We Really Don’t Have Free Will?: A Conversation with Robert M. Sapolsky (Episode  

I find the idea of no free will incredibly comforting. It somehow solidifies the futility of ruminating over my past decisions.

I’ve literally been watching both of your videos pertaining to free will throughout this last week & then this notification just pops up. Awesome.

I remember in an old Sapolsky lecture he discussed how people with Huntington’s disease years before they show easily recognizable symptoms will end up cheating in their spouses, getting into fights, stealing, and running away to different states without telling their family. We understand now tbis is because Huntington’s disease damages the structures in the brain responsible for self control and inhibition. It feels unnecessarily cruel to say people with Huntington’s disease effected this way are evil people or that they deserve to suffer for their wrong doings beyond any aim of harm reduction or that they even deserve and less respect and love than people lucky enough to not be effected by the disease. If you take that position seriously though then trying to explain why those wrong doings are just an unfortunate consequence of something wrong with their brains that they’re just unlucky instead of being evil but other people really are responsible for their wrong doings and they really are inherently evil and lesser for it becomes irrational. Everyone is just the product of factors beyond their control and even if it makes sense to treat someone who kills someone’s by accident differently than someone who does it on purpose, both are just unlucky in an ultimate sense. This is one of the most uplifting understandings to have about people. It sounds super woo and crazy but I mean it in the most secular and non-magical way, I really feel like everyone is just my family now and every bad thing anyone has done is no reason to hate.

Thank you both for this conversation. (Writing this comment and liking the video was totally a result of my free will, and has nothing to do with having listened to and admired the work of both Sam and Robert for years.)

Free will, as a social construct, could be a kind of shortcut to saying "if we don't hold you accountable as if you could have chosen something different than what you chose, then there would be a different less desirable outcome altogether" this nuance is too much for many people and they actually believe people could have done something different. I totally agree with you that if more people could appreciate this nuance, we could optimize how we hold people accountable.

There's no where else I'd rather be.. listening to you two having a conversation about something not many people believe but the proof is overwhelming that we don't have a shred of free will

What I don't understand is when they say things like "we should change things as a society" in light of the evidence against free will, as if collectively we can decide to do or not do something. If we are not responsible for our actions at an individual level how is this any different on a collective / societal level? How are we responsible for deciding when or how to do something on a group level when it is simply a by-product of antecedent events? Is problem solving just random causal events? I don't get it.

I wish it were possible to purchase individual episodes

Thank you- wonderful conversation! Although a certain linguist may have this differently, I recall when speaking of forms of pride and their pitfalls, I recalled when learning the word schadenfreude that a catechism teacher had illustrated to us “Have you ever…” situationally to point out to us that feeling a sense of gladness at the hurt of someone you have feelings of dislike, even if you seemingly had nothing to do with it?” That exists out of a form of pride. That is hurtful to you and them. Or “imagine if you felt that way…” stories came our way. I thought back when I learned the idea of schenfreude that that is the word to the other context of words which described it (easier understood by children, I thought a stroke of genius simply got the allowance to work out our hearts with our -hopefully-innate sense of the golden rule) and so I think I have understood and turned away from schadenfreude a lot earlier than when I had learned the word. Worth considering. 13:48 (not sure where you reference this here, number -wise. 14:15

it's too much of a stretch for me to say that free will doesn't exist when we're not really sure how consciousness works. As far as I understand it, consciousness is also considered to be an 'emergent property', and it's also something that we're all convinced we have, so are we also prepared to throw that out as we don't understand how, exactly, it emerges?

This is the most important topic in human behavior. Most people have no idea it is even possible to not have free will so they just ignore or dismiss the evidence that shows we do not. I am pretty convinced, thanks to Sam and Robert Sapolksky, that we don’t and that is such a wonderful feeling of relief and compassion. I still have many episodes where I react as if there is free will and unfairly judge that episode by my emotional reaction. But, believing in no free will, makes it much easier to excuse your behavior so that you don’t get as depressed for having the wrong reaction . You should still use that episode to correct future reactions but, understanding why you reacted the way you did, gives you more compassion to quickly change your view on that initial reaction. I am doing my part to spread this theory to anyone who is willing to listen and hope everyone else who understands this will be doing the same. The more people who understand this the better it will be for all human kind.

Great interview...I've teetered on the question of free will for many years. Sam and Robert have recently tipped me into the no free will camp. My meditation and study group are currently reading a text by the Zen teacher Danin Katagiri who refers to free will often. This is confusing as I am under the impression that Buddhists of all stripes embrace the notion of cause and effect.

I'm listening to this after having watched Robert's conversation with Alex O'Connor, with anticipation of Alex's upcoming podcast with Sam. Such a surreal feeling.

From my understanding of downward causation or top-down causation, the idea is that higher level organization can influence the lower levels that make it up. For example, tree absorb sunlight in order to get energy and make food which they use to constitute their branches and leaves. The higher-level structures of branches and leaves organize to themselves to spread out to increase the probability of gathering more sunlight and the positive feedback loop continues as such. Organic complex systems rely on these feedback loops for autopoiesis, and these dynamic complex systems rely on a dynamic. The organism is shaped by bottom-up causation and the emergent structure of the organism puts top-down constraints on how that bottom-up causation introduces variation into the system. Selective attention is one of these top-down constraints that human beings have control over, and it allows us to the freedom to choose what matter and energy in the environment we make ourselves out of. If free will is anything, it would have to do with selective attention and the ability to restrain action and delay gratification. These can be summed up in saying free will is the capacity for an organism to shape its own development by conscious mediation in its own sensory-motor loop.

ohh I have been wating for this meeting of these two minds...a long time, esepcially after the coming out of Determined. Thank you!

In Jewish esoteric thought there's an idea that all we truly have is 'desire'. If you desire to do good, God/existence will make it so. If you desire to do bad, so it will be... Ultimately, therefore, all we can do is desire to go right or left. It's a deep spiritual concept about how powerful desire is. That being said, after watching MANY philosophical conversations on this topic, Rebbe Nachman says it best: Free will is as simple as "a person has in his ability to simply choose. If he wants to, he does something, if he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t do it." I think "practically" we have free will. Spiritually and philosophically, we don't. JUST LIKE, practically, we feel all of physical existence as a distinct matter. But fundamentally, spiritually and philosophically there's no separation. Everything that exists is one "energy".

Hey Sam, thanks for the subscription to your podcast ❤ I’ve been following you since the early 2000s. I appreciate your work 😊

Thanks for the podcast I had no choice but to listen to and the subsequent existential headache I got through no will of my own.

You were mentioned by a couple of callers on the David Packmans show so I decided to give you a listen.

I have read both their books on this topic. But what has really grounded me in seeing no self and no free will are the daily meditation's on Harris's Waking Up app. I had to have this drummed into me every day for a couple of years through the app to really get it. A podcast can let you know these ideas are out there, but you will not get it if this is your first or maybe even 20th exposure. It's tricky.

I can have the worst day and I can feel like shit, but I can then recognize this and choose to go into meditation and choose to stop those circumstances from affecting me the rest of the day. Instead of getting drunk in the evening, I write poetry. Does that not show we have a backwards switch to regulate the billiard balls? We just aren't good at doing that. We largely don't exercise it much.

One of the best and most important conversations on the Making Sense podcast.

Really nice and fun conversation. For those who missed Sam’s podcast episode “final thoughts on free will” it is a must

Our parts make us capable of awareness of both our parts and the effects that system of parts produces. Our parts also allow us to evaluate information we are aware of and then act to change things to be more in line with our interests. This means we can be aware of our mental situations and then go about changing them through various actions. Such as medication, avoidance, change of focus, reframing, practice of actions we want instead.

I think that the argument for“free will” is linked to the argument for an objective moral landscape. If you accept the latter exists, it provides the basis for the former, at least in some degree. 19:20 I think the existence of an objective moral landscape is an example of downward causality examined through self reflection.

I may subscribe for a month just to get this full episode. Proudly not destabilized by discussions like these.

a conversation between these two finally happened after Sapolsky's book, what a dream come true!

I can't understand why Sam Harris says he doesn't understand why people feel uncomfortable when their notion of free will is undermined. It's so obvious it's precious to people. It gives people meaning for their actions and behaviors.

Hello Sam Harris, I've watced Dr. Sapolsky's Stanford class lectures here on RU-vid and learn about varying subjects. What a delight! Thank you for this talk on Freewill.

Great conversation. Thank you Sam and Robert.

This subject is the ultimate Rorschach test.

My first question to either Sam or Robert would be to ask if they thought that we are spiritual beings having a human experience or human beings having a spiritual experience. If we're a spiritual being having a human experience did we sign up for this non free will journey we're on? And is so what are we gaining from that experience? Not sure anyone can answer that but please note that I'm on board with the whole free will is an illusion evidence/theory.

one could say, I could pass this convo up even if I wanted to

Please do another podcast with Thomas Metzinger and talk about his new book ‘The Elephant and the Blind’.

Funny today I was talking about free will and I was looking for his book right now ! Yes right now

I haven’t finished listening but I just wish they talk about their last talk!

Hah, odd. I learned about Daniel Kahneman only yesterday because I wanted to know more about where Yuval Harari got the idea of a 2-main-parts self (experiencing and narrating). Daniel Kahneman published a book where he describes a fast processing self and a slow processing self. That was only one interesting thing Khaneman noticed. He was full of good and interesting ideas. RIP Daniel.

I'll never understand the hate for Sam Harris.

Perhaps Dawkins' somewhat overlooked theory of memes could shed light on this. I'm inclined to agree that no one is ultimately responsible for their actions; determinism holds weight. However, it's undeniable that we're compelled to behave as if our conscious decisions too hold weight. In every action we take, we're faced with the perpetual dilemma of choosing between immediate gratification and delayed rewards. When confronted with the need for self-control, it's prudent to reinforce the latter option, both on an individual and societal level. The world stands to benefit greatly from the widespread adoption of this principle. This notion, in turn, underscores another concept: the existence of free will-those challenging decisions we grapple with. In essence, it's a battle of ideas. Free will may not be an absolute reality, but it remains an indispensable notion. A winning idea.

This is just a language game, not a scientific inquiry. Some saying free will means, choices come from you and not outside you, some saying we're just cogs and essentially there is no 'us'. I believe the psychology of that choice of definition means you may either be motivated to act freely or to just flow down some pointless downward spiral. I go with what it seems like. It seems like the body's mechanisms provide us with endless choices and memories at the point of any decision for some purpose. For the purpise of choosing. Otherwise, we wouldn't see all these choices and motivations/memories with which to help us 'choose' things.

What is the artwork for the thumbnail?

Thanks to you both! I couldn’t watch the entire episode as I felt the need to exercise my apparently non existent free will to prefer reading Cormac McCarthy, although he would probably agree with you and so, what?

Is Penn Juliette and co. carrying around a dice and acting on roll results.. feels related to this topic. I’m still working out how.

We are corporeally, products of what would be more succinctly described as 'momentumism', rather than determinism. Determinism has a connotative flavour that produces an imagery that there is some external force or agent compelling each of our decisions or actions and that ‘we’ do not interplay with that path. Although it is accurate to state that our lives are, in a manner of speaking “determined”, a more astute way of viewing this determined trajectory; through contained and extremely complex shifting states of inertia, it's more aptly and semantically descriptive if portrayed as a momentum. As a means of contextualizing this particular reconceptualizing of determinism, I'd propose a ‘rock metaphor’. Every rock is different in its fundamental material construction, shape, mass, etc. There are multiple methods in which rocks are created and formed. As they find their ultimate place in time they are imperceptibly changed by gravity, altitude and temperature they are, nonetheless, altered by these changes. Imagine a sloping mountain with its crags and dales, its ever-changing terrain of boulders, shale, trees, grass, moss, waterways, shifting altitudes, temperatures and weather. If we place this particular rock at the top of this metaphorical mountain and push it off in one directional side of the peak of this mountain with a given force and deviation its path will be determined by the rock's given physical construction, shape and size coupled with the features of the mountainside which the rock will encounter as it; by the predetermined force of gravity, tumbles down the face of our mountain that determines what this rock will be exposed to, physically altering it, redirecting it as it encounters the varying frictional surface features and obstructions, ultimately determining its long or short course and the where, when and how it will ultimately end. We were set in motion, into a momentum that determines us.

Whether or not there is completely no free will, which is hard to reckon from a philosophical standpoint, the presenters here do make a powerful case that free will is much less a part of human behavior than we might have previously thought.

I’ve been waiting a while for this one!

Deserves more views/ more people listening!

Sadly, Sam is right about physically attractive people moving with far more opportunity and ease through life. They have magnetism that causes people to bens over backeards ro help them and be near them. As someone with below average attractiveness, it has definitely caused me not to be hired, to lack opportunities, to not be saught as a partner or friend in many situations, not to be invited places, and so on. It is a sad reality. NDT once described the Higgs field in relation to the Beyone-effect and it seems similar. Walking through life beautiful is like ealking through air, while not being attractive is like crawling through neck deep sludge.

We got that book, haven’t read it yet. Sam has had much better and clearer takes on “Free will” than they did here. Hope the book is alittle clearer. 👍🏻

We don't cause what causes what happens to us. The universe is just running, the current now flowing into the next now. Causal/determined, while also unknowable (random). Enjoy the ride, and how random it all is. What happens cannot be otherwise.

A simple question: based on the guest’s proposed definition of free will, does it really matter if we have free will or not?

If there's no method of acquiring knowledge, how do you know what you claim to know?

Wonder if the self is a product of, and consciousness a measure of, the amount of “not currently busy” neurons a brain has at any given time. I guess that would make it some sort of software almost idk. But what made me think of it is when a person is in “flow” and the self seems to drop away, it also seems those are situations where your brain is very engaged. And when we’re unengaged and literally just sitting and over thinking things, there’s not much else going on to process. Just a layman shower thought.

Think of the free will as free-ish will or effective free will, and all issues around free will simply dissolve. If the decision originated inside our body/brain without external coercive influence, that is good enough. The pursuit of the theoretical idea of free will is like people needing the universe to have a purpose so that their life has a purpose. Why does it matter if the universe has a purpose or not for one to make and have a purpose in their own life. That should be good enough. Similarly, the worry about determinism related to free will is only significant, if one is actually a Laplace daemon. But we are clearly not Laplace daemons. Therefore the free will is effectively free and originates in our bodies (when no coercive forces are at play). Thus why worry if free will is not really free if the universe is deterministic or not. For all practical purposes, legal or otherwise what we call free will is effectively free. That is why I suggest to call free will - free-ish will or effective free will or simply effree will (spread the meme). But anyway that is semantic and we could just continue to use free will - and hold people responsible for their actions as long as we understand its nature as described above. The notion of libertarian freewill is hidden in the gap between what a Laplace daemon may know vs. what is possible for us to know when we make decisions. We make moral decisions because there is an implicit coercive force on our decision making based on our knowledge of what society has taught us what is moral. Of course sociopaths ignore that coercion and moral pioneers think for themselves what is moral and make decisions accordingly (when people first realized that slavery was bad) even when the rest of the society thought it was OK. Heck it was there in holy books even. Lastly, we are always constrained by what is possible. I cannot free will myself to get admitted into Harvard Phd program. I am limited by my abilities, desires, life history, economic status and physical laws. BTW we can think of these are implicit coercive forces that constrain our free will anyway. I cannot free will myself to dodge a bullet fired at me at a short range. I think discussions about free will being libertarian or not are much ado about nothing in the end. The real issue is can we hold a competent person responsible for their action for pragmatic purposes. We are not Laplace daemon to know every micro state of our brain and micro-history of our own to be able to track down why we made a decision. Also we have to take decisions (with that partial information) quickly to be able to actually function in the world. Also just to make a decision there is no need to analyze at atomic level how we are making that decision deterministically. It is sufficient to know at the level of our memory, abilities, desires and goals why we made the decision we made. The true issue of libertarian freewill is not important at the time of making decisions in real time. But it is important to determine the responsibility. And for all pragmatic purposes the "responsibility" attribution is at a similar social level of our memory, abilities, desires and goals and legal systems etc, it is OK to hold a "normal" person responsible for their action. And we do have the "insanity defense" or "crime of passion" mechanisms in our legal system to evaluate if the responsibility can in fact be attributed to a particular individual. A "normal" person is the one who will themselves say they can and should be held responsible for their actions.

Free will exists only in this present moment. All thought and claims about the future or the past are phenomena of the immediate present. We are free to become aware. When awareness shifts, behavior changes itself.

I definitely think we have free will. We’re just increasingly (at least in the Western world) experiencing areas of existence that are engineered for certain goals

Complete realization of no free will obliterates the concept of “I,” thus liberating the realizer. The rub is, it can be extremely psychologically dangerous to allow “no free will” to become fully realized and integrated. Peace.

Welp, this may be the one I gotta pony up for. You got me.

I think people get the illusion of free will from our ability to use prior experiences to model future experiences and achieve better future outcomes. The illusion occurs when they forget that they can't take this new insight into the past.

Thank you father samuel

I know Sam's argument against free will, and its a good one. But I have thought of a way that free will could still be possible and it relies on Quantum Super-Position. If it is Consciousness that collapses the wave function and cells within the brain are in a superposition of states, it could be possible for consciousness to have a retro-causal effect on the brain, meaning that consciousness could essentially be dictating brain behaviour. This is along similar lines to the Biocentric Universe idea. Consciousness could be more fundamental that the physical.

11:00 around here, "It just feels like (free will) it." I really like Yuval Harari a lot. Liberalism, according to Yuval, is many things, but mainly it's a form of trusting idividuals and their feelings over almost all else. Liberalism sanctifies the personal experience of individuals. If we're truthful with ourseleves, then we see how feelings (or what Rob calls "intuition") aren't to be completely trusted or sanctified above all else. 😅 It's funny. Rob is unintentionally fighting against the current of liberal thought. Even among scientifically minded folks, it's easy for them to fall back on "I feel like I have free will." Well, that's interesting, but what you feel doesn't have to line up with reality of the situation. 😅

Could there be benefits to embracing determinism as truth?

In a universe that does not provide room for libertarian free will to exist, there should be , when determining regular human beings, no doubt already a consensus around the motivations for human behaviours, associations and interaction, and a set of non-negotiable constants that one should be able to observe. Still, it seems to me that there are tougher questions ahead of the certainty that free will does not have a space in understanding human behaviours but somehow we keep on explaining everything using subjective cases. For example the tendencies of male and female selection partners, the causes for divorce, the differences in profession or career choice between genders, to cite a few. It all is simply waved away, ignored and we recourse back to subjective cases, individual circumstances, the knock-on effects of other events, rendering this knowledge useless; a curiosity in the museum of things we know but that have no implications. The future of AI is in the hands of very intelligent people who do not know themselves and are attempting to create human-level intelligence without even observing what that animal intelligence is for a dimorphic, mammalian being such as us. The whole project will all reside with socialists and ideological types who align with words and ideals. When forced to look at the mirror, we primates, prefer to grab and throw a stone to that reflective surface. No wonder we are afraid of AI.

Harris and Sapolsky claim to not get Dennett’s argument that free will is essential for humans, specifically the idea that people desire to be held accountable for their actions. They dismiss Dennett by suggesting that he, like many others, is simply reluctant to relinquish the accolades he believes he deserves for his conscious decisions. Harris describes this as a classic case of ego attachment. Sapolsky humorously references people who assert that the merits listed on their CVs are sufficient proof of free will, and therefore of deserving praise. However, I believe the amusement and apparent surprise displayed by Sapolsky, and to some extent by Harris, actually underscore their own pride in their intellectual accomplishments. Despite understanding on a rational level that they are not fundamentally responsible for their innate intellectual capabilities, they seem unable to completely detach from this notion. This, in essence, is exactly Dennett's point. It would be invaluable for them to integrate this aspect of human nature into their discussions without fear that acknowledging it would undermine their arguments against the existence of free will. By doing so, they could move beyond the typical stance of classical liberal intellectuals who, perhaps arrogantly, advocate for new enlightened standards in a world populated by those less intellectually fortunate, who are then faulted (yes, blamed !) for not understanding these new ideals.

fantastic

Under the circumstances that Robert speaks of, he is correct that in those states, there is no free will. However, free will does exist outside the guise of the mind. Free Will is the act of not allowing the mind to run the show. The mind is a program that guides reaction. Free Will is the act of not reacting like the mind wants you to. It's the understanding that the mind makes decisions based on all past input. Free Will is understanding that you are actually separate from the mind, and therefore you don't have to consent to what it is programmed to want to do.

Finally, I've been waiting for this one! Thank you, Sam, for making Robert chuckle.

The freedom of decisions isn’t always clear when we submit to them as well as cope with the reality that if we want to eat, we must work for it.

I am one of those "gift" subscribers that Sam graciously awards...why is it so complicated/difficult to find the full-length versions...can someone please chart-out the steps I need to reach the long-pods...I's stimied...thank you for your help in advance

Clearly there are two types of people: those destined to believe they have agency over the universe and those destined to believe in destiny.

I am confident that there is no free will, yet I haven't understand any of what these two have to say about it. Maybe because i am not well educated in neurobiology, but Alex O Connor just explains it much simpler with logic

thank you guys, Ive been waiting for this

You both admit that there is a distinction between voluntary and involuntary behaviour, @ 29:20. Therefor decision making exists. If you can make a decision and choose a voluntary action, then you have exercised FREEWILL. Freewill is simply the ability to either entertain and explore a thought, or line of thinking, or dismiss that thought, as it emerges from the 'working memory'.

We judge ourselves based on our intentions & others for their actions.

Compatibilists are saying that "A decision is being made entirely through me" = "I am the one making the decision" (free will).

Very weird how they never bother to discuss, let alone steelman, the main compatibilists arguments, and acknowledge that this is the prevailing view amongs the tens, hundreds of thousands of people who have thought about this with any seriousness (which is meaninful considering that the real battle for the concept of free will is purely a dialectic one - that there's a useful meaning of free will which doesn't imply "libertarian" free will. I remember Sam s conversation with Denett where about 3% was devoted to the dialectic use of the word and "what people mean by it" and instead Sam regurgitated fully accepted determinist concepts which no one serious denies.

There are layers to consciousness.. The immediate layer of day to day conscious awareness has no free will the same way we are not conscious of the liver.... Because you are not conscious of the actions of the liver doesn't mean you have no free will you're just not aware of the many mechanisms beyond your personal egoic mind.

"Life is short. Let's use the time wisely." We have no choice in whether we "use time wisely" or not. "He has fully accepted the implications of this topic." He did not accept them. He only experiences the acceptance. "Sapolsky authored a book" False. He experienced writing it, but he did not write it. "By all means, pick another podcast today". We have no choice in the matter. "We've reached the same conclusion". Sam and Robert have only experienced reaching the same conclusion. They did not reach the conclusion. Others are not so lucky. "What arguments do you find the least persuasive?" There is no "find". No one chooses to think as they think. Sam and Robert's bodies are talking about arguments as if they matter. No body has any say in the matter. Condemnation of other experiencers for not taking their arguments on board in a world without free will is like condemning the universe for having gravity. "Dan Dennett conflates them". Nope. Another deterministic or randomly determined meat-robot is conflating. Dan, the experiencer, has no say in the matter. They ridicule Daniel Dennett for having ridiculous views on free will. Sam and Robert: he has no choice. Sam and Robert's bodies may emit sound or scribble words that eventually convince Daniel's body of their ideas. "The way I often frame it is if you took a chimp..." Robert's biorobot body still hasn't taken into account that there was no will in "framing". "We are not denying that there is a distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior." Um, what? The word voluntary is meaningless within a Universe without free will. "If you want to be a good friend or a good husband" We can certainly experience want, but that experience is irrelevant to outcomes. Sam is a good husband (I assume) because his consciousness happened to emerge within a biorobot that is one. Robert: "You wanna be able to..." Whether we do want to or we don't is not up to any of us. "I've never understood why people imagine that (randomness) gives scope to free will." Sam: you have no choice in not understanding, and others have no choice in using randomness to give free will "scope". I also had no choice in wasting a hour writing this. And Sam and Robert had no choice in making this podcast.

I've one requirement for Harris and others who opine that "free will doesn't exist": prove it. This will be met with silence or hand wavy insistence that it's already been proven, despite there being no way to do so. The insistence that free will doesn't exist is based upon the structure, history, and success in explaining physical phenomena with deterministic physics (everything in our current physics except quantum...). The argument boils down to: the physics and its applied versions that have been fantastically successful in explaining and manipulating the physical world are entirely deterministic, our consciousness "arises" in our brains (unproven...), our brains are part of the physical world, and, since everything else in the physical world is deterministic, consciousness and behavior must be deterministic, hence, no free will. A series of unproven assumptions presented as "truths" in order to "force" an unexplained phenomenon into the existing structure of physics. Does this remind you of anything? How about...the state of physics prior to Einstein's relativity theory, where various contortions were proposed to explain the "weird" behavior of light so as to shoe-horn it into the structure of Newtonian Physics. There is something very big missing from our understanding of physics and our world, and consciousness (and free will) is smack dab in the middle of whatever it is.

If all of a sudden you'd stop believing in free will, then your destiny would change. My intuition says that sum of its effects on many human beings would be negative = negative impact on the society. Even though it's pretty obvious to me that free will doesn't exists but I won't push the idea to the society. And that's because I'm a pragmatic person.

In terms of one will subjugating another will, say in a master and slave relationship, the slave would do otherwise if his will was free of a master. That's the only context I can find the concept of free will being sensible.

I appreciate the idea of having a scholarship program over outright pay walls OR totally free... It just makes sense (no pun intended)... People like me who are destitute, but also interested in this stuff, and possibly need this sort of mental fodder (very possible i do given im approaching 34 and still have never had gainful employment and have spent most of the last 2 decades addicted, incarcerated, or homeless) can still benefit... Alright I'll precent myself from rambling. It makes sense though.

Is it only me who is not receiving a scholarship? I believed that they were readily available to everyone, without any conditions. It is my sincere wish to listen to the entirety of the episode on free will, irrespective of the absence of my personal volition.

Finally!! I've been waiting for this for considerable amount of time .

Something I don't understand - we don't have free will because what we experience and do is a product of our biologicals systems and we are the observer. But while we do also observe, why cannot we consider our genetics, our biological systems, our nurture as part of ourselves and the decision making?

I think we do have free will but because of the consequences, we choose not to do some things and we are also conditioned not to do certain things to keep our society in order. For example, I can choose never to show up in school, but what would happen? I would fail and I don't want that to happen so I have to go to school

the two warriors of determinism finally speak

Almost all people seem to not understand that what happens can be both (continuum of flowing forces) deterministic AND also be random (unpredictable), unknowable.

Video please

In essence, free will requires the ability to determine the outcome of an event, different to that which is otherwise determined. It requires to ability to override the world as we understand it, at least to some degree. The belief is unscientific. Spooky!

I’m back in 2012 😂 this is actually refreshing

What happens if you acknowledge there’s no free will and then intentionally kill someone, telling yourself “ well it was obviously predetermined, it’s not my fault”? What’s the purpose of life?

So we don’t have free will, instead it’s all our individual brain chemistry reacting to situations? That’s it? Seems like a pointless half hr talk could be two mins. Besides that who cares what you call why you do what you do? What’s the point of

If we don't have free will, can we conclude that nothing is within our control? And therefore, the DOC principle of Stoicism is... useless? Or am I wrong?

I havent finished watching this video but i think the notion of "no free will" doesn't capture the full reality of experience. although there is this truly profound wisdom to rejecting free will, I think there is something to identifying with your own will even if the universe could be captured fully by a deterministic system. I guess its about the truth of subjective experience on its own terms even if on a level it is illusion.

Wow. Rest in peace, Dr. Kahneman.

* RS&SH: Talks about emergent complexity as basically magic. * Also RS&SH: We absolutely understand all of the physics involved in higher consciousness and thus NO FREE WILL! QED.

If people could be convinced that they had no free will, they wouldn’t murder, pillage, and rape. Simply thinking about something doesn’t create depravity.

I hope you release the full version!!