Are We Too Stupid to NOT Believe in Free Will?

Over at his blog, Sic et Non, Daniel Peterson highlighted a Scientific American article from last June asking what happens if society stops believing in free will. The article is pay-walled but, according to Peterson's summary, experiments suggest that people become less judgmental and punitive. However, they are also more likely to act less like a Boy Scout.

Participants in scientific experiments who’ve just read a strongly anti-free-will passage seem to show a significantly greater tendency (50%!) than their fellow participants to cheat on academic tests. Other experiments showed a higher tendency to cruelty among readers of such passages, and decreased impulse control.

This gives me an excuse to think out loud: Maybe there are falsehoods that we need to generally believe because otherwise a significant number of morons would run us all off the rails. I'm reminded of an article at The Onion from a few years ago: U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion.

"It's just an illusion," a wide-eyed [Federal Reserve chairman Ben] Bernanke added as he removed bills from his wallet and slowly spread them out before him. "Just look at it: Meaningless pieces of paper with numbers printed on them. Worthless."

According to witnesses, Finance Committee members sat in thunderstruck silence for several moments until Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) finally shouted out, "Oh my God, he's right. It's all a mirage. All of it—the money, our whole economy—it's all a lie!"

Screams then filled the Senate Chamber as lawmakers and members of the press ran for the exits, leaving in their wake aisles littered with the remains of torn currency.

Yes, in a sense money is an illusion, but it's an illusion that works [1]. However, if enough people actually came to believe that dollars, for example, were worthless, life would suddenly be a lot harder. (Even for the gold hoarders, I think, but that's a topic for another day.)

So anyway, although I tend to think of humanity in a positive aspirational light, it is abundantly clear that there are a lot of menaces (and potential menaces) to society out there. And morons. (Let's face it, we're all morons in some way). I can imagine God considering what to tell humanity and thinking, "Well, I'm going to say X, Y, and Z, even though it's not strictly accurate, because if I give them more accurate information the humans will self-destruct [2]."

We are free to choose, the scriptures say. But maybe that's because if they said anything else, we'd all go to hell in a handbasket.


Notes:
1. For a neat example, check out this story about how fake money ended inflation in Brazil.

2. God does not lie. But in a way, anything less than the full accurate truth is misleading. However, the full accurate truth may be incomprehensible to mortals or dangerous to their well-being. And so we get accommodations (baby stories, as Brigham Young called one example) which begin to look like falsehoods in the light of better information. What is a truthful God to do? Also, see D&C 19:4-12.

---