NationStates Jolt Archive

In which of the following scenarios is the agent (marble, toy robot dog, or human) exercising free will?

1. You have a marble in a box. When you open a slot, the marble will roll down the slope and into a hole. Does the marble have free will?

2. You have a marble in a box. When you open the slot it rolls down a slope until it comes to a Y intersection. The intersection has been carefully made so that the marble has a fifty percent chance of going either way. Does the marble have free will?

3. Replace the marble with a human. You capture a human, put them in a box and they walk down a corridor to the Y intersection. Does the human's choice about which direction to take mean they have free will? Why or why not? What if you capture many humans and repeat the experiment many times and find there is a fifty percent chance they will go left and a fifty percent chance they will go right? Wouldn't it be logical to conclude that their choice is based on random processes and humans have as much free will as marbles?

4. Put Aibo, Sony's toy robot dog in the corridor. The robot dog is programmed to go and pick up its plastic bone that you have placed in the left corridor. Abio always goes left towards the bone. Does Aibo have free will?

5. Put a bone in both corridors. Aibo now has a fifty percent chance of turning either way. Does Aibo have free will? Why or why not? Aibo appears to be making a choice. What if a quirk in his program always causes Aibo to turn left when faced with bones at equal distances? Does Aibo have free will then?

6. Put a bone in one corridor, put a fake bone that resembles Aibo's bone in the other. Aibo goes towards the real bone 70% of the time and the fake bone 30% of the time. Does Aibo have free will? Why not? Aibo is acting upon information in the environment and making a choice based on it. Is that an exercise of free will? If not, why not?

7. You put a human in the corridor. You tell him than down the left corridor is antidote for the fast acting poison you have given him and a way out of your mad laboratory. You also tell him that down the right corridor is insulin for his daughter, a hacksaw and other medical supplies. You have chained his daughter to the wall. You then shoot him in the left leg. How is this scenario different from Aibo's scenario above, apart from its complexity? Don't both agents have to make the best decision they can based on the information they have? Is the human exercising free will in his choice? If so, can you say that Aibo isn't in the previous scenario?

I'm bumping this thread, I'd like to see what people who believe in Free Will have to say about it.

Marbles are inaninamte objects which just move in the direction of gravity. Robot dogs just run as they are programed. That last one sounds like the ending of a bad Hollywood movie.

Marbles are inaninamte objects which just move in the direction of gravity. Robot dogs just run as they are programed.I think the question is, do humans exercise free will, do they run as they are programmed, or do they randomly move in the direction of something else?

I think the question is, do humans exercise free will, do they run as they are programmed, or do they randomly move in the direction of something else?

What is this, the Matrix? Humans have free will which is what puts us above the animals. We can make decisions on our own. That guy in the mad labatory has a decision to make and because he has thought he will make it something that marbles and robot dogs cannot do.

What is this, the Matrix? Humans have free will which is what puts us above the animals. We can make decisions on our own.Do you think the robot dog might think it's making decisions on its own?

Do you think the robot dog might think it's making decisions on its own?

I do not believe that the robot dog CAN think. It is just a bunch of computer programming and as they said on the movie Short Curcuit "It just runs programmed!" :D

Aargh! Stop messing with my brain!

In which of the following scenarios is the agent (marble, toy robot dog, or human) exercising free will?

1. You have a marble in a box. When you open a slot, the marble will roll down the slope and into a hole. Does the marble have free will?

2. You have a marble in a box. When you open the slot it rolls down a slope until it comes to a Y intersection. The intersection has been carefully made so that the marble has a fifty percent chance of going either way. Does the marble have free will?

3. Replace the marble with a human. You capture a human, put them in a box and they walk down a corridor to the Y intersection. Does the human's choice about which direction to take mean they have free will? Why or why not? What if you capture many humans and repeat the experiment many times and find there is a fifty percent chance they will go left and a fifty percent chance they will go right? Wouldn't it be logical to conclude that their choice is based on random processes and humans have as much free will as marbles?

4. Put Aibo, Sony's toy robot dog in the corridor. The robot dog is programmed to go and pick up its plastic bone that you have placed in the left corridor. Abio always goes left towards the bone. Does Aibo have free will?

5. Put a bone in both corridors. Aibo now has a fifty percent chance of turning either way. Does Aibo have free will? Why or why not? Aibo appears to be making a choice. What if a quirk in his program always causes Aibo to turn left when faced with bones at equal distances? Does Aibo have free will then?

6. Put a bone in one corridor, put a fake bone that resembles Aibo's bone in the other. Aibo goes towards the real bone 70% of the time and the fake bone 30% of the time. Does Aibo have free will? Why not? Aibo is acting upon information in the environment and making a choice based on it. Is that an exercise of free will? If not, why not?

7. You put a human in the corridor. You tell him than down the left corridor is antidote for the fast acting poison you have given him and a way out of your mad laboratory. You also tell him that down the right corridor is insulin for his daughter, a hacksaw and other medical supplies. You have chained his daughter to the wall. You then shoot him in the left leg. How is this scenario different from Aibo's scenario above, apart from its complexity? Don't both agents have to make the best decision they can based on the information they have? Is the human exercising free will in his choice? If so, can you say that Aibo isn't in the previous scenario?
1 and 2. Marbles don't have a will, so certainly no free will.

3. This is mostly personal preference. I don't know if this experiment has been conducted, but I think it won't be 50-50. This because of either the majority of the people being righthanded (ambidextrous people walk into the wall separating the corridors, so there :p) or where people start to read. So Westerners would go more left. I think. Anyway. Free will? Tough one. I think there's a little programming here. Or random choice

4. This is program. The dog can't go right, because there is no bone there. It would be illogical for it to go and find it there.

5. This is program too, unless the program "flips a coin" then it's just ramdom.

6. I'm curious where you got the 70-30. I guess 40 will recognise the real bone for some reason and the others just go for one at random. So no. No free will.

7. Well you haven't shot Aido in the leg, nor can it love it's daughter or even have a daughter. So I think the "just higher complexity" doesn't really count. Definate free will here.

< massive snippage >
Free will may or may not be an illusion. By an act of will, I choose to believe that it's not. :)

The answer is more complex than the question supposes.

The marble is influenced solely by gravity (and negligible frictional forces).

The robot dog is influenced by gravity and programming. It is important to note that the dog cannot override its programming.

The human is influenced by gravity, instinct (a sort of programming), and free will. So your hollywood ending is unpredictable. Chances are the human will do whatever it takes to save his or her offspring (instinct), but this is not necessarily so. The human may come up with an answer that the madman did not foresee in his scheming. Just like I came up with this answer that lies outside of the choices implied by the question.

In scenario 6. Aibo processes infomation and makes a choice about which bone to approach. It makes a decision. In scenario 7. the man does the same thing. He processes infomation and makes a decision. Although the man has much greater processing power and a wider range of actions he can perform, what he does is not different in kind from what the Robot dog does. You could argue that they both exercise free will, or that neither do. This leads me to say that the question of free will is irrellevent for making choices. I think human brains are complex decision making machines and the feeling we get inside our head when make choices is called free will by some.

When you make a decision, electrochemical signals travel through your brain. You can't say that your freewill enables you to make decisions independant of these electrochemical signals because you are these electrochemical signals. You, your consciousness, is part of the decision making machine.

We live, we learn, we make choices. Hopefully we make choices that improve out lives. If you want to call the process of making choices free will, fine. But then the robot dog has a basic kind of free will too.

Holy crap man, I thought you were kidding.
Good, I'm glad this exists.

What? No comment on this??? :(


Free will may or may not be an illusion. By an act of will, I choose to believe that it's not. :)

Free will may or may not be an illusion. By an act of will, I choose to believe that it's not.
You are a decision making machine. It would be kind of stupid for a decision making machine to think that it couldn't make decisions. It wouldn't be very efficent, you see. Please continue to feel free to make choices. Of course, I would say the only reason that you are capable of feeling free to make choices is to help you make better choices than you would if you didn't have the processing power to feel free.

Free will may or may not be an illusion. By an act of will, I choose to believe that it's not. :)

I take a different approach. Either free will exists, or it's predetermined that I will believe free will exists.

Free will may or may not be an illusion. By an act of will, I choose to believe that it's not. :)
Exactly. We can't know for a fact whether or not we have free will, but we must act as though we do because if we have free will and choose to act as if everything is predestined then we end up drifting through life aimlessly.

What is this, the Matrix? Humans have free will which is what puts us above the animals. We can make decisions on our own. That guy in the mad labatory has a decision to make and because he has thought he will make it something that marbles and robot dogs cannot do.

How come we have free will but animals don't? Animals have as much free will as we do so we're equal according to you we're equal.

Humans have free will which is what puts us above the animals.
I don't see it that way. Animals have brains which they use to make decisions. Humans use their brains in the same way. The only difference is our brains are larger and have more processing power. I see nothing called free will that distinguishes our decision making from say chimpanzee's.

I don't see it that way. Animals have brains which they use to make decisions. Humans use their brains in the same way. The only difference is our brains are larger and have more processing power. I see nothing called free will that distinguishes our decision making from say chimpanzee's.

I don't want to get into a discussion about whether animals operatesolely on instinct, but I would like to point out that humans do not. Your stance assumes that humans are only operating on instinct, i.e. the same way animals do. This is not the case. My choice to respond to your post can not be construed as an instinctive response.

There is more than one decision making process involved. You seem to be assuming that there is only one.

Animals have free will too. It's just that, in the wild, they can't take the time to come up with the answer without dying. They rely on instincts and split-second timing. Take them out of the wild and into a safe place and you'll pretty soon see that they begin to slow down. They begin to take longer to make decisions. They start playing and having fun.

Now, let's take a person and place that person in the wild. Pretty soon, if that person survives, he or she will begin to act purely on instinct. Now, I'm not saying all animals have free will. I doubt a sponge makes decisions. It's just the more complex ones that have the free will. Wolves have free will. Yes, they often make decisions. Some stay with the pack when they reach maturity while others stike out on their own. Some are confortable with their lower ranks while others challenge the alphas. Yes, they all have different personalities, but their free will won't override basic instincts most of the time. It's the same with us. Some men stay with mommy until they're 40 while most leave home soon after they reach the 18 mark. Some are confortable in lower ranks while others try to become president. Plus, how long can you keep your hand on a burning stove until your pain instinct kicks in? How many people can you kill before your community instinct takes hold?

I don't want to get into a discussion about whether animals operatesolely on instinct, but I would like to point out that humans do not. Your stance assumes that humans are only operating on instinct, i.e. the same way animals do. This is not the case. My choice to respond to your post can not be construed as an instinctive response.

There is more than one decision making process involved. You seem to be assuming that there is only one.

To play devils advocate, though are decision precesses are more involved, our actions are dictated by our thoughts. Now the question is if we have control over the directoins our thoughts take (The old example is the statement "I'll give you $500 if you don't think of a pink elephant", what is the first thing you think of (at least me) ... a pink elephant. On a purely physical level there is not much differenciating our brains with their neurons with a computer and their circuits. Our brain functions which control our actions, obey the physcial laws of the Universe just like computer functions do.

Yep. Our actions are based off of our thoughts because our brain basicly controls both. That's not saying other creatures, like monkies, foxies, and wolves don't have the same thought processes. Sure, you can't expect a fox to compose beautiful scores on par with Mozart. You can't expect a dog to invent the most powerful and fuel-efficient jet engine ever concieved. You can't even expect a wolf to do your work for you. They use their instincts of thought. A wolf won't always go after sheep instead of a much-tastier deer. A wolf won't always challenge Mr. Alphawolf. They make decisions. A fox learns. Traps almost never trap more than one rat because they saw that it just killed Ratty.

Is our technology because of purely free will or was some instinct involved? Humans, like monkies, have an instinct to use tools. But unlike monkies, our tools became more complex. Why? We simply added on to them. We made discoveries and applied them. Cars weren't invented within a year. It took millennia of discoveries and invention to come up with cars. Same with planes and submarines. Those took millennia of slow development to create. The wheel bacame the cart. When seats were added to carts, the stage-coach came to be. Add an engine and you have a car. It's more complex than that, but you get the idea. Humans are programmed to learn and to apply knowledge when needed. Although we have free will, we aren't completely free from instinct.

The problem with discussing this is that the concept of "free will" is flawed.
According to Webster, the definition of "free" would be best expressed by 2a:

"2 a : not determined by anything beyond its own nature or being : choosing or capable of choosing for itself "

The choices involved are determined by something beyond an entity's nature or being, i.e. the existence of corridors. It's like the Rush song says: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

The only scenario that I could envision for determining free will would be a person existing in an endless tract of empty space, but then, without a reference, there would be no way to measure the person's "choice".

In which of the following scenarios is the agent (marble, toy robot dog, or human) exercising free will?

1. You have a marble in a box. When you open a slot, the marble will roll down the slope and into a hole. Does the marble have free will?

2. You have a marble in a box. When you open the slot it rolls down a slope until it comes to a Y intersection. The intersection has been carefully made so that the marble has a fifty percent chance of going either way. Does the marble have free will? not free will unless you can prove the marble is sencient
3. Replace the marble with a human. You capture a human, put them in a box and they walk down a corridor to the Y intersection. Does the human's choice about which direction to take mean they have free will? Why or why not? What if you capture many humans and repeat the experiment many times and find there is a fifty percent chance they will go left and a fifty percent chance they will go right? Wouldn't it be logical to conclude that their choice is based on random processes and humans have as much free will as marbles? Nope,1) Humans will show a preference, either left or right, I for one, tend choose right first if all things are equal. 2) humans can change their mind, they can walk halfway down the corridor and then turn around, especially when evidence starts to show they made the wrong turn.

4. Put Aibo, Sony's toy robot dog in the corridor. The robot dog is programmed to go and pick up its plastic bone that you have placed in the left corridor. Abio always goes left towards the bone. Does Aibo have free will? Can Abio choose not to pick up the bone? Can Abio choose to do other things to the bone other than pick it up? No? then no free will.

5. Put a bone in both corridors. Aibo now has a fifty percent chance of turning either way. Does Aibo have free will? Why or why not? Aibo appears to be making a choice. What if a quirk in his program always causes Aibo to turn left when faced with bones at equal distances? Does Aibo have free will then?Can the quirk be removed? if so, does Abio still show the tendency to go left? can Abio 'Change his mind'? No? then no free will.

6. Put a bone in one corridor, put a fake bone that resembles Aibo's bone in the other. Aibo goes towards the real bone 70% of the time and the fake bone 30% of the time. Does Aibo have free will? Why not? Aibo is acting upon information in the environment and making a choice based on it. Is that an exercise of free will? If not, why not?when you switch bones, are the results the same? is there a programming that allows Aibo to 'choose?' what method of determining real or fake is being used? 50/50 chances does not mean 50% Results.

flip a coin 10 times for 100 sets, bet you the results will be different for each set of 10 flips. While there is a 50/50 for heads to come up each flip, the results will be different.

7. You put a human in the corridor. You tell him than down the left corridor is antidote for the fast acting poison you have given him and a way out of your mad laboratory. You also tell him that down the right corridor is insulin for his daughter, a hacksaw and other medical supplies. You have chained his daughter to the wall. You then shoot him in the left leg. How is this scenario different from Aibo's scenario above, apart from its complexity? Don't both agents have to make the best decision they can based on the information they have? Is the human exercising free will in his choice? If so, can you say that Aibo isn't in the previous scenario?thing is tho, can you disable or hinder Aibo's leg, and get the same results? or will the results be different? The human is different because no matter how you try and fix the scenario, there is nothing you can do to predict how the human will react, some of the possible choices are, 1) he can attack you, take the gun away and shoot you. 2) he can also attack you forcing you to shoot him not in the leg but in the head, thus ending your experiment. 3) he can get the antitdote, then go down the other corridor and rescue his daughter. 4) he can rescue his daughter and die from the poison. 5) he can sit and not do anything.

Another thing you needed to do was place all these "conditions"; using his daughter, poision, injury... all to try to influence the outcome. Aibo didn't need it, the marble didn't need it, but the human does. why? choice, the human can choose a path you didn't think of, one that is not inherent to the simplicity of the test needed for the Marble and the robot.

do humans have free will? yep, the fact that you need to create situations so outlandish to try to "drive" the human to the solutions you desire shows that the human can 'Choose' paths you may not even think of.

Was my argument sound or was it flawed? My small dog likes to lay down on my big dog. Are all small dogs going to go on top of big dogs? What about the fact that my medium-sized dog bites strange dogs even though she absolutely adores people and begs for their friendship? Is free-will purely human? It might be since it was created by humans, like math and science. Those never existed before the first human that ever studied stuff and started counting. Is free-will real or imagined? Is anything real or is everything an illusion? Am I real or a figment of my imagination. What am I tlaking about? I have absolutely, possitively, 110%.....no clue.

I don't see it that way. Animals have brains which they use to make decisions. Humans use their brains in the same way. The only difference is our brains are larger and have more processing power. I see nothing called free will that distinguishes our decision making from say chimpanzee's.

I suppose that my cat makes decisions the same way that I do. Much as I love my cat I know that he is just an animal and that he has no self-awareness that he is an individual. Which is why animals do not advance as humans do. They just run on their instincts to eat and sleep. Animals hardly make decisions.

How does the scientific community describe the relation of spontatneous events and free-will? With the uncertainty principle, would it be possible for say a "soul" from another higher dimesion to sway the movement of electrons as they orbit?

Not that I'd believe it, but is it possible? Can this be disproven through scientific experimentation?

I don't see it that way. Animals have brains which they use to make decisions. Humans use their brains in the same way. The only difference is our brains are larger and have more processing power. I see nothing called free will that distinguishes our decision making from say chimpanzee's.
acording to that, plants even have free will. a carrot plant has an iq of 2, i'm pretty shure, and a slug's iq is also 2, isn't it? and planarians, well, they don't need iq for this, they'd just split in two and take BOTH paths!

of course, i don't believe in free will(but i'm also not a theist)
but, if we think that there's no freewill, and we don't do anything because we think that everything we're going to do is predetermined, then wouldn't that be predetermined? therefore we should go about as we would anyways, even though it's predetermined, and that is and was predetermined allong with the consiquences of it :p

How does the scientific community describe the relation of spontatneous events and free-will? With the uncertainty principle, would it be possible for say a "soul" from another higher dimesion to sway the movement of electrons as they orbit?

Not that I'd believe it, but is it possible? Can this be disproven through scientific experimentation?
if something can't be disproven than it automatically disproves it, heheh.

if something can't be disproven than it automatically disproves it, heheh.

What? If something can't be disproven it is labelled as "uncertain" or "unknown"
Scientific method is interested in facts, but just because one can't prove something does not mean it is false.

In scenario 6. Aibo processes infomation and makes a choice about which bone to approach. It makes a decision. In scenario 7. the man does the same thing. He processes infomation and makes a decision. Although the man has much greater processing power and a wider range of actions he can perform, what he does is not different in kind from what the Robot dog does. You could argue that they both exercise free will, or that neither do. This leads me to say that the question of free will is irrellevent for making choices. I think human brains are complex decision making machines and the feeling we get inside our head when make choices is called free will by some.

When you make a decision, electrochemical signals travel through your brain. You can't say that your freewill enables you to make decisions independant of these electrochemical signals because you are these electrochemical signals. You, your consciousness, is part of the decision making machine.

We live, we learn, we make choices. Hopefully we make choices that improve out lives. If you want to call the process of making choices free will, fine. But then the robot dog has a basic kind of free will too.

In scenario 6, either the dog's programming exerts itself and the dog goes for the real bone, or it is conned by a fake. Either way, it is still following its programming. It does not make a choice - in both cases it is following its programming. The human on the other hand bases his/her decision on the information is has been given. In this way it is the same as the dog, agreed. However, it then chooses which path to take. The dog does not. The dog follows its programming. The human, in extension, automatically creates his/her own programming for the specific situation. The dog cannot do this. Therefore, the human is exerting free will, the dog is not.

What? If something can't be disproven it is labelled as "uncertain" or "unknown"
Scientific method is interested in facts, but just because one can't prove something does not mean it is false.
i didn't say if something wasn't proven, i said if something is incapable of being disproven it is invalid, and therefor disproven(in a different sence, more of the sence of discarded as it is useless.)

You are a decision making machine. It would be kind of stupid for a decision making machine to think that it couldn't make decisions. It wouldn't be very efficent, you see. Please continue to feel free to make choices. Of course, I would say the only reason that you are capable of feeling free to make choices is to help you make better choices than you would if you didn't have the processing power to feel free.
I see. Circular logic conquers all! Yayy!

The point is that free will exists only in reference to internal states.

I agree with PC here.

The human mind is simply an incredibly sophisitcated decision making machine. We come hardwired with our basic brain stats, and given a complex operating system. From our first experiences we are reprogramming that operating system and adding to it with new information from our perceptions. Input from the enivronment (eg scenario 7) goes into the brain and runs through the complex program which comes up with a decision based on his initial O/S (geneticly determined personality) and the extra programs added and modifications of the original O/S (influence from past experience). It feels like free will because we are conscious of the decisions and thought process (hence why it feels like a conscious 'choice'). But they are still based on our brains processing the data and assessing risks and benefits for each course of action based on how our brains are programmed.

I agree with PC here.

The human mind is simply an incredibly sophisitcated decision making machine. We come hardwired with our basic brain stats, and given a complex operating system. From our first experiences we are reprogramming that operating system and adding to it with new information from our perceptions. Input from the enivronment (eg scenario 7) goes into the brain and runs through the complex program which comes up with a decision based on his initial O/S (geneticly determined personality) and the extra programs added and modifications of the original O/S (influence from past experience). It feels like free will because we are conscious of the decisions and thought process (hence why it feels like a conscious 'choice'). But they are still based on our brains processing the data and assessing risks and benefits for each course of action based on how our brains are programmed.
Humans do base decisions on past influence, but they do not then follow their own programming to make the decision. A person will create new programming to allow themselves to make the decision. This programming will then be stored, and will be referenced the next time the person wants to make a decision related to it. But then new programming will again be created. What we are calling 'free will' here is simply the creation of new programming to make the decision.

What is this, the Matrix? Humans have free will which is what puts us above the animals. We can make decisions on our own. That guy in the mad labatory has a decision to make and because he has thought he will make it something that marbles and robot dogs cannot do.


How do you propose to demonstrate this?

Humans do base decisions on past influence, but they do not then follow their own programming to make the decision. A person will create new programming to allow themselves to make the decision. This programming will then be stored, and will be referenced the next time the person wants to make a decision related to it. But then new programming will again be created. What we are calling 'free will' here is simply the creation of new programming to make the decision.

So they base the new programming off their previous experience so that the new programming is better equipped to allow for a more favorable decision? In that case the decision is still based of previous experience, it just has an extra step now.

Unless of course you mean that the brain rewires/reprograms itself spontaneously every time we make a decision. In which case we would never actually be able to learn as each new decision would be the result of programming NOT based on previous experiences.

So they base the new programming off their previous experience so that the new programming is better equipped to allow for a more favorable decision? In that case the decision is still based of previous experience, it just has an extra step now.
It is not based solely on previous experience, as it has a new circumstance to deal with. Yes it 'just has an extra step'. But the 'extra step' is the new circumstance. Unless that circumstance is identical in every single way to a previous experience, the new programming must involve an element of choice. And if there was an exactly identical previous experience the person would be able to make the decision regardless. Free will wouldn't enter into it because the person would know what to do. Unless what he/she'd done last time had fucked up.
Anyway, I didn't say that new programming is based on previous experience to better equip oneself for a more favourable decision, I just said new programming is based on previous experience. That's irrelevant, I thought I'd just clarify.

It is not based solely on previous experience, as it has a new circumstance to deal with. Yes it 'just has an extra step'. But the 'extra step' is the new circumstance. Unless that circumstance is identical in every single way to a previous experience, the new programming must involve an element of choice. And if there was an exactly identical previous experience the person would be able to make the decision regardless. Free will wouldn't enter into it because the person would know what to do. Unless what he/she'd done last time had fucked up.
Anyway, I didn't say that new programming is based on previous experience to better equip oneself for a more favourable decision, I just said new programming is based on previous experience. That's irrelevant, I thought I'd just clarify.

Ok. For the sake of a coherent thread i'll accpet that new programming occurs for each new situation. For the record though i think its an unnecessary step.

The new cirumstance provides new data to the system to create the new programming alongside information from previous experience. new data + previous programming ---> new program ----> decision.

Quite simply the old programming will interpret the new data input to create the new program to make the decision. Its still only 'choice' because we are conscious of the process going on. I fail to see why new data means free will must be involved.

Ok. For the sake of a coherent thread i'll accpet that new programming occurs for each new situation. For the record though i think its an unnecessary step.

The new cirumstance provides new data to the system to create the new programming alongside information from previous experience. new data + previous programming ---> new program ----> decision.

Quite simply the old programming will interpret the new data input to create the new program to make the decision. Its still only 'choice' because we are conscious of the process going on. I fail to see why new data means free will must be involved.
With reference to your first paragraph, imagine you have an infestation problem. Mice. You buy a cat, it kills the mice, problem sorted. Five years on, your cat's dead, when suddenly you have another infestation. Cockroaches. If you use the old programming (I'll get a cat), you won't solve your problem. You need to come up with new programming. It's not such an unnecessary step.
For the rest, well, it's late (almost midnight in fact), and I've been up for nearly 20 hours. I'll get back to you. :)