there is YOU: The “Real” you and not the thoughts generated from your biology. You get to choose to follow the thoughts flowing into your conscious awareness from your subconscious mechanics or not. You DO have a choice.

Moreover, given this new information you now have a basis for understanding that the genetic and biologic mechanisms do not invent anything. They work with what they are given — that is — the mind is a genetic engine like garden soil. The garden soil responds to the seeds that are planted within it. So, the mechanism of your subconscious mind works with the seeds of thinking planted within it. Thus, what appears in your conscious mind for you to choose from is the combined effort of the seeds planted there (nurture) and the genetic mechanisms of your brain (nature).

This answer an age-old conundrum: Am I the way I am based on nature or nurture. The reality is: BOTH!

Now — with all that said: An issue remains: Who is your seed source? There are ultimately two: God and Satan. You choose. You decide. What source of seeds have been planted in you? From what source has the mechanism of your mind been seeded with from which to make choices to present to you in your conscious mind?

Your ultimate choice is to figure out from what seed you want your mind (subconscious and conscious) planted, nurtured and grown?

The choice is now yours. Make it a good one!

I’d like to see this experience repeated and in different settings. This poses more questions than it solves. What about split second decisions that we all make when driving? Does your inconscient knows the future?! Funny how science drives towards a complete description of the human mind in mathematical prediction but we can’t seem to make artificial intelligence (consciousness) with the imensely powerful computers we have today.

I read most comments here. Some people touched on the perspective which is my comment. I have to say that this 7 seconds is stated to be fact here means that everyone has a 7 second premonition capability, ie: can see into the future by 7 seconds with their subconscious. Example, you’re driving down the road, regardless of the ultimate decision that is made, you see the child that runs across in front of your moving vehicle 7 seconds before they actually run across in front of you. Does this mean we don’t have free will? No it does not. It means we exercised our free will 7 seconds earlier. However, that movie with Nicolas Cage where he could see into the future 2 minutes, he had the presence of mind to change his decision whereas we don’t. But then again, that was a movie with a supposed fictional power of foresight.

[...] interesting to observe that none of us are as “in control” of ourselves as we think we are.  Recent research shows that “by monitoring the micro patterns of activity in the frontopolar cortex, the [...]

[...] interesting to observe that none of us are as “in control” of ourselves as we think we are.  Recent research shows that “by monitoring the micro patterns of activity in the frontopolar cortex, the [...]

wow i was kinda creeped out but i do things without even thinking about it like walking i didnt tell myself i was going to walk i kinda just did and talking when i speak words come but i didnt and i did know what i was gonna say if you ask me thats pretty spooky

No, what that means to me is that the more conscious of the workings of our subconscious mind we are, the better we can make decisions based on a much deeper source than we think we are.  Until we do deeply conscious, subconscious, or unconscious work, we are driven by what the limitations of what we think from the conscious mind only, whereas true thought, true feeling, true decision making, true action must encompass of levels of ourselves.  The conscious ego can never do that kind of work because it would duplicate itself ad infinitum with no real answer in sight.  To reach the depths of the unconscious and become informed of our unacknowledged thoughts, feelings, patterns of desire, etc. we need to let go of the superficial ego and dive in, deeply in.  It is only scary for the limited self because of it’s mental construct of how reality should be, that it holds on to so tightly to create a safe life for itself, which has nothing to do with the true levels of experience and existence.  If one has the courage to let go and dive in, become conscious of those unconscious levels as an impartial observer, the whole universe changes, the whole point of view changes, and just by doing that, our very own viewpoint changes, into a much more real experience, where bliss and light are the true backdrop of all our thoughts, of all our feelings, and of all our actions.  

The universe is a simulation and works like a computer. As your body is slower than your consciousness the body reacts first before the mind. Watch Tom Campbell the Hawaii seminar on You tube where similar experiments have been performed. It is a compelling watch

 Interesting, to say the least. I can only wonder if this is related to our brains performing multi-functions on a conscience level. Could it be that we are thinking 6 or 7 steps ahead. or seconds ahead in order to process the next bit of information?

Its called the SOUL

the sould makes a decision first and lets the brain know 7 seconds before

before you actually do it

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I apologise in advance but this post is extremely stupid. You seem to forget the very basic premise of scientific methodology. Experiments like these need to start at basic choices before moving in to more complex reasoning. In all honesty you sound like an undergrad psychology student who had his first lecture on the limitations of psychological methodology.

Of course the subject did not choose to not press the button. He volunteered for the flaming experiment! What would be the point in taking part and NOT doing the experiment. That would be retarded! The point of the experiment, which you are clearly oblivious to, is to ascertain whether a simple choice (i.e. choosing between A or B where they have equal value) is made consciously (i.e. ‘the thinker’ is making a choice) or sub-consciously (i.e. in the absence of ‘the thinker’).

The conclusion of the study is that a simple decision is made prior to conscious awareness of that decision. The implication is that it is only AFTER a decision has been made that the subject is conscious of a decision. In other words a choice has been made and afterwards the conscious mind says “I made that choice” giving the illusion that “you” had made that choice.

Of course other studies are required to explore choice in other complex scenarios but that does not in any way detract from the relevance of this study.

so who made this post then??

[...] More @Exploring the Mind. [...]

“it could only go one way”

The real proof for free will lies in juxtaposing scenarios which are obviously determined with those which might not be. If I jump from a tree, a scientist could say with certainty, “In 7 seconds you will land.” (It’s a high tree.) I cannot frustrate his prediction in that case because the action of falling is determined for me. But I don’t believe any scientist could tell me with certainty, “In 7 seconds, you will jump.” It seems that I could always frustrate him by simply choosing not to jump. I have written on this in greater length in my blog. Please feel free to visit Larry Hunt’s Bible Commentary, Romans 7 notes.

why do we generally take a left turn

It’s nonsense. There are a lot of people who believe in determinism because they think that physical causality is both inescapable and (here’s the rub) can only have one outcome. That is, Universe state A is bound to inexorably lead to Universe state B and nothing else. They apply that belief with religious fervour and they expect the universe to fit their idealistic notions. They consider people to be rather stupid when they don’t buy their simplistic brand of logical positivism. Also, the experiment was arguably meaningless because the decision to use the right or left hand was meaningless and would tend to naturally set up a cognitive algorithm which was then detected. Sometimes university researchers can be very, very stupid.

As far as I know at this moment, most humans have the illusion of free will, but not free will as it truly is. Another interesting point/question is: what is “free will”? A friend of mine once explained, that free will only exists if consciousness is the driver of your carriage, so to speak. If memory/ego is the dominant force, then you do not have free will at all, but the illusion thereof. Thanks for allowing me to share.

“Marcus is really disturbed here…”
Nah. He’s not disturbed. He’s trying to make an exciting program so he has to *look* disturbed, and of course tell the audience how shocked he is. It’s called television. Made for entertainment. Take it with a pinch of salt (his reaction, that is). In fact, take the whole thing with a pinch of salt until you’ve checked it and double-checked it with more reputable sources than a journalist (and a BBC journalist to boot).

Perhaps, we make the decision to drive the action potential that sorts these things out. We definitely have more going on underneath, but all of these actions can’t be made aware of or it might take too long. Also, maybe we offset a lot of actions that were once made consciously to this behind the scenes chatter, and also integrate familiar scenarios.

Also, he was shown a choice for at least 6 seconds? What about impulse decisions?

[...] Brain Scans Can Reveal Your Decisions 7 Seconds Before You “Decide” – Exploring the mind [...]

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Surely the brain activity seen in preparing to use either hand to press a button is itself a consequence of the prior decision to commit oneself to the experiment and does not therefore mean the brain is ‘controlling’ you against your will?

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It comes down to this:
“Something” in us may know 7 (6 according to the investigator) seconds before we are conscious of it what will happen. If a car suddenly appears in front of yours coming from the right, and you slam on the brakes and instantly make a flash decision to steer to the right of it to pass behind it, and this decision was based on a millisecond calculation, then either decisions can be made nearly or completely simultaneous with their execution, or if the making of that decision took place 6-7 seconds earlier, “something” -call it the brain if you will- already knew 6-7 seconds before the actual event happened that it would. That would be pre-cognition.

One thing is obvious from the experiments: “something” in us can be aware of things before we are. And it can make decisions before before we are conscious of them.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if a video of a traffic situation as described would be shown to the subject, and he or she would have to react to it instantaneously.

Also -and this was not explained- to actually have the subject hold a neutral image in mind of both hands with neither of them pressing the button, and then say “Left now!” and do it at the “Now!” And “Right now!” and press the right button, again at the “Now!”

Yes. But it’s a “superwoman” or “supernatural” you who is making decisions. On the human level you might not be aware of your “supernatural” Self.

This research has been at the heart of CPHT Hypnotherapy training for a long time now, and whilst this would appear to suggest a lack of control over our decisions, it in fact opens the door to more and better control.

I think it’s like decisions we make have already been made 7 seconds ago , it just took 7 seconds to transform to thoughts …