Conscious Robots: If We Really Had Free Will, What Would We Do All Day?

by Paul Kwatz

We humans are equipped with the ability to imagine in advance how much pleasure or pain a particular event will give us: it’s what we do when we’re umming and ahhing about a decision – we’re trying to imagine what are the most likely outcomes, and to find out how good or bad those outcomes might make us feel.

When we climb a mountain and admire the view from the summit, although it seems to be the view itself that’s making us feel good, that’s not really how it works; the view has no capacity to control how we feel because the view is nothing more than a collection of different wavelengths of light passing through the atmosphere and entering our eyes… It’s up to our brains to interpretthat information and convert it into our experience of“enjoying the view”.

A feeling is not an inevitable consequence of the physical world - a feeling is created inside our own brains.

Feelings are created in a part of the brain that is beyond our conscious control.

Our genes are the music. We’re the discardable and vulnerable vinyl discs.

Pleasures fade and expectations adjust, leaving us always wanting more than we have.