New Year’s Resolutions, Free Will, and Quantum Physics

Today is January 1, 2025. It’s not only the day we vow — yet again — to exercise more, eat better, and finally learn that second language. It’s also the official start of UNESCO’s International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Exactly one hundred years have passed since quantum mechanics was formulated, forever changing our understanding of reality.

Yet, when we resolve to get fit, we don’t seem to be invoking anything quantum. But what if I told you quantum physics is what grants you the freedom to make that choice?

For the sake of argument, let’s say your New Year’s resolution is to get fit in 2025. It feels like the ultimate expression of your free will — you made a deliberate decision to set this goal, to craft a plan, to imagine a future where you become a healthier version of yourself. The pure act of making a resolution seems to embody your agency.

But how does that resolution actually work in practice?

What you’ve done is create a mental model of yourself — a fictitious narrative about a world where you take specific actions, like hitting the gym, eating better, and sticking to a schedule, all of which are supposed to lead to the desired effect. Within this framework, everything is clear — causes lead to effects, actions yield results.

But, within this deterministic world of causes and effects that you’ve built for yourself, where is your free will?

The very resolution that feels like an act of agency — your choice to get fit — could be seen as just another event caused by the state of the universe leading up to it. Your decision wasn’t plucked from the ether. It was shaped by everything that came before it — your experiences, habits, emotions, even the momentary burst of inspiration you had at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

If prior causes ultimately determined your resolution to get fit, does free will even exist, or is our sense of agency just a useful illusion?

The question of free will

What do we mean by free will? For many, it’s the ability to say, “I could have done otherwise.” If you skipped your morning workout, the belief is that you could have chosen differently, laced up your sneakers, and…