Weird News: Scientists Fear Determinism's Consequences

A chilling article (Bering in Mind: Scientists Say Free Will Probably Doesn't Exist, but Urge: "Don't Stop Believing!") from Scientific American underscores the recent suspicions of neuroscience and philosophy. The question of free will has raged through the West since the dawn of its intellectual history, but to find out the whole thing may be a flustered chattering over something that was never present is like the gradual onset of a living nightmare. And the horror may not end there: consider the study discussed in the article, where it appears that some portion of those subject to enlightenment about their puppetry turn anti-social. Would civilization itself begin to fray if enough people dropped their belief in free will, and found that their society is possibly as much of a deluded farce as its constituents' self-important dogmas?

Hard to say, but the article, which is a bit too lengthy to post in full here, raises some fascinating questions. They are the same ones discussed at length by Thomas Ligotti in his new book, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Luckily, weird fiction and its actors have always seemingly been ahead of the curve in meditating on determinism's quandaries. Supernatural possession and domineering personalities have long been at work in weird fiction's pages, raising the possibility that this small genre has harbored scientific truths too monstrous for most to accept.

-Grim Blogger