Free will is back, and maybe we can measure it

Is he saying that because other animals also seem to exhibit free will, and because some humans appear to be more impulsive than others, that makes it possible without a "supernatural ability to transcend the laws of nature"?

Buried in the article, rather than in an introductory definition of the terms used, is the line:

"for some, a really free will is one that is not determined by anything – one that stands outside the causal chains of nature. Such a person might feel cheated when offered instead a set of capacities that we share (to a degree) with cats and chickens."

Surely there's nothing at all novel here. We've long known that other animals have varying degrees of autonomy.

I also don't think that any determinists would argue (or even ever have argued) against the existence of this kind of free will. Just that it is only free if you also accept that Bertrand Russell's table is "oblong, brown and shiny, to the touch it is smooth and cool and hard", and choose to go no deeper.

Then by this logic one could argue, that locking them away for 30 years is not unfair because it is also predetermined by the state of the universe at this given time and there is nothing other people could do but to sentence the killer. Free will or no free will the argument goes both ways.

Focusing on actual processes in the brain may be a more objective discussion than discussing "free will". For example, is the human brain driven by reinforcement learning? is dopamine part of the reward loop? how does curiosity fit in? Are there tipping point effects in neural networks? What about noise, or even quantum effects if you were trying to model and predict an outcome?

Regardless of one's position, that's an objective discussion with questions that can be tested, with useful results that could help develop a general AI.

Contrast that with a discussion about "free will", a suitcase word with numerous polarizing definitions. It's like walking into a minefield of bias and enmity. And frankly just as much strident opinion from "rationalists" as from the religious. And I ask, where is that going? What's the result such discussion is driving towards? Is the discussion really analyzing a real physical process in the brain or is this a values discussion masquerading as logic?

Once you have a grasp of the fundamental mechanisms of the universe(cause/effect, logic, etc) you quickly see that certain, socially-defined terms are irreconcilable with the facts of reality. Namely they, the three major and thorny ones, are ideas of God or gods, supernatural phenomenon and ideas of free will.

These three ideas just don't fit with the facts. If an entity was powerful enough to create everything, what created IT? If supernatural phenomenon were real, why isn't there solid evidence of its existence, and if it exists on a plane beyond the material then how could it ever affect the material plane we inhabit? Finally, if you accept that the universe follows certain predictable, immutable laws then you must agree that with enough information any future or past state could be predicted or recreated. Humans and their minds live within the constraints of this physical universe, thus any potential future state of mind or behavior could be predicted from the previous state(s) that human was in. All moments arise from the moments before them. There is absolutely no gap there to shimmy in ideas of "free will". I was born at a certain time, place and in a certain community. I had no choice there, but the die was cast and everything I ever become will be constrained by those facts. I will never be able to magically pull myself out of this causal chain.

I would like to add one more thing, to counteract the possible easy pessimism that a realization like this could have on an individual. One day I realized that ghosts weren't real. As a child, this was a burden lifted from my shoulders, as I could rest easier knowing no unpredictable and unfathomable force was going to accost me as I slept. One day I realized that there was no God. I suddenly felt freer than ever, and less self-conscious in solitude. I don't live every day in anxiety about the "lack" of these two delusions. It happened once more with free will. I realized all things belong to a causal chain possibly extending into infinity, and I was just a pattern at the tail end of this chain in time. I suddenly felt more compassionate for every other human, lodged as they are in their station . You and I can't help what we have become, what we came from or what we will be. Even knowing this, I live intentionally, not drowning in a sea of slavish fatalism, but instead with the keen knowledge that I too belong to the causal chain, and that through evolutionary machinations, my mind can suspend disbelief and still feel it is directing the future toward a desired state.

The paradox is difficult to rest in, but it has given me a powerful tool, another paradoxical belief, that I can control my future by knowing that I simply arise from what has past.