The Illusion of Free Will

When making a choice between two competing options, we often think we carefully weigh the pros and cons before reaching a considered, informed decision. In reality, our decisions are often influenced by subtle internal and external factors, sometimes nudging us away from the option that is best for us. In this talk, I will show how these biases guide our choices, even leading us to pick options we like the least. Importantly, these influences don’t come from persuasion or clever marketing, but from the way our visual and motor systems naturally function. We’ll explore how these processes can bias our decisions even before the options are presented to us. In the end, you’ll see how some of our “free” choices are shaped long before we’re aware we’re making them.

Place a pencil so that half of it is in water. The pencil will appear to be bent. This can be explained by the bending of lights rays as they pass from water into air (an example of refraction) -- the 'illusion' here tells us something about the physics of light and the optics of the eye. Such a straightforward illusion tells us very little about the brain. However, there are many illusions that offer great insights into how the brain itself works. Stare at the credits rolling up in the cinema (preferably of a big budget film where everyone from the person who directed the film to who made the tea is listed). Then look around and momentarily you should see stationary objects appearing to move downwards. This tells us a lot about the how the visual motion processing system in the brain works. There are a host of such illusions -- we explore a number of these and show how they act as windows into the brain.