A Drunken Walrus: The Case Against Free Will

In March of 2005, ten of us spent our spring break in a four-bedroom beachfront condo in Destin, Florida.

Our first morning, we packed a football, frisbee, boogie board, books, and two gallons of margaritas and spent a day on the beach that was punctuated by my realization that it is possible to enjoy the outdoors between the hours of 9 am and noon. I had always assumed those hours were reserved for work, class, or sleep.

Later that night we drank some more and ate a big home-cooked meal and were about to go to a local piano bar when we noticed that Walrus was especially drunk. All of us had been drinking, but it was clear that Walrus had been drinking the most.

But no one was especially concerned because Walrus is a relatively safe drunk. Unlike some of our other friends, we don’t have to worry about a drunken Walrus getting into a fight, or slapping a woman’s ass, or throwing up in public, or somewhat homo-erotically explaining the virtues of Brett Favre to every man in the bar and then trying to get one of those men to come back to his room and watch “Favre Forever” until sunrise. With Walrus, we all knew what was going to happen: his speech would begin to slur, he would have difficulty keeping his balance, and he would eventually require the assistance of his wife to get back home and into bed. (Worst case: he’d fall down a flight of stairs. Worst case.)

Ok, for the sake of full disclosure: there had been one night when Walrus went out drinking and didn’t come home. But the next morning his wife found him sleeping safely a few blocks away in the middle of an intersection—but that was an exception to the rule. We all knew that.

And we were right.

We had been at the piano bar for about a half hour when Walrus’s wife told us she was going to take him back to the condo. No surprise.

The next morning a few of us were sitting on the deck and laughing about how Millis and a few others had come home from the piano bar and were greeted by a semi-conscious Walrus who asked them to recall the manner in which they consume a lollipop and apply that method to his testicles.

Walrus stumbled out to the deck in time to catch most of the conversation and listened with a smile. He eventually sat down and asked, “So you guys went to a piano bar last night?”

A couple nights later, a group of us—including Walrus and his wife—went to the piano bar again.

As we made our way to a table, Walrus began to comment on various items in the bar. His comments made his wife laugh, but they weren’t meant to be funny, so he asked, “What’s so funny?”

She kept laughing and turned to him and said, “You commented on all of this stuff the exact same way the last time we came here!”

He laughed and said, “I don’t even remember being in here.”

Walrus had been in the same bar just two nights earlier, but remembered none of it. So although it was his second time seeing everything, he reacted as if it was his first. And his reactions were all the same.

If someone can be put in the exact situation twice, won’t they react the same both times?

Do we make decisions? Or are we simply aware of the process that leads to our reactions and their consequences?

(Or is a drunken Walrus not the proper test subject?)