Free will is an illusion?

[Marcus]

I came across an interesting study today:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/jay-olson-mcgill-psychiatry-student-can-influence-your-every-move-1.2952085

He stopped 118 people and did a card trick for them, while simultaneously subtly influencing their choice of cards.

He found that 98 per cent of them picked the card he wanted. And of those people, 90 per cent believed they made the choice of their own free will.

A guy has devised an experiement that gets people to choose the card of his card a whopping 98% of the time?

What does this say about free will and how does Objectivism respond to these findings?

Thoughts?

[Brant Gaede]

They chose to participate. Did he trick them into that? What did the 2% demonstrate?

[Selene]

What was the total number that he tried to enlist would also be a question that I would need answered, e.g., the person actually asked 220 people and only got 118 to interact and ...etc.

Changes a lot of conclusions that one could attempt to make.

Did he have a control group without the "subtle" stuff and get statistically accurate results?

A...

[Jonathan]

I came across an interesting study today:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/jay-olson-mcgill-psychiatry-student-can-influence-your-every-move-1.2952085

He stopped 118 people and did a card trick for them, while simultaneously subtly influencing their choice of cards.

He found that 98 per cent of them picked the card he wanted. And of those people, 90 per cent believed they made the choice of their own free will.

A guy has devised an experiement that gets people to choose the card of his card a whopping 98% of the time?

They didn't choose a card. They were asked to "choose" one of the cards that they saw as the magician flicks the deck for a fraction of a second. The trick is that he exposes only one of the cards long enough to be seen. It's a card that he has chosen ahead of time. They name the only card that they saw. The two percent of people for whom the trick didn't work were accidentally shown another card due to the magician's error when flicking the deck.

What does this say about free will and how does Objectivism respond to these findings?

It doesn't say anything about free will. Free will involves choice. When someone asks you to choose one of the cards that you see, and you see only one, no choice is actually involved, and therefore it has no relevance to the issue of free will.

Thoughts?

All that the "experiment" shows is that the magician can't perform the trick to perfection 100% of the time.

J

[Selene]

geez J now I have to watch the damn video ...

 

 

 

 

[Selene]

Here is the study...which apparently had two (2) stages.

In the second stage, the researchers created a simple computer-based version of the riffle by presenting a series of 26 images of cards sequentially on a screen. Researchers asked participants to silently choose a card, then enter it after each of 28 different trials. Overall, participants chose the target card on 30% of the trials. Although "reasonably high" this rate was much lower than in the first study, "possibly because many of the social and situational factors central to magic tricks were absent" from the conventional laboratory conditions in which this stage was carried out, says co-author Ronald Rensink, a professor of psychology and computer science at the University of British Columbia. In a magic performance, for instance, spectators may be influenced by the personality of the magician, expectations created by the setup, and pressure to choose a card quickly, he notes.

"Magic provides an unusual lens to examine and unravel behaviour and the processing of higher brain functions," says co-author Amir Raz, who is a former professional magician and holds the Canada Research Chair in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention in McGill's Faculty of Medicine. "This study joins a nascent wave of experiments that binds the magical arts to the principles of psychological and neural sciences. Such a marriage has the potential to elucidate fundamental aspects of behavioural science as well as advance the art of conjuring."

Vancouver magician Alym Amlani, an accounting instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, B.C., also contributed to the study.

Funding for the research was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Video of the card trick:

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by McGill University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

Jay A. Olson, Alym A. Amlani, Amir Raz, Ronald A. Rensink. Influencing choice without awareness. Consciousness and Cognition, 2015; DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.01.004

McGill University. "Pick a card, any card: How magicians sway decision-making." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 February 2015. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150209113003.htm>.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150209113003.htm

[Peter]

Adam wrote:

What was the total number that he tried to enlist ?

end quote

That reminds me of enlistment posters from a bygone era. Uncle Sam wants you!

[Brant Gaede]

Adam wrote:

What was the total number that he tried to enlist ?

end quote

That reminds me of enlistment posters from a bygone era. Uncle Sam wants you!

Not any more. Now he wants your kids.

--Brant

when he wanted me, I couldn't feel the love (just sayin')

[Marcus]

Here is a better article that goes into much more detail:

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/this-is-your-brain-on-magic/385468/

I came across an interesting study today:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/jay-olson-mcgill-psychiatry-student-can-influence-your-every-move-1.2952085

He stopped 118 people and did a card trick for them, while simultaneously subtly influencing their choice of cards.
He found that 98 per cent of them picked the card he wanted. And of those people, 90 per cent believed they made the choice of their own free will.

A guy has devised an experiement that gets people to choose the card of his card a whopping 98% of the time?

They didn't choose a card. They were asked to "choose" one of the cards that they saw as the magician flicks the deck for a fraction of a second. The trick is that he exposes only one of the cards long enough to be seen. It's a card that he has chosen ahead of time. They name the only card that they saw. The two percent of people for whom the trick didn't work were accidentally shown another card due to the magician's error when flicking the deck.

Thoughts?

All that the "experiment" shows is that the magician can't perform the trick to perfection 100% of the time.

J

He didn't expose one long enough to be seen, you can see other cards in the deck, he merely showed his chosen card the longest. In magic, it's called forcing and there are two forms: physical and psychological.

This same experiment was done using computers for flashes of a few seconds and it got a 30% result (for the chosen cards), which while not 98% does clearly show free will can be influenced.

In the second part of Olson’s Cognition and Consciousness study, the researchers tried the same type of physical forcing on a computer, asking volunteers to name a card after seeing several flash by, one staying on the screen imperceptibly longer than the others. The subjects picked the target card 30 percent of the time—still a significant number, but one dramatically smaller than when Olson had been flipping the deck.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's another example, a rather famous one, of subliminal persuasion where a choice looks like pure free will, but has been "seeded" subliminally.

 

 

Derren Brown is famous for this kind of thing.

 

Michael