The Mystery of Free Will: Donald Hoffman 

so you are no longer a muslim then?

@@fenthedog No I am exactly a Muslim.

@@DarioHaruni how are you judged if you have no free will ?

It might be in this case that truth is transmitted not through belief but through self-enquiry? One may be able to drop all the other stuff sold/given/conditioned that one has acquired for this new teacher (truth). In this case, all dogma (religious or otherwise) would have to be emptied to taste the tea of this new teacher. This may be where one learns about attachment.

Cite source?

@@DJ-GASM DR sam parnia

We are not morally responsible for our actions, but we are legally responsible, if we want to live in a decent society, because to live together, we need laws and to have those laws enforced. He's wrong in his ultimate conclusions. Cf. Quora on free will for better answers.

Damn, that's wild...

@@jimmuncy5636 Yes we are morally responsible for our actions.

Me too!

Just got Hoffman's book in the mail today. Can't wait to see if I can find the holes in his theorem or if he can convince me beyond my favorable opinion of his videos so far. I'm not happy that Deepak Chopra offers the 1st praise on the back cover though...😞

@@travislawrencemusic Gotta judge ideas based on their own merits and not who supports them but yeah, i feel you there.

@@christopherchilton-smith6482 agreed!

@@travislawrencemusic All this hate against Deepak Chopra is really born out of physicalist dogma, so I don't really see the problem there.

@jonesman What is energy?

John Browne consciousness does not require free will. Have you ever had a song stuck in your head?

@@mattbabb. Not my experience. Consciousness itself requires the option to choose, right or wrong, good or bad, correct or incorrect, remember or not. Regarding automatic things, so called "unconscious" things, these too occur IN consciousness. Donald agrees and teaches this phenomena of consciousness. Memory is not consciousness. Many confuse the two. You forget most things you do but remain conscious. Like your breakfast last Tuesday, most of your dreams, and yes music popping into your head from nowhere. 😊

John Browne You have no idea why we are here! That conclusion you came to is from reading and spreading nonsense that you haven't vetted.

Like Feynman said said, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.” You obviously don't understand this argument.

The commentor is the content creator.

@@jeremygreer4039 👍🏼😊

Yes....Hugh Everett was veering in the right direction. Look up the Many Minds Interpretation. " The many-minds interpretation of quantum mechanics extends the many-worlds interpretation by proposing that the distinction between worlds should be made at the level of the mind of an individual observer"

@@TheSaffronasha: I'm familiar with that interpretation but not well-versed

Oh 🤯

I love that word Ima use that

Lol, honestly 😭

Pls elaborate, thank you

You are full of shit.

Yes. Reality 101.

If I cant choose which thought that will pop up in consciousness, how can I believe that I choose anything

@@888sk8er888 "If I can't choose which thought that will pop up in consciousness" If that were the case, you still have free will to choose to act on that thought or not; thus 'free will' still exists, regardless of how deep a person can or can't see into their subconscious where thought processing is theorized to occur. "how can I believe that I chose anything." Believing is easy to do. Take any phenomena and assign a truth label to the conclusions of the phenomena you align yourself with. For the act of believing is to assign the value of 'truth' to a matter without having any verifiable proof it is true. I.E., belief is accepting something is true without verifiable evidence. The current knowledge is no one can see how a thought is constructed within the human being. They have a machine that shows there's brain activity 7 seconds before conscious awareness of a thought, but they have no understanding of what that activity is or what is being constructed. Folks generally reside in two camps: Free will exists or it doesn't. And they can only believe at the moment because mankind hasn't yet devised a means to see thoughts being constructed, though I think everyone agrees the individual is the one creating those thoughts. (putting aside Nondualists who don't even believe an individual exists, and some other religious\spiritual folks like that) I have no idea why folks choose to believe or not in free will. What I found is imporant to me is the ability to control myself, to develop self mastery. I have no need to see my thoughts being initially created, for I regard free will as the ability to choose what I'll do with the thoughts I have. I regard free will as... "The last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." - Viktor E. Frankl "Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom - the power to choose, to respond, to change." - Stephen R. Covey "Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us." - Stephen R. Covey If a researcher\philosopher wants to declare that's not free will, I have no need or desire to dispute what they think. My self mastery has developed to a high degree, thus I'm content with my definition of free will. EG: If a researcher\philosopher says there is no free will because we automatically get upset when insulted. I'll then share with this researcher that I'm no longer offended when insulted. I have mastered or developed my free will to include chooing to remain calm or joyful when insulted, and to have genuine compassion for the insulter instead of anger or hate\dislike. None of my business if a researcher\philosopher still claims there in no free will occurring in that situation. I used to instantly become offended when insulted. Bat as I continued my Know Thyself journey, I began to understand my self more and of human nature, of the seemingly instinctual and of course, uncontrollable responses we humans have to situations; that we instantly react to certain stimuli. My attitude has developed, thus I freely choose to remain calm or joyful when insulted. Sam Harris, the main person I know of that's convinced free will doesn't exist. He would find it impossible to convince me of his belief.

Xander17 You just said you have the ability to control yourself. Who thought the though that has to be controlled by you in the first place? If it was truly your thought, you would have no reason to create a thought you then have to control so you don't act on it. Who would do that to themselves? Almost every comment here eludes to the fact that we often have no idea where our own thoughts are coming from. It is almost like two entities in one body. So when you are able to control this thought after you have it, you seem to have the final authority. What if that changes and you get overruled? Ever think you are going to go straight home from work and end up stopping at the store? Who had that thought? Who popped that idea in the middle of your thought to go home? If you stopped at the store when you wanted to go home, you no longer have the final authority. Seven seconds, ten seconds, a minute..... Who cares how long it took for that thought to get there? Bottom line is you didn't want the thought or to go to the store, so why did you create that thought? I'm not trying to argue. It's just really hard to explain in writing. The written word doesn't cut it.

@@and4all706 Q1. My current judgement is if the thought is in my head, it is I that thought it. The issue about free will is the freedom to consciously think things through and consciously construct a conclusion, then a decision, then an action. While it's true I lack the self awarness to see many thoughts in their initial creation within me, I retain free will on what I wil do with that thought once I become aware of it. It is proposed that the bulk of our thinking is done in the subconscious, thus logically, we humans are unaware of what's occurring in there, but a devlopment of self awarness creates the ability to venture further into that arbitrary region, thus self control is increased. I don't know how many of my thoughts are created because I can't see 100% in to that regoin of my mind, but through experience I know that the power level of my free will is proprotional to the level of self awareness I have. So to me it's not about is there free will or not, but how much in control of myself am I. How much am I operating consciously as opposed to being on autopilot. Q2. I know a lot about my self, but I also know I don't know everything. But what I do know about the issue of free will is, it exists, and the issue is how much in control are we of ourselves. Just because I can't see the birth of a thought, is not proof free will doesn't exist, it simply means I lack the self awareness to see this birth. If free will is the ability to cconsciously choose one's actions, not knowing exactly how I generated a thught doesn't affect my ability to freely choose what to do with it. "It is almost like two entites in one body." It may look like that, but from my experiences over the decades as I delved in to know myself more, the parts of myself thay I lacked control over were not from not having free will, but from a lack of self knowledge. The simple example of asking someone why they're upset. An incident triggered an emotional response, with accompanying negative thoughts of the situation. I ask, why are you upset? Some folks may answer they don't know. They say this because as they scan themselves they cannot find any info to explain why they're upset. But, as I experienced over years, if you continue to look, if you willfully choose to return to a calm state and explore yourself, the potential exists that you'll eventually see why you chose to become upset, and in doing so, you've just learned more about how you function, of the inner workings usually hidden from superficial day to day levels of consciousness, and you can then consciously reprogram your responses so that type of incident will no longer upset you. Q3. Any overruling is self done, you just haven't seen the thinking going on in your subconscious that was occurring. Q4-5. The self had the thought, one just wasn't aware it occurred because it may have occurred in the subconscious, or as is often the case in busy modern lifestyles wrought with daily stresses, the thought to go to the store was inthe consciousness, but was quickly overlooked because the mind is overloaded with thoughts of all manner of issues. The issue is self awareness. The increase in self awareness increases the knowledge of oneself - the mechanisms that drive our behavior, be they emotions or thoughts. Q6. The self did. One may have consciously decided to go stright home, but subconsciously the mind is operating and considering this decision and may then send a message to the conscious part, to stop off at the store. I imagine one must know why one wants or needs to stop there. "If you stopped at the store when you wanted to go home, you no longer have the final authority." Only if you believe a thought you have is not yours. If you believe all your thought are your creation, then you are always the fianl authority. The problem is when we do things we don't want to. But this doesn't proof no free will. It does suggest a lack of self awareness of the underlying thinking and feeling mechanisms the produce the thought to go to the store. And if you can't see thse underlying mechanisms, you can conclude the thought wasn't produced by you. True it wasn't a conscious thought. It was a subconscious thought. But a subconscious thought is still one's thought. "Bottom line is you didn't want the thought or to go to the store, . . ." I think along the lines of, you weren't aware you formulated a reason to go to the store. And I don't understand the scenario; are you saying this person had a contradictory thought to go to the store, and once they got there they had no idea what they wanted there? I have never encountered this. I've always experienced it a such - that I may have decided to go straight home, but then a thought would arise to stop off at the store first, but this thought was accompanied by a reason to go there. For if there was no justifiable reason, I would ignor the thought and go straight home. The only thing I can think of choosing to go somewhere without understanding why suggests a really low level of self awareness.

Xander17 Thank you! That was a really nice response. I think it was in Q2 that I finally understood. When you talked about someone not knowing why they were upset and if they continued to look and be honesty, they could get to the bottom of what was making them upset and learn more about one aspect of themselves that had been unknown. I was being a little sarcastic and naive with my first comment, but I learned something. I will have to go read more about free will, but I think once we understand how much of our thinking is done by our subconscious mind, it becomes like a big puzzle. Like the Creator has a sense of humor and just made the game harder. Now how do I solve this one?..... If you had had some arrogant response like many would have given me, you would have not stimulated my thought and I might have lost my desire to ever learn about this. Thank you again.

Thomas Metzinger was similarly influenced by ketamine. Perhaps you already know of his work

jonathanwoodvincent I had not, but I will look him up!

me too. I was astonished how this man can precisely articulate the idea formed in my head through reading about quantum physics and spiritual traditions from all around the world. Aside from his academic background, in another talk he said he meditates.

Same! Only I’ve never dabbled with psychedelics, I just think deeply about things a lot, which might mean nothing but then again it’s interesting to see the same ideas I “toy” with formalized like you said here.

ask him, he is active on twitter

Sometimes we need to conclude that there is a still a question. When people say that consciousness and free will are explained by neurons etc. we need to point out that their explanations don't cover everything (or even make sense, perhaps) and that there's still a question of how it works.

All that one can do is experience. Experience experience. To experience can be to question. And, as I have been saying for many years:.... + "Every answer generates new questions." + "Question everything, including the questions." That leaves us with an endless supply of questions. No question is a conclusion, but rather an opening/beginning because.... + Any question will always generate new questions. + A conclusion is a dead end unless it is questioned.

Hmmm...that needs long thought....

Years of observation of people's behaviour leads me to believe that there is not much free will, if any.

Every one has as much free will as he has ethics norms. In case some one has no clue about ethics he is following his instincts as an animal does

You haven't understood the argument mate

Much of what we do is routine. But the important decisions are not. Those whose will is the most free are the teachers and the leaders. But even a follower and a student can choose not to follow and not to learn.

@@fenthedog You probably do not understand the complex decisions that the unconscious makes. We are more than our currently conscious activities. Global Workspace Theory sheds some light on this.

@@JJRed888 LMFAO

(1)-What if the awereness we have today wasnt the same in the future what if evolution progress might be needed to force stop in the near future because of the ways it continues!?in order to save the mind?

can you explain me how and where? i want to know...

and i dont think nietzsche himself believed in free will...he says it doesn't exist

@@arpitthakur45 hello, yes. I’m sorry I was lazy with my comment. I don’t recall what part of the video triggered me to say that. I agree with you, Nietzsche did not believe in free will hence the theory of eternal return. I guess, maybe, I was thinking about the postmodernist thinking and my comment was meant as a critique for the video.

Nietzche stole it from Schopenhauer

@@Dialogos1989 what steal man...people can have similar ideas...

Yes!!! you've found the trio lol. well, i'm new to hoffman. but isn't the internet amazing, how we all find these ideas together?

@@whitleyblaine4017 Following the trails, like detectives. :) There are more I think, but these are the first ones that comes to mind as they all have a consciousness based view. A nice triad indeed.

@Ruby Badilla did you write this out just for us?

Never heard of Kastrup and Campbell, I'll check them out 🙂

I'd LOVE to see those three together in the same room and discuss.

What if I believe we "deserve" the same?

Funny trick, opt out of the conversation and just assert you're right. (Slow clap) Have fun teaching Jesus to five year olds and uneducated people.

I don't see how it's possible any link spirituality with classical physics. Eventually, Quantum Physics could do it.

@@rmcd823 true they won’t b linked as one science. But for people who can manage linking both, these talks make a lot of sense

@@rmcd823 physics is so slow as an epistemological tool

In other words, he's bridging science and hocus pocus. Don't see the purpose, but maybe that's just me.

@I dunno But Keep an open mind. Not everything that exist can be tested or measured. Some of these need thought experiments to make progress towards their truths.

Like ending a statement with a questionmark? Also believe is a choice.

@@kinngrimm "believe is a choice"? Is it possible to believe something you know is not true? Pick something you know is not true (the moon is made of cheese), then choose to believe it. The best you would get is lying about what you believe. You can only believe that of which you are convinced, you can be convinced for good reasons or for bad reasons. Maybe, maybe you have a choice on what you accept as evidence. Maybe, you have a choice in resisting peer pressure when considering the evidence. But ultimately you can only believe what convinces you.

@@truthseeker2275 If what you said would be true then there could hardly be any religions. Reality is screaming in their faces and yet they choose to believe in some stuff written down thousands of years ago from people trying to explain things to the masses without evidence. Now i wasn't on the moon so you may think it likely that someone could choose to believe it is 'made/created' out of cheese, just like others believe humans were never there, even though lots of people told their stories from first hand experience, video materials which back then maybe harder to be facked than today and science which sofar has brought marvelous advancement because of what was learened by aiming to get to the moon and learning what space does to materials. If you believe what convinces you, it is still a choice to be convinced. I didn't say it was a good choice or a bad choice. From my opinion i would say if a believe helps you survive and master life so you could be happy, then it is good enough for yourself, but generalized and objectivly speaking only those things which are closer to reality have in the long run a chance to help survival. Also i am not convinced that indoctrination leaves a lot of room for choices. A mind formed in an environment where believe is higher up the gratification ladder than the scientific method seems to me is therefor predestined for choosing believes over facts. It still is a choice, but within a narrower spectrum of choices.

You can choose not to believe

@@i6mi6 Your epistemology determines your means for determining what is convincing, you can change your epistemology, once you do, you can reevaluate your beliefs and change them. If you change your epistemology to something like that of a 4-year-old child then you may be able to choose beliefs (positive or negative) - Many people do not even have an epistemology - they will believe whatever the last person they spoke to tells them.

Try as you might, you have no way of knowing. You put in a new set of inputs; the outputs were different.

It's your ultimate reality. It's all you know. You don't know what happens when you die and from for all you know your consciousness is an emergent property of your brain which ceases at death.

Far too cocky of an assertion to take seriously.

@@daithiocinnsealach3173 3rd party confirmed Reincarnation studies prove this is nonsense. Plenty of people's consciousness come back to this world. However you slice it it's a FACT and this happens. Mostly likely through Quantam Physics.

@@JesusChrist2000BC wtf are you even talking about.

you say consciousness i say awareness,somebody else says,experience, pantheists say God is everything

I have that book :-D

Bold of you to assume they are “kids”.

Sent me down a huge rabbit hole today, look into the double slit experiment and the affect that observation has on its outcome

SecondComingTwice, how did you come to desire the ones and the sixes?

Open-minded Skeptic not sure I agree. I assume you are referring to “enlightened” FW choices leading to that evolution. Unfortunately that does not prove free will. How do you know they were really free will. Just because you think there “wholesome”. Our bodies have evolved for millions of years. To the “positive”. Is that free will. I don’t think it proves anything.

Actually the opposite.

did you have free will to write that?

@@MrCastleJohnny No, I wrote it because I had reasons to write it. I used the words I did because of the grammar I was taught, I expressed the Idea because of the information I read, I write it here because this is the video that popped up in my feed, and the words in the video prompted me to write. In exactly the same way, when you wrote the question, you wrote because you have seen it asked before and you had been told it is a smart question. I ask you, do you consider yourself a reasonable person? Either you do things for a reason, in which case you are reasonable, or you do things without a reason in which are you are unreasonable. It is a dichotomy, There is no third option.

@Ekalabya Mohanty Read my original comment, Calling me names or claiming something is a brute fact does not make it so. If you do want to understand you should maybe see if you can steelman the argument against free will. i.e. switch sides, understand why, then see if you can switch back.

@@truthseeker2275 A world where free will exists and one where it doesn't are not distinguishable by observation. I don't think there's any use in debating the issue of free will if you can't settle it.

@@BygoneT That is an interesting claim, I am not sure if you are correct or not; Do you have any reasoning behind why you say it is unobservable?

If you meditate [think about] the meaning and implications of the words "self evident" for long enough, it will eventually dawn on you that consciousness [awareness of awareness] is essentially the same as agency, and that there can be no awareness without a corresponding agency. Another [slightly different] route is to simply notice, over and over, that you are aware, and then try to be aware of being aware. If done sincerely, or for long enough, it will bring up more questions, and more awareness of problems with a strictly material and automatic existence. Also you will see that automaticity and meaning are mutually exclusive: A wholly automatic response can have no meaning or intention behind it - it does what it does by reason of mechanical setup, not in response to anything outside of it's program. If you are only a machine, then you can only respond to your own program, not to another person, and the same goes for them. So there can not really be any [meaningful] conversation between the 2 of you.

You can't remove the consequences of a decision and still call it free will. If god steps in and takes over, we are not free do do as we will. That is my humble PK opinion.

Some people don't have the good grace to know what is right and what is wrong... and others are plain evil, malefic. In fact, those strategies can be more efficient, if they are smart enough to remain covert ! Search for the dark triad, psychopaths, narcissists, machiaviellians... they are everywhere, at the top of the ladder ! Is it a choice ? For many of them, it is, clearly ! Also many people are directed by their unconscious, and it rules a good part of everyone's lives anyway. Consider yourself lucky to have this light, although good people often suffer the most, being victims of the bad grain... you need to be strong.

If you had free will you wouldn't need the concept of evil and good at the same time, the illusion of free will creates the energy of our determined universe which is a set of finite time, the universe can never change or it wouldn't be real for itself. By believing we can observe ourselves we can create the energy of memory which allows us to recreate the illusion of free will. The point of existence is to infinitely exist as is, the point of obseving is to believe you exist which allows you to recreate yourself as the energy of memory. No energy without the illusion of duality and no universe without the reality of non duality, time is an illusion of change(duality) and space is the illusion of a static universe(non duality), every point in the universe is the same point of one infinite point of energy.

@@theuniques1199 So am I determined to disagree with you?

Smart Cat Collar Project 🙏❤️

lizzyann 76 Awesome...

learning isn't gaining freedom it's just making you a more capable machine.

You have articulated the most useful perspective for living well and developing as a person.

Should have said, "infers the *possibility* of a vast amount of stacked-up, inherited memory."

Could that be the origin of species?

And, of course, people don't actually mean "free will." They mean that the cause was "me," and it's the "me" which can cause things where the chain of causation ends in "me," and "me" can never be understood by anyone or anything (except, PERHAPS, "me" itself) to the extent that the actions of "me" could neither be predicted, NOR be shown to be random. People mean "free will ends with me," and "me" is something which can never be described or defined. Thus...I can't imagine what a "me" is, either.

@@GetMeThere1 On materialism only a determined brain exists. On dualism and idealism a determined brain plus a non-determined conscious rational mind exists. Hence if materialism is false every event is not necessarily a determined response produced by non-rational universal causation, but can be a non-determined response produced by conscious rational mind. On dualism and idealism, the "me", "I" (the Self) is a non-determined conscious rational mind existing outside the deterministic system; hence not determined by the deterministic system. Metaphor: I have a body. The body is a determined aspect within the system. I (conscious rational mind) is not a determined aspect. My body is determined to need water. I am free to choose to give or not to give my body water.

@@MidiwaveProductions Sorry, I don't understand you. It seems to me that "rationality" is one of the most strictly "determined" states of mind one can have.

@@GetMeThere1 Rationality can only exist if free will is true: **Rationality cannot exist on determinism P1. Rationality is when a non-determined agent has the causal ability to 1. make decisions based on logic and evidence and 2. choose to believe that which is true and choose to not believe that which is not true P2. According to determinism non-rational universal causation (the Big Bang plus the laws of physics) is the only existing causal agent P3. Human brains are not causal agents P4. Human brains execute the instructions of non-rational universal causation C. Rationality cannot exist on determinism

@@MidiwaveProductions I'm not going to get into this sort of unproductive (from my perspective) back and forth. "Rationality" generally means that the facts and logic produce the conclusion -- that's a "deterministic" process, at least in the natural way that I use the word "determine." The conclusion is "determined" by rules. That's my last post on this, sorry.

Depends on what you mean by conscious.

@@BygoneT Well thats for shit sure. Even leaving metacognition out of it, Lets just go with: There is something that it is like, to be me / have experience.