Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asking the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and add free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

Since the dawn of philosophy, humanity has debated if free will exist, or was an illusion

in a predetermined universe, or even if somehow both could be true at once, and compatible

concepts to each other.

Either way, I hope you'll choose to stick around for the rest of the episode.

The relationship between quantum mechanics and the concept of free will is a fascinating

and complex topic that intersects physics, philosophy, and neuroscience.

Many of the sciences felt the debate was closed going to the start of the 20th century,

but then we got quantum mechanics, with its seemingly random and probabilistic nature,

and the principle of superposition, the idea that two outcomes, like Schrodinger's living

and dead cat in a box, could be simultaneously true until observed. This seemingly introduces

a level of indeterminacy and unpredictability at a fundamental level of physical reality.

If all the universe is random, how could it possibly be predetermined after all?

This is that some thinkers to speculate about its implications for free will, a topic that

has been debated for centuries in philosophy and more recently in the context of the cognitive

sciences.

As we learn more about our universe and how it

works, we've also learned more about our minds and how they work, and it shakes our

worldview in this most fundamental way, challenging if we can truly even make up our own minds.

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