Isolated rat cells can fly planes, so you have no free will

In the last few years, someone decided to see if isolated rat brain cells placed in a dish could control a flight simulator. Not to keep you in suspense, they can.

At first, the cells did not what the hell they were doing, but over time, they learned. (That's what brain cells do.)

Basically, the cells are grown are grown on dish of electrodes and form sort of a bio-circuit board. Whenever the virtual plane is flying strait, the neurons receive a positive electrical signal, which strengthens which ever neural connections are active at that time. Pretty soon, the neural pathways that fly the plane correctly are the strongest, and the isolated neurons are blazing around like Goose and Maverick giving "the bird" to a MIG. This is the same that we learn to walk or hit a golf ball.

Now if isolated neurons can fly planes, can they form some kind of natural, artificial, semi-conscious, conscious, human-like, bio-bot? I'm glad you asked.



This robot learns the same way that the flight simulator neurons learned. In other words, it gets better at being a robot over time without any future programming. Neural cells are built to do just that. It's a large part of how we learn - neurons that do the job correctly become stronger.

So why don't you have any free will anymore? Well, you are basically one of the these robots, except your brain cells last a lot longer and you occasionally have to go to the bathroom. That's it. Maybe. Perhaps all you do is respond to stimuli and strengthen neural connections over time.

Not enough proof that you have no free will? Well, how about this: Recent studies have shown that, when making a decision, electrical signals for that decision can be observed in your brain...wait for it...10 seconds before you make your decision. In other words, contrary to our assumed relationship with our brain, which is that we tell it what to do, it now appears that it tells us what to do.

Let's think about how this works. You are at the store pondering whether to add crunch berries™ to this week's stockpile of your favorite breakfast treat, Cap't Crunch (which are supposed to look like a bunch of treasure chests, by the way). Your impatient wife asks you what you're going to get. You reply "I have no idea", because you don't. Ten seconds later, Bam! you triumphantly throw the crunch berry™-less cereal into your cart. Beaming, you walk off to ready to take on the ever present "idodized vs non-iodized salt" Goliath.

Had you been able to see your brain's activity more clearly, you would have known that you were about to choose that the plain cereal when your wife asked. In fact, your brain has probably already decided on idodized salt. In essence, the decision was already made before you knew about it. All you did was eventually carry it out by grabbing the cereal box, like some kind of monkey butler.

On the other hand, maybe your brain is just good at reading minds. Like your own. Wait, that doesn't make any more sense at all.