Scientist, After Decades of Study, Concludes: We Don't Have Free Will (phys.org) 347
Corinne Purtill reports via Phys.Org: Before epilepsy was understood to be a neurological condition, people believed it was caused by the moon, or by phlegm in the brain. They condemned seizures as evidence of witchcraft or demonic possession, and killed or castrated sufferers to prevent them from passing tainted blood to a new generation. Today we know epilepsy is a disease. By and large, it's accepted that a person who causes a fatal traffic accident while in the grip of a seizure should not be charged with murder. After more than 40 years studying humans and other primates, Sapolsky has reached the conclusion that virtually all human behavior is as far beyond our conscious control as the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells or the beating of our hearts.
This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane. "The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over," Sapolsky said. "We've got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn't there."
Sapolsky, a MacArthur "genius" grant winner, is extremely aware that this is an out-there position. Most neuroscientists believe humans have at least some degree of free will. So do most philosophers and the vast majority of the general population. Free will is essential to how we see ourselves, fueling the satisfaction of achievement or the shame of failing to do the right thing. Saying that people have no free will is a great way to start an argument. This is partly why Sapolsky, who describes himself as "majorly averse to interpersonal conflict," put off writing his new book "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will." [...]
Analyzing human behavior through the lens of any single discipline leaves room for the possibility that people choose their actions, he says. But after a long cross-disciplinary career, he feels it's intellectually dishonest to write anything other than what he sees as the unavoidable conclusion: Free will is a myth, and the sooner we accept that, the more just our society will be. "Determined," which comes out today, builds on Sapolsky's 2017 bestseller "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst," which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a slew of other accolades. The book breaks down the neurochemical influences that contribute to human behaviors, analyzing the milliseconds to centuries preceding, say, the pulling of a trigger or the suggestive touch on an arm. "Determined" goes a step further. If it's impossible for any single neuron or any single brain to act without influence from factors beyond its control, Sapolsky argues, there can be no logical room for free will.
This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane. "The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over," Sapolsky said. "We've got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn't there."
Sapolsky, a MacArthur "genius" grant winner, is extremely aware that this is an out-there position. Most neuroscientists believe humans have at least some degree of free will. So do most philosophers and the vast majority of the general population. Free will is essential to how we see ourselves, fueling the satisfaction of achievement or the shame of failing to do the right thing. Saying that people have no free will is a great way to start an argument. This is partly why Sapolsky, who describes himself as "majorly averse to interpersonal conflict," put off writing his new book "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will." [...]
Analyzing human behavior through the lens of any single discipline leaves room for the possibility that people choose their actions, he says. But after a long cross-disciplinary career, he feels it's intellectually dishonest to write anything other than what he sees as the unavoidable conclusion: Free will is a myth, and the sooner we accept that, the more just our society will be. "Determined," which comes out today, builds on Sapolsky's 2017 bestseller "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst," which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a slew of other accolades. The book breaks down the neurochemical influences that contribute to human behaviors, analyzing the milliseconds to centuries preceding, say, the pulling of a trigger or the suggestive touch on an arm. "Determined" goes a step further. If it's impossible for any single neuron or any single brain to act without influence from factors beyond its control, Sapolsky argues, there can be no logical room for free will.
We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:5, Insightful)
"The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over," Sapolsky said. "We've got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn't there."
Actually, by his very own argument, we have no choice as to who we reward or punish. He needs to stop attributing these punishments and rewards to the free will, which isn't there by his own argument.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:5, Funny)
New defense: "My brain made me do it."
Re:We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:5, Interesting)
New defense: "My brain made me do it."
This leads me to think that. there is something monstrous going on in this man's own life that he is certain will one day be revealed.
Re:We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There is a Hebrew saying, everything is known and the choice is yours.
Re:We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:4)
Re: (Score:3)
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose freewill
Re:We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:5, Interesting)
So you don't get the point? Free will is not the same as choice, or consciousness. It is hard to define free will because it refers to a logical misconception.
How do you define something that makes no sense? It is nothing but a vague and inconsistent set of human feelings/assumptions.
My car chooses which gear to use. I don't think my car has "free will". But I don't just assume my car will get me home. I choose to put fuel in it and steer it.
Just as it makes sense to talk about how to operate a car, we talk about how to manage people.
The choices we make influence the choices of other people to commit crimes or not. If punishment does not affect them, then yes it is (mostly) pointless.
The science referred to in the article goes further that these philosophical arguments. It shows that our view of our own choices is deeply delusional. Our brains actually made the choices well before we became consciously aware of it. Our perception of decision making is often something we construct after the fact.
A classic example is post-hypnotic suggestion. A person can be told in hypnosis to do a strange act on a cue, after hypnosis. Ask why they did it, they will make up a reason, and believe it. It seems that we do this all the time, creating the impression that our choices are based on conscious rational decisions, when morst of the time the choice/behaviour come from far deeper in our brains. Just like epilepsy.
https://www.hypnosis101.com/hy... [hypnosis101.com]
Re:We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:4, Funny)
Mine doesn't. I drive a manual transmission, you insensitive clod.
The summary has nothing to do with science. Where's the testable hypothesis?
Re: (Score:3)
The summary has nothing to do with science. Where's the testable hypothesis?
I'm terribly sorry but you'll need to RTFA. There are two separate sets of ideas, the philosophical, and the biological. The science is in how our brains work, and it disproves not so much the concept of free will, as our belief in how we make choices.
Re:We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:5, Interesting)
The science is in how our brains work, and it disproves not so much the concept of free will, as our belief in how we make choices.
If the universe is mechanistic then free will is an illusion. It doesn't matter how the "choices" are actually made behind the scenes unless the how of it involves some externally animating principle, because all you're doing is shifting the argument to which set of mechanistic actions were responsible for what happened.
Re: (Score:2)
Just as it makes sense to talk about how to operate a car, we talk about how to manage people.
Huh? People should be managed like a fleet of cars? If it's too expensive to fix, scrap it, perhaps scavenge some parts before sending it to the crusher for recycling? Now that is some extreme view of how to manage a society - essentially run the world like an animal farm.
Re: (Score:3)
No. Did you really need to ask?
essentially run the world like an animal farm.
That metaphor is taken.
Re: We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:4, Informative)
Free will is often thought to mean: "Could we have made a different choice under the exact same circumstances?"
The choices we make are deterministic, based on the input parameters. If we ran the simulation 100 times with the exact same parameters, we would make the exact same choice each time.
Re: (Score:3)
Initially they would start the same, but they would drift over time, as the universe itself isn't deterministic (as far as we can tell).
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
"with an interpretation of QM"
vs.
"(as far as we can tell)"
Our operating model of QM involves randomness. There may be something underlying it that's deterministic, but from everything that's knowable in our universe - as far as we can tell - we physically cannot know enough to render the universe deterministic.
Re: We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:4, Insightful)
That is not a demonstration of a lack of free will.
Free will doesn't mean "choose at random". Given the same parameters the result should always be the same with or without free will.
He's making an extremely academic OCD argument about the source of that decision making process which is irrelevant even if he's correct. He's not but it doesn't matter.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Having just looked up a picture of Sapolsky, I'm now more convinced by his arguments, as nobody would choose that hairstyle of their own free will.
Re: (Score:2)
We simply deem people to be a danger to society on proof of prior dangerous behaviour & sentence them all the same. So what of free will? I guess ignoring it would also ignore a lot of moral judgement & make it easy to slip into fatalism. I choose to stick with ethics & morality until something better comes along.
Clearly our justice system seems quite stupid, pretending we have free will. Rationally, "punishment" does (or should) serve rational purposes such as deterrence, physical restraint from re-offending, behaviour modification, and if we are honest, revenge.
Waiting until a person commits a crime before arresting them makes some sense. It may acts as a deterrence in many cases. And the crime may also convey new information: we did not know the person was such a risk before.
But if a person has been repeatedly
Re: (Score:2)
"Our justice systems & laws are strongly focused on the assumption of free will..."
Are they? It depends on who the "we" is in "our justice system" and when you are talking about. Over history, justice has made varying assumptions regarding free will.
"... defendants' intentions."
Lack of free will does not imply lack of intentions. This is a fundamental mistake being made. Whether free will exists or not, the APPEARANCE of free will definitely does exist. People can make decisions and do have intenti
Doesn't mean we should do nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
That we have no conscious choice is not the same as it serving no purpose to discuss our justice system. Our conscious decisions are illusions, but that a mass of humans discussing things affects the decision making process of all the brains involved, is very much in line with what he's saying. We just have no conscious control over the outcome.
Put another way, we are free to "choose" the flavor of ice cream we prefer, but we have no control over what we prefer. That the choice is an illusion doesn't mean everyone should stop enjoying ice cream or stop picking the flavor they feel like, nor that it's important that we never phrase a sentence without including the caveat that we understand we have no real choice. Our brains still think and make their inevitable decisions even if if our consciousness is a mere observer rather than the controlling agent we feel it is.
With regards to criminal justice, as I understand it his argumentation is pretty much to remove the imagined agency from a criminal's action. If a car kills people because its brakes are bad, we fix the brakes or make sure no one drives it. If it keeps on happening we might look at how cars are built, or institute mandatory maintenance programs. We don't talk about how cars should make better choices.
His argument is that it makes no more sense to do that for a human than for a car, because there's no more agency there. It doesn't take much thought to see the point. If you stop viewing crime as something that people choose, and instead take the perspective that it's something that happens to people based on past events, you skew the handling of crime from piling on more police and building more prisons, to preventative programs. Succeeding at the latter is a much better outcome for everyone, and it has been shown to work. Brains are programmable, and how we structure our society is a large part of what kinds of brains we end up with as inhabitants.
Re:Doesn't mean we should do nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The issue is, such a being do
Re: (Score:3)
In principle, you're not completely off track, facetious or not. But, we do view humans as a bit special, don't we.
So, if don't want to genetically engineer people to behave as we'd like, or just kill anyone that does something wrong, what are our options? The obvious one is how we treat each other. In a grander sense, how society treats its inhabitants. If you have an area of town with a lot of young criminals, you look at why. In some cases, adding activities for youths can make a huge difference. If you
Re: (Score:3)
If you stop viewing crime as something that people choose, and instead take the perspective that it's something that happens to people based on past events, you skew the handling of crime from piling on more police and building more prisons, to preventative programs.
Yes, unfortunately all the money is in providing unhelpful and/or inadequate services. Actually helping people not only costs money, but it also makes it less likely that you will be able to get profit from them later. Not only will you reduce recidivism, but you'll also reduce the amount of meaningless crap that people buy to self-soothe in a world where acquisition of goods is equated with success.
Re: (Score:3)
"But cars and humans are unresolvably different."
In this sense, no. That's the whole point. They're objects of different complexity, but adhering to the same physical laws.
"LOL, which only proves that the entire exercise is philosophical masturbation. Brains ARE programmable, there IS accountability, there IS agency, people DO have choice. Better outcomes prove that prevention CAN work. All this contradicts the idea that human behavior is beyond control."
You appear to have a fundamentally different view of
Re: (Score:3)
He's not saying that we aren't open to reason. He's saying that a lot of our behaviour, such as being convinced by a reasoned argument, is actually not the freely made choice we think it is.
It's an interesting scientific aspect to what is usually a moral argument. You can blame people for poor decisions that lead to them being poor or addicted to drugs, for example, but actually just putting blame aside and helping them tends to produce better outcomes for everyone. Sapolsky is arguing that it's not just th
Re: (Score:2)
Without free will the rest is crap. It doesn't matter what we do. We can have no impact or change anything. And why should we? You can't blame us for running people over or shooting people or Hitler for his genocide or anything else. Just accept everyone is a preprogrammed robot. And then the other robots will impose long prison sentences or their countries go to war to stop a robo-Hitler and so on. They can't help but do what they're programmed to do. No free will.
And nothing at all has changed as
Re: (Score:3)
As an engineer, I see little value in blame. It doesn't solve anything, and often just makes the situation worse because the person who made a mistake is unwilling to help fix it for fear of being blamed.
I'm far more interested in how we stop murders and the rise of fascism than in who is to blame for it.
Re:We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:5, Interesting)
STOP right there.
No, he's saying ALL of our behavior is beyond freedom of choice. This would mean that his public announcement of these findings -- indeed, even the "studying" done to reach his conclusion, was outside of free will. But, then he states that it's "unfair" that we, as a society, act as if there is free will, and that we should stop. In doing so, he effectively makes two statements:
1. Fate (destiny that is un-swerved by conscientious choice) is unfair.
But, contradictingly...
2. We have the power and, according to him, the responsibility to counter this unfair fate through will of choice -- completely negating the force of fate in the first place.
Re: (Score:3)
Can't have it both ways, professor: Either we're automatons and your profession has no purpose, or we're not and you've just admitted being incompetent.
Only until you accept you're wrong. (Score:2)
If you assume you can't change your mind, then you're wrong in the reasoning for having the rule (the other person couldn't change their mind either). If you assume they can change their mind (punishment is just), then you're wrong (you could change your mind if you actually tried).
Re: We have no choice who we punish/reward (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Stop attributing stuff to us that isn't there." (Score:4, Funny)
Stop attributing stuff to us that isn't there.
I can't, it's out of my control.
I tried not to write this comment... (Score:5, Funny)
Extremely Disappointed (Score:2)
I saw the headline and thought this would be about a physicist feeling they had proven the block universe/eternalism [wikipedia.org].
In which case I'd point out that, of course you had a choice to write the comment, it's just that the choice you made was the one you were always going to make.
Maybe Sapolsky is a neuroscientist/philosopher who is coming at Eternalism from a biological perspective? Let me (and Sabine Hossenfelder [youtube.com]) know if he can prove all of time in its infinite divisibility exists simultaneously.
Yay, Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Not well defined (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly.
Imagine a universe where people have free will and then exactly the same universe where they don't. What would be the observable difference between both universes? Unless we can figure that out, "free will" is just an empty concept that doesn't mean anything.
Re: (Score:2)
You got to define what you mean by free will first.
It is hard to define free will because it refers to a logical misconception.
How do you define something that makes no sense? It is nothing but a vague and inconsistent set of human feelings/assumptions.
"free will" means to make choices without not just external constraint, but without being constrained by our own nature. It is not just wrong, but meaningless.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone is looking for and Excuse (Score:3)
1 - Brain tumor, that gives him disturbing urges
2 - Undiagnosed mental illness, that gives him disturbing urges
3 - Guilty Conscious of Past Crime - that he yielded to disturbing urges
This study is like looking at the slit, from a particular angle, at a particular time, and saying, look, a particle, and missing the wave. For an atheist, he sure is framing a 'fate' argument. This smacks of intellectual sloth.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no fate but what we make.
Yes we do (Score:5, Interesting)
Ultimately all free will is is the human brain making a decision. It doesn't matter if its concious or subconcious. If he's trying to suggest that everything in the universe is simply dumb clockwork and our decisions are simply part of that then I'm afraid the clockwork universe argument was destroyed by quantum theory 100 years ago.
And even if he's right and we have no free will, we certainly have conciousness so how does that fit into his theory? We can't make decisions but we can observe them being made? Riiiight.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Yes we do (Score:3)
You can work within rules but still create something greater than them. Theres nothing in the laws of physics that defines s ferrari or van gogh for example.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, fMRI shows that the conscious mind starts making a decision after the subconscious has already initiated the response.
Re: Yes we do (Score:2)
The subconcious and concious mind are all part of the same system. Your subconcious is still you
Re: Yes we do (Score:3)
No. It shows how a decision affects the brain. That is different. It also only works for simple decisions.
Re: (Score:2)
The point is that at the moment of action, everything leading to that action has predetermined that action. Making a decision is an action too, thus making or not making a decision has been predetermined by millions of previous factors. Getting a grain of sand in the eye 5 years ago is a factor affecting your current decision whether to wear a hat or not...
> We can't make decisions but we can observe them being made?
10 years ago, I would have made this exact same comment. Experiencing this is the only wa
Hmm... Not buying it. (Score:3)
This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane.
This seems like an argument someone caught doing something bad, like driving drunk, etc... would come up with to excuse their behavior and shirk responsibility.
Re: (Score:3)
The reasons for not agreeing with an idea shouldn't start with not liking the implications.
Re: (Score:2)
My comment was more about possible/obvious motivations for the idea -- shirking responsibility for one's actions.
There's a problem with lack of free will. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, according to theorists, there is a potential mechanism.
Firstly, Conway's Strong Free Will Theorem must be correct AND there must be certain quantum events that fit Conway's concept of choice.
Secondly, Penrose's idea of the mind being a product of quantum events must be correct, otherwise there's no mechanism by which Conway's ideas could apply to the human brain.
Provided both of these conditions are met, then free will is physically possible. Otherwise, there's no known mechanism by which it can occur
Re: (Score:2)
Finally (Score:4, Funny)
I've been hoping this debate could be settled by science so that armchair philosophers could move onto a different topic.
Re: (Score:2)
It's an old and tired argument. (Score:3)
I remember hearing this same argument discussed in freshman philosophy, more years ago than I care to count. It isn't new and it isn't science.
What he's saying is: We don't see how it's possible for any part of the brain to act in such a way that it creates free will, therefore free will is impossible. And that's nothing but an argument from ignorance.
Scientist, after decades of study (Score:2)
Scientist, after decades of study, becomes a philosopher. Film at eleven.
Re: (Score:2)
Scientist, after decades of study, becomes a philosopher. Film at eleven.
This just in. Person writing a book creates controversy in order to sell more books!
Not buying it (Score:3)
Using his own example against such lame thinking. A driver who kills a pedestrian due to epilepsy may not be held accountable, but they lose the right to drive again until they can show medical treatment has made it safe for them to do so. We don't say "Well epilepsy is beyond your control, here's you keys back, you are free to drive again".
If someone murders we don't say they have no free will and let them loose. We we try to imprison them until we think it is safe for them to be free again. We may have a poor track record with that system, but there are some who murder who do change for the better, and go on to lead normal murder free lives after release.
I might agree that we have less free will than we think, but I refuse to believe I have no free will.
Re: (Score:2)
But do you punish a person, with no previous history of epilepsy, for having an epileptic event and killing someone? You don't, right? Around here, you do lose your right to drive, and only get it back after a number of years with no more incidents, which makes sense. But we don't blame, and we don't punish.
That's not far form an example I've heard from Sapolsky. In that case it was a previously "normal" person suddenly starting to do horrible things. On examination, a brain tumor was discovered, and upon i
Punishment (Score:5, Informative)
The argument that there is no "real" free will isn't new. That we are essentially machinery running software. The fact that we can somewhat predict the behaviour and responses of those close to us does somewhat validate that.
But it doesn't mean that reward and punishment are useless or unfair. Both simply provide additional inputs to the algorithm running in our heads that guides our behaviour. If you want to stop me attacking your family and taking your stuff, does it really matter whether or not I really have free will? If the presence of punishment deters me, isn't that good enough?
Re:Punishment (Score:4, Insightful)
There's surprisingly little evidence in support of the idea that punishment acts as a deterrent. There's some, sure, but not much. Murderers, for example, don't consider the penalty from being caught because they don't expect to be caught.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with the death penalty is that the percentage of those executed who were, in fact, innocent runs at between 4% and 10% depending on the nation. Since the US court system tends to reinforce racism, the failure rate is probably nearer 10%. That means that, in 10% of "solved" cases, the murderer was never actually caught - the system just stopped looking for them. So the recidivism rate may be low amongst those actually caught but you have to reduce the number actually caught.
Because dead people ca
Why bother writing a book about it then? (Score:2)
Well I disagree (Score:2)
Free Will (Score:2)
Neil Peart said it best https://www.rush.com/songs/fre... [rush.com]
Ignores or denies the concept of emergence. (Score:2)
It becomes merely a philosophical quibble, whether or not at some level of inscrutable complexity (such as billions and billions of neurons interacting recursively with one another) emergent behaviour is really any different from free will.
Check out his recent interviews. (Score:2)
For example, he does NOT advocate for removing consequences for criminal actions. Rather, he supports reframing prison as quarantine, with the significant differences that would entail. He also talks abo
Re: (Score:2)
He also talks about how meritocracy doesn't make sense either.
So has he given back the MacArthur money and refused his tenure, on principle?
Re: (Score:3)
So has he given back the MacArthur money and refused his tenure, on principle?
Well the Summary says he's not stupid
So I'm going to guess no.
Re: (Score:2)
For example, he does NOT advocate for removing consequences for criminal actions. Rather, he supports reframing prison as quarantine, with the significant differences that would entail. He also talks about how meritocracy doesn't make sense either.
Does he also acknowledge the futility of his advocacy? If humans have no free will, their minds and actions cannot be changed by advocating anything. If however he believes his message will be heard and change people's actions, then he believes people do have free will and can change their actions, which nullifies his original argument. So which one is it then? People do or do not have free will to choose their actions, change their minds, etc?
Re: (Score:2)
No free will? (Score:2)
Exemplary punishements ? (Score:2)
Since we are focusing on the penal consequences of nonexistence of free will (there are other aspects to explore), I'd argue the punishment can still have some potential to avert the societal meltdown:
If the goal is to prevent individuals from engaging behaviors that are considered harmful, we need some means to influence them.
Creating the perspective of dire consequences is one of possible means to exert such an influence.
In fact it matters not whether the individual has free well or not what matters is ho
Strong Free Will Theorem (Score:2, Offtopic)
John H. Conway, mathematician and genius nutter, came up with a formal mathematical analysis of free will. He concluded that free will exists provided there are at least some quantum events that are not truly random but are "decided" in some sense by the particle.
He did not argue that particles were conscious, and explicitly said so.
But if we combine Conway's arguments with Penrose's conjecture that the conscious mind is a product of quantum events, we can see a possible path from Conway's deciding particle
Been there, done that (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Arguing about semantics (Score:2)
The more I read about "centuries-old arguments", the more I realize that they are all just about semantics, about non-defined words, usually. In this case, "free will".
A walker finds a fork in the road. Will he turn right or left? Of course if you study the biology of the subject you will end up deciding that the answer is pre-ordered. Some stimuli reach a body, that is a biological machine, of course it will react based on the current situation of the pieces of the machine and the stimuli. What else there
Guy sounds either conflicted or sensationalist. (Score:2)
There's no "grammar of neurological experience" that can predict with high confidence what someone is experiencing by knowing their brain in detail. If it existed, we could do away with all preexisting forms of communication and just read each other mind's directly, making lying or deception of any kind impossible. We would, essentially, beco
Stop The Planet Of The Apes - I Want To Get Off (Score:2)
This Sapolsky guy is one stressed out monkey, reacting to the trauma of his orthodox religious upbringing. See, God, it's not my fault I don't believe in you - you gave me hormones and glucocorticoids!
Genius? (Score:3)
Looks like Mr. Genius Grant should have taken a basic (and I mean basic) philosophy course in undergrad. His conclusion illustrates his ignorance about the philosophical implications over lack of free-will.
Essentially the argument about punishment/reward for a universe without free-will is moot for two reasons. First, those punishing/rewarding other have no free-will themselves. Second, the purpose of punishment/reward is not to punish and reward the INDIVIDUAL. Rather their purpose is to function as a positive inducer or negative deterrent to SOCIETAL behavior.
The actions of an individual are not determined by free-will, they are determined by the environment and history that lead to the current state of the individual's brain. Society's only recourse is to try to shape this environment, to induce the brain towards actions we deem acceptable. So our reward/punishment systems serve to steer free-will-less individuals towards morality/ethics in their future free-will-less choices, not as retroactive reward/punishment.
So why does all this matter? Its all just philosophy because as you notice, the systems we set up to achieve our societal goals are the same whether there is free-will or not. Rewards and punishments continue, its just their justification and the philosophical implications are different. Social systems set up to be proactive and shape future free-will-less choices or they are they set up to retroactively reward/punish free-will choices. Those systems are indistinguishable aside from the philosophical debate.
Undermines the entire premise (Score:3)
Well there, sparky, if we don't have free will, accepting things isn't an issue at all.
This is a perfect example of just how dumb a "smart" person can be.
And you *should* believe me when I tell you that! (Score:2)
Because ... um .... er ... hmm.
Because my epiphenomena are better than your epiphenomena?
Suddenly Sapolsky Everywhere? (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, I think 60% of what Sapolsky has to ssy is genius.
And who does much better than that?
But why are all my YouTube recommends suddenly Sapolsky and now this? Maybe his marketing team is genius, maybe not.
But he's wrong on this, at least in a post-quantum sense.
Southerland's work on the extened Pilot Wave Theorem is simpler than Copenhagen and specifies a nondeterministic quantum world without a complex configuration space.
You "just" need to allow that the present exists in tension between
Context problem (Score:2)
This hasn't given me the context to answer "do I need to care about this?", which is a red flag.
What makes this one bright mind's study of the nature of free will a significant work in a way that eclipses earlier studies - ancient through modern - of the nature of free will? I don't begrudge anyone selling their book (along with the PR offensive and marketing effort that'll come with it).
But I don't care to have the lede buried. If this is a strong evidence of a definitive conclusion then that's a Yes Actua
I think (Score:2)
Spotting the losers. (Score:2)
Sounds to me that he wants every culture to immediately have one more of the seven signs of a failed culture as defined in the paper by Ralph Peters "Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States", namely the inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure. After all, if we don't have free will, we're not responsible for anything, including our failures. Add in the other factors he mentioned back in 1998 and things are looking grim. Such as restricting the flow of infor
T R O L L E D !! (Score:2)
Sapolinsky by his own admission is being controversial. And committing a serious logical fallacy on the order of "Absence of proof is not proof of absence". He is advocating a negative which cannot be proven and can be disproven by a single counter-example. Essentially a statement in favor of determinism and against randomness.
Feh!
Why does it have to be all or nothing? (Score:3)
It seems reasonable that in the heat of the moment someone might pull the trigger, which they may later regret after some calm reflection. But it's also reasonable to say that they had lots of time to consider before-hand whether they would make a gun available to themselves and put themselves in a highly emotionally charged situation, knowing, as we do, that heightened emotions suppress the logical portion of our brain and make us react on impulse. Thus we hold each other accountable for things simply because that's the person who had some lever they could pull at some point in the past to change the outcome.
When a truck driver drives through a stop sign and kills a bunch of kids in a bus [wikipedia.org] we send them to jail for years. That's not fucked up. What's fucked up is that we give out *fines* to drivers who drive through stop signs but don't kill anyone, and send them to jail for years if they kill someone, when the action taken was the same in both cases. We even *feel* like the one who killed someone is *more* guilty when clearly they are not. Choosing to play Russian Roulette with the gun aimed at someone else's head should be punishable the same whether the gun goes off or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Author: ChatGPT