Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently

by Beau Lotto

So while we’re not able to consciously control the “present now,” we can influence our “future now.” How? By changing our future past, which raises a deep question about where free will—if we have it—might actually live. What do I mean? Libet’s experiments demonstrate that we have little… if any… free will over our responses to events in the present. But through the process of imagination (delusion), we do have the ability to change the meanings of past events, whether they occurred a second ago or, as in the case of some cultural memes, centuries ago. “Re-meaning,” or changing the meaning of past events, necessarily changes our “past” history of our experience of the world—not of course the events themselves, nor the sensory data arising from those events, but the statistical history upon which perception is predicated.