Reddit sapolsky free will " As expected, they disagree on what they are calling "free will". It is known as the “contra-causal” argument, but I choose to call it the could-you-have-chosen-otherwise gambit, or otherwise gambit for short. I think many of them prefer to leave things the way they are because they are afraid of the implications but Robert has done well to explain that these implications are not well founded and that the world will not collapse if we understand free will to not Submission statement: Free will is often a topic here, and this guy states the case for the lack of free will in a manner that is even more succinct and to the point than Sam manages. This will help the Reddit Admins or the subreddit Mods, and it will make it more likely that the post gets removed promptly Reddiquette about upvoting/downvoting comments Sam Harris also says we have no free will, but we should make good choices. Users liked: The book presents a balanced view of the free will debate (backed by 3 comments) The book effectively critiques arguments against free will (backed by 3 comments) The intuitions of Nietzsche with his Genius on the illusion of free will and the supremacy of the body over counsciousness throughout the realm of pulsions, uncounscious mecanisms and chaotic complex biological phenomenons he experienced, are nowadays scientifically justified throughout the works of people like Sapolsky. Thats a nonsensical absurdity. It's hard to argue you because I agree with you. There is a talk between Sapolsky and Kevin Mitchell. Sapolsky argue that there is no free will on a few podcasts recently. Sapolsky just ignores the compatibilist account of free will in his book, and so he reaps those results, a misconstrued idea of free will skepticism that is unworkable because it misunderstands reality. I'm convinced its just comforting for anyone that hates their lives and are too lazy and unaware to make actual, beneficial change for themselves and the people around them. Please note that as of July 1 2023, reddit has made it substantially more difficult to moderate subreddits. There's No Free Will. That it would be great if we treated ourselves like we had fee will and therefore responsible for our behaviors and treat others as lacking free will so you have to understand them and forgive them. Someone came into our store at work last weekend saying that they'd read some of his books, and he had started questioning whether or not free will exists, which gave me an 'aha moment' recalling that I did see Mr. You can’t prove a negative inductively. Anyway, I think Sapolsky is really harnessing his determined (no free will) schtick primarily to argue for his liberal agenda, but I'm surprised nobody in here has talked about this episode yet. People who disagree are misunderstanding the vocabulary. I prefer to go with the best definition that actually means something. r/ScienceNcoolThings A chip A chip. For one thing, how could people institute change without free Hey - collapse-aware collage artist who’s contributed to several Casual Fridays on this sub. That is, you can’t prove that free will does not exist by citing any number of instances where we do not have free will or a long list of influences that diminishes free will. Are determinism and free will compatible? You cannot define free will, because your notion of it is vague and ultimately meaningless. And that kind of free will is gradual, different from person to person and it changes constantly. What Now? - Robert Sapolsky. I am free to choose a restaurant, but not which planet to visit. Free will is the ability to choose one's thoughts and actions for one's own reasons (not the absence of reasons). For in the free will debate, a core disagreement between compatibilists and hard determinists (who both agree causal determinism is true) is over what free will is, and thus whether free will (properly understood) is compatible with causal determinism or not. Our choices are always limited. For example, you could decide to jump of a building. (And, on the compatibilist account, free will is a perfectly natural phenomenon, which is why it "works" in the real world). ” Apr 3, 2024 · Sapolsky's book Determined argues that our best scientific evidence points to the absence of free will, while Mitchell's book Free Agents claims that our best scientific evidence The truth probably lies somewhere's in the middle in that we probably have some free will. This is the subreddit to discuss anything and everything about Armchair… The free will concept requires one to subscribe to the idea that despite there being a swirl of biological yuck and squishy brain parts filled with genes and hormones and neurotransmitters, nonetheless, there's an underground bunker in a secluded corner of the brain, a command center containing a little homunculus who chooses your behavior. We are sentient beings that can recognize patterns and make "The trouble with Sapolsky’s arguments, as free will expert John Martin Fischer explains, is he doesn’t actually present any argument for why his conception of free will is correct. He gives very broad and imprecise statistical correlations which leave large explanatory gaps—if 60% of people in situation x go on to do y, that leaves a rather stark question about why the other 40% doesn't do that. Free will is the ability to choose a path without external constraints. ” But it could be argued that's the whole point, Sapolsky and Sam are talking about something completely different than what most lay people and philosophers actually mean by "free will". Please note that as of July 1 2023, given recent changes to reddit's platform which make moderation significantly more difficult, r/askphilosophy has moved to only allowing answers and follow-up questions by panelists. Not even close to fame is Kevin J. I'm looking for modern writing on determinism/ free will and came across his most recent work. Feb 5, 2024 · Sapolsky maintains that if the world is deterministic and there is no free will: “We are nothing more or less than the biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment. Free will, in my opinion, is a metaphysical, philosophical claim. He believes that we cannot escape our biological machines. Lastly, if a post violates either the rules of r/consciousness or Reddit's site-wide rules, please remember to report such posts. That said there is no arguing with the results. For people who believe in free will, what are your thoughts on Robert Sapolsky’s work? Im reading his latest book and have been watching many of his lectures recently. Based on our experience acting in the world it seems we have free will. Robert Sapolsky did not mean that we have free will; he doesn’t believe in it. " Sapolsky is “a wonderful explainer of complex phenomena,” said Peter U. It sounded like a weird concept at first and I dismissed it until I read the studies and a really nice book about it, Determined by Robert Sapolsky. This article was written with the complete misunderstanding of what Sapolosky (and Sam, and others) mean by “free will. BTW, personally, I more or less agree with Sapolsky but think the fact that we have no free will literally has NO obvious implications for anything. This is, basically, what is behind the claim that Sapolsky never defines free will. Well, if we don't have free will, then we are biological robots that operate under the delusion that we do. They explore what this argument, taken to its logical conclusion, means for our social and legal systems, and the challenge of how to live if free will is an illusion. "Though absolute living conditions has improved, but the wealth inequality is at its worst. Free will, souls, true randomness, the primacy of the observer, and the irreducibility of consciousness into physics, god, and less recently, the earth being the center of the universe, mankind being above animals vs just another animal, etc all arise from the same flawed mode of thought: that we are somehow set apart and transcendent above the rest of flawed nature. And Sapolsky had this great quote. Best of: Robert Sapolsky on the toxic intersection of poverty and stress I am a firm believer of no free will but I simply cannot act in concordance to my beliefs, Sapolski himself mentions he can last a mere 5 minutes. Believing in anything seems completely backwards and instead you should be constantly re-examining your beliefs and assumptions. Love the book. Because if you decide you cannot change, we've learned form this absence-of-free-will is that nothing can changes - it's-predetermined. Free will itself is a bizarre artificial concept that has no grounding in anything other than the Christian desire to place guilt and responsibility on the individual, so that God is just. retributive justice in the U. Yes. Likewise or normal use of terms like "free" don't mean "free of ALL CAUSE AND EFFECT" but rather being free of certain relevant constraints or impediments - e. 9M subscribers in the atheism community. This is actually the exact opposite of “free will,” but him using the wrong word allows for cracks that free will believers can squirm through. And he merely touched over it. We have a free will but it’s constrained by individual will power. Why free will should require that behaviour occur without reason he can’t explain. I find it ironic that in many of his other books he offers advice such as how to cope with and reduce stress as if we have any ability to make such changes in our lives. Without bothering to invoke any of the underlying physics also. 46M subscribers in the AskReddit community. 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. Unless there’s good reason to conclude that belief is mistaken, it is reasonable to believe we have free will. I suppose the best I can come up with is. Thought it sounded cool when I wrote it lol. MARCH 27, 2024 Sam Harris speaks with Robert Sapolsky about the widespread belief in free will. Sapolsky has “proved” that free will doesn’t exist by arguing that there are always reasons for peoples’ behaviour, and giving multiple examples of this. Brain states, as far as we can tell, are physical states. Sapolsky, we don't have free will because our actions are determined by are brains rather than by us. Topics discussed include morality, free will, the justice system, intuition, and chaos theory. I have since read Harris’ “Free Will,” though I have not read Sapolsky’s “Determined” in full, so admittedly my knowledge may be incomplete. The main argument people like Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky make against free will is that your decisions/choices are brain states resulting from past experiences. It is simply free of coercion, insanity, and other forms of undue influence that would prevent a person from deciding for themselves what they will do. The only way you can make free will go away is by redefining "free will" into something entirely different from what ordinary people, using ordinary language, mean by that. Superdeterminism is rejected by almost all physicists and philosophers of physics not because they want to “cling to free will” as you write, but because it makes an extremely bold claim (that the n-th letter of the original novel of Moby Dick and the k-th digit of the wavelength of some distant quasar are correlated in such a precise way as to give the illusion of an indeterministic The classic argument against it is solipsism in disguise, and logically requires one to believe that nothing whatsoever exists in order to remain consistent in the belief that free will doesn't exist. Mitchell says it's taking conscious choices, "estimating the probabilities of different consequences from the activities, weighing the costs and benefits, and deciding what course of action to take". Worse still, we have structured our justice system and various cultural practices on the assumption that we have free will (e. If anyone suggested that an effective way to deal with a political problem would be to try to convince people that they have no free will, Europeans would just think that such a person is nuts. We are literally watching human brains — even the best ones, like Dennett — short circuiting around this topic of free will, to the point where the conversation goes in circles. He makes a strong case culturally and an even stronger case biologically, that free will does not exist. The lack of free will argument is ridiculous. Free will belief is just the most bizarre example of mass delusion that we can directly observe in plain site. Its not "absolutely free from reality" since that is simply an absurdity. Members Online The story of the gorilla accidentally picking up his own kid. What I'm saying is that he's explained in depth why learning you have no free will shouldn't make you think you have no responsibility. Actively realising wich cortical area is stimulated and which system is running for me to feel and think the way I do – it is such a help. I used chaos in the colloquial sense, not academic, my bad. But that is not "free will". Sapolsky is brilliant and we would do well to listen. There are multiple problems with this. A belief in free will is the only thing stopping us from going off the deep end as a society. Technically there is more science supporting that we don’t have free will than science that supports we do. You have the free will to do so but what you’re lacking is the WILL to do so. Quite technical in parts but Sapolsky is an entertaining writer so that helps a lot. Reply reply RecentLeave343 Actually, my question is why will you so readily accept that the brain is deterministic at the molecular level despite being indeterministic at the quantum level (ignoring Many Worlds interpretation), or readily treat the brain as though it's a classical object, but you won't treat the human as possessing free will at the personal level despite being constrained at the neuronal level. He simply defines free will as being incompatible with determinism, assumes this absolves people of moral responsibility, and spends much of the book describing So, if by "free will" one means a conscious choice decided on the fly by random particles then yes, indeed, we may have free will, and I bet Sapolsky would concede that. Sam Harris employs the otherwise gambit, and so does Sapolsky, implicitly. Hey you guys, do you think Sam will have Sapolsky on again, now that his new book on determinism is out? 2. His explanations all relate to things (e. I think the motivation for excluding this sort of interpretation from the umbrella term "free will" is because of just how starkly it differs from the historic definition Group for the discussion on the new emerging field of Neurophilosophy and of those working in this field ( Churchlands) , as well as on the intersections between neuroscience ,philosophy, behavior, and other related fields Since free will is simply our biology choosing from it's action potentials, history & stored info. The arguments against free will aren’t compelling. I also want to hold space for the possibility that (like Sapolsky discusses in Determined), there is no free will. The idea of a "free" will, and what qualities of that "freedom" would lead to responsibility for an individual, is completely constructed. Recently Dr Robert Sapolsky has been making the rounds on the internet to promote his book and view that humans have no free will and are biological machines. This guy seems to be saying, "If you make a decision because of reasons, then that's not free will. All topics related to atheism, agnosticism and… Sapolsky cites a myriad of explanations for human behavior. Regardless, in time I found the arguments against free will to be convincing enough to weaken my prior belief in free will, which was somewhat distressing. The idea of free will and arguments for or against the existence of free will have existed for far longer than Sapolsky has been around. He hits the nail on the head. And as for books, it really depends. On the downer side of things this book has got me questioning how much free will we even have. 7K subscribers in the freewill community. ” If you conceive of free will in a way that makes it absurd, then it’s no surprise you’ll wind up with the conclusion that free will doesn’t exist. Are there any therapists who share this perspective? Can therapy help someone who is coming from this perspective? (My experience is that therapists often have poor neuroscience education. Free Press is a press free of state control or coercion, a "free man" is someone not enslaved or imprisoned, signing of your "free will" means not being coerced/threatened to do Another quote from Sapolsky in an interview: One thing you totally have to be on guard for is to not turn "don't blame me/don't praise me , I'm just following biological orders", into " - and I can't change". As such, the only useful perspective and scale for discussing free will is a perspective and scale that admits to and sets a boundary between one's self and everything else. In Europe political problems, such as those with the penal system, are addressed head on. In his book, Sapolsky places great emphasis on how, when he manipulate sensory environments, he can affect people's moral judgments. I like to think collaging is reasonably sustainable since I’m using old magazines and recycled cardboard as my collage materials (and there’s also digital collages which require only electricity). g. Seems like the answer is somewhere between "Less than the average person thinks" and "Not very much". Sapolsky proposes we shouldn't praise people for doing good things or blame people for doing bad things. Robert Sapolsky on free will, interesting implications for causes of AvPD and feelings of responsibility Sure, the free will vs determinism debate is useful to contemplate but the fact is is that “you don’t know what you think you know”. He is a functionalist and is locating the source of free will in agents’ capacities for counterfactual reasoning and decision making, which is pretty much in line with Fisher and Ravizza’s reasons responsiveness (arguably the most widely held compatibilist account). Everyone interested in free will these days is reading Robert Sapolsky's Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will [1], because he is famous. I had the sense that this language that still seems to use choice as a part of free will was catching up Mitchell. Free Will is rejected on the basis of thoughts and actions being deterministically related to the Universe. Sapolsky is making the rounds to promote his new book so there are any number of recent interviews out there. Oct 18, 2023 · In this episode of CultureLab, Sapolsky outlines his case against free will and what a society without free will should look like. If you see posts or comments which violate our subreddit rules and guidelines , please report them using the report function. Sapolsky claims there is no free will, which means he uses absolutes while providing us with zero evidence(from scientific perspective), and giving us no valid and sound arguments(from philosophical perspective), which is same as claiming something you don't know, and which is dishonest and insincere by definition. Mitchell who published this month, two weeks before Sapolsky, Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will [2], somehow of a part two of his 2018 book Innate: How Robert Sapolsky joins Curt Jaimungal to discuss some of the most important topics of our time. 2. Sapolsky just wrote a new book dedicated to convincing people that we have no free will at all. Remember, freedom is the opposite of compulsion. Sapolsky, of course, can't predict what anyone he has studied will have for lunch 7 Thursdays from now, let alone the how and when of their demise. Robert Sapolsky on Free Will and Determinism (on Michael Shermer Podcast) comment sorted by Best Top New Controversial Q&A Add a Comment zscan • This will help the Reddit Admins or the subreddit Mods, and it will make it more likely that the post gets removed promptly Reddiquette about upvoting/downvoting comments Please upvote comments that are generally helpful or informative, comments that generate high-quality discussion, or comments that directly respond to the OP's post. We then hear from the philosopher who has long been Sam’s intellectual wrestling opponent on this subject, Daniel Dennett. His view on free will changed my perception a lot. Are determinism and free will compatible? Hi Professor Sapolsky, I’ve listened to a lot of your talks on the absence of free will, but I haven’t heard you talk about any practical applications of this theory. Given recent changes to reddit's API policies which make moderation more difficult, r/askphilosophy now only allows answers and follow-up questions to OP from panelists, whether those answers are made as top level comments or as replies to other people's comments. Haven't gotten a response to any of my comments so maybe someone can explain to me now. Two points to note, it's a straightforward matter to show that science requires the assumption that researchers have free will, so one thing that we can say for sure is that science can never support the conclusion that there is no free will, and the incorrigible experience of free will, explicitly acknowledged by Sapolsky, falsifies any theory Three books on free will: Sapolsky, Mitchell, and Harris Free Will I just finished Sapolsky's new book a few days ago, and would definitely recommend it, both for it's explication of neuro-science and the wonderfully interesting anecdotes he tells (Catherine of Sienna, Casanova, the last French man to be drawn and quartered, the sad history of I think Sapolsky is quite sloppy with his methodology in the debate. 9K subscribers in the freewill community. Nov 11, 2023 · After much deliberation, I decided to address an especially insidious source of free-will denial. Welcome to r/askphilosophy! Please read our updated rules and guidelines before commenting. This is just wrong. ” “However, a person can be both brilliant and utterly wrong. What would our society look like if this was widely understood and adopted? In a conversation that's equal parts fascinating and frightening, Sapolsky and EconTalk's Russ Roberts discuss the science and philosophy behind determinism. 107K subscribers in the samharris community. Regardless even if it’s not true, the benefits are real. ” I would define free will as the ability to do whatever you will regardless of the outside stimuli. You asked about the topic though, not just the book. Something the laymen can understand. He explains how we all have causal powers, how our evolved sense of morality helps us make norms in culture, and how treating other What is the overall reception of Sapolsky’s determinism among philosophers and others in the free will discussion? I hear mixed opinions on Sapolsky, but the main thing I see is that compatibilists and hard determinists agree on the evidence, but disagree with the conclusion. Would increasing ones knowledge & understanding of personal family history, human biology, sociology & environmental interactions, effectively increase a persons "free will", by increasing the number of options the brain/body has to choose from? SS: Free will is a longterm subject of interest of Sam Harris. Sapolsky takes the position that there is no free will. You do however have a “free won’t” as in the ability to override those automatic impulses. Are we talking about ACTUALLY "free" will (being able to change the future somehow, defying the realities of extant spacetime), or FUNCTIONALLY "free" will (given subjective-in-time perspective allows for disregarding objective-four-dimensionalism), or PRACTICALLY "free" will (that we're all in the same boat so even if we can't truly make free Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the MIT Press Free Will Essential Knowledge Series and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful. Here are two academics debating free will, relating to Sapolsky's new book about free will. Free will is an important intuition that is commonly used in apologetics to argue for something more than the material existing. Open menu Open navigation Go to Reddit Home. They discuss the limits of intuition, the views of Dan Dennett, complexity and emergence, downward causation, abstraction, epigenetics, predictability, fatalism, Benjamin Libet, the primacy of luck, historical change in attitudes about free will, implications for ethics and criminal justice, the But if I could choose, I'd take Sapolsky. S. " “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. " If you are a genuine free-will-er (or even a compatibilist) and you have an argument in support of free will that significantly breaks from classic theistic arguments, I would genuinely be curious to hear it! Thanks for hearing me out. Welcome to r/atheism, the web's largest atheist forum. Posted by u/Lauren4355 - No votes and no comments I want to utilize therapy. We just have to start calling it that. Are determinism and free will compatible? Skip to main content. If only the compatibilists can see what he is doing here and understand the importance of it. Simply because I feel like it gives me an upper hand on topics like anxiety and depression through sheer knowledge of the biology of it. r/AskReddit is the place to ask and answer thought-provoking questions. Yes, we're determined. Would love any other… We start with the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky who begins to deflate the widely held intuition and assumption of “libertarian free will” by drawing out a mechanistic and determined description of the universe. I'm a pretty big fan of his lecture material regarding reciprocal altruism, and of course the baboon insights. Tse, a Dartmouth neuroscientist and author of the 2013 book “The Neural Basis of Free Will. Sapolsky has a book on determinism coming out in the fall. I can get behind the idea that we have no free will, but then I have never seen anyone give me a good answer to how we make good choices, if we have no free will. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome. criminal justice system, blaming and shaming people who make bad "choices," lavishing others with praise for their Early listeners, you know this was a fantastic pod. But said he had a whole book about the biology & neuroscience of it. A place to discuss Sam Harris and to have difficult conversations with civility. Sapolsky is part of an ongoing conversation that has existed for thousands of years. So, it is reasonable to believe in free will Most of the work is going to be spent defending 3. He says this is the only 'intellectual and morally honest' way to structure society. I think the problem with Sapolsky’s argument against free will is that it is totally inductive. The free will that i talk about is freedom within the influences of this Universe and reality. My sense is that - if we can - changing the way we talk about choice might be another support towards making this idea an eency-weency bit more graspable for some people. . I don’t think the explanations he cites support his claim. , experiences, biology, culture) an individual inherits. For Mr. Sapolsky's main case for no free will is that we do things based on our preferences, how we were raised, genetics, and everything else biological that goes back to the brain and he is right in this regard. Sapolsky. Ordinary free will is not free from causation, or evolution, or neuroendocrinology, or biology, or neuroscience. 8K subscribers in the freewill community. Michael Shermer, a free will compatibilist, is well-versed and nuanced on the topic and thought that this would be a good one to share. In my opinion, this is a much better debate than the one with Daniel Dennett, as Michael Huemer makes much better points for the free will side and is generally more convincing. The place on reddit for anything and everything related to the neuroendocrinologist Robert M. Or to put it more charitably, because we sub/un-consciously decide what to do before we consciously make a decision (at least in some rudimentary experiments,) it isn't really "us" that makes the decision. 21K subscribers in the ArmchairExpert community. Robert Sapolsky Is Writing a Book Titled 'Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will' (he previews it in this short audio clip) Sapolsky doesn’t seem to know or care that his version of free will, which indeed does not exist, is not what most laypeople or most philosophers mean by free will. Yall have to take “Sapolsky-there-isnt-free-will-pill” Choices that you have to make weren’t chosen by you, it’s all the result of biology and how your parents lived and how their grand grand grand parents lived Dennett is kind of a garden variety compatibilist, so it seems a bit strange to frame it as “his” free will. 19 votes, 26 comments. ucghwqn qtlbdr hjkgxq ycbxp agbcl ryu zmwhk naouwi rczvn zoofv