.@krysboydthink: You disagree with the notion, made popular by Stephen Hawking and others, that free will is, in fact, a sort of illusion. Can you talk about that? @DavidDeutschOxf: Yes, this is the idea that because we are made of atoms, and atoms are subject to laws of motion that don't allow any wiggle room, therefore everything we do also doesn't allow any wiggle room, and therefore our free will must be an illusion. Now, I think that's called reductionism, and it is simply a mistake. It's sort of assuming that the laws of physics are a kind of a person; they're a kind of a supernatural being that makes us do things, but it's not true. The laws of physics are simply a description of what we do. It's not the laws of physics that make atoms move around; laws of physics are simply a description of what they do. The thing about what we see about the world is that there are levels of description: there are descriptions at the atomic level and descriptions at the molecular level and the biological level, and then there are descriptions and explanations at the level of human thought. There's no reason to expect that just because there's a low-level description, there isn't also a high-level explanation and description. In the book [The Beginning of Infinity], I give some arguments, both due to me and due to people like Douglas Hofstadter, that the high-level description is sometimes the only reasonable explanation of what is happening. So, for example, if you play a game of chess against a computer, then it's not the silicon that has beaten you; it's the program. The program in the computer, and that program, is an abstraction. The program doesn't consist of atoms; the program is an abstraction over the atoms, just like human thought is an abstraction over our atoms. It is the programs that have beaten you. When I make a decision, it's I who have made it, not my atoms and not the laws of physics. @krysboydthink: So, we get really unnecessarily and detrimentally hung up on this sense that we can get to the absolute foundation of anything. @DavidDeutschOxf: That's true as well. The idea that there's an absolute foundation is a formula for stagnation in science and for tyranny in politics and so on. There will never be an absolute foundation for knowledge because there will always be the question, once we have got a particular fundamental theory, of why it is that way and not some other way.