Final Thoughts on Free Will (Episode  

He had no choice.

I laughed out loud when he said that, hilarious!

@@laurelangelle3451 me too ha!

@@ArchLordXarnor Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free ) Best book in the world - upanishads ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)

This argument is already the best proof that Sam is wrong on free will. He is like so many that argue against free will, who can’t even think their own argument through

@@MichaelAntonFischer I guess I don’t understand the difference between free will and free choice from a pragmatic or practical perspective.

@@livingroomc well, there probably isn’t a big one, the point is just that Sam, like so many „no free will“ proponents can’t conceptionalise the full extend of that position, so they come up with wacky statements like this, to gloss over the fact that their position flies in the face of all the evidence. I mean sure, we are not entirely free to decide, but free will isn’t a complete illusion either.

"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become" - Carl Jung

@@MichaelAntonFischer what's the evidence then??

Exactly

Omggg 😂😭

A very logical answer but according to Hinduism it is real

@@rajendrarajasingam6310 I also believe it is real; because everything that exists is reality... reasoning, imagination, love or illusion exist in reality there's no other place to be.

Boom 💥

And I have forgiven you

@@blankname5177 Isn't forgiveness the one necessary step that absolutely has to be taken to stop hating anyone? You could say that you forgive but don't forget, but if you don't forgive and don't forget, then isn't that the very definition of hatred?

And that's the value in letting go of free will. It's especially valuable for someone who has to deal with a lot of shame. Still the illusion will continue to creep back in. I like to listen to Sam's arguments sometimes just to remind myself. :)

It is senseless to forgive something that could not have been otherwise. Ironic this podcast is called 'Making Sense.'

Now, recall credit for all the positive choices you've made too.

Of course, if the "self" does not exist in the ultimate sense, and "I" is contiguous with the entirety of the universe (the latter being admittedly, a murky claim), then the exact opposite of the absence of free will is true: EVERYTHING, everywhere, is being done by "I" (correctly understood), and "I" am "willing" everything- after all, every neutrino in every far reach of the universe is part of me; which is really the same thing as if NOTHING were being done by me. I think for this reason, Alan Watts himself often considered the formal philosophical debates on topics such as free will from the POV of Wittgenstein, as being mostly bad language games, and akin to looking disjointedly at two halves of a single cat through a hole in a fence, and concluding that the halves are really two different entities.

So you are "free" to hate or not hate, get away or not get away? I guess no one is "free" to be stupid or not.

@@mikekane2492 To have no free will implies zero control over _anything_ and _everything_ including whether to be a nihilist or not.

I think some people actually do hate tornados.

If hatred doesn't make sense, then love doesn't either. Positively interpreted experience being preferable doesn't make it more reasonable than hatred, unless ethics is the bedrock of all of human reason.

Lmao 🤣

@@ChrisKogos Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free ) Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)

@@KrypticSpiderMan I choose to believe Santa exists, I'm with you dude.

I understand where you're coming from, although it manifested as nihilism instead of suicide for me. I was an agnostic for the sake of integrity, with an atheist position if I was forced to bet on a conclusive state, before I understood my lack of authorship anyway. Now, I think of it as a productive tool. I've made positive changes I likely would have never made before I was equipped with this information. There are many of these changes in perception we've inherited from those who came before us. What makes this change in perception unique is that it's occurring in our own timeline and isn't common knowledge. I like to imagine what it was like for those who lived when Earth was the center of everything, and even the other side of the body of water you were standing was a mystery. There's a lot of comfort in that limited perspective when you think about it. The narrative of your existence was whatever you wanted it to be. I don't subscribe to the ignorance being bliss way of seeing things, so I'm thankful Ive become aware that free will isn't a thing. Gratitude is another useful tool. How lucky am I to exist during a time of a nearly endless supply of knowledge? How incredible to understand my surroundings at such a resolution. To even exist as one of these high intellect beings in relation to the many other living things is incredible, and I couldn't be more thankful. You could say I've succumbed to convenient thinking like those who came before me, but that's what I admired about their ignorant place in history. You can construct a world of gratitude, too, and I would argue it's better than the illusion.

Suicide never occured to me after listening to this, but Im glad you found some peace in the end.

@@tommyhennessy Yeah it's not clear to me either why it should. I have existential compulsive disorder though

​@Ken Hiett Very well said, Ken

Correct me if I'm wrong, but these acts of compassion, are they not also determined?

@@ramodemmahom8905 ​Yes, they are! he is the perfect example of educated but not intelligent. He probably plans to regurgitate Sam Harris' ideas among his peers without giving things a second thought. I bet that if you ask him why he feels obligated to act more compassionate, he wouldn't be able to provide a good rationale.

Why do you feel obligated to act more compassionate?

Yes it is ​@@ramodemmahom8905

@@warriorinside1989 it like everything will be a monolithically long list of predetermined prior causes that make him how he is, how receptive he is to massive amounts of existing as well as new evidence or ideas or not and how willing he is to carry this into his lived experience in terms of how he acts in the causal chain of the universe here on earth in every moment. So effectively how effected and receptive a person is to the truth and evidence for determinism is itself determined by prior causes.

Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free ) Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)

thats bc we r in harmony with nature going with the flow going against the flow of traffic is only smart if ure riding a bike

Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free ) Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)

@ZK Tay sounds like that lack of free will talking

Is the function of reasoning an act of free will?

Reminds me of a well known Kantian aphorism, which is rather the inverse: "I had to restrict knowledge in order to make room for faith".

@ZK Tay What objections do you have to Kant?

you can easily have both. marinate on that

Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free ) Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)

@ZK Tay Of course one can change what they desire, but they have to have a deeper desire to make this change. If you quit smoking your desire to do so was simply stronger than your desire to smoke.

Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free ) Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)

Does your head hurt from having a completely new operating system installed ? Mine does. I will truly never be the same. 90 minutes changed my life forever ; no more guilt about past mistakes just self compassion and acceptance. I still “choose” to hold myself responsible because it leads to less suffering in the long run .

If you get the chance, listen to the audio version of his book titled Free Will. It expands on some of the ideas here. Also his conversation with Dan Dennet does a good job of exposing the flaws of the compatiblist argument. I highly encourage you to look into his meditation app as well!

I know king Jew.

I applied for a free account. Never got an answer to my email.

@@wanderingdoc5075 WanderingDoc 1 day ago

the proust effect Well put! It--although I think it shouldn't, if I was fully rational--often surprises and buffles me to see people talking about themselves or others seemingly with full conviction that they are the self determining agent, a prime mover of sort, while simultaneously talking about their mechanical nature (though, perhaps without much awareness of that), like how to exploit the their own, or other person's (inescapable) biological tendencies to achieve their (also inescapable) desired conditions. Those cannot be true at the same time, and that seems as simple as 1+1=0, yet we can believe both are possible and true at the same time.

@@KenTails This baffles me sometimes aswell, however then I slip back into the reality where I act upon my instincts, blame other people for their transgressions, and consider myself the prime mover of my own reality. If the universe is everything and everything is the universe, how come the phenomenon of human behaviour you decribe here can exist? I guess I can understand that a universe, although likely having a set of laws governing it, does not have to be entirely logically consistent - the law of logical inconsistency probably exists in ours.

@@martinb4272 at the end of the day the models and ideas we form in our mind are beneficial to our biology.

​@@martinb4272 all human behavior is ultimately the result of biological evolution - so it has little to do with the "universe" as a whole. Humans behave in the way that evolutionary processes led them to behave : those had to be either behaviors that were beneficial or at least neutral in their effect and it's easy to see why it's beneficial for humans to believe they (and others) have free will: it makes the social world more coherent. it would have been incoherent (to a human) and also computationally prohibitive to try to model the world WITHOUT the concept of agents: i.e. - to see each person's behavior as the accumulation of a billion years of evolution, particle paths, neural connections, etc. it is simply not a viable model of the world for a human to process so humans think of others as agents, and of themselves as well - and it is a great model because it gives a lot of predictive power and can help navigate a complex social situation.

@@gatherfeather3122 Is that always the case?

Who was guiding the dog? 😂

Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free ) Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)

The only thing I can point out in your comment is "it was destined to happen" which isn't a helpful way of thinking about it, that's fatalism. With what Sam presents is the ability to improve as a computer that is an instinct machine. The difference between determinism and fatalism is the confusion. Free will is an illusion but that doesn't mean choices don't matter.

@@pedestrian_0 That's a very important differentiation. I'm still somewhat stuck on the difference between fatalism and determinism but I am slowly drifting towards grasping it (I suppose). If a computer can learn, then so should I. I think that the single most basic and perhaps most important capacity we can acquire, is the capacity to direct attention or, perhaps more broadly, to be attentive to what is going on. I mean, it's really hard to grasp the concept of the lack of free will/determinism in combination with the statement that choices matter. Whose choices??? And also, even more important question: how do you combine moral philosophy with determinism, namely for whom and why do choices matter?

@@AnnaPrzebudzona Rather than whose choices, the question is what caused your choices ? you or your imagination of great results that forces you to make those choices? for example, pick a film. The film you chose is not free will, but will have impact on the next film you choose if you keep choosing, just like you've 'chosen' to watch those films before, somehow they got in your brain other than other films.

@@pedestrian_0 Sam disagrees with fatalism, but that's just his own bugbear. He can disagree with it all he wants because it's a 'bad word' but any condition in the universe is a necessary result of prior causes. It was always going to end up that way. I don't believe that fatalism necessarily has to make any stance about choices mattering or not. It follows the same line of thinking that choices matter but you don't make the choices. Fatalism and determinism are the same, people just use the word determinism because it's more marketable.

@@pedestrian_0 Very accurate!

He definitely is. He is also a guy who likes his ideas challenged by others who will care to debate them.

@@jlmer616 And then clings to his ideas undettered by not acknowledging effective challenges that were brought.

@@twntwrs found Deepak Chopra

@@spooky_action Harris doesn't have a problem with Deepak style woo. His blind spots are more in the socioeconomic, sociocultural, historical and geopolitical realm. Understandable since those are not his areas of expertise.

@@twntwrs Sam has lightened up over the years on Deepak, but he definitely did have a problem with him. Called him out specifically in very public ways and Deepak was fuming. So any generalized statement like the one you made always invokes an image of a butt-hurt Chopra and/or his syncophants going around spamming forums. Apologies if I misread, lmao. Do you have any specific examples of Harris completely missing a point?

its boring

You had no choice in the matter

@@SerendipitousProvidence I like to say that I make choices; it's just that whatever choices I made were the only choices I ever had. It's not like determinism means you're not making choices.

I'm partial to spells and hexes myself. It's where I first met Hermione.

@@Elintasokas Choice is the sensations associated with awareness and judgement

yeah just relax,go for a walk,look at the tree's and the birds

You should try emailing him. It gets much closer to him

Sam harris is not free to do what he do / he is just uttering words not free to choose his words

Sure, if it makes you feel better, though i think it'd be the most optimal to understand reality without the need for religion

Great point.

Yes, but we already know enough to condo that Sam is wrong

Lex Fridman asked Sam in his recent clip talking about free will whether its possible that we just don't know some essential feature of consciousness or the mind that would illuminate the answer to the question of free will. Sam basically said its not possible because he couldn't even conceive what it might be. I wonder if humans before Newton could even conceive the notion of gravity? Or if physicists before einstein could even conceive the notion of space-time dilatation... I think Sam has built up this idea so much in his mind and that's the reason he cannot accept he could be wrong

I think the answer is completely knowable. Belief in free will only starts with a mistake over what oprions are. I can drink tea or coffee with my breakfast. But that doesn't mean I can choose tea in the actual circumstances that I choose coffee. That's just an error.

Sam Harris is a neurologist. He is making these assumptions with all of the information he has gathered not excluding his expertise on the brain.

Free will keeps God interested in us

@@pineapplaplatypotamus huh

@@twokidsmovies It’s true. Imagine being God. You’d want some excitement too

@@pineapplaplatypotamus ohhh I see, tru

@@pineapplaplatypotamus I thought god is supposed to already know what happens in the future, regardless of whether or not free will exists, so I can't imagine they would be surprised by any actions we are doing.

Ouch. I can relate to this.

@@snaileri I´m not sure if it does help me that I know that determinism is true. It means that I´am aware of the fact, that I can not make any mistakes in the sence that they might have been avoidable. So any "wrong" decision, any "bad behaviour" appears more appealing somehow. Right now I should shut down my computer and try to sleep. But somehow I think "fuck off, I stay awake and binge-watch youtube-videos". My belief in determinism steals my discipline and there is nothing I can do about.

Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free ) Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)

i love straw men, and the people that create them and feel high and mighty

@@fabianbravo6008 I've seen the point of view he's describing come up very often in free will debates. "Without free will, you can't blame Hitler for what he did."

Where and when did he say that? I'd love to see the entire discussion

@@williaminnes1563 I don’t know when, but I think he said that in a debate with David Wolpe. There is a video called “Hitchslap” where you might find it there too.

His humor was never-ending 😅

@@williaminnes1563 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-IG_TGNJfg0s.html Found that bit

@@shiskeyoffles ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WPoyM9SmHmw.html

Well I can't grasp it yet. The urgency keeps passing me by.

@@alexpacific1721 I had to listen to the beginning of the podcast again just now, the understanding of the concepts is indeed a little elusive. But the most valuable insight for me is to realize that I didn't think about my consciousness deeply enough (ever) and that whether or not the universe is deterministic or not, either way it does not explain why we should have something called "free will". That the term "free will" is just an empty label and that there's nothing in our thinking process that this label could represent. I think that's the main message of this podcast and I can only hope I understood it well :)

​@@alexpacific1721 It is actually fairly simple. You can choose what you want. But you can't choose what it is that you want. Because if that where the case you would have to be able to think it before you think it. And even then that thought is also not something you choose to think. Things just pop up in to your brain without you having any control over it. So the idea of free will does and can not make any sense.

Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free ) Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)

Yeah dude, it’s called “free will” by Sam Harris. Available on amazon and anywhere you buy books.

@@genzcurmudgeon8037 I know. I read it. But this is newer and more comprehensive. Clearer better arguments. Unless the podcast was just him reading Free Will.

@@claudes.whitacre1241 fair enough, it is more concise and clear.

I feel like the book expands on some aspects that this podcast does not, but the podcast is like a newer edition of the book and ultimately better.

You misunderstood. Free will simply cannot exist.

@@AshinaBorjigid I understood just fine, I’m simply just proposing a new definition for “free will.”

It would make more sense had he said that man cannot will _what_ he wills.

@@aesirvanir8671 It looks like in his native German Schopenhauer uses "was" (English "what"). It appears to be from On the Freedom of Will but I haven't looked it up in that work myself. "Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Maybe it was translated as "as" because of the commonly used English phrase "doing as one wills/pleases," which essentially means to do what one wills.) But I agree that "will as one wills" is more ambiguous than "will what one wills." The former could mean "will in the manner one wills," or "will at the same time one wills," whereas the latter is more specific to what I think is the intended meaning.

@@mattheenan1536 borrringggg. why don't you eat a hot dog instead of all this philosophy

You can get a free subscription to both his full podcast episodes and the meditation app by just sending an email saying that you cannot currently afford it. They dont ask any questions and send you a free year subscription, and you can renew it afterwards.

@@borna1231 Yes, but they want to share it with as many people as possible.

Free will is not free

It's free. Just subscribe. What's the problem?

@@matthewhorizon6050 it's not free unless you ask due to financial hardship, and I think most people who aren't willing to pay for it but also aren't truly in financial hardship are equally unwilling to ask for a free membership, because they don't feel good about "lying" and taking advantage of Sam's generosity. That's my situation currently. I could easily afford it... I just don't want to, because it seems a bit steep for a twice a month podcast. But I'm also not going to lie and say I can't afford it just to get a free membership. Seems kind of messed up to me. Sam obviously knows people will do just that and take advantage of him, and he allows it anyway in order to help the truly poor, which is quite generous of him.

That is EXACTLY how I conceptualise it too. Wow. Have found it difficult to put into words though, glad you said it for me!

Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free ) Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)

😂

🤣🤣🤣

@ZK Tay EXACTLY. I will judge a lion differently from a deer.

@ZK Tay fair enough. My choice says much about me and may be an indicator of the kind of choices I might make in the future... I now await your your judgement and all those he read my comment from now to the till the end of this RU-vid post

@@chaitanyagaur7928 good point

Perhaps after learning these concepts you’re struggling with identity, or perhaps on the flip side, you are just starting to accept that you are a product of your genes and environment? Determinism is the great equaliser.

He is your God now! Good thinking. IF IT WAS YOU THINKING?

@ZK Tay there's some validity to it

Omg, I came to the comments to write about that exact line. SO FUNNY! I want it on a shirt.

@ZK Tay meaningful to those who saw humor in it. That was the only reason I commented on it. Glad you stopped by :).

Hi Simon :)

That will be determined by your subscription ;)

There's nothing more to say about it, so there isn't any point asking Sam to basically repeat his position hundreds of additional times. But hopefully if some new evidence comes up, or maybe if there's some new philosophical argument, he'll come back to it

Become an atheist and be forever confused.

@@usmanshah344 Atheism is definitely confused.

Quite a slippery slope isn't it

It’s funny that Jesus is basically J Zeus.

I think there’s a danger of listening to half the argument and not being walked through all the Implications can be very destabilizing . After I listened to the full episode through the subscriber feed my mind is completely blown . My head hurts and this actually makes sense . I had no choice but to lose my belief of free will .

@@vladislavkozlov4978 I'm a subscriber , i made the mistake of closing the page half way through........the media player is forcing me to start all over again😢

@@Alex-Zone i love how sam is obsessed on making this point.....i don't think the world is ready for this, this idea demands the loss of soo much vanity. the masses won't assimilate this

Oh, they know what they do, they just can't do anything about it.

That's really stolen from sartre: 'condemned to be free'

@c h a r l e s Because he didn't reference Sartre, he simply appropriated his phrase without citation.

@@John-lq7yt It's possible that he came up with that line independently of reading Sartre. However, I think that at the very least, he was inspired by Sartre's words. It's extremely unlikely that someone as well-read as Hitchens (especially in philosophy) would not have come across such a famous line of Sartre's. However, I admit I was being too strong when I used the word 'stolen'.

The thoughts of mystics come from the choice to evade focusing their minds.

* You don't know where they come from

What changes?

@@chrisrus1965 far more compassionate yet slightly more emotionally detached

@@chrisrus1965 We realise that which option we select is s matter of fortune good or bad. This does change how we think and feel about what people "deserve", which has ramifications for political systems, criminal justice systems and how we treat ourselves and others. It is making a tremendous difference that almost everybody is deluded about free will

@@chrisrus1965 Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free ) Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)

I loved that film. As a good repressed catholic boy, it snapped me out of my lame status quo.

and i’m so sorry even annoyed sometimes that not only people don’t understand but laugh at Sam coz of this theme .. they literally have no ides what he’s trying to teach us .. amazing how ungrateful we are as humans

@@travisbickle8008 Yeah, I think it's a matter of perspective in a profound sense. I don't think people share the same perspective to understand what he is really saying and even how empatheticly he is saying them. Personally, he resonates so well with me and reallyh is a personal hero of mine.

Sam Harris is my favorite character in Tropic Thunder after blackface Robert Downey Jr.

“Where is the free will in me looking like ben stiller? Because if free will isn’t here it isn’t anywhere.”

Hahah. That’s first class.

Good 1