That's called internalizing success and externalizing failure. Nothing special, this is what a healthy mind does to preserve self-esteem, since that benefited survival. Every first-semester psychology student learns about that. So congratulations, you're perfectly normal. 😉
Strongly Smacking your NPD mother in the head with a frying pan to create a scar and psychological trauma which basically an attempted murder in order to show you're not scared of her is a show of self-defense and defense mechanism for her potential future abuses towards you. I would say is an act of choice.
But for example as a kid you didnt like the taste of alcohol, yet as we grow we will to will it and we start to enjoy the taste. Isn't that willing a will? Hahaha this stuff gives me headaches
It only seems witty because he hadn't seen through the apparent paradox. The mistake is when we're talking about what we can do "in the circumstances" we don't mean "in the actual circumstances with the same past" . It's just an error and resolving that resolves the paradox. How many scientists and philosphers know that? Dan Dennett is one. Most scientists don't and most people don't. Perhaps a number of philosphers do but are they getting the message across? Nope.
Agree. Fool me once, shame on you. But after 1000 more times, usually I analyze enough for clarifying future hopes along with today's serenity. Someways more and somedays less. I got myself de-programmed from Plantational Cartoonism. Un-saluting y'all Crowd Controlling Pulpit Spotlight Monkeys has been a good practice, to selectively reinforce my autonomy. I am good enough at it to get labeled as a Contrarian by those officious plagiarists. I minimize my exposures to mental illness germs. ♡ ☆ ◇
Only religious or political nutcases are clinging onto free will. The reality is that nothing will change even if everyone understands there is no free will. All the consequences and motivations will be the same.
Simply proves there is no free will. That book acted as an instruction and determined the future decisions these people made. Free will is an illusion.
Daniel Dennett argues that neuroscientists "shouldn't tell the public they don't have freewill because it's irresponsible." But if there is significant evidence against freewill, then isn't withholding that information the irresponsible thing? Telling the truth the best way you know how is more important, I think, than trying to prevent malevolence.
Danielle might be right. People need to be controlled to some degree. Its for the best for societies to advance. It's best if everyone buy in to the belief of free will and play along.
When science argues against free will I can only assume that it has taken over the mantle of religion in the role of destroying autonomy in the individual. When you argue against free will in favour of determinism, you reinforce the concept of intelligent design.
The idea of free will is detrimental to the functioning of society. One of the most important things a human being can ever realize, is the fact that there is no free will. But as for telling people, it depends on how they are informed about it. Many people will spend their entire lifes, trying to find prove that they do have free will.
The neuroscientists have no choice... they must tell what they learn, which is different than telling the joke in the analogy, so the thought experiment is flawed.
The problem is in getting everyone to agree on what free will means. Apparently, Saplosky thinks that if you have "gas pains" and it influences a choice you make, then it's not free will.
I would have him in charge of advising lawmakers around the world on criminal justice. We still have Medieval thinking in today's courts, with judges "preaching" to defendants about their crime.
If anyone wants to watch more of him. I suggest his Stanford course on human behavioral biology. You can find it on RUclips. It's pretty old but you will learn a lot about what processes are behind human behavior.
@@AceofDlamonds I agree that we should have more compassion for criminals, and that there should be more focus on rehabilitation. But prisons shouldn't be totally abandoned. Even though there might not be complete free will, I'm sure that the idea that once you do x or y you'll get punished still inhibits the occurrence of x and y.
Quantum uncertainty still doesn't give you free will. It just means that determinism may not be true. But you still have no control over these dice rolls at the quantum level.
Exactly. As Sam Harris often says, "whatever the combination of determinism and randomness, there still is no room for free will" as it alleges to be neither of those things.
@@Phoenix51291 Yes! It's mind boggling that these "expert" scientists can't seem to comprehend that. All it takes is a simple thought experiment and one quickly sees that 100% of ALL things is a direct (even if unfathomable to our human brains) result of everything that has ever happened - if even the tiniest thing had happened differently, things would thus unfold differently - and NONE of this has anything to do with some misguided notion of "free" will...
I read a bit of Carl Jung's Theory of the Collective Unconscious. The theory said that our mind is not born like a clean slate a contrary to the ''tabula rasa'' concept of by John Locke.
I feel like those kinds of ideas have a weird distinction they make between what they consider 'you' (the self) and arbitrary other parts of the body. If a part of your body does something, is that not you doing the thing? What part of you in particular is 'you?'
I think about this topic often and while believing we do not have free will I don't think this has ever had an affect on my choices or morals. It always feels like we're making the decisions for ourselves which I think is what matters, the deterministic part is on a much deeper level.
You have free will. (Just keep it simple. It donst have to be deep) There's really NOTHING stopping you from killing a fly. You choose to do it or not..because of your FREE WILL. As for corruptions..There's really nothing stopping you from being corrupted. Politicians/ corporations do it all the time...they get away with it ( there's no acountablity) Are they going to hell or there's karma???? I dont KNOW....probably NOT. It is in your FREE WILL to praticipate in those activities. Consequence or NOT. God or No GOD....Evil or NOT. As far as being able to time travel , fight gravity or to live forever. In that sense. No Im NOT FREE nor have power
This is exactly how I approach it and I think it’s the only way for me to stay invested in life yet have a more holistic understanding of how things are a certain way. It also helps you to understand that effort can be necessary but to be less arrogant and more forgiving of others’ bad actions. If not forgiving then it at leas should help people look past a single act of supposed volition to a longer and more complicated lead up to that given act - where most of the time it is almost impossible to really place blame at a single given point or person. Your comment is on the money, I think 👏
Of course there is no free will, your brain just treat input the way your brain have learn to treat those input from the beginning, based on the output you had from previous run.
Good response. That's what even some of these scientists get wrong. They mix up Physics on the deepest level with human morale which is on a completely different level.
Even if there is no free will....you cannot do anything about it....even your commenting is pre determined...i see it like domino falling.....we just dont know what domino will fall next
Totally agree, since that opening bit about dolphins and chimpanzees, they didn't recently acquire their brain activity, they've been the same for quite some time. We are only aware of that complexity recently-ish.
Benjamin Henderson - When other species begin to explore space, formulate philosophical ideas, compose epic poetry, engage in theoretical physics, develop the latest smartphone, invent myths like “the Invisible Hand of the Market”, or produce the next ‘Kardashians’ season, let me know: I’ll grant that free will “is nothing but narcissistic dribble”.
That's always the argument of people who want to believe in free will. The belief that if we told someone else they didn't have free will, they would do evil.
He's merely illuminating the demonstrable phenomenon that a BELEIF, in and of itself, can completely change the outcome of decisions for a given individual. That is to say, life is subjective. Believe what you want- but there will be consequences- good or bad.
It boils down to your definition of free will. If it is simply that you can make choices, then yes, you have free will. BUT, if you look deeper into what causes us to make the choices we do, then no, you do not have free will because every choice we make is caused by things out of our control, and we did not choose those things that eventually caused us to make our choices.
We do have to free will to listen to our thoughts. We don’t have the free will to choose or control our thoughts. Same with actions. Not having free will doesn’t mean we can’t work on ourselves. Besides all actions come from thoughts. Unless raise wrongly, you knew what you thought was wrong, so you shouldn’t act on it.
@@Bunni504 Choosing to “listen to our thoughts” is just as much of a decision as choosing what thoughts to think. There is no more freedom in choosing one than the other.
I was going to say the same but when you think of it those things that "happen" to us that we have to choose from is the result of someone else's choice. The consequences and choices before us aren't of our own doing. To be able to have true free will we would have to live in a world completely alone with only our own choices left to choose from.
@@paulmobleyscience Even then we wouldn’t have free will, because our next thought comes out of a void of nowhere and we don’t actually get to choose what it is, only witness it.
@@epicbehavior What do you mean comes out of a void? No it wouldn't change how choices occur to us. They don't come from a void now, they are instances in our lives where we choose one thing over another or multiple things. Those things don't come from a void anywhere...
Also bear in mind your lack of free will is unique to you. Everyone has a different lack of free will. Don't see that aspect brought up much, but it's a fact.
The last guy in this video is a total idiot! Ask yourself why the hell do we perpetuate the idea of Santa Claus lying to our children from the very beginning creating a bed of distrust‽ it's because of tradition but we are saying by telling people that they have no free will is to get rid of their predetermined ideals of tradition of what humans have trained as good and bad they are two sides of the same coin you're limiting Your Existence and your potentiality by doing so and setting up tradition this eliminates people from tradition mindset which is saving them from their slavery induced by mankind!
I would say that if you look at a person, you would say he has free will. In the sense that nobody knows what that person is going to do. But when it comes to, does the person know what he is going to do, I would say no. His brain comes up with an idea and he identifies with the idea. What are your thoughts?
2 года назад
@@JerryMetal 😃 Hi!!! As I understand, free will would act in both cases but in different levels. If you take the person as just and individual at an environment, it's decisions would have less consequences in that hole system. But if the same person it's located at a social environment with at least one more person, it's decisions would have considerable consequences, because one action causes another, and if it not, that itself it's a effect. It seems that as more exposed to global society we are as less free will we have, and it will depend on how we filter every senseless information. 😁 What do yo think?
Yep. Really ultimately comes down to how one defines "free will", but yes nobody is ultimately free from pre-existing conditions Also NOT talking about the interplay (usually invisible to most people) between the distinct active consciousness and unconscious/subconscious minds makes serious debate of this topic arguably laughable and hastily conclusive
I'm not saying we are free from our past predispositions/ genetics/ environmental conditions. We are not free from anything or anyone in a sense , since we are are all interconnected to each other including everything and every creature but you can consciously change predispositions , genetics and environmental influences by not identifying to them as a self. We can change bad habit's, ways of perceiving , thinking, feeling that we have been predisposed to from out tribes, neighborhoods, genetics , environmental conditioning. I can personally verify that. It's not easy but the more you become aware of this stuff you are less likely to be trapped by it or sucked into it,
Last point by Dennett was a direct attack. He's irresponsible. Sam's philosophy stinks. He's essentially a serial killer sympathizer. If the brain has evolved to exercise self-control and we understand social rules----then we're morally responsible for our behaviour, but Sam will disagree.
@@OMAR-vq3yb it doesn’t sound like you’ve spend much time listening to Sam. It depends on what you mean by responsible. Bad actions require negative reinforcement to prevent further bad actions. People can’t just do whatever with no repercussions. But on a personal level, resentment and disgust at a persons actions doesn’t make sense if they had no “choice” but to act that way.
@@OMAR-vq3yb Were you free to think the exact opposite? Given your brain state at the moment you wrote that, could you have “chosen” to write the opposite? Could you have chosen to agree with people like Sam Harris? Some people agree with Sam Harris. I don’t think they can simply choose to believe as you do, as if they have freedom to think the opposite of what is in their brain. If you couldn’t have “chosen” to say the exact opposite of what you did, where is the freedom?
@@bakedalaska6875 It's living through a story that works for you. This is what spirituality/religion is about for example. You may not believe the earth was created by a white-bearded man 10,000 years ago, but you can lead your life in a positive way following ideas about mercy and gratitude.
@@dominoespizza1756 These are concepts represented by language to make sense of yourself in your environment. None of those concepts actually exist objectively. Believing that free will doesn't exist can be what logically makes sense from a mechanical point of view of interactions in the world, but you can recognize that it may not be the most practical story to tell yourself to live a happy & meaningful life. To answer more precisely, you could recursively argue that what as just been said cannot be deterministic by definition. This would be true if perfect logic actually existed in the realm of mathematical precision in philosophy, but Godel's Incompleteness theorem and quantum mechanics show that this doesn't hold true. So essentially, I believe that like many other things, both determinism and free will are true, kind of like superposition. You just have to pick the concepts that is best at the right time. Another analogy would be genes, you can carry certain genes that just don't get expressed depending on the environment you live in, simply because its an adaptation that makes you live longer in it.
It’s also to be raised in such an environment where morally irresponsible behavior is not tolerated or existent, because people model their behavior on what they grew up with.
People has different degrees of self-control and no one, even you, I bet, does believe in anyone's power to chose what to want. So even in this sort of diminished free will (not talking about denying position) your statement holds no water.
@@marcdemell5976 Free will actually stand in the way of understanding our behavior and that of others. It implies that our nature cannot be understood. It leads us to think that we should hold others responsible for their actions but we only have our own responsibilities to consider.
Making a decision has been confused with free will. All our knowledge comes from a few things. Our genetic predispositions, our brain, and outside stimulus. We cannot control any of those so to say that we have free will is silly. Second guy explained it VERY well.
Right, in view of those facts, we can have real free will, just the illusion of it. That illusion is so powerful, and the fear of loosing it so disturbing, that many people do not want to accept or even entertain the idea of not having free will.
But we could choose among the the possible outcome..free will is not an illusion as it is not proven to be.. So claiming shit coz everybody else did to fit in is bullshit..
@Star Traveler science is pretty darn good at predicting ones decisions based on a number of things, otherwise psychologist would be out of a job. And let ke put it this way, our brain is made of atoms and they have to follow the law of physics just like every atom so unless our brains are able to manipulate the laws of physics then we are at the mercy of billions of atoms and thier natural processes. I know its hard to think outside the box some people just arent capable of it sadly
@Star Traveler and you zay that like you have read every study on the brain and know all nueroscience and studies going on rn. You wouldnt know if they proved something unless you happened to see it on twitter or see a youtube video about it i bet you have never read any actual scientific studies about nueroscience 😂
@@absurdist5938 so what makes you choose weither you want something or not? What made you decide you like one thing over another in the very first place? Mostly outside stimulus and that can come in any random order and depending on the order it can decide wiether you like something or not which decides whiether you will make certain descisions in the future after that. You can only think on a level that is simple you cant get past the "WeLl We StIlL dEcIdE iT so" lmfao go talk to a few neuroscientist and get humbled you dweeb
@@LasseJ789 its a counter analogy, I thought u had the capacity to understand it ,so sorry .. If u gave that as an argument or any thing against that it's nonsense ..
I always hated the physicists argument about free will. Having unpredictable quantum systems at play doesn't mean you have free will. It just suggests that your actions might have a certain upper limit in predictibility. There's a certain randomness in it. But that's not free will, that's the opposite of free will.
It's not even physicist that argue that, it's usually childish fools who know nothing about physics that just recently learned about quantum mechanics and desperately want to use it to support the notion of "free will"
Quantum inFORMation Entanglement synchronization to reference is evidence that there's no Free Will if the system of inFORMation timeless (faster than Light) still evolves without Free Will✓
Dennett is also very disappointing here! Hhis thought experiment has no sense nor link with the real situation and is actually antiscientific. The data he talked about later is utterly misleading and not sufficient to making the point.
His thought experiment is more akin to showing the effects of a placebo or hypnosis. You can swap out being told you have no free will for pretty much anything. Say someone tells you that your wife cheated on you. You will change certain behaviours (or rather certain behaviours will change) upon you being made aware of this information. His confused and illogical thought experiment actually suggests that there is no free will, at least it does to me. And there is no way that it couldn't have!!!
@@christianbaughn199 totally agree. It shows that there is a cause for a reason, therefore no free will. Moreover, his one is not a thought experiment, but a metaphor for what he wants to prove.... He used the metaphor of his point as a proof of the point itself. That's exactly the same reasoning I often see in a church... Big mistake by Daniel
@@al2642 Exactly my friend. I've never understood his popularity or many of his stances. He believes in determinism, yet claims we have "a free will worth having". One of his examples is that you have a rock thrown at you. Your choices are to move and avoid being hit by the rock, or stand still and let it hit you. To him those choices represent free will. To me there is no choice, you either move out of the way or you don't. But feeding in to the action you take is so much information that you would never be able to comprehend it. How good are your reflexes? Did you get a visual of the rock being thrown at you early? Due to experiences in the past you "recognise" that it is in your best interests to move and avoid pain. Is there a clear path for you to move into? Etc etc etc
I agree that Dennett is not bringing his "A game" to this debate. He often uses logically flawed arguments in an attempt to rescue free will. This may be excusable in laymen, since the idea of not having free will is disturbing to many, but scientists should try to overcome this in the quest for truth.
@@christianbaughn199 Christian, you're spot on. Even if a rumor of your wife cheating caused you to act differently with your wife, it would have nothing to do with the question of whether your wife actually cheated. That Dennett seems unable to recognize this principle when it comes to the question of free will is disappointing.
Agreed. “Let me use this trick called a thought experiment on you to convince you of my point of view!” And I swear a I just read of an experiment where those primed with determinism were “more” moral afterwards. Is his example in opposition this this study or is he representing it inaccurately? I didn’t catch if he cited his source.
I thought the same thing. Wondered if he was religious, I was trying to make out the fish pin on his lapel. Jesus fish? IDK, but I checked out his wiki page and apparently he's an atheist.
I'm a huge fan of all of these great minds. As soon as i saw the names of the speakers i though, " i have to watch this". Thanks for putting this together.
0:40 "for billions of years no free will and now there is but the physics haven't changed." Sounds like the best argument against free will I've ever heard. Also his last example 18:38 is hilarious because he's basically saying that simply by introducing a concept to human beings before an activity it will determine the outcome. Does this guy even listen to himself talk? I guess he's determined not to.
If this idea logically followed, then we could also suggest, " since the universe had no experience within its system for billions of years, and since the universe had no awareness or consciousness inside its system for billions of years, experience simply doesnt exit, because the laws of physics remain the same.🤔.....or since the universe was inanimate for billions of years, the animate do not exist, because the laws of physics haven't changed.🤔 Sounds like more madness added to the confusion.
@@paddydiddles4415 It's also hilarious that you could've told me about the specific "sophistication and subtlety" but you chose an insult instead. It shows more about you than me.
From a social perspective, it doesn't matter if free will is real or not. As long as we have the experience of choice, it is real to us humans and that's all that matters. We simply can't live our lives pretending we don't have free will.
@@S1L3nCe no the truth matters. The fact that we don't have free will means things like the death penalty can be debated. Or debated easier. You can still hold responsibility in a deterministic society.
This has to be one of my favorite philosophical topics to think about. Realizing we have no free will has made me a more understanding and empathetic person. Evil is sickness. Some respond to treatment and others don’t.
@@crappymeal We are shaped through evolution to feel the need for revenge and artificial separation. That had its place and purpose in wilderness in which we spent 99.99% of our evolution. But that doesn't make it right or beneficial nowadays.
@@MarkoKraguljac we are still in the wilderness. Its just relaxing and easy to view things like an animal sometimes because i am one, my overall view of humans is the same as i view any other animal
Michio Kaku's argument is deeply flawed after 9:12, here's why: Let's grant him that he's right that there is an element of randomness in the universe, how does this at all justify free will as I can not influence or determine randomness. 'No one can determine your future events' he states. No single individual dictates the future (maybe perhaps God when he created the big bang) but every person, action, and variable put together dictates our morals, thoughts, emotions, actions, etc. Every atom in my body (+ randomness) put together is exactly who I am. We do not choose to choose what we choose. What will we do to influence our influences? More influences? No offense but Michio wasn't very smart in what he stated. He basically said randomness and 'Wild cards' give rise to free will? What?!
At 13:52 till the end of the video his argument collapses on itself. If someone states that "free will is an illusion" and that influences the person then where is the freedom in this? Just like how my teachers in school taught me and influenced me which changes my beliefs, emotions, and actions. Every action is belief-based. If someone is told "free will is an illusion" and the individual makes negative actions then people and society (karma) will punish or at least disrespect them and life will be more difficult in a feedback loop. Albert Einstein also said, "First we must accept our limits to go beyond them". Because I believe determinism it makes me look at my weaknesses and what causes them, also what will help them. It makes me believe that jails should be used to rehabilitate rather than punish. The 'choices' I make everyday influence the rest of my life. Its like a puppet who is aware he is attached to strings and can influence them. The paradox of believing "free will is an illusion" is it gives me even MORE freedom due to rationality (psychology, science, health, etc). Before anyone says I'm hypocritical I did not choose my rationality, intelligence, creativity, morals, or a thought 30 seconds from now this was predetermined since before I was even born.
Man, Sapolski is always very enlightening but ever so depressing. He is like a psychedelic trip forcing you to look human nature in the eyeballs. Being sober and hearing it is pretty abrasive.
3 года назад+8
I really like him in his other videos. He is blunt, and that makes things simpler to follow. When people start beating around the bush the answer gets muddled and the logic is harder to remember.
In another interview about free will he talks about his experience with depression. It was really sad to hear. I appreciate him so much I hope he realizes that so many people appreciate him.
Yes, the unconscious delivers decisions, desires and impulses to our conscious selves and we then have to justify them. Though its often just a story, or a guess. Ask people why they like jazz, or yoga, or don't like gay people, or watch football, and watch them try to come up with a reasonable story, but really they've no idea of all the factors that went into that decision.
There's a perspective I believe they did not cover: We assign others with "Free Will" as a way to explain why we can't predict their actions. Since we can never know every detail about a thing, that thing can take some action which we can not predict.
There is no free will as long as we have emotions, desires, or attachments because these are controlled in whole or in part by unconscious factors that are not accessible to us at the moment of a decision.
the subconscious makes our decisions, and it’s been proven by neuroscientists time-after-time. willpower is just anxiety before making a negative decision, and free will doesn’t truly exist in the absolute present moment. The past dictates the present.
This is true if we make an impulsive decision. We also have the option (dare I say, the free will) to stop and reflect on our subconscious emotions, desires, and attachments to examine exactly where they came from and how and why they influence our decision making process. If we have the ability to change our original impulsive decision after a careful examination of how we arrived at that decision, this is evidence of free will yes? Most people are reactive and impulsive, but we also have the option to carefully cultivate self awareness.
@@stephenlawrence4821 One can choose to believe all is fate or one can choose to master their destiny. Whether this choice is made consciously or not depends on the previous choices made by that individual. In other words, we are presented with conscious choices in each moment that are determined by the conscious choices we made in previous moments, but the tree distribution of timelines across of all possible choices one can make across their lifetime is predetermined. Consciousness allows one to have the experience of navigating to other branches of the predetermined tree by gaining enough wisdom to choose what will occur before it happens.
@@coryharasha We always make the choice we are fated to make. Choice is no more than to select from options. What you're doing is presupposing it's something more.
@@stephenlawrence4821 Personally, I believe the current moment allows one to change the future. You are presupposing time is one dimensional, linear, and unchangeable but I don't believe there is much evidence of that from quantum mechanics to multiple conscious observers spread across time and space to first person experiments one can perform with choices.
I don't know if it's so much of belief as it is a philosophy, an opinion on perspective. Supposed it boils down to the math. And whatever critical logic you can get from that. But whatever, I know we're the only Critters on this planet that study's itself, and runs around trying to prove what everything is.
“People think freedom is about being unrestrained. No. Freedom is about being restrained so you can be free to do the things that really matter. But you have to be restrained from doing the things that don’t really matter to be able to move in that direction.” Marshall Vian Summers
According to fundamental physics, everything that happens in the universe is encoded in its initial conditions. From the Big Bang onward, mechanical cause-and-effect interactions of atoms, formed stars, planets, life and eventually your DNA and your brain. It was inevitable. Your physical brain was therefore always destined to process information exactly as it does, so every decision that you are ever going to make is predetermined. You (your consciousness) are a mere bystander - your brain is in charge of you. Therefore you have no free will.
Daniel Dennetts thought experiment didn't catch up to the real world. They did a study and found out that instead of aggressive, people even tend to behave more kindly.
You mean humans are not disgusting pieces of shit that need to be controlled by guilt and fear? Who would have thought! Do you have more info or a link to this experiment?
He described religion to a tee! You have free will, but remember some sky daddy watches your every move, and gave you the morals you have. making some people look for the border where their imagined god, tells them they gone too far, and since there is no god to tell them they've gone too far they up their "crimes" in an effort to get that imagined god to respond!
I think the problem is defining what free will is and it depends on that definition whether we have it or not. On a level we do have it. In our case we might be like prisoners inside a cage i.e. earth or even this universe which might be a simulation. We are not only physically but also mentally bounded in this reality. Even though we can do a lot of things & it might seem we have choice but on a higher level we are all bounded in a eternal cycle of life & death and can never escape it. We might be just like a NPC in a video game. Upnishads, ancient Indian texts of high philosophy are also based on the foundation that our reality is nothing but 'maya' i.e illusion and our greatest purpose should be to attain 'moksha' i.e realize the ultimate truth.
The way I see it we have free will, but no control over what we actually do with that free will, it sounds like a weird paradox, but essentially for me all free will is, is the advanced ability to make decisions based on our experience, since we have no real control over what we experience, and any decision made to experience something different is only a decision made based on knowledge from prior experience, we, therefore, have no real control over what decisions our free will results in us making.
I can't decide - if you have convinced me, yourself and/or others. Hee hee There is reality in our playing with reality but the Being beyond - is the Real and speaks as the Voice Real - within the heart and in utter silence. One follows Him -as the Real Self - guiding us. It is what spirituality is - at Essence. (That is how Raj Yoga - may hint at.) @@danielnewman3428
"A man can do what he wills but he can't choose/will what he wills" - Arthur Schopenhaur. That we do not have free will of thought is evidenced by the fact that we cannot freely decide to remember or forget a so-called idea of the mind. Forgetting or remembering is, instead, a natural causal process
I think I understand. So what you remember makes up who you are, and therefore the collection of ideas which you are responsible to sift through and decide upon which to refrain and which to act. But what you remember is not what so ever apart of your conscious decision. So free will extended to an eternal soul according to these facts does not coincide.
Schopenhaur is obviously wrong. A person routinely chooses what they will do. It's something we observe ourselves and others doing every day. And, yes, this is a natural causal process. All processes are natural causal processes. So what? That changes nothing. Reliable cause and effect? That is also true of every event. So what? That changes nothing. A person routinely chooses for themselves what they will do. When they are free to make that choice for themselves, we call that "free will" (literally a freely chosen "I will"). When the choice is forced upon them against their will, by someone or something else, then that is an unfree choice. It's that simple. How did Schopenhaur become so confused about these things?
Marvin Edwards This is a translation error: The German word "will" stems from "wollen", which is "want". The correct translation is "Man can do what he wants, but he can't want what he wants." So no, Schopenhauer isn't wrong, you've just misunderstood him - granted, based on an unfortunate way of translating his words by a previous commenter. 😉
@@cosmicprison9819 Actually, by treating an addiction a person can choose to change what they want as well. I finally managed to quit smoking after years of unsuccessful attempts. I wanted to not want nicotine.
Robert Sapolsky and Steven Pinker are some of the most admirable men of our time. If you want to find some good men for your sons to role model after- look no further. Both are intelligent, humorous, calm, friendly, compassionate, and personally, I think they’re both handsome. What more can you ask for!?
I saw Lex's interview with Sam Harris and searched for free will and still postponed this. Decisions aren't free will by default but we have autonomy within certain parameters meaning there is a spectrum here. Not either/or.
My view is that free will occurs when you have more control over your environment than your environment has on you. The factors that determine this is numerous. My view is that the level of control you have vs the level of control your environment has is extremely fluid. Some will argue though that your environment has complete control or that you have complete control over your environment. Neither seems to be true. It goes back and fourth depending on the circumstance.
Those circumstances are also environment. It's not really control of environment on ours but we try to go with choices that suit us best in environment we are in
Finally a decent comment. You're still being a bit black and white though by implying that free will "occurs" when your control is > 50%. It's not binary, it's a spectrum. Some things are 1% your choice and 99% percent other factors, some things are the reverse. For example, I have a real problem overeating right now and binging on junk foods. On a really good day, I might only take one bite. On a neutral day, I will eat half a pint of ice cream and save the rest. But on a very bad day when I'm not at all happy, I will eat endlessly, because I have given up caring. In all cases, I'm aware of what I'm doing. It is a matter of feeling motivated to control myself or not. But there is always SOME amount of free will being exercised. To give another example, if you poke someone unexpectedly, they will almost always say "ow" or the equivalent word in their language. But if you say to someone, I'm going to poke you but I want you to not say "ow", they can prevent themselves from saying it. Even reactions we think of as automatic are not necessarily so. So, even if we eventually discover somehow a hundred years down the road that free will simply does not exist according to the most strictest science, we still have a kind of de facto free will, because we are able to prevent anything that is assumed to be automatic physiological evolutionary based responses from happening, ie anger, sexual desires, appetite, and even some physical processes like breathing or sleeping.
Whenever the discussion of free will comes up I just always remember the brain reacts 5-7 seconds before your body does because of subconscious programming. So I don’t think we have free will as we think we do - we have free will to change the subconscious programming to change predictable behavior.
yes, we also have the choice to simply recognize that whatever emotion we are feeling can be ignored or channeled into something else with enough practice and tools.
I believe our brains definitely control us, but with some calculated thinking you can adjust your environment to sway your subconscious slightly, but it's difficult
Just because your subconsciousness makes your body act before you "have the time to think", does not mean the act or decision to act was not made by you. Your subconsciousness does not train you to become a fighter pilot, your conscious self learns as much it can and trains the rest of the body and mind to react as fast and smart as it can in accordance with all dangerous situations you are put in. You train your self while awake. And while you sleep, your subconciousness simulates these situations of danger to make you respond better when you are focused, which is why most of us experience dangerous, fearful and unknown situations in our dreams. If you get little to no rest, your mind becomes less aware of dangers, to the point where you don't care about your life. My point is, if you bank hard left to avoid a missile at the glimpse of a flashing light, it was you who trained your self to do that, not your subconsciousness. Your subconscious self merely reacted to your training quicker than your aware, focused, awake self would.
The irony to the last story is so funny. He is basically telling those who do not believe in responsibility to act responsibly so that everyone else acts responsibly
Not really, because responsibility can be learned and lived without free will. You just don't have a choice in weather you learn and adapt to it. There is a real concern here for people who conflate the two, because people tend to equate "no free will" to "choices not mattering". Thus making it worthwhile considering how to revealed it to people who aren't ready for it, by no choice of their own. Cause and effect still applies without free will, so we would still want to maximize our outcomes.
I think some people are so trapped into the idea of people needing to be controlled in order not to become despicable people that they can't comprehend the idea of free will. His arguments were so poor and based on imagined scenarios that never happened
Everything functions as a symbiotic relationship. The brain is there to gather and store information so that we can function and sustain the ability to survive in this form of reality.
@@biggieb8900 he's one of those pseudo-intellectual dark web people that say they value logic above all else but advance their right wing agenda. Sam Harris, for eg, lied a lot about Islam.
@@eagleleft It's so depressing there's people out there who actually think this about him. All I can say is that you have been misled and should give him another chance. He is not right wing whatsoever.
Not so much. You can know a lot about traffic based on your knowledge of cars. Likewise, you can know a lot about behaviour based on knowledge about brains. His claim that you can't know anything at all is ludicrous. The only point I will grant him is that growing complexity makes things more difficult to make sense of - but that seems rather self-evident...
I love the irony of an experiment showing the negative social impacts of casting doubt on free will which also undermines free will. Those students didn't choose what text to read and the results of the experiment suggest their moral judgements were affected by something they don't control!
Thanks for pointing that out. Your point reminds me of Socrate's Cave and Plato's myths. Some concepts are unfounded in fact but useful in society. In the end, I like that uncertainty principle. Free will and determinism both look like myths under scrutiny. Even when they seem to apply, there's room for uncertainty. Uncertainty seems helpful. It helps to reflect compassionately on our pasts and see each other with humility. Putting all three together, it helps to recognize that we need to plan based on data and account for limits in our perception.
Yeah, that should be profoundly embarrassing for Dennett. Also, I loathe the appeal to consequences fallacy. "If what *you* believe were true, you'd be worse off."
Ok, Humanity has used stories to influence society. Do we accept all stories as truth? If one did not question or think out of the box things would remain the same. Is not questioning free will.? If society takes away the right to question what happens to the biological human? The idea that life is predetermined or discoveries are bound to happen at a certain time due to a gravitational or electromagnetic wave weather does not take into account wormholes where electrons join another galaxy as their geometrical time had come. The question is can we make our time on earth where we have the ability to talk, relate, can we believe in each other enough to make our planet our moral compas? On another note if there is always a space in between things could that be free will?
Well then by that logic every single psychology experiment would be wrong because all the subjects are being subjected to something they don’t control.
In that study, there are also other groups of people who aren't even mentioned. The three main groups are all the people who were asked to join but chose not to participate, those who had agreed to participate but could not, and those who weren't asked at all. Out of those three groups, the group of people who decided not to join used their free will to not participate. In other words, both you and I indirectly participated in that study. Just because we were not aware of it until now, does not mean your will was tested. In fact, the study is still ongoing even though it was closed and concluded, as all of us has a choice to take the test or even duplicate it ourselves and present it to others. There are many other alternative choices to make. Another one is to ignore everything I just said and pretend that I did not write this of my own free will. I can even delete everything I just wrote and keep my thoughts to myself. But if I don't post them here, then you, the reader, might never realize that you are always tested, and that you always have a choice, constantly. Whether you are aware of it or not is not impaired by your willingness to act upon your own thoughts or not.
After learning about this a few years ago from Sapolsky's books and subsequent lectures, I discovered that, while we do seemingly lack free will, we are still able to guide our lives in subtle ways through what I've thought of us 'micro adjustments' to our environment. Things that start small, but build a recursive cycle of momentum towards a particular direction. They can be beneficial or detrimental, the key is that once you learn about this information, not simply saying, I have no choice, but drawing upon your experience and information, allow it to motivate you to grow. Healthily.
Odd that they gave Dennett so much more time than the others. His thought experiments are based on belief. Why couldn't his subject have done good things instead of criminal acts? The reason Dennett is oppose to the idea our will is not our own is based in fear. He's afraid that if we believe we are not responsible for our actions that we'll all go out and murder and steal and thieve and be bad people. I disagree. I think free will is a myth and this realization causes me to do none of those things.
Except Dennett cited a study (that had been replicated in several different ways), that basically proved a lapse in responsibility when the belief that free will is non-existent is established. How is your assumption that every choice is predetermined by causes beyond our control not simply a belief? Has anyone demonstrated this empirically? (Seriously, if you know of any studies that have been done that establish this beyond mere assumption, please do share.) There really needs to be documented observation of the train of independent causal factors that lead to one decision, then another, then another, etc. before the denial of free-will can be so confidently disseminated.
@@nerosuperstardom Where has free will been proved to exist? It's more of a philosophical question still, and the arguments for free will being an illusion make more sense to me. Maybe arguments for free will make more sense to you. However neither are proven facts. Our perception of experience is not equivelent to reality. Making choices feels free, but we dont have infinite choice. We are constrained by biology, society, and uncountable other factors. Its interesting to consider because our world could be more just if we examined how modifying constraints affected behaviour. Whether or not we have complete free will, we have choices, and the illusion of free will. Our morals exist for reasons, and the fact that we have not come to them in a vaccuum doesn't mean we abandon them. Its similar to arguments against atheism. If there is no God, whats to stop people murdering and stealing and becoming 'evil'? Not all atheists are horrible people. We dont require a God, without, or within, to stop us from behaving anti socially.
If you want to know why there's no such thing as free will just look up the definition of free and independently of Will and then look up the definition of Will and put the two definitions together and don't look up the definition of what free will actually it is because if you look up the definitions independently you get something totally different... there is no free will everything you do here just leads to more suffering it doesn't matter your goals on this planet all of your actions lead to a doubling of potentiality Y branches. There was a study done on people who are on their deathbed they are in a sealed chamber at the moment of their death 20 something grams of mass leaves their body... this consistently happens with every single human this is the soul this given to us by the creator of creators to protect us from our own creation so we can control physical time and move through time and space without the confinement of time and space this keeps us protected from our own invention allowing us to soul transfer. There is no objective reality in the third dimension in order to have objective reality you need to Observer to exist from the very beginning of time all the way to the end of time and even if such hypothetical Observer exists the end of time has not came yet so therefore objective reality does not exist and only subjective reality because everything is constantly changing and undefinable and there are no Baseline anything all of the Higgs bosons all of the fundamental particles are not fundamental at all they are constantly changing. Reality is completely subjective. All humans share the same water of Earth use your tears and manifest selfless thoughts into those tears and All Humans will share those tears and those thoughts in the future when you are cycled out of existence. All that exists is Destiny you have a limited amount of choices that you can choose you cannot choose to take off and fly around the earth with Superman powers and change everything it's not possible it is not a choice that you can make... you have limited predetermined choices that you can make. Technically everything is possible but playing the odds logically almost nothing is possible except for our day-to-day activities. It is all an illusion of choice there is nothing but Destiny and what is meant to be. You are not smart and you have no control embrace the reality of the situation.....
Exactly, and I think the merely - and completely misplaced in *any* scientific discussion - mechanical bachelor Bill Nye should give up his spot to allow for Sam Harris to give some real interesting opinions on this matter
He isn't even arguing that free will is real, just that in the wrong environment saying that it is an illusion can be a dangerous idea to introduce. It sort of proves the point that external factors influence people in a way that they do not have control over. At a minimum this shows that there can be a reduction in free will.
To me, what people like Kaku and Dennett are doing is proving the argument of NOT having control even more 🙂 If any type of belief, a story, a lie, a joke you didn't understand, a text you just read or whatever also influences the outcome of your behaviour, even when it's bad like not controlling some bad or criminal impulses, then again you were not 'free' to choose any other option. Being free is actually having two or more options to choose from in reality. And then there is also the question of where the impuls to do a bad or immoral thing came from in the first place. As if an impuls to do harm also just came falling out of the sky. That also has a history, a biology etc to it; So all it does to me is add more or different influences that determine again a certain specific outcome. And it's not because we can't compute or map out all the factors involved because of complexity, that the factors aren't there and determining only one possible outcome and not several. Not even the uncertainty principle does that. Why would a moment of uncertainty or 'dice-rolling' prove that in the end the result was one of more possible outcomes. Our ability to foresee or imagine different possible outcomes, both good or bad ones, is an important one and should be shaped, moulded, trained, inspired etc. as much as possible (by education, culture etc.) and this, along with some external deterrents like punishable actions, can determine and influence better moral outcomes. The fact that every real time action or decision was only one real possible outcome doesn't excuse or negate the need for influence, for creating the right kinds of culture, justice system, moral education etc. But I agree with many that we should look way more in the possibility (even probability) that whenever an action has occurred, no other possible action was possible and that could change so many views on hatred, vengeance, shame, guilt etc. It would also help to understand, not the same as excuse, more and make us choose more suiting solutions, justice or treatments for harmful behaviour. Is it moral to give someone who murdered someone a punishment only based on trying to scare others in doing the same? Only to satisfy some need for vengeance? Shouldn't we look more into all the possible factors that led to the murder that might have been out of the control, alongside with determining the best way possible how much of a threat the person would still be for others and society? Some people may have to stay in jail for the rest of their lives just because they are incurable psychopaths. But so many others were just dealt a bad hand and it is too superficial and quick to just attribute it all to simple bad but free decision making and full responsibility. Dennett calls it dangerous, putting it out there there might not be an actual freedom of the will, but isn't it even more dangerous if that were true and we keep ignoring or denying it?
The difference between atomistic thinking and holistic thinking is that the former suffers from singling out specific topic while the latter is the way of incorporating multiple subjects simultaneously
You obviously don't get the first thing about this issue...what they say is that nothing ever matters anymore. At all. Completely nihilistic point of. I have no idea who in their right mind would subscribe to this in the absence of any evidence.
@@slapmeisterrecords8226 if your goal is to communicate with people then I’d suggest you drop the bravado and condescension from your responses. Realizing that “free will” is an illusion does nothing to ones sense of meaning. Nihilism doesn’t follow. Finally, everything we know about the natural world is consistent with causal relationships. Assuming the human psyche is somehow exempt from causality is clearly the less parsimonious position.
So the only thing "free" we have, is the learning from the outcome of our pre-determinism 🤔.......but if you're not free to answer that, how do you even believe what you're saying is even remotely correct 🤔
@@Dialogos1989 don’t you think through changing causes now, we can change the effects later down the road in the future? Culture and nurture affect the human psyche, and people can change their culture and/or reactions to it
I'm turned off by him to the point that if I see his name somewhere, I assume the conversation will be empty or substance and only sciency wazzy-woozzy fictiony word salad
Highly recommend Sapolsky's books, Behave and Determined, for those who want to take a deeper dive into this subject. But be warned, it will shrink your ego and may make it impossible to really hate another human again. Highly recommend!
Absolutely! The man is light years ahead and your mention of “ego” is key to understanding why the world is in the predicament it finds its self in. The belief in free will is what keeps the farm running.
2:00 problem is, the “why” of choice isn’t always the actual reason. So, we don’t always understanding why we do things, or at least, we don’t always have full cognitive access to the reasons. It’s actually possible to be genuinely surprised as to the reason’s behind our actions, and this highlights the fact that we don’t always act knowingly. But there is action, and there is the feeling of volition, but the feeling of volition doesn’t necessarily take its roots from our self insight.
I agree with this pov, that's why in some instances we need to think hard about the event and situation. We dig deep to find reasons but there is no guarantee if we find the right reason or we just make us believe it. It would be great if we wouldn't have to find out reasons but we knew instantly as we perform actions.
"It's actually possible to be genuinely surprised as to the reasons behind our actions." -me not knowing it was actually possible to be surprised- _stops reading_
For me the knowledge that there's no free will was incredibly relieving. As the final speaker put it I'm less concerned with the implications of my actions now, but it's taken a positive spin. Previously I was plagued by anxiety and stress about even the most mundane things. "Oh, a piece of trash on the ground, should I pick it up? Will people think I'm weird for picking up something minor and dirty? Will the people who didn't see me pick it up think I'm weird for carrying around what's obviously trash? No one else is picking up the trash. Will they think I'm judging them if I pick it up? Oh god, I'm already walking past it, now I'll look even weirder if I stop or turn around for something I blatantly already saw! Am I a bad person for not picking it up?" Now I just pick up the trash. Done, easy, don't even have to think about it, I feel like I'm watching my meat suit moves on its own while I observe it
Yes, it makes you less concerned with *implications* of your actions and more concerned with their actual *consequences* in the world. Ie your behavior isn't subsumed by concerns about your internal states.
If you want to know why there's no such thing as free will just look up the definition of free and independently of Will and then look up the definition of Will and put the two definitions together and don't look up the definition of what free will actually it is because if you look up the definitions independently you get something totally different... there is no free will everything you do here just leads to more suffering it doesn't matter your goals on this planet all of your actions lead to a doubling of potentiality Y branches. There was a study done on people who are on their deathbed they are in a sealed chamber at the moment of their death 20 something grams of mass leaves their body... this consistently happens with every single human this is the soul this given to us by the creator of creators to protect us from our own creation so we can control physical time and move through time and space without the confinement of time and space this keeps us protected from our own invention allowing us to soul transfer. There is no objective reality in the third dimension in order to have objective reality you need to Observer to exist from the very beginning of time all the way to the end of time and even if such hypothetical Observer exists the end of time has not came yet so therefore objective reality does not exist and only subjective reality because everything is constantly changing and undefinable and there are no Baseline anything all of the Higgs bosons all of the fundamental particles are not fundamental at all they are constantly changing. Reality is completely subjective. All humans share the same water of Earth use your tears and manifest selfless thoughts into those tears and All Humans will share those tears and those thoughts in the future when you are cycled out of existence. All that exists is Destiny you have a limited amount of choices that you can choose you cannot choose to take off and fly around the earth with Superman powers and change everything it's not possible it is not a choice that you can make... you have limited predetermined choices that you can make. Technically everything is possible but playing the odds logically almost nothing is possible except for our day-to-day activities. It is all an illusion of choice there is nothing but Destiny and what is meant to be. You are not smart and you have no control embrace the reality of the situation.
Exactly, and if people behave more badly after reading that free will doesn't exist, that doesn't prove that free will does exist. All it means is the all biologic processes, previous knowledge and experiences plus the new acquired information makes them behave that way.
I honestly think that it's easier to understand *_Free Will_* from a Daoist perspective than from a Western Judeo/Christian/Muslim/Baha'i perspective because frankly the West tends to see categories almost entirely in terms of being absolutely separate and distinct (like integers), while the Eastern perspective see categories as necessarily bleeding into each other (ergo, the Daoist symbol of Ying & Yang where each extremity turns into it's opposite) much as transcendental numbers can be seen as real, yet never contained. I don't believe in _libertarian_ free will (literally free will as a Ghost in the Machine in which the machine is controlled by it's ghost,.. but the machine never constrains the ghost),.. but I don't believe in no free will at all either. The truth here, as in so many places, exists upon a continuum between total to no free will. Free will, like moral effort and courage, is a muscle that becomes stronger the more it is exercised.
Yes! Free will in your sense would be equated to ~ self-discipline/ self-control / self-mastery. It’s something we can practice and strengthen over time. It is a much better and much more useful definition of free will than the one we currently « have ».
@@robertog8008 Given that Chaos theory shows that the simulation of every purely deterministic process depends intimately upon the numerical precision used to simulate such processes,.. that the use of a different precision will yield wildly different results,.. and that no one knows what is the correct numerical precision to use to mimic most any complex, iterative, physical process (that there is *_ALWAYS_* an inherent indeterminacy in just what is the best precision to use; too much precision leads to error, just like too little does also),.. I believe this leaves more than enough room for the indeterminacy of free will to reside within. Add also such qualities as moral courage, virtue, and valor,.. and that over time such qualities tend to be ever more self-reinforcing,... and, yes, I believe in free will,.. abridged perhaps,.. not libertarian free will,.. not a ghost in the machine free will,.. but how about a Daoist conception of free will in which every action is formed out of all of one's past actions,.. including one's acts of moral effort and/or indifference. To a substantial extent, we are all beings of self-made souls; not entirely free,.. but not entirely unfree or predetermined either.
Why one person's will breaks in Auschwitz, while another lives to tell their story,.. may well be largely, even substantially, outside their control,.. but *_entirely_* outside their control,.. that one person had no choice but to quit, while another had no choice but to persevere,.. I don't believe it,.. and I genuinely doubt Sam Harris believes this either.
If there is no free will, what utility does consciousness have then? Ignoring for the moment the amazing qualia of the phenomenon of consciousness which would certainly seem not to be reducible to the known laws of physics,.. why would nature create such an elaborate epiphenomena if it has no purpose,.. and what purpose could consciousness have *_except_* to inform free will so that free will can make well informed choices? Put another way; having free will without consciousness is simply absurd while consciousness without free will is no better.
*_Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others._* ~ Aristotle
*_Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts._* ~ Aristotle
*_Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives -- choice, not chance, determines your destiny._* ~ Aristotle
*_Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals._* ~ Aristotle
*_First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end._* ~ Aristotle
*_Anybody can become angry -- that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way -- that is not within everybody's power and is not easy._* ~ Aristotle
*_It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels._* ~ Augustine of Hippo
*_Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual, and the most precious substance in that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in these times of the herd's rampancy. Only he knows that no task on earth is more burdensome and difficult than to maintain one's intellectual and moral independence and preserve it unsullied through a mass cataclysm. Only once he has endured the necessary doubt and despair within himself can the individual play an exemplary role in standing firm amidst the world's pandemonium._* ~ Stefan Zweig, _Montaigne_
*_An old Cherokee told his grandson, 'My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth'. The boy thought about it, and asked 'Grandfather, which wolf wins?' The old man quietly replied, 'The one you feed.'_* ~ Unknown Whoever figures out how to impart a _will to survive_ to a machine will determine the destiny of literally everything. Check out James P. Hogan's, *_Two Faces of Tomorrow_* for an intelligible presentation of how this might happen,.. and even turn out well for all involved,.. including even the GAI.
@@davidhunt7427 Consciousness does have a purpose without free will. It gives animals motivation to get food , reproduce etc.. A computer could also be programmed to do that. But it wouldn't have the same drive to get things done. It wouldn't get creative when the chips are down like a conscious creature would.
@@LegendLength but if things were entirely determined, why would we need motivation? If there were no free will, regardless of whether there is motivation or not, we will either get food or we will not get food. To say that motivation has a purpose means that we have choices. Perhaps we are not entirely free, but at least somewhat free
Understanding that free will is an illusion and being a bad human being are not interconnected. Whoever uses this knowledge as an excuse, has always been an awful person that needed an excuse to reveal his true self.. and that excuse is not "having no free will"! I can accept I might not have free will, but this doesn't mean I will begin harming others based on this excuse! What sick person would do such a thing?!?
Dennett, the moralizer, is just revealing himself. Logic is simple but he somehow does not see it? Yeah right. He is an ideologue who believes he protects something good by spewing all these stories and obfuscating.
there is some people who confuse determinism ("every thing has a causation") and fatalism ("there is destiny and i can't change it"), those who confuse determinism by thinking it's the same as fatalism tend to cheat when they learn they have no free will, a studies with student show this correlation (wich is funny because the studie kind of prove the absence of free will itself since it's exactly what we expect as behavior from someone who believe in fatalism), however if you make the distinction clear that determinism isn't fatalism then you avoid this trap
I’m disagree a small hand full of humans are more “predatory” by nature and it’s probably a genetic thing that was mostly a survival advantage pre-agriculture so like most traits it needs to be “bred” out bc it does not fit in modern society
The final example would only seem to underscore the lack of freewill... it would seem to imply the external is more in control then who we THINK we are.
I think of it this way. First, free will is about making choices, you make about 35,000 of them a day. From whether or not to press the snooze button when you wake up, which sock you put on first to when you wiggle your toes when you sit on the couch watching Netflix. But what makes you make those decisions? You think you have complete control, that you can touch your nose at any time you want. But what you decide actually depends on all kinds of factors: On the stimuli you receive through your senses, on your memories from past events and experiences and on all different types of biologic processes. From (epi)genetics, to hormones and neurotransmitters, to environmental influences like the chemicals in the air you breath and the water you drink. you think you are in control, while the outcome was determined by so many factors that's out of your control. It's really complicated and I can't really put it into words. But I hope I have been able to explain it a little bit.
To have free will is to sacrifice. As to have something wanted, the mind is computing the many possibilities to reach this goal unconsciously. Free will in this real is limited to the source that created it. For IT' has chosen the path of least resistance to reach its desire. I do believe our creator although limitless and in an infinite time frame is also limited to the environment it lies on.
I agree with your analysis. As long as your brain has several options you have a certain choice which is then probabilistic and not fully determined. And as long as you are consciously training your brain into a certain direction of outcome e.g. non violence, respectfulness etc. you can form your character. This needs a certain input from outside (teacher, coach, crisis etc.). So in summary: yes, there is no free will. But you can model your will in a certain way.
@@jurgenkosider1584 you can’t model your way..bc the environment and experiences react with genetics to then be expressed .. So what I’m saying is the valid conclusion you came up was destined to happen 🤯
We have the freedom to what we want, but we don't have the freedom to want what we want. The concept of free will is complicated. On the one hand, we have the ability to make choices, but there are so many factors in play that dictate the choices we make and that's what makes it complicated. The way people were treated or raised as children, the circumstances we grew up in, the knowledge we had access to and the society we grew up in all instill certain ideas, thoughts and moral codes in us and for the most part, those control how we act and what we do.
In reality its very simple and obvious but a huge obstacle for our habitual egoistic way of thinking. That way of thinking is partly natural and further reinforced by cultural values we are exposed to. Powerful people and groups do not like the idea of no free will because it means that its all 100% luck and necessitates radically different organization and functioning of society.
Certainly some truth to that. People from different fields in an open ended format each gave different examples, microscopic, social, biochemical, etc.
@@biggieb8900 but how do you define 'could'? If I roll a die, it "can" be any number from 1 to 6, but did the die have free will? That's the question. If you choose X instead of Y how do we know that your decision didn't come to your mind as a result of a random process (similar to the die rolling)?
18:36 -- I disagree with the conclusion that the 'no free will' group made the worst decision. If they did better due to intelligently using the baked in cheat code for a 'fitness' advantage then arguably they are the stronger group. Arguably the other "you have free will" group performed poorer by not taking the available path due to *subjugation of conformity* and the group who were told they had no free will threw caution to the wind and broke their (programmed) chains of societal conformity that prevent them from being exceptional, unique and advancing regardless of socially programmed restrictions. Maybe being told you have no free will is a 'cheat code' to breaking the chains of group think and clone behaviour.. a step towards a form of enlightenment or actualisation. We need more maverick thinkers who throw caution to the wind, step outside institutionalised paradigms and think differently. If being 'red pilled' about free will is what it takes I'm all for it. Rules are there to be broken.
lol of course. for him worst decision is actually social morality based which is again produced by no the non-free will of humans. cause in the insecurity of the mind and the surroundings humans brought morality and justice in the concept of living but actually both are based on non-free will factors.
It's an extremely weak experiment, that only proves that kids can be influenced to do slightly naughty things. I mean, garner what you can about institutionalized paradigms and group think conformist behaviors. But the second actual consequences are introduced this experiment certainly fails.
It's pointless to debate free will until everyone agrees to a definition of free will for the purposes of a debate. You can't just assume there is an absolute definition of free will.
@Star Traveler I don't know. And why would one want to? If, as physics seems to demonstrate, every event (since the "big bang") has a prior cause, then there is no room for some sort of agency that is independent of prior causes. And if all the choices "you" make originate sub-consciously, making your "wants" out of your control (you can really want something you don't want, it happens to you), then your wants are, by definition, the product of prior causes that generated those "wants" those "choices" your "will." But there does not appear to be some "ghost" inside the biological machine that is you (the trillions of cooperating "specialized amebae," only a 10th of which have human DNA) that is able to "choose" any path it wishes. Do animals, like a bear, or a wolf, or a hornet, or a snake, etc. have "free will?" Or do they in fact operate by "instinct?" Stimuli and response. Sure, they make "choices" to attack or run. But aren't those choices made based on their genetic predisposition and their prior experiences, in fact, ALL of their prior causes? Could they have done something other than what their instinct (their prior causes) led them to do? If not, then there was no actual choice. They just did what their prior causes led them to do. How are humans any different? We simply do what our prior causes lead us to do. The decision is really made subconsciously and it percolates to our conscious action. And then we tell a story about why we did it. But in reality, we could not make any other choice. Choice is an illusion. So what is there to measure? How would one measure the lack of something, anyway? I hope this helps. May your prior causes lead to good things! Peace! ;-)
@Star Traveler In answer to your question, "Do you really find it plausible that his choice of Boston was predetermined by his predisposition, given all of the randomness involved in his selection process, and all of the possible choices he had to evaluate?" ABSOLUTELY. What else are you proposing influenced his choice than the prior causes that made him who he was in the moment he committed to Boston. In *this* Universe, he could not do otherwise, because every subatomic particle collision on the fractal branch of matter and energy that led to this person's state impacted what decision would percolate into his actions. If there is something additional, then the burden of proof is on you to propose a hypothesis of something outside of materialism. Regarding your claim that it is untestable, Google the Libit Experiment. It has been repeated many times and results in being able to predict what a person is going to do before they even know what they will "choose" to do. Consider that primitive AI technology is being employed right now on services like Pandora or Spotify to accurately predict what songs you will prefer. Imagine where that tech will be in a century from now. Certainly it will have the potential to predict not only the city a person will choose, but many other behavioral outcomes as well. And how is it able to do this? By applying a predictive algorithm to the previous events. Whether you agree or not, I thank you for the conversation. Peace!
@Star Traveler A man can do what he wants, but he cannot choose his wants. The man can choose Boston, but he could not do otherwise because he cannot control what he wants. That has been determined by his prior causes. It *feel* to him as if he can choose any city he likes or even decide to postpone moving. However, all of these machinations are reactions to what is occurring subconsciously. He has no control over what has happened to him and the neurons that will fire and recall pros and cons about each option and lead to his eventual actions. You can say these influences are random (and they are, in the sense that we lack the sensory and computing tools and power predict which will occur and what influence they will have), but randomness does not create libertarian free will. The man is either subject to random influences that result in his choice, or mathematically precise particle collisions that have cascaded over billions of years resulting in his choice or a combination of the two, but there does not appear to be any agency that is able to function outside of these influences and override them and make a different selection than that which random and/or deterministic events point to. If you think differently, make your case!
Free will or no free will. Can we just finally accept the fact that there are things we'll never know for sure. That's the point of self-actualization. Hello from Russia!
@@uninspired3583 exactly. Thats what science is about. Trying to umderstand the not understood. Leave the accepting things without understanding to religions
We don’t have free will... Our actions and choices are made by the past experiences we had, memories. As we know, of course; we don’t have control about past events. Neither we have control in what we can remember and what we cannot remember. So thinking like this, we don’t have control about our future actions.
@@DiceDecides hmm no matter how we argue bro, no god or no any force is controlling our will, we have our free will, but like a game of chess.. if you make a blunder then the position is bad, alot of troubles, make the best move the life should get easier..
I love this topic, so fun to see the different perspectives of very smart people. I would probably try to reframe the discussion if I was invited to participate. Let me make choice, am I going to eat a slice of pizza or have a salad? Sounds simple enough, I'm going to weigh my options and focus on what is important to me: am I more interested in taste or function? Did I have a salad recently? Did I have pizza recently, and do I care if I did. When I ask myself, why do I like the taste of pizza better than salad, I can't really answer it. Is it a product of my taste buds and my brain structure? Is it because my parents made pizza night a special event in our house growing up. It gets muddy real quick about how I make that simple decision. At some level my like of pizza over salad is beyond my control. I did make the choice to eat the pizza in the end, but I had limited say into the data I made the decision from. So I'm betting in the experiment where the people were more likely to cheat after reading the free will is not real excerpt was affected in a similar fashion. Hearing that information affected the decision pathways of the brain through a justification. You may have seen the exact opposite affect if the passage they read said, free will may not be real but every person can positively affect their path by exposing themselves to social acceptable behaviors such as not cheating and treating others with respect. There was another study I heard about where they had people swear on a bible, even if they were ashiest, to not cheat on a test. Then they left the subjects in a position to easily cheat. The people that swore on the bible cheated less than those that didn't. Manipulating the data that choices are made upon is a product of environment in cases such as these. The test subjects were not in control of the priming of the behaviors that the experiment ultimately targeted. This is more evidence of brain washing than the existence or non-existence of free will, though I can see the two being very interconnected. All of this points to a level of uncontrolled action. Our choices are ours but our understanding of those choices are limited to the level we understand the variables and the data that we base our choice from. At best we have limited free will, I would venture to guess it is virtually none, BUT we likely have the ability to affect the data that our choices ultimately come from and thus can manipulate that data to support a desired outcome. The question then comes down to if you are a behaviorist, invoking a set of desired outcomes or an educator wanting to see where other's take newly acquired knowledge. I'm not above taking the behaviorist approach but then someone is going to have to take ownership of that process, regulate it to ensure there is no misuse, and maintain it as new information becomes available. I feel, though difficult, success would be more realistic in educating people how their minds work and giving them the tools to set the data points of decision themselves.
If you want to know why there's no such thing as free will just look up the definition of free and independently of Will and then look up the definition of Will and put the two definitions together and don't look up the definition of what free will actually it is because if you look up the definitions independently you get something totally different... there is no free will everything you do here just leads to more suffering it doesn't matter your goals on this planet all of your actions lead to a doubling of potentiality Y branches. There was a study done on people who are on their deathbed they are in a sealed chamber at the moment of their death 20 something grams of mass leaves their body... this consistently happens with every single human this is the soul this given to us by the creator of creators to protect us from our own creation so we can control physical time and move through time and space without the confinement of time and space this keeps us protected from our own invention allowing us to soul transfer. There is no objective reality in the third dimension in order to have objective reality you need to Observer to exist from the very beginning of time all the way to the end of time and even if such hypothetical Observer exists the end of time has not came yet so therefore objective reality does not exist and only subjective reality because everything is constantly changing and undefinable and there are no Baseline anything all of the Higgs bosons all of the fundamental particles are not fundamental at all they are constantly changing. Reality is completely subjective. All humans share the same water of Earth use your tears and manifest selfless thoughts into those tears and All Humans will share those tears and those thoughts in the future when you are cycled out of existence. All that exists is Destiny you have a limited amount of choices that you can choose you cannot choose to take off and fly around the earth with Superman powers and change everything it's not possible it is not a choice that you can make... you have limited predetermined choices that you can make. Technically everything is possible but playing the odds logically almost nothing is possible except for our day-to-day activities. It is all an illusion of choice there is nothing but Destiny and what is meant to be. You are not smart and you have no control embrace the reality of the situation.
@@AquarianSoulTimeTraveler I'm not sure I track on all that and some of that sounds depressing and I'm not sure how losing some small amount of mass at death relates to free will but i hope you find something joyful to hold on to, free will or not. Good luck to you.
Michio Kaku's argument is deeply flawed after 9:12, here's why: Let's grant him that he's right that there is an element of randomness in the universe, how does this at all justify free will as I can not influence or determine randomness. 'No one can determine your future events' he states. No single individual dictates the future (maybe perhaps God when he created the big bang) but every person, action, and variable put together dictates our morals, thoughts, emotions, actions, etc. Every atom in my body (+ randomness) put together is exactly who I am. We do not choose to choose what we choose. What will we do to influence our influences? More influences?
@@cosmicprison9819 You answered your own question. Choosing to be lazy is a free act. It would apply to anyone who was a workaholic and choses to take a vacation.
@@stevelenores5637 But WHY would anyone make this choice? You didn't answer that question at all. Being lazy is pretty much universally seen as a bad thing, so why would anyone consciously choose it? In a deterministic and evolutionary framework, meanwhile, it's easy to explain: Laziness is an instinct serving the evolutionary purpose of resource conservation, and that was useful for survival in most prehistoric environments, where resources were scarce. But I have yet to hear anyone say "no, I wasn't lazy, I consciously decided to conserve my resources". ^^ Instead, people catch themselves procrastinating and still have trouble stopping that behaviour, even though they know what they should be doing instead.
@@cosmicprison9819 I think I explained extremely well. We have natural inclinations. When ever we brake bad habits to form good ones we require will. The use of will is choice. This is true even if the will is to throw off the yoke of labor if that is something we feel compelled to do. If you think doing more and more shows free will you are mistaken. That is a neurotic compulsion not free will. Note: Critical thinking is not intuitive. It is why it is called critical thinking, it goes against intuition and examines issue in detail. Schools today automate thinking not necessarily encourage free thinking. But your chief error is equating not doing labor with laziness. You can be a hard working (a cog in the machine) and be a lazy thinker. Free will is metaphysical exercise applied to the physical world to bend it our will. Now before you challenge what I just told you here try to answer your own questions first before seeking out others to explain every step to you. To not do so is a form mental laziness.
I don’t agree that free will exists, it’s only an illusion; we just want to believe that we are free of our choices but actually we are not because the background of the decisions we make come from the stuffs we can’t control. Remember: We can’t choose what we will feel, want and need next, and they (feelings, wants and needs) attribute our decisions and none of us can’t control them. Therefore destiny is real too.
You mean Nirvana? From the deterministic point of view described in this video, the environment in which you received life experience determined the inevitability of your achievement of nirvana
2:00 Well, someone might argue that being able to state the reasons for doing something is NOT a sign of free will. Also, all this resistance and even fear of "giving up" one's free will is completely unfounded, because if we possess it, it can not be extracted from us, and if we don't there's nothing to loose.
People seem to be confusing (in my understanding) choices based on knowledge/benefit and choices made by just not thinking or not taking into account everything a person comprehends at the moment. We are part of the reality of cause and effect, as much as time, reality and space are. We do have free will to a certain extent when we choose what benefits us either as a whole or individual. That in it self is freedom, because we are definitely not choosing what would be detrimental to us by not thinking and being strapped to an uncontrollable choice. Just like some people choose to benefit humanity instead of themselves, or vice-versa. So in that sense we have the freedom to think and then to choose, but obviously under the circumstances of our current knowledge and/or biology (hormones, etc.). Now our freedom will always be limited or bend, to an extent, to the reality that is cause and effect. I would say a balance between yes and no, depending on the uncontrollable circumstances (biological, material and situational) and the controllable abilities we each have or create. Remember that we also must take into account our natural biological system of learning and development. Much as Kaku and Denett explained, there is a certain degree of randomness and absolute calculation. It would be nice to have an absolute answer as "yes or no", but you would still be making that answer hindered by your current state of development, knowledge, bias and by the natural law of reality that made and sustains reality in the first place.
I like your response. The ironic thing is, some of our first programming languages were “Basic”, which ran on the “If - Then” set of principles. This lasted until we understood that a computer was capable of so much more, but still within the confines of powerful programming.
@@thorenshammer If-then and sth like GOTO is already computationally complete. Basic is also computationally complete. There is nothing more you could even in principle want.
It is one thing to realise that we don't have free will, but it is another thing entirely to realise that our lack of free will is the ultimate pearl of wisdom. When one realises there is no free will then judgement of others becomes foolish, and the same goes for feelings of resentment and regret. We really are the same as everything else in the universe. However this is no easy way out for feelings of great loss or envy, but it still helps to know that we are subjects in this difficult struggle that is life.
Okay,.. I'll bite,.. just how is it true that *_What is irresponsible, is to affirm that without free will we are doomed to be morally incompetent?_* I believe I know what you are going to say,.. but I'm still interested. Besides,.. what's a RUclips comment thread without some respectful discussion and disagreement. I am a fairly hard-core, 90% Anarcho-Capitalist Libertarian, so I have some heavy stakes in asking this question.
@@davidhunt7427 I'm not the author of the comment but I think he meant that we aren't necessarily, or even likely to be morally incompetent if in fact there's no free will and even if we subscribe to such a belief. I can only speak for myself, but through a study of this topic I came to my current view of free will being an illusion and it actually made me more understanding and empathetic of other people. Arguments such as the ones that Dennett makes are made by people who are scared of stripping the social construct of belief in free will. You could compare it to people saying that without religion and holy books people would be raping and killing each other in the streets. Guess how that turned out.
@@Casevil669 I would prefer to say that rather than free will being an illusion (which to me suggests willful fraud or misrepresentation, such as a magic trick), it's a construct made by our minds/brains and is no more false than pain, pleasure, lust, boredom,... or any other mental state we may be in. I am very impressed by the phenomenon of multiple personality disorder in which one brain would seem to contain two or more distinct personalities,.. usually as a result of overwhelming trauma that provokes the brain to adapt by breaking the mind apart and trying to hide the worse abuse somewhere where it doesn't have to destroy all that it would otherwise influence. This definitely tells me that,.. yes the mind is an construct,.. but saying therefore it's merely an illusion seems too much.
_I came to my current view of free will being an illusion and it actually made me more understanding and empathetic of other people._ I hear the same thing from Sam Harris,.. and this one really leaves me perplexed (but hey,.. I am autistic,.. which has lead me to suffer all sorts of blind spots that others don't seem to suffer from). To me, if people don't have free will,.. then there can be no moral responsibility, period. An automata, such as a computer, can not be held morally responsible for it's actions. But people are so much more than mere automata. While I don't believe in _Libertarian_ free will (as in there being a Ghost in the Machine where the Ghost runs the Machine unencumbered by the Machine), I don't believe that moral effort, much less moral courage, don't exist either. As a Daoist this seems fairly simple to me that Humanity is an impure mixture of what we are given by our genetics, environment, family,.. but most of all, what _we_ choose to do with all of this. The more we exercise moral strength, like any muscle in the body, the stronger our moral resilience becomes. However we start out,.. over our lifetimes we become more and more the authors of our own souls. We are never entirely free,.. but neither are we entirely a mere victim/product of our circumstances. Sam Harris accepts that consciousness can not be denied,.. but then proceeds to deny free will,.. because while both would seem to violate the laws of physics as we presently understand them,.. consciousness is the first undeniable primary fact of our existence *_from which every other aspect of our lives comes from,_* but, apparently, not so with free will?!?! Okay,.. how could free will happen in a deterministic/indeterministic (take your pick) universe? Well,.. look at Chaos theory,.. which teaches (at least to me) that sufficiently complex systems, even if provable deterministic,.. will yield wildly varying results,.. all determined by the numerical precision being used in the computer algorithms. Now,.. I ask you,.. what is the _correct_ numerical precision to use when simulating weather patterns, chemical reactions,.. or neurophysiology? Do even known biological processes yield themselves to purely deterministic processes, always yielding the same result each time an experiment is repeated? If Chaos theory shows that indeterminism, in knowing what is the correct numerical precision to use, is always present,.. then I think, given the amount that whoever we are as adults is the result of a lifetime of effort,.. I think there is more than enough room for an adequate free will to accommodate moral choice & responsibility. Just out of curiosity,.. how do you believe Physics will eventually accommodate and explain consciousness? Why have consciousness at all if there is no free will,.. i.e., no ability to choose differently from what we in the end choose in fact and in deed?
*_Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others._* ~ Aristotle
*_Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts._* ~ Aristotle
*_Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals._* ~ Aristotle
*_First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end._* ~ Aristotle
*_Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives -- choice, not chance, determines your destiny._* ~ Aristotle
*_Anybody can become angry -- that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way -- that is not within everybody's power and is not easy._* ~ Aristotle
*_It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels._* ~ Augustine of Hippo
*_Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual, and the most precious substance in that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in these times of the herd's rampancy. Only he knows that no task on earth is more burdensome and difficult than to maintain one's intellectual and moral independence and preserve it unsullied through a mass cataclysm. Only once he has endured the necessary doubt and despair within himself can the individual play an exemplary role in standing firm amidst the world's pandemonium._* ~ Stefan Zweig, _Montaigne_
@@davidhunt7427 I do agree that free will is a construct of our mind, I just don't care that much for nomenclature to consider 'free will as an illusion' being a bad way to put it, but I get what you mean. It's beneficient to perceive oneself as an agent in the world, judge its actions, and reason about them. You can easily observe this when watching children develop - in the early stages there's no such concept as I or clear perception of being an agent, free will, and other associated constructs are modeled after we spend some time in the world. I'm not sure how familiar are you with Sam's point of view on this topic, but I can tell you that he doesn't dismiss free will merely because it defies laws of physics (I'm not sure that it does really). It's the fact that the consciousness is prior to everything. When you do mindfulness meditation a lot you begin to realize that all you perceive (inputs) happens on its own. You don't make your ears and brain make sense of sounds. You don't force your eyes to send signals to your brain and make a comprehensive sense of what the electrical inputs really are outside your skull. The same goes for thoughts, they just appear in and out of consciousness. All of these make us who we are, upon which we construct the I. There's no space for free will, because all outputs are generated based on inputs, which are obviously happening on their own. I would distinguish between claiming that there's no free will and the world being deterministic. I don't think one necessarily follows the other. For all I can say from my own meditation experiences, except for sensual perceptions, thought patterns seem very random. One moment I can be thinking of a nice evening with my wife and at the very next second death of my father pops up, up next we have a thought about what's for dinner tomorrow. To the point of leaving you perplexed - again, only describing my own experience, but when I came to a conclusion that there's no free will, I got rid of the mentality of blaming others for their actions. Of course, the thoughts can still occur, as it's hard to get rid of almost three decades of mental constructs, but I don't immediately jump a gun, as people often do (I did too). Hope that clears it up a bit, as I was confused too before experiencing this myself. As for physics explaining consciousness, I'm not sure that we will necessarily come to definite conclusions, but my bet would be that we will first create something that at least resembles a conscious agent in a form of AGI, and only then maybe start to dig deeper into understanding the phenomenon.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
Every time I do something honorable I'm proud of my free will. Every time I do something despicable I say ' I had no choice'.
And the funny thing, you might be right with both assumptions ;)
That's called internalizing success and externalizing failure. Nothing special, this is what a healthy mind does to preserve self-esteem, since that benefited survival. Every first-semester psychology student learns about that. So congratulations, you're perfectly normal. 😉
It's not a friendly game of dice It's a mean streets crap shoot with loaded dice and only one thing for certain: mortality.
Strongly Smacking your NPD mother in the head with a frying pan to create a scar and psychological trauma which basically an attempted murder in order to show you're not scared of her is a show of self-defense and defense mechanism for her potential future abuses towards you. I would say is an act of choice.
So does those under Hitler regime
“A man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills”
Another commenter hit the nail head on, w/ Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
(Also reminiscent of William James's great : “With my first act of free will, I choose to believe in free will.”)
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exactly ! and whats with the responsibility issues ? even if your not guilty, we still would protect society.
But for example as a kid you didnt like the taste of alcohol, yet as we grow we will to will it and we start to enjoy the taste. Isn't that willing a will? Hahaha this stuff gives me headaches
Christopher Hitchens: "Of course we have free will, we have no choice."
One of the wittiest comments I have ever heard🤣
I love how he put it in a religious context once as a rebuttal in a debate when he said "Of course we have free will, the boss says we do."
It only seems witty because he hadn't seen through the apparent paradox.
The mistake is when we're talking about what we can do "in the circumstances" we don't mean "in the actual circumstances with the same past" . It's just an error and resolving that resolves the paradox.
How many scientists and philosphers know that? Dan Dennett is one. Most scientists don't and most people don't. Perhaps a number of philosphers do but are they getting the message across? Nope.
@@stephenlawrence4821ñ
oh this is brilliant 😃 I wonder how many new assholes Hitch would have torn in last 5 years, were he with us.
@@giomjava I bet that if there WAS Free Will, Hitchens would choose to still be with us.
If reading one passage about free will can change whether a person will cheat or not, I think that proves "free will" has great limitations
Agree. Fool me once, shame on you. But after 1000 more times, usually I analyze enough for clarifying future hopes along with today's serenity. Someways more and somedays less. I got myself de-programmed from Plantational Cartoonism. Un-saluting y'all Crowd Controlling Pulpit Spotlight Monkeys has been a good practice, to selectively reinforce my autonomy. I am good enough at it to get labeled as a Contrarian by those officious plagiarists. I minimize my exposures to mental illness germs.
♡ ☆ ◇
@@samuelmullins271 Sounds like you have a "mental illness germ".
Only religious or political nutcases are clinging onto free will. The reality is that nothing will change even if everyone understands there is no free will. All the consequences and motivations will be the same.
@@samuelmullins271you literally fooled me
Simply proves there is no free will. That book acted as an instruction and determined the future decisions these people made. Free will is an illusion.
Daniel Dennett argues that neuroscientists "shouldn't tell the public they don't have freewill because it's irresponsible." But if there is significant evidence against freewill, then isn't withholding that information the irresponsible thing? Telling the truth the best way you know how is more important, I think, than trying to prevent malevolence.
Danielle might be right. People need to be controlled to some degree. Its for the best for societies to advance. It's best if everyone buy in to the belief of free will and play along.
When science argues against free will I can only assume that it has taken over the mantle of religion in the role of destroying autonomy in the individual. When you argue against free will in favour of determinism, you reinforce the concept of intelligent design.
The idea of free will is detrimental to the functioning of society. One of the most important things a human being can ever realize, is the fact that there is no free will.
But as for telling people, it depends on how they are informed about it. Many people will spend their entire lifes, trying to find prove that they do have free will.
@@NLSasuga It is only detrimental to those that seek to oppress the natural instinct to resist oppression, violently.
The neuroscientists have no choice... they must tell what they learn, which is different than telling the joke in the analogy, so the thought experiment is flawed.
Robert Sapolsky is amazing
The problem is in getting everyone to agree on what free will means. Apparently, Saplosky thinks that if you have "gas pains" and it influences a choice you make, then it's not free will.
and correct!
I would have him in charge of advising lawmakers around the world on criminal justice. We still have Medieval thinking in today's courts, with judges "preaching" to defendants about their crime.
If anyone wants to watch more of him. I suggest his Stanford course on human behavioral biology. You can find it on RUclips. It's pretty old but you will learn a lot about what processes are behind human behavior.
@@AceofDlamonds I agree that we should have more compassion for criminals, and that there should be more focus on rehabilitation. But prisons shouldn't be totally abandoned. Even though there might not be complete free will, I'm sure that the idea that once you do x or y you'll get punished still inhibits the occurrence of x and y.
Dennett: “telling people they don’t have free will is bad, therefore we have free will “
Both off topic and incoherent
Yeah
It sounds a bit like a religious argument. That we’re all going to fall into sin and impulsive tendencies if we don’t believe in free will.
Exactly.
Ying, Yang ☯️
Why the hell does this guy get so much camera time. I cringed the whole time
Quantum uncertainty still doesn't give you free will. It just means that determinism may not be true. But you still have no control over these dice rolls at the quantum level.
Exactly. As Sam Harris often says, "whatever the combination of determinism and randomness, there still is no room for free will" as it alleges to be neither of those things.
EXACTLY. I hate when people make that mistake!
Leaving your consciousness up to chance removes all autonomy. How weak to say you do not control your reality.
but still physical models are "just" models. The truth is that you cannot really decide if there is free will or not. Just because your model says so?
@@Phoenix51291 Yes! It's mind boggling that these "expert" scientists can't seem to comprehend that. All it takes is a simple thought experiment and one quickly sees that 100% of ALL things is a direct (even if unfathomable to our human brains) result of everything that has ever happened - if even the tiniest thing had happened differently, things would thus unfold differently - and NONE of this has anything to do with some misguided notion of "free" will...
I read once that the mind has already made a decision. We just come up with reasons for that decision.
I read a bit of Carl Jung's Theory of the Collective Unconscious. The theory said that our mind is not born like a clean slate a contrary to the ''tabula rasa'' concept of by John Locke.
I feel like those kinds of ideas have a weird distinction they make between what they consider 'you' (the self) and arbitrary other parts of the body. If a part of your body does something, is that not you doing the thing? What part of you in particular is 'you?'
@@xxportalxx. that's exactly what I'm thinking. Isnt my brain still me?
Or you heard the Oracle say that in The Matrix movie.
@@xxportalxx. this, especially since your emotions are hormones, and hormones don't only come from the brain
I think about this topic often and while believing we do not have free will I don't think this has ever had an affect on my choices or morals. It always feels like we're making the decisions for ourselves which I think is what matters, the deterministic part is on a much deeper level.
You have free will. (Just keep it simple. It donst have to be deep) There's really NOTHING stopping you from killing a fly. You choose to do it or not..because of your FREE WILL.
As for corruptions..There's really nothing stopping you from being corrupted.
Politicians/ corporations do it all the time...they get away with it
( there's no acountablity) Are they going to hell or there's karma????
I dont KNOW....probably NOT.
It is in your FREE WILL to praticipate in those activities. Consequence or NOT.
God or No GOD....Evil or NOT.
As far as being able to time travel , fight gravity or to live forever.
In that sense. No Im NOT FREE nor have power
This is exactly how I approach it and I think it’s the only way for me to stay invested in life yet have a more holistic understanding of how things are a certain way. It also helps you to understand that effort can be necessary but to be less arrogant and more forgiving of others’ bad actions. If not forgiving then it at leas should help people look past a single act of supposed volition to a longer and more complicated lead up to that given act - where most of the time it is almost impossible to really place blame at a single given point or person. Your comment is on the money, I think 👏
Of course there is no free will, your brain just treat input the way your brain have learn to treat those input from the beginning, based on the output you had from previous run.
Good response. That's what even some of these scientists get wrong. They mix up Physics on the deepest level with human morale which is on a completely different level.
Even if there is no free will....you cannot do anything about it....even your commenting is pre determined...i see it like domino falling.....we just dont know what domino will fall next
Everytime someone insists humans have free will but "lesser" animals dont, it just tells me their opinion is nothing but narcissistic dribble.
Totally agree, since that opening bit about dolphins and chimpanzees, they didn't recently acquire their brain activity, they've been the same for quite some time. We are only aware of that complexity recently-ish.
Well you might look at it as, a philosophy, and I don't know if animals do. You know an opinion about their environment.
Cats certainly do have free will ! 😼
That’s a dumb argument, either everything has free will or nothing has free will, you would be better off arguing about being self aware.
Benjamin Henderson - When other species begin to explore space, formulate philosophical ideas, compose epic poetry, engage in theoretical physics, develop the latest smartphone, invent myths like “the Invisible Hand of the Market”, or produce the next ‘Kardashians’ season, let me know: I’ll grant that free will “is nothing but narcissistic dribble”.
Freedom of Choice and Free Will are not synonymous.
Something most people, including those who comment on videos of this kind, can never grasp.
Yh but neither is free. If your will isn't free, neither is your choice.
There is no freedom of choice if free will doesn't exist
So Dennets thought experiment isn’t against free will. It’s against the idea that we should let people think free will is an illusion.
Totally. And even then, it’s a poorly reasoned conclusion
That's always the argument of people who want to believe in free will. The belief that if we told someone else they didn't have free will, they would do evil.
He's merely illuminating the demonstrable phenomenon that a BELEIF, in and of itself, can completely change the outcome of decisions for a given individual. That is to say, life is subjective. Believe what you want- but there will be consequences- good or bad.
He really had no choice but to express that opinion so... :)
@@Deliberateleo That's false. I often argue for existence of free will. I've never made the argument that belief in it is necessary to prevent evil.
It boils down to your definition of free will. If it is simply that you can make choices, then yes, you have free will. BUT, if you look deeper into what causes us to make the choices we do, then no, you do not have free will because every choice we make is caused by things out of our control, and we did not choose those things that eventually caused us to make our choices.
We do have to free will to listen to our thoughts. We don’t have the free will to choose or control our thoughts. Same with actions. Not having free will doesn’t mean we can’t work on ourselves. Besides all actions come from thoughts. Unless raise wrongly, you knew what you thought was wrong, so you shouldn’t act on it.
@@Bunni504 Choosing to “listen to our thoughts” is just as much of a decision as choosing what thoughts to think. There is no more freedom in choosing one than the other.
I was going to say the same but when you think of it those things that "happen" to us that we have to choose from is the result of someone else's choice. The consequences and choices before us aren't of our own doing. To be able to have true free will we would have to live in a world completely alone with only our own choices left to choose from.
@@paulmobleyscience Even then we wouldn’t have free will, because our next thought comes out of a void of nowhere and we don’t actually get to choose what it is, only witness it.
@@epicbehavior What do you mean comes out of a void? No it wouldn't change how choices occur to us. They don't come from a void now, they are instances in our lives where we choose one thing over another or multiple things. Those things don't come from a void anywhere...
The idea of not having free will makes me feel that my human experience is more simplistic. It feels scary and interesting at the same time.
Also bear in mind your lack of free will is unique to you. Everyone has a different lack of free will. Don't see that aspect brought up much, but it's a fact.
If you knew every outcome because you were capable of calculating the outcomes, it all would be determined, since we can't we call it free will.
Daniel Dennett is the Santa Claus of scientists, telling us we have free will, when he knows free will doesn't exist. Pathetic 🎅
The last guy in this video is a total idiot! Ask yourself why the hell do we perpetuate the idea of Santa Claus lying to our children from the very beginning creating a bed of distrust‽ it's because of tradition but we are saying by telling people that they have no free will is to get rid of their predetermined ideals of tradition of what humans have trained as good and bad they are two sides of the same coin you're limiting Your Existence and your potentiality by doing so and setting up tradition this eliminates people from tradition mindset which is saving them from their slavery induced by mankind!
@@klocke5247aw 77yyy
I simply love conversations about free will. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge. 💓🔥
I would say that if you look at a person, you would say he has free will. In the sense that nobody knows what that person is going to do.
But when it comes to, does the person know what he is going to do, I would say no. His brain comes up with an idea and he identifies with the idea.
What are your thoughts?
@@JerryMetal 😃 Hi!!! As I understand, free will would act in both cases but in different levels. If you take the person as just and individual at an environment, it's decisions would have less consequences in that hole system. But if the same person it's located at a social environment with at least one more person, it's decisions would have considerable consequences, because one action causes another, and if it not, that itself it's a effect.
It seems that as more exposed to global society we are as less free will we have, and it will depend on how we filter every senseless information. 😁 What do yo think?
You put Bill Nye and Michio Kaku on the title and expect me to have free will? Of course I had to click, there was no choice
Every time I see Kaku I expect less and less.
@@MarkoKraguljac good he's not here to fulfill your particular expectations
@@angelmidknight3119 shoo little anime troll, off with you! Ill ask you when I need something.
Not impressed with Bill.
2 very different people
I love Robert Sapolsky. He’s such a wonderful educator.
Yep. Really ultimately comes down to how one defines "free will", but yes nobody is ultimately free from pre-existing conditions
Also NOT talking about the interplay (usually invisible to most people) between the distinct active consciousness and unconscious/subconscious minds makes serious debate of this topic arguably laughable and hastily conclusive
Yess🙌
You're pre determined to say that because you don't have any free will🤣
@@alankuntz6494 Well yeah, what makes you think we're free from our past and predispositions/ genetics/ environmental conditions? XD
I'm not saying we are free from our past predispositions/ genetics/ environmental conditions. We are not free from anything or anyone in a sense , since we are are all interconnected to each other including everything and every creature but you can consciously change predispositions , genetics and environmental influences by not identifying to them as a self. We can change bad habit's, ways of perceiving , thinking, feeling that we have been predisposed to from out tribes, neighborhoods, genetics , environmental conditioning. I can personally verify that. It's not easy but the more you become aware of this stuff you are less likely to be trapped by it or sucked into it,
Should have invited Sam Harris to this
Exactly. He had great arguments
Last point by Dennett was a direct attack. He's irresponsible. Sam's philosophy stinks. He's essentially a serial killer sympathizer. If the brain has evolved to exercise self-control and we understand social rules----then we're morally responsible for our behaviour, but Sam will disagree.
@@OMAR-vq3yb I don’t know why this argument always turns to maladaptive behavior. I don’t think we’re responsible for our “good” behavior either.
@@OMAR-vq3yb it doesn’t sound like you’ve spend much time listening to Sam. It depends on what you mean by responsible. Bad actions require negative reinforcement to prevent further bad actions. People can’t just do whatever with no repercussions. But on a personal level, resentment and disgust at a persons actions doesn’t make sense if they had no “choice” but to act that way.
@@OMAR-vq3yb
Were you free to think the exact opposite? Given your brain state at the moment you wrote that, could you have “chosen” to write the opposite? Could you have chosen to agree with people like Sam Harris? Some people agree with Sam Harris. I don’t think they can simply choose to believe as you do, as if they have freedom to think the opposite of what is in their brain.
If you couldn’t have “chosen” to say the exact opposite of what you did, where is the freedom?
I have the knowledge that I don't have free will.
But I have the wisdom to lead my life believing I do.
👆
So wisdom to you is living a lie? I don't think so.
@@bakedalaska6875 It's living through a story that works for you. This is what spirituality/religion is about for example. You may not believe the earth was created by a white-bearded man 10,000 years ago, but you can lead your life in a positive way following ideas about mercy and gratitude.
@@pyb.5672 but if I don’t have free will I’m not able to decide to live my life as if I do.
@@dominoespizza1756 These are concepts represented by language to make sense of yourself in your environment. None of those concepts actually exist objectively. Believing that free will doesn't exist can be what logically makes sense from a mechanical point of view of interactions in the world, but you can recognize that it may not be the most practical story to tell yourself to live a happy & meaningful life.
To answer more precisely, you could recursively argue that what as just been said cannot be deterministic by definition. This would be true if perfect logic actually existed in the realm of mathematical precision in philosophy, but Godel's Incompleteness theorem and quantum mechanics show that this doesn't hold true.
So essentially, I believe that like many other things, both determinism and free will are true, kind of like superposition. You just have to pick the concepts that is best at the right time. Another analogy would be genes, you can carry certain genes that just don't get expressed depending on the environment you live in, simply because its an adaptation that makes you live longer in it.
The only thing we need for moral responsibility is understanding the consequences of our behaviour.
It’s also to be raised in such an environment where morally irresponsible behavior is not tolerated or existent, because people model their behavior on what they grew up with.
Responsibility is learned through guidance
People has different degrees of self-control and no one, even you, I bet, does believe in anyone's power to chose what to want. So even in this sort of diminished free will (not talking about denying position) your statement holds no water.
And that takes freewill! It's too simple for you eggheads .
@@marcdemell5976 Free will actually stand in the way of understanding our behavior and that of others. It implies that our nature cannot be understood. It leads us to think that we should hold others responsible for their actions but we only have our own responsibilities to consider.
Making a decision has been confused with free will. All our knowledge comes from a few things. Our genetic predispositions, our brain, and outside stimulus. We cannot control any of those so to say that we have free will is silly. Second guy explained it VERY well.
Right, in view of those facts, we can have real free will, just the illusion of it. That illusion is so powerful, and the fear of loosing it so disturbing, that many people do not want to accept or even entertain the idea of not having free will.
But we could choose among the the possible outcome..free will is not an illusion as it is not proven to be.. So claiming shit coz everybody else did to fit in is bullshit..
@Star Traveler science is pretty darn good at predicting ones decisions based on a number of things, otherwise psychologist would be out of a job. And let ke put it this way, our brain is made of atoms and they have to follow the law of physics just like every atom so unless our brains are able to manipulate the laws of physics then we are at the mercy of billions of atoms and thier natural processes. I know its hard to think outside the box some people just arent capable of it sadly
@Star Traveler and you zay that like you have read every study on the brain and know all nueroscience and studies going on rn. You wouldnt know if they proved something unless you happened to see it on twitter or see a youtube video about it i bet you have never read any actual scientific studies about nueroscience 😂
@@absurdist5938 so what makes you choose weither you want something or not? What made you decide you like one thing over another in the very first place? Mostly outside stimulus and that can come in any random order and depending on the order it can decide wiether you like something or not which decides whiether you will make certain descisions in the future after that. You can only think on a level that is simple you cant get past the "WeLl We StIlL dEcIdE iT so" lmfao go talk to a few neuroscientist and get humbled you dweeb
"I can feel I have free will, so I do." "I can feel the earth stands still, so it does."
U feel u are alive but ur dead..
@@absurdist5938 I don't believe in an afterlife either.
@@LasseJ789 did I asked about after life?
@@absurdist5938 Did I say something about feeling alive or dead?
@@LasseJ789 its a counter analogy, I thought u had the capacity to understand it ,so sorry .. If u gave that as an argument or any thing against that it's nonsense ..
I always hated the physicists argument about free will. Having unpredictable quantum systems at play doesn't mean you have free will. It just suggests that your actions might have a certain upper limit in predictibility. There's a certain randomness in it. But that's not free will, that's the opposite of free will.
It's not even physicist that argue that, it's usually childish fools who know nothing about physics that just recently learned about quantum mechanics and desperately want to use it to support the notion of "free will"
Quantum inFORMation Entanglement synchronization to reference is evidence that there's no Free Will if the system of inFORMation timeless (faster than Light) still evolves without Free Will✓
It’s just Michio always a sensationalist ignore him 😂
It's embarrassing to see scientists act like religious people with the "free-will of the gaps".
@@Erickhetfield Absolutely agreed. there is no free will, the evidence is staggeringly clear on this.
Dennett is also very disappointing here! Hhis thought experiment has no sense nor link with the real situation and is actually antiscientific. The data he talked about later is utterly misleading and not sufficient to making the point.
His thought experiment is more akin to showing the effects of a placebo or hypnosis. You can swap out being told you have no free will for pretty much anything. Say someone tells you that your wife cheated on you. You will change certain behaviours (or rather certain behaviours will change) upon you being made aware of this information. His confused and illogical thought experiment actually suggests that there is no free will, at least it does to me. And there is no way that it couldn't have!!!
@@christianbaughn199 totally agree. It shows that there is a cause for a reason, therefore no free will. Moreover, his one is not a thought experiment, but a metaphor for what he wants to prove.... He used the metaphor of his point as a proof of the point itself. That's exactly the same reasoning I often see in a church... Big mistake by Daniel
@@al2642 Exactly my friend. I've never understood his popularity or many of his stances. He believes in determinism, yet claims we have "a free will worth having". One of his examples is that you have a rock thrown at you. Your choices are to move and avoid being hit by the rock, or stand still and let it hit you. To him those choices represent free will. To me there is no choice, you either move out of the way or you don't. But feeding in to the action you take is so much information that you would never be able to comprehend it. How good are your reflexes? Did you get a visual of the rock being thrown at you early? Due to experiences in the past you "recognise" that it is in your best interests to move and avoid pain. Is there a clear path for you to move into? Etc etc etc
I agree that Dennett is not bringing his "A game" to this debate. He often uses logically flawed arguments in an attempt to rescue free will. This may be excusable in laymen, since the idea of not having free will is disturbing to many, but scientists should try to overcome this in the quest for truth.
@@christianbaughn199 Christian, you're spot on. Even if a rumor of your wife cheating caused you to act differently with your wife, it would have nothing to do with the question of whether your wife actually cheated. That Dennett seems unable to recognize this principle when it comes to the question of free will is disappointing.
"Der Mensch kann tun was er will. Er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." - Schopenhauer
Please tell me meaning
@@eraoflearning6908 Man can do what he wants. He cannot however choose what it is he wants.
@@wesmann3999 this is intriguing
Oh yeah!
Dan Dennett sounds like religious authority with his thought experiment. Especially with his explanation of it.
people with his rationality aren't helping humans progress.
@@engineeringreality7878 what?
Agreed. “Let me use this trick called a thought experiment on you to convince you of my point of view!” And I swear a I just read of an experiment where those primed with determinism were “more” moral afterwards. Is his example in opposition this this study or is he representing it inaccurately? I didn’t catch if he cited his source.
@@Lisel_Wanders I didn't get if he cited anything, but he just sounds like all old people making excuses on why we should think how they think
I thought the same thing. Wondered if he was religious, I was trying to make out the fish pin on his lapel. Jesus fish? IDK, but I checked out his wiki page and apparently he's an atheist.
I'm a huge fan of all of these great minds. As soon as i saw the names of the speakers i though, " i have to watch this". Thanks for putting this together.
0:40 "for billions of years no free will and now there is but the physics haven't changed." Sounds like the best argument against free will I've ever heard. Also his last example 18:38 is hilarious because he's basically saying that simply by introducing a concept to human beings before an activity it will determine the outcome. Does this guy even listen to himself talk? I guess he's determined not to.
If this idea logically followed, then we could also suggest, " since the universe had no experience within its system for billions of years, and since the universe had no awareness or consciousness inside its system for billions of years, experience simply doesnt exit, because the laws of physics remain the same.🤔.....or since the universe was inanimate for billions of years, the animate do not exist, because the laws of physics haven't changed.🤔
Sounds like more madness added to the confusion.
Its hilariously that you have no idea about the sophistication and subtlety of DD comment, yet you pontificate like you have a clue
Ever heard of emergence?
@@paddydiddles4415 It's also hilarious that you could've told me about the specific "sophistication and subtlety" but you chose an insult instead. It shows more about you than me.
@@actuallyZiggyZagga ya, super interesting
From a social perspective, it doesn't matter if free will is real or not. As long as we have the experience of choice, it is real to us humans and that's all that matters. We simply can't live our lives pretending we don't have free will.
what a weirdly incomplete thought.
@@user-tv9to1oe2h Try to act as if you did not have free well. Let us know how it goes 👍
@@S1L3nCe how?
@@user-tv9to1oe2h EXACTLY. You just can't and that's my whole point.
@@S1L3nCe no the truth matters. The fact that we don't have free will means things like the death penalty can be debated. Or debated easier. You can still hold responsibility in a deterministic society.
This has to be one of my favorite philosophical topics to think about. Realizing we have no free will has made me a more understanding and empathetic person. Evil is sickness. Some respond to treatment and others don’t.
Exactly!
My logical brain knows they are a victim of circumstance but my animal brain thinks their a ****
@@crappymeal We are shaped through evolution to feel the need for revenge and artificial separation. That had its place and purpose in wilderness in which we spent 99.99% of our evolution. But that doesn't make it right or beneficial nowadays.
@@MarkoKraguljac we are still in the wilderness.
Its just relaxing and easy to view things like an animal sometimes because i am one, my overall view of humans is the same as i view any other animal
@@crappymeal I can agree and disagree. Too long discussion would ensue. Be well
i love this lineup. you got legitimately some of the smartest, most highly credentialed minds in our time and also the science guy.
I was gonna say the same thing and ya beat me to it , DAMMIT
Missing from this lineup is Sam Harris who literally wrote a book called: “Free Will”. Also, they didn’t show enough of Robert Sapolsky’s arguments.
But Kaku is one of the most discredited in his field. And that's true of NYE except he has no real field outside of being a media guy
Michio Kaku's argument is deeply flawed after 9:12, here's why: Let's grant him that he's right that there is an element of randomness in the universe, how does this at all justify free will as I can not influence or determine randomness. 'No one can determine your future events' he states. No single individual dictates the future (maybe perhaps God when he created the big bang) but every person, action, and variable put together dictates our morals, thoughts, emotions, actions, etc. Every atom in my body (+ randomness) put together is exactly who I am. We do not choose to choose what we choose. What will we do to influence our influences? More influences? No offense but Michio wasn't very smart in what he stated. He basically said randomness and 'Wild cards' give rise to free will? What?!
At 13:52 till the end of the video his argument collapses on itself. If someone states that "free will is an illusion" and that influences the person then where is the freedom in this? Just like how my teachers in school taught me and influenced me which changes my beliefs, emotions, and actions. Every action is belief-based. If someone is told "free will is an illusion" and the individual makes negative actions then people and society (karma) will punish or at least disrespect them and life will be more difficult in a feedback loop. Albert Einstein also said, "First we must accept our limits to go beyond them". Because I believe determinism it makes me look at my weaknesses and what causes them, also what will help them. It makes me believe that jails should be used to rehabilitate rather than punish. The 'choices' I make everyday influence the rest of my life. Its like a puppet who is aware he is attached to strings and can influence them. The paradox of believing "free will is an illusion" is it gives me even MORE freedom due to rationality (psychology, science, health, etc). Before anyone says I'm hypocritical I did not choose my rationality, intelligence, creativity, morals, or a thought 30 seconds from now this was predetermined since before I was even born.
Interviewer: What is the best recipe, movie, and sports team on this planet?
Michio Kaku: You asked some of the deepest questions in *physics*.
Man, Sapolski is always very enlightening but ever so depressing. He is like a psychedelic trip forcing you to look human nature in the eyeballs. Being sober and hearing it is pretty abrasive.
I really like him in his other videos. He is blunt, and that makes things simpler to follow. When people start beating around the bush the answer gets muddled and the logic is harder to remember.
Love it!
In another interview about free will he talks about his experience with depression. It was really sad to hear. I appreciate him so much I hope he realizes that so many people appreciate him.
@@pamelapap Yeah! Same hope
@@pamelapap can you please link the video?
We don't always know why we do things, but we can always create a reasonable story to explain it.
haha 🤣, exactly..
Yes, the unconscious delivers decisions, desires and impulses to our conscious selves and we then have to justify them. Though its often just a story, or a guess. Ask people why they like jazz, or yoga, or don't like gay people, or watch football, and watch them try to come up with a reasonable story, but really they've no idea of all the factors that went into that decision.
There's a perspective I believe they did not cover:
We assign others with "Free Will" as a way to explain why we can't predict their actions. Since we can never know every detail about a thing, that thing can take some action which we can not predict.
But the idea of free will stems from personal experience, not from patterns we notice in people.
There is no free will as long as we have emotions, desires, or attachments because these are controlled in whole or in part by unconscious factors that are not accessible to us at the moment of a decision.
You can consciously control both your desires and your emotions. Isn't stoicism about that?
"We have free will but we can't control our free will. It's the free will that controls us."
the subconscious makes our decisions, and it’s been proven by neuroscientists time-after-time. willpower is just anxiety before making a negative decision, and free will doesn’t truly exist in the absolute present moment. The past dictates the present.
free will doesnt mean no self imposed boundaries
This is true if we make an impulsive decision. We also have the option (dare I say, the free will) to stop and reflect on our subconscious emotions, desires, and attachments to examine exactly where they came from and how and why they influence our decision making process. If we have the ability to change our original impulsive decision after a careful examination of how we arrived at that decision, this is evidence of free will yes? Most people are reactive and impulsive, but we also have the option to carefully cultivate self awareness.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
- C.G. Jung
And whether you make the unconscious conscious or not is fate and what you're conscious of is fate. It's all fate which ever way you look at it.
Carl jung is soooo right have to see that shadow self !!
@@stephenlawrence4821 One can choose to believe all is fate or one can choose to master their destiny. Whether this choice is made consciously or not depends on the previous choices made by that individual. In other words, we are presented with conscious choices in each moment that are determined by the conscious choices we made in previous moments, but the tree distribution of timelines across of all possible choices one can make across their lifetime is predetermined. Consciousness allows one to have the experience of navigating to other branches of the predetermined tree by gaining enough wisdom to choose what will occur before it happens.
@@coryharasha
We always make the choice we are fated to make. Choice is no more than to select from options. What you're doing is presupposing it's something more.
@@stephenlawrence4821 Personally, I believe the current moment allows one to change the future. You are presupposing time is one dimensional, linear, and unchangeable but I don't believe there is much evidence of that from quantum mechanics to multiple conscious observers spread across time and space to first person experiments one can perform with choices.
Robert Sapolsky ❤️
For me, the question is why do we believe that we possess free will.
Because sometimes we can choose which environment to be in.
@@Kaizrwolf apparently
I don't know if it's so much of belief as it is a philosophy, an opinion on perspective. Supposed it boils down to the math. And whatever critical logic you can get from that.
But whatever, I know we're the only Critters on this planet that study's itself, and runs around trying to prove what everything is.
Only a dogmatic materialist would ask such an absurd question
It's essential to maintaining a hierarchical society
“People think freedom is about being unrestrained. No. Freedom is about being restrained so you can be free to do the things that really matter. But you have to be restrained from doing the things that don’t really matter to be able to move in that direction.”
Marshall Vian Summers
I be like after reading this
r/woosh
Because free will exists.
Restrained by whom? You?
@@drjdsjr By yourself.
According to fundamental physics, everything that happens in the universe is encoded in its initial conditions. From the Big Bang onward, mechanical cause-and-effect interactions of atoms, formed stars, planets, life and eventually your DNA and your brain. It was inevitable. Your physical brain was therefore always destined to process information exactly as it does, so every decision that you are ever going to make is predetermined. You (your consciousness) are a mere bystander - your brain is in charge of you. Therefore you have no free will.
Daniel Dennetts thought experiment didn't catch up to the real world. They did a study and found out that instead of aggressive, people even tend to behave more kindly.
You mean humans are not disgusting pieces of shit that need to be controlled by guilt and fear? Who would have thought! Do you have more info or a link to this experiment?
I know this is lls but would you happen to have the study?
@@Typicalgold can look it up again
Loving Daniel Dennet's thought experiment saying absolutely nothing about free will and everything about our flawed moral system.
He used his time and mine freely, but all he added was rambling stories.
He's a conservative with an agenda
every time I listen to Dan Dennett, I'm more convinced that free will doesn't exist. good job, Dan!
He described religion to a tee! You have free will, but remember some sky daddy watches your every move, and gave you the morals you have. making some people look for the border where their imagined god, tells them they gone too far, and since there is no god to tell them they've gone too far they up their "crimes" in an effort to get that imagined god to respond!
It takes work on your behalf, you need to examine how you feel about the situation when the facts are tweaked.
I think the problem is defining what free will is and it depends on that definition whether we have it or not. On a level we do have it. In our case we might be like prisoners inside a cage i.e. earth or even this universe which might be a simulation. We are not only physically but also mentally bounded in this reality. Even though we can do a lot of things & it might seem we have choice but on a higher level we are all bounded in a eternal cycle of life & death and can never escape it. We might be just like a NPC in a video game. Upnishads, ancient Indian texts of high philosophy are also based on the foundation that our reality is nothing but 'maya' i.e illusion and our greatest purpose should be to attain 'moksha' i.e realize the ultimate truth.
The way I see it we have free will, but no control over what we actually do with that free will, it sounds like a weird paradox, but essentially for me all free will is, is the advanced ability to make decisions based on our experience, since we have no real control over what we experience, and any decision made to experience something different is only a decision made based on knowledge from prior experience, we, therefore, have no real control over what decisions our free will results in us making.
I can't decide - if you have convinced me, yourself and/or others. Hee hee There is reality in our playing with reality but the Being beyond - is the Real and speaks as the Voice Real - within the heart and in utter silence. One follows Him -as the Real Self - guiding us. It is what spirituality is - at Essence. (That is how Raj Yoga - may hint at.)
@@danielnewman3428
"A man can do what he wills but he can't choose/will what he wills" - Arthur Schopenhaur.
That we do not have free will of thought is evidenced by the fact that we cannot freely decide to remember or forget a so-called idea of the mind. Forgetting or remembering is, instead, a natural causal process
What are you thinking now? When did you decide to think it?
I think I understand. So what you remember makes up who you are, and therefore the collection of ideas which you are responsible to sift through and decide upon which to refrain and which to act. But what you remember is not what so ever apart of your conscious decision. So free will extended to an eternal soul according to these facts does not coincide.
Schopenhaur is obviously wrong. A person routinely chooses what they will do. It's something we observe ourselves and others doing every day. And, yes, this is a natural causal process. All processes are natural causal processes. So what? That changes nothing. Reliable cause and effect? That is also true of every event. So what? That changes nothing. A person routinely chooses for themselves what they will do. When they are free to make that choice for themselves, we call that "free will" (literally a freely chosen "I will"). When the choice is forced upon them against their will, by someone or something else, then that is an unfree choice. It's that simple. How did Schopenhaur become so confused about these things?
Marvin Edwards This is a translation error: The German word "will" stems from "wollen", which is "want". The correct translation is "Man can do what he wants, but he can't want what he wants." So no, Schopenhauer isn't wrong, you've just misunderstood him - granted, based on an unfortunate way of translating his words by a previous commenter. 😉
@@cosmicprison9819 Actually, by treating an addiction a person can choose to change what they want as well. I finally managed to quit smoking after years of unsuccessful attempts. I wanted to not want nicotine.
Robert Sapolsky and Steven Pinker are some of the most admirable men of our time.
If you want to find some good men for your sons to role model after- look no further.
Both are intelligent, humorous, calm, friendly, compassionate, and personally, I think they’re both handsome. What more can you ask for!?
Yes, except Sapolsky is the better of the two. Pinker is wrong sometimes, and even Sapolsky points that out
@@fabian5002 they're humans. Both have strengths and weaknesses.
@@fabian5002he's a materialist, but I like Sapolsky anyway.
Weird take but ok
Is being a buddy of Jeffrey Epstein one of the criteria for being a most admirable man?
I see this video in my feed and free will already determined to watch it. 🤔🤨😋
I saw Lex's interview with Sam Harris and searched for free will and still postponed this. Decisions aren't free will by default but we have autonomy within certain parameters meaning there is a spectrum here. Not either/or.
Trying to understand free will makes my head hurt.
My view is that free will occurs when you have more control over your environment than your environment has on you. The factors that determine this is numerous. My view is that the level of control you have vs the level of control your environment has is extremely fluid. Some will argue though that your environment has complete control or that you have complete control over your environment. Neither seems to be true. It goes back and fourth depending on the circumstance.
Those circumstances are also environment. It's not really control of environment on ours but we try to go with choices that suit us best in environment we are in
Part of your environment is inside of you.
Finally a decent comment. You're still being a bit black and white though by implying that free will "occurs" when your control is > 50%. It's not binary, it's a spectrum. Some things are 1% your choice and 99% percent other factors, some things are the reverse. For example, I have a real problem overeating right now and binging on junk foods. On a really good day, I might only take one bite. On a neutral day, I will eat half a pint of ice cream and save the rest. But on a very bad day when I'm not at all happy, I will eat endlessly, because I have given up caring. In all cases, I'm aware of what I'm doing. It is a matter of feeling motivated to control myself or not. But there is always SOME amount of free will being exercised. To give another example, if you poke someone unexpectedly, they will almost always say "ow" or the equivalent word in their language. But if you say to someone, I'm going to poke you but I want you to not say "ow", they can prevent themselves from saying it. Even reactions we think of as automatic are not necessarily so. So, even if we eventually discover somehow a hundred years down the road that free will simply does not exist according to the most strictest science, we still have a kind of de facto free will, because we are able to prevent anything that is assumed to be automatic physiological evolutionary based responses from happening, ie anger, sexual desires, appetite, and even some physical processes like breathing or sleeping.
Whenever the discussion of free will comes up I just always remember the brain reacts 5-7 seconds before your body does because of subconscious programming. So I don’t think we have free will as we think we do - we have free will to change the subconscious programming to change predictable behavior.
yes, we also have the choice to simply recognize that whatever emotion we are feeling can be ignored or channeled into something else with enough practice and tools.
@@comdrive3865 spiritual alchemy yes! The transmutation of emotions (energy in motion).
I believe our brains definitely control us, but with some calculated thinking you can adjust your environment to sway your subconscious slightly, but it's difficult
Just because your subconsciousness makes your body act before you "have the time to think", does not mean the act or decision to act was not made by you. Your subconsciousness does not train you to become a fighter pilot, your conscious self learns as much it can and trains the rest of the body and mind to react as fast and smart as it can in accordance with all dangerous situations you are put in. You train your self while awake. And while you sleep, your subconciousness simulates these situations of danger to make you respond better when you are focused, which is why most of us experience dangerous, fearful and unknown situations in our dreams. If you get little to no rest, your mind becomes less aware of dangers, to the point where you don't care about your life. My point is, if you bank hard left to avoid a missile at the glimpse of a flashing light, it was you who trained your self to do that, not your subconsciousness. Your subconscious self merely reacted to your training quicker than your aware, focused, awake self would.
It could also mean that perhaps we don't understand time as well as we think we do.
The irony to the last story is so funny. He is basically telling those who do not believe in responsibility to act responsibly so that everyone else acts responsibly
100% agreed. He is simply present ling a circular argument, going against himself.
Not really, because responsibility can be learned and lived without free will. You just don't have a choice in weather you learn and adapt to it.
There is a real concern here for people who conflate the two, because people tend to equate "no free will" to "choices not mattering". Thus making it worthwhile considering how to revealed it to people who aren't ready for it, by no choice of their own. Cause and effect still applies without free will, so we would still want to maximize our outcomes.
I think some people are so trapped into the idea of people needing to be controlled in order not to become despicable people that they can't comprehend the idea of free will. His arguments were so poor and based on imagined scenarios that never happened
“Does the brain control you or are you controlling the brain? I don’t know if I’m in charge of mine.”
-Karl Pilkington
Maybe our true selves are spirits
Well considering the brain is part of you and it's at the top of your head maybe that answers your question
@@tars7265 perhaps. But nobody can be expected to believe in magic.
@@tars7265 there are no such thing as spirits
Everything functions as a symbiotic relationship. The brain is there to gather and store information so that we can function and sustain the ability to survive in this form of reality.
No free will debate today can be complete without Sam Harris.
Sam Harris is a tool who should not be taken seriously
@@eagleleft He knows more about free will that you will ever know in a thousand years.
@@eagleleft i would be delighted to hear about an issue you have with him
@@biggieb8900 he's one of those pseudo-intellectual dark web people that say they value logic above all else but advance their right wing agenda. Sam Harris, for eg, lied a lot about Islam.
@@eagleleft It's so depressing there's people out there who actually think this about him. All I can say is that you have been misled and should give him another chance. He is not right wing whatsoever.
Loved the cars vs traffic analogy. Absolutely accurate 👌🏾
Not so much. You can know a lot about traffic based on your knowledge of cars. Likewise, you can know a lot about behaviour based on knowledge about brains. His claim that you can't know anything at all is ludicrous. The only point I will grant him is that growing complexity makes things more difficult to make sense of - but that seems rather self-evident...
@@esletner agreed
I love the irony of an experiment showing the negative social impacts of casting doubt on free will which also undermines free will.
Those students didn't choose what text to read and the results of the experiment suggest their moral judgements were affected by something they don't control!
Thanks for pointing that out. Your point reminds me of Socrate's Cave and Plato's myths. Some concepts are unfounded in fact but useful in society.
In the end, I like that uncertainty principle. Free will and determinism both look like myths under scrutiny. Even when they seem to apply, there's room for uncertainty.
Uncertainty seems helpful. It helps to reflect compassionately on our pasts and see each other with humility. Putting all three together, it helps to recognize that we need to plan based on data and account for limits in our perception.
Yeah, that should be profoundly embarrassing for Dennett. Also, I loathe the appeal to consequences fallacy. "If what *you* believe were true, you'd be worse off."
Ok, Humanity has used stories to influence society. Do we accept all stories as truth? If one did not question or think out of the box things would remain the same. Is not questioning free will.? If society takes away the right to question what happens to the biological human? The idea that life is predetermined or discoveries are bound to happen at a certain time due to a gravitational or electromagnetic wave weather does not take into account wormholes where electrons join another galaxy as their geometrical time had come. The question is can we make our time on earth where we have the ability to talk, relate, can we believe in each other enough to make our planet our moral compas?
On another note if there is always a space in between things could that be free will?
Well then by that logic every single psychology experiment would be wrong because all the subjects are being subjected to something they don’t control.
In that study, there are also other groups of people who aren't even mentioned. The three main groups are all the people who were asked to join but chose not to participate, those who had agreed to participate but could not, and those who weren't asked at all. Out of those three groups, the group of people who decided not to join used their free will to not participate. In other words, both you and I indirectly participated in that study. Just because we were not aware of it until now, does not mean your will was tested. In fact, the study is still ongoing even though it was closed and concluded, as all of us has a choice to take the test or even duplicate it ourselves and present it to others. There are many other alternative choices to make. Another one is to ignore everything I just said and pretend that I did not write this of my own free will. I can even delete everything I just wrote and keep my thoughts to myself. But if I don't post them here, then you, the reader, might never realize that you are always tested, and that you always have a choice, constantly. Whether you are aware of it or not is not impaired by your willingness to act upon your own thoughts or not.
After learning about this a few years ago from Sapolsky's books and subsequent lectures, I discovered that, while we do seemingly lack free will, we are still able to guide our lives in subtle ways through what I've thought of us 'micro adjustments' to our environment. Things that start small, but build a recursive cycle of momentum towards a particular direction. They can be beneficial or detrimental, the key is that once you learn about this information, not simply saying, I have no choice, but drawing upon your experience and information, allow it to motivate you to grow. Healthily.
Odd that they gave Dennett so much more time than the others.
His thought experiments are based on belief. Why couldn't his subject have done good things instead of criminal acts? The reason Dennett is oppose to the idea our will is not our own is based in fear. He's afraid that if we believe we are not responsible for our actions that we'll all go out and murder and steal and thieve and be bad people. I disagree. I think free will is a myth and this realization causes me to do none of those things.
Except Dennett cited a study (that had been replicated in several different ways), that basically proved a lapse in responsibility when the belief that free will is non-existent is established. How is your assumption that every choice is predetermined by causes beyond our control not simply a belief? Has anyone demonstrated this empirically? (Seriously, if you know of any studies that have been done that establish this beyond mere assumption, please do share.) There really needs to be documented observation of the train of independent causal factors that lead to one decision, then another, then another, etc. before the denial of free-will can be so confidently disseminated.
@@nerosuperstardom Where has free will been proved to exist? It's more of a philosophical question still, and the arguments for free will being an illusion make more sense to me. Maybe arguments for free will make more sense to you. However neither are proven facts.
Our perception of experience is not equivelent to reality. Making choices feels free, but we dont have infinite choice. We are constrained by biology, society, and uncountable other factors. Its interesting to consider because our world could be more just if we examined how modifying constraints affected behaviour. Whether or not we have complete free will, we have choices, and the illusion of free will. Our morals exist for reasons, and the fact that we have not come to them in a vaccuum doesn't mean we abandon them. Its similar to arguments against atheism. If there is no God, whats to stop people murdering and stealing and becoming 'evil'? Not all atheists are horrible people. We dont require a God, without, or within, to stop us from behaving anti socially.
If you want to know why there's no such thing as free will just look up the definition of free and independently of Will and then look up the definition of Will and put the two definitions together and don't look up the definition of what free will actually it is because if you look up the definitions independently you get something totally different... there is no free will everything you do here just leads to more suffering it doesn't matter your goals on this planet all of your actions lead to a doubling of potentiality Y branches. There was a study done on people who are on their deathbed they are in a sealed chamber at the moment of their death 20 something grams of mass leaves their body... this consistently happens with every single human this is the soul this given to us by the creator of creators to protect us from our own creation so we can control physical time and move through time and space without the confinement of time and space this keeps us protected from our own invention allowing us to soul transfer. There is no objective reality in the third dimension in order to have objective reality you need to Observer to exist from the very beginning of time all the way to the end of time and even if such hypothetical Observer exists the end of time has not came yet so therefore objective reality does not exist and only subjective reality because everything is constantly changing and undefinable and there are no Baseline anything all of the Higgs bosons all of the fundamental particles are not fundamental at all they are constantly changing. Reality is completely subjective. All humans share the same water of Earth use your tears and manifest selfless thoughts into those tears and All Humans will share those tears and those thoughts in the future when you are cycled out of existence. All that exists is Destiny you have a limited amount of choices that you can choose you cannot choose to take off and fly around the earth with Superman powers and change everything it's not possible it is not a choice that you can make... you have limited predetermined choices that you can make. Technically everything is possible but playing the odds logically almost nothing is possible except for our day-to-day activities. It is all an illusion of choice there is nothing but Destiny and what is meant to be. You are not smart and you have no control embrace the reality of the situation.....
This is a good video in terms of the topic in general, but I believe a video like this should include Sam Harris. He wrote an entire book on this!
Exactly, and I think the merely - and completely misplaced in *any* scientific discussion - mechanical bachelor Bill Nye should give up his spot to allow for Sam Harris to give some real interesting opinions on this matter
And, Yuval Noah Hariri. He wrote one too.
But Sam added nothing to the discussion. Just because he wrote a book he is still ignorant of the topic.
lmao
Bring in sadhguru too
Daniel Denet is wrong on this one.
People post rationalize. Should have asked Sam Harris.
Thankfully Sapolsky was there 🥰
He isn't even arguing that free will is real, just that in the wrong environment saying that it is an illusion can be a dangerous idea to introduce. It sort of proves the point that external factors influence people in a way that they do not have control over. At a minimum this shows that there can be a reduction in free will.
To me, what people like Kaku and Dennett are doing is proving the argument of NOT having control even more 🙂 If any type of belief, a story, a lie, a joke you didn't understand, a text you just read or whatever also influences the outcome of your behaviour, even when it's bad like not controlling some bad or criminal impulses, then again you were not 'free' to choose any other option. Being free is actually having two or more options to choose from in reality. And then there is also the question of where the impuls to do a bad or immoral thing came from in the first place. As if an impuls to do harm also just came falling out of the sky. That also has a history, a biology etc to it; So all it does to me is add more or different influences that determine again a certain specific outcome. And it's not because we can't compute or map out all the factors involved because of complexity, that the factors aren't there and determining only one possible outcome and not several. Not even the uncertainty principle does that. Why would a moment of uncertainty or 'dice-rolling' prove that in the end the result was one of more possible outcomes. Our ability to foresee or imagine different possible outcomes, both good or bad ones, is an important one and should be shaped, moulded, trained, inspired etc. as much as possible (by education, culture etc.) and this, along with some external deterrents like punishable actions, can determine and influence better moral outcomes. The fact that every real time action or decision was only one real possible outcome doesn't excuse or negate the need for influence, for creating the right kinds of culture, justice system, moral education etc. But I agree with many that we should look way more in the possibility (even probability) that whenever an action has occurred, no other possible action was possible and that could change so many views on hatred, vengeance, shame, guilt etc. It would also help to understand, not the same as excuse, more and make us choose more suiting solutions, justice or treatments for harmful behaviour. Is it moral to give someone who murdered someone a punishment only based on trying to scare others in doing the same? Only to satisfy some need for vengeance? Shouldn't we look more into all the possible factors that led to the murder that might have been out of the control, alongside with determining the best way possible how much of a threat the person would still be for others and society? Some people may have to stay in jail for the rest of their lives just because they are incurable psychopaths. But so many others were just dealt a bad hand and it is too superficial and quick to just attribute it all to simple bad but free decision making and full responsibility. Dennett calls it dangerous, putting it out there there might not be an actual freedom of the will, but isn't it even more dangerous if that were true and we keep ignoring or denying it?
The difference between atomistic thinking and holistic thinking is that the former suffers from singling out specific topic while the latter is the way of incorporating multiple subjects simultaneously
@MorningStarKnowledge it's pretty amazing coming from him when you think about it.
a long rant no one will read.
@@larrycarter3765 Haha, possible but my will wasn't free ;-)
@@larrycarter3765 it's actually a very good argument you should have read
Dropping free will just means shifting your responsibility from making 'right' choices, to learning from them.
You obviously don't get the first thing about this issue...what they say is that nothing ever matters anymore. At all. Completely nihilistic point of. I have no idea who in their right mind would subscribe to this in the absence of any evidence.
@@slapmeisterrecords8226 if your goal is to communicate with people then I’d suggest you drop the bravado and condescension from your responses.
Realizing that “free will” is an illusion does nothing to ones sense of meaning. Nihilism doesn’t follow.
Finally, everything we know about the natural world is consistent with causal relationships. Assuming the human psyche is somehow exempt from causality is clearly the less parsimonious position.
So the only thing "free" we have, is the learning from the outcome of our pre-determinism 🤔.......but if you're not free to answer that, how do you even believe what you're saying is even remotely correct 🤔
@@Dialogos1989 don’t you think through changing causes now, we can change the effects later down the road in the future? Culture and nurture affect the human psyche, and people can change their culture and/or reactions to it
@@cat3584 the point is that you cannot violate causality. Anything that appears in the mind is the result of prior unconscious processes.
Here I am, watching Daniel Dennett talk about OCD, and I simply cannot stop staring at that one hair on his moustache...
Me, with ocd, wondering about free will and getting scared of not having it.
@@harshpherwani6590
Don't worry, you have autonomy. It's limited within some boundaries but you can decide.
Michio kaku... How can that man always disappoint me
I'm turned off by him to the point that if I see his name somewhere, I assume the conversation will be empty or substance and only sciency wazzy-woozzy fictiony word salad
@@giomjava and I'm really disappointed by Dennis's idea in here..... Did not expect that. This is maybe the only point I strongly disagree with him.
Highly recommend Sapolsky's books, Behave and Determined, for those who want to take a deeper dive into this subject. But be warned, it will shrink your ego and may make it impossible to really hate another human again. Highly recommend!
Absolutely! The man is light years ahead and your mention of “ego” is key to understanding why the world is in the predicament it finds its self in. The belief in free will is what keeps the farm running.
I’m aware that I don’t have free will, but that doesn’t make me want to kick puppies. Revealing our lack of free will is not going to destroy society.
W•H•A•T•S••A••P•P•••
+•1•2•5•4•3•1•3•0•5•5•0
I•N•V•E•S•T••I•N••B•T•C••C•R•Y•P•T•O•C•U•R•R•E•N•C•Y••
2:00 problem is, the “why” of choice isn’t always the actual reason. So, we don’t always understanding why we do things, or at least, we don’t always have full cognitive access to the reasons. It’s actually possible to be genuinely surprised as to the reason’s behind our actions, and this highlights the fact that we don’t always act knowingly. But there is action, and there is the feeling of volition, but the feeling of volition doesn’t necessarily take its roots from our self insight.
I agree with this pov, that's why in some instances we need to think hard about the event and situation. We dig deep to find reasons but there is no guarantee if we find the right reason or we just make us believe it.
It would be great if we wouldn't have to find out reasons but we knew instantly as we perform actions.
"It's actually possible to be genuinely surprised as to the reasons behind our actions."
-me not knowing it was actually possible to be surprised-
_stops reading_
For me the knowledge that there's no free will was incredibly relieving. As the final speaker put it I'm less concerned with the implications of my actions now, but it's taken a positive spin. Previously I was plagued by anxiety and stress about even the most mundane things. "Oh, a piece of trash on the ground, should I pick it up? Will people think I'm weird for picking up something minor and dirty? Will the people who didn't see me pick it up think I'm weird for carrying around what's obviously trash? No one else is picking up the trash. Will they think I'm judging them if I pick it up? Oh god, I'm already walking past it, now I'll look even weirder if I stop or turn around for something I blatantly already saw! Am I a bad person for not picking it up?" Now I just pick up the trash. Done, easy, don't even have to think about it, I feel like I'm watching my meat suit moves on its own while I observe it
I simply call that paralysis by analysis. And, try not to worry about what someone else may or may not think of you. Just shine ✨
Just pick it up bruv.
Its like that for me too. Just watching my self happen.
Yes, it makes you less concerned with *implications* of your actions and more concerned with their actual *consequences* in the world.
Ie your behavior isn't subsumed by concerns about your internal states.
If you want to know why there's no such thing as free will just look up the definition of free and independently of Will and then look up the definition of Will and put the two definitions together and don't look up the definition of what free will actually it is because if you look up the definitions independently you get something totally different... there is no free will everything you do here just leads to more suffering it doesn't matter your goals on this planet all of your actions lead to a doubling of potentiality Y branches. There was a study done on people who are on their deathbed they are in a sealed chamber at the moment of their death 20 something grams of mass leaves their body... this consistently happens with every single human this is the soul this given to us by the creator of creators to protect us from our own creation so we can control physical time and move through time and space without the confinement of time and space this keeps us protected from our own invention allowing us to soul transfer. There is no objective reality in the third dimension in order to have objective reality you need to Observer to exist from the very beginning of time all the way to the end of time and even if such hypothetical Observer exists the end of time has not came yet so therefore objective reality does not exist and only subjective reality because everything is constantly changing and undefinable and there are no Baseline anything all of the Higgs bosons all of the fundamental particles are not fundamental at all they are constantly changing. Reality is completely subjective. All humans share the same water of Earth use your tears and manifest selfless thoughts into those tears and All Humans will share those tears and those thoughts in the future when you are cycled out of existence. All that exists is Destiny you have a limited amount of choices that you can choose you cannot choose to take off and fly around the earth with Superman powers and change everything it's not possible it is not a choice that you can make... you have limited predetermined choices that you can make. Technically everything is possible but playing the odds logically almost nothing is possible except for our day-to-day activities. It is all an illusion of choice there is nothing but Destiny and what is meant to be. You are not smart and you have no control embrace the reality of the situation.
You only have free will once you've made a conscious decision about what free will is.
Well, hiding from people the truth that they don't have free will, isn't that an immoral act in and of itself?
Exactly, and if people behave more badly after reading that free will doesn't exist, that doesn't prove that free will does exist. All it means is the all biologic processes, previous knowledge and experiences plus the new acquired information makes them behave that way.
Yes it is. No free will means more humility and a very different human world.
@@Someone-cd7yi Yup.
Who the hell invited Bill Nye before Sam Harris?
Smart people
anime kidz? xD
they worship Kaku as well
I honestly think that it's easier to understand *_Free Will_* from a Daoist perspective than from a Western Judeo/Christian/Muslim/Baha'i perspective because frankly the West tends to see categories almost entirely in terms of being absolutely separate and distinct (like integers), while the Eastern perspective see categories as necessarily bleeding into each other (ergo, the Daoist symbol of Ying & Yang where each extremity turns into it's opposite) much as transcendental numbers can be seen as real, yet never contained. I don't believe in _libertarian_ free will (literally free will as a Ghost in the Machine in which the machine is controlled by it's ghost,.. but the machine never constrains the ghost),.. but I don't believe in no free will at all either. The truth here, as in so many places, exists upon a continuum between total to no free will. Free will, like moral effort and courage, is a muscle that becomes stronger the more it is exercised.
Yes! Free will in your sense would be equated to ~ self-discipline/ self-control / self-mastery.
It’s something we can practice and strengthen over time.
It is a much better and much more useful definition of free will than the one we currently « have ».
@@robertog8008 Given that Chaos theory shows that the simulation of every purely deterministic process depends intimately upon the numerical precision used to simulate such processes,.. that the use of a different precision will yield wildly different results,.. and that no one knows what is the correct numerical precision to use to mimic most any complex, iterative, physical process (that there is *_ALWAYS_* an inherent indeterminacy in just what is the best precision to use; too much precision leads to error, just like too little does also),.. I believe this leaves more than enough room for the indeterminacy of free will to reside within. Add also such qualities as moral courage, virtue, and valor,.. and that over time such qualities tend to be ever more self-reinforcing,... and, yes, I believe in free will,.. abridged perhaps,.. not libertarian free will,.. not a ghost in the machine free will,.. but how about a Daoist conception of free will in which every action is formed out of all of one's past actions,.. including one's acts of moral effort and/or indifference. To a substantial extent, we are all beings of self-made souls; not entirely free,.. but not entirely unfree or predetermined either.
Why one person's will breaks in Auschwitz, while another lives to tell their story,.. may well be largely, even substantially, outside their control,.. but *_entirely_* outside their control,.. that one person had no choice but to quit, while another had no choice but to persevere,.. I don't believe it,.. and I genuinely doubt Sam Harris believes this either.
If there is no free will, what utility does consciousness have then? Ignoring for the moment the amazing qualia of the phenomenon of consciousness which would certainly seem not to be reducible to the known laws of physics,.. why would nature create such an elaborate epiphenomena if it has no purpose,.. and what purpose could consciousness have *_except_* to inform free will so that free will can make well informed choices? Put another way; having free will without consciousness is simply absurd while consciousness without free will is no better.
*_Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others._*
~ Aristotle
*_Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts._*
~ Aristotle
*_Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives -- choice, not chance, determines your destiny._*
~ Aristotle
*_Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals._*
~ Aristotle
*_First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end._*
~ Aristotle
*_Anybody can become angry -- that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way -- that is not within everybody's power and is not easy._*
~ Aristotle
*_It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels._*
~ Augustine of Hippo
*_Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual, and the most precious substance in that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in these times of the herd's rampancy. Only he knows that no task on earth is more burdensome and difficult than to maintain one's intellectual and moral independence and preserve it unsullied through a mass cataclysm. Only once he has endured the necessary doubt and despair within himself can the individual play an exemplary role in standing firm amidst the world's pandemonium._*
~ Stefan Zweig, _Montaigne_
*_An old Cherokee told his grandson, 'My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth'. The boy thought about it, and asked 'Grandfather, which wolf wins?' The old man quietly replied, 'The one you feed.'_*
~ Unknown
Whoever figures out how to impart a _will to survive_ to a machine will determine the destiny of literally everything. Check out James P. Hogan's, *_Two Faces of Tomorrow_* for an intelligible presentation of how this might happen,.. and even turn out well for all involved,.. including even the GAI.
@@davidhunt7427 very wise
@@davidhunt7427 Consciousness does have a purpose without free will. It gives animals motivation to get food , reproduce etc..
A computer could also be programmed to do that. But it wouldn't have the same drive to get things done. It wouldn't get creative when the chips are down like a conscious creature would.
@@LegendLength but if things were entirely determined, why would we need motivation? If there were no free will, regardless of whether there is motivation or not, we will either get food or we will not get food. To say that motivation has a purpose means that we have choices. Perhaps we are not entirely free, but at least somewhat free
No debate. There is no free will.
Understanding that free will is an illusion and being a bad human being are not interconnected. Whoever uses this knowledge as an excuse, has always been an awful person that needed an excuse to reveal his true self.. and that excuse is not "having no free will"! I can accept I might not have free will, but this doesn't mean I will begin harming others based on this excuse! What sick person would do such a thing?!?
Dennett, the moralizer, is just revealing himself. Logic is simple but he somehow does not see it? Yeah right. He is an ideologue who believes he protects something good by spewing all these stories and obfuscating.
there is some people who confuse determinism ("every thing has a causation") and fatalism ("there is destiny and i can't change it"), those who confuse determinism by thinking it's the same as fatalism tend to cheat when they learn they have no free will, a studies with student show this correlation (wich is funny because the studie kind of prove the absence of free will itself since it's exactly what we expect as behavior from someone who believe in fatalism), however if you make the distinction clear that determinism isn't fatalism then you avoid this trap
@@sampajam6256 Yeah, there is value in that observation. But education should take care of that.
I’m disagree a small hand full of humans are more “predatory” by nature and it’s probably a genetic thing that was mostly a survival advantage pre-agriculture so like most traits it needs to be “bred” out bc it does not fit in modern society
The final example would only seem to underscore the lack of freewill... it would seem to imply the external is more in control then who we THINK we are.
I think of it this way. First, free will is about making choices, you make about 35,000 of them a day. From whether or not to press the snooze button when you wake up, which sock you put on first to when you wiggle your toes when you sit on the couch watching Netflix. But what makes you make those decisions? You think you have complete control, that you can touch your nose at any time you want. But what you decide actually depends on all kinds of factors: On the stimuli you receive through your senses, on your memories from past events and experiences and on all different types of biologic processes. From (epi)genetics, to hormones and neurotransmitters, to environmental influences like the chemicals in the air you breath and the water you drink. you think you are in control, while the outcome was determined by so many factors that's out of your control. It's really complicated and I can't really put it into words. But I hope I have been able to explain it a little bit.
To have free will is to sacrifice. As to have something wanted, the mind is computing the many possibilities to reach this goal unconsciously. Free will in this real is limited to the source that created it. For IT' has chosen the path of least resistance to reach its desire. I do believe our creator although limitless and in an infinite time frame is also limited to the environment it lies on.
I agree with your analysis. As long as your brain has several options you have a certain choice which is then probabilistic and not fully determined. And as long as you are consciously training your brain into a certain direction of outcome e.g. non violence, respectfulness etc. you can form your character. This needs a certain input from outside (teacher, coach, crisis etc.). So in summary: yes, there is no free will. But you can model your will in a certain way.
@@jurgenkosider1584 you can’t model your way..bc the environment and experiences react with genetics to then be expressed ..
So what I’m saying is the valid conclusion you came up was destined to happen 🤯
You explained it very well.
Dennet is more concerned with keeping an illusion of free will because he thinks its harmful not to have one than the actual truth of the matter.
We have the freedom to what we want, but we don't have the freedom to want what we want.
The concept of free will is complicated. On the one hand, we have the ability to make choices, but there are so many factors in play that dictate the choices we make and that's what makes it complicated. The way people were treated or raised as children, the circumstances we grew up in, the knowledge we had access to and the society we grew up in all instill certain ideas, thoughts and moral codes in us and for the most part, those control how we act and what we do.
In reality its very simple and obvious but a huge obstacle for our habitual egoistic way of thinking. That way of thinking is partly natural and further reinforced by cultural values we are exposed to.
Powerful people and groups do not like the idea of no free will because it means that its all 100% luck and necessitates radically different organization and functioning of society.
Through self examination do you think we can understand and maybe overcome those factors not in our control?
@@MarkoKraguljac why do you think it is partly natural?
Bach is the smartest person I've ever heard. Is interview with lex Fredman blew my mind
Here it was quite awkwardly clipped or it seems so to me. Beside Sapolsky only fascinating guy in this clip.
I feel this way about Sam Harris, who should have been invited to contribute to this video imo. ill check out that podcast
@@biggieb8900 Well Daniel does share Sam’s ideas before discarding them if that makes you feel any better. 🤷♂️
It's not that free will doesn't exist, it's that it isn't defined.
Certainly some truth to that. People from different fields in an open ended format each gave different examples, microscopic, social, biochemical, etc.
Exactly. Not one of the quotes indicated which of the many notions of free will they were even talking about.
most people understand the basic concept: you could have done otherwise
@@biggieb8900
And you agree we have the ability to have acted differently?
@@biggieb8900 but how do you define 'could'? If I roll a die, it "can" be any number from 1 to 6, but did the die have free will?
That's the question. If you choose X instead of Y how do we know that your decision didn't come to your mind as a result of a random process (similar to the die rolling)?
I hate how Kaku is so ignorant on this topic. He has very little awareness of the many arguments against free will. Sapolsky is brilliant on this.
18:36 -- I disagree with the conclusion that the 'no free will' group made the worst decision. If they did better due to intelligently using the baked in cheat code for a 'fitness' advantage then arguably they are the stronger group. Arguably the other "you have free will" group performed poorer by not taking the available path due to *subjugation of conformity* and the group who were told they had no free will threw caution to the wind and broke their (programmed) chains of societal conformity that prevent them from being exceptional, unique and advancing regardless of socially programmed restrictions.
Maybe being told you have no free will is a 'cheat code' to breaking the chains of group think and clone behaviour.. a step towards a form of enlightenment or actualisation.
We need more maverick thinkers who throw caution to the wind, step outside institutionalised paradigms and think differently. If being 'red pilled' about free will is what it takes I'm all for it. Rules are there to be broken.
lol of course. for him worst decision is actually social morality based which is again produced by no the non-free will of humans. cause in the insecurity of the mind and the surroundings humans brought morality and justice in the concept of living but actually both are based on non-free will factors.
It's an extremely weak experiment, that only proves that kids can be influenced to do slightly naughty things. I mean, garner what you can about institutionalized paradigms and group think conformist behaviors. But the second actual consequences are introduced this experiment certainly fails.
It's pointless to debate free will until everyone agrees to a definition of free will for the purposes of a debate. You can't just assume there is an absolute definition of free will.
That's why it's a debate.....
@@denitrifi.gaming You mean if everyone agreed upon a definition there would be no debate?
Michio put it perfectly. The great subjective question. I am happy to be aware that free will does indeed exist!
Randomness is not freewill. Randomness may challenge determinism, but it does not give you freewill.
he mentions in his books that he thinks free will is an illusion
@Star Traveler I don't know. And why would one want to? If, as physics seems to demonstrate, every event (since the "big bang") has a prior cause, then there is no room for some sort of agency that is independent of prior causes. And if all the choices "you" make originate sub-consciously, making your "wants" out of your control (you can really want something you don't want, it happens to you), then your wants are, by definition, the product of prior causes that generated those "wants" those "choices" your "will." But there does not appear to be some "ghost" inside the biological machine that is you (the trillions of cooperating "specialized amebae," only a 10th of which have human DNA) that is able to "choose" any path it wishes. Do animals, like a bear, or a wolf, or a hornet, or a snake, etc. have "free will?" Or do they in fact operate by "instinct?" Stimuli and response. Sure, they make "choices" to attack or run. But aren't those choices made based on their genetic predisposition and their prior experiences, in fact, ALL of their prior causes? Could they have done something other than what their instinct (their prior causes) led them to do? If not, then there was no actual choice. They just did what their prior causes led them to do. How are humans any different? We simply do what our prior causes lead us to do. The decision is really made subconsciously and it percolates to our conscious action. And then we tell a story about why we did it. But in reality, we could not make any other choice. Choice is an illusion. So what is there to measure? How would one measure the lack of something, anyway? I hope this helps. May your prior causes lead to good things! Peace! ;-)
@Star Traveler In answer to your question, "Do you really find it plausible that his choice of Boston was predetermined by his predisposition, given all of the randomness involved in his selection process, and all of the possible choices he had to evaluate?" ABSOLUTELY. What else are you proposing influenced his choice than the prior causes that made him who he was in the moment he committed to Boston. In *this* Universe, he could not do otherwise, because every subatomic particle collision on the fractal branch of matter and energy that led to this person's state impacted what decision would percolate into his actions. If there is something additional, then the burden of proof is on you to propose a hypothesis of something outside of materialism.
Regarding your claim that it is untestable, Google the Libit Experiment. It has been repeated many times and results in being able to predict what a person is going to do before they even know what they will "choose" to do. Consider that primitive AI technology is being employed right now on services like Pandora or Spotify to accurately predict what songs you will prefer. Imagine where that tech will be in a century from now. Certainly it will have the potential to predict not only the city a person will choose, but many other behavioral outcomes as well. And how is it able to do this? By applying a predictive algorithm to the previous events.
Whether you agree or not, I thank you for the conversation. Peace!
@Star Traveler A man can do what he wants, but he cannot choose his wants. The man can choose Boston, but he could not do otherwise because he cannot control what he wants. That has been determined by his prior causes. It *feel* to him as if he can choose any city he likes or even decide to postpone moving. However, all of these machinations are reactions to what is occurring subconsciously. He has no control over what has happened to him and the neurons that will fire and recall pros and cons about each option and lead to his eventual actions. You can say these influences are random (and they are, in the sense that we lack the sensory and computing tools and power predict which will occur and what influence they will have), but randomness does not create libertarian free will. The man is either subject to random influences that result in his choice, or mathematically precise particle collisions that have cascaded over billions of years resulting in his choice or a combination of the two, but there does not appear to be any agency that is able to function outside of these influences and override them and make a different selection than that which random and/or deterministic events point to. If you think differently, make your case!
Listen. No one is going to believe this but this is the absolute and total truth. Love is free, fear is bondage.
Free will or no free will. Can we just finally accept the fact that there are things we'll never know for sure. That's the point of self-actualization. Hello from Russia!
Nope, can't accept that. The things we don't yet understand are exactly the things we should be putting effort into exploring.
@@uninspired3583 exactly. Thats what science is about. Trying to umderstand the not understood. Leave the accepting things without understanding to religions
If we took that dismissive attitude science would never have made many of the discoveries we benefit from today.
We don’t have free will...
Our actions and choices are made by the past experiences we had, memories.
As we know, of course; we don’t have control about past events. Neither we have control in what we can remember and what we cannot remember.
So thinking like this, we don’t have control about our future actions.
Actions made by present also affects future, free will exists!
@@DarkLord-mf7oi but you need to use your past to make a decision in the present, without the past you don't exist
@@DiceDecides past decisions made by present by then, !!
@@DarkLord-mf7oi but the past present decisions were made by the past present's past... hehe
@@DiceDecides hmm no matter how we argue bro, no god or no any force is controlling our will, we have our free will, but like a game of chess.. if you make a blunder then the position is bad, alot of troubles, make the best move the life should get easier..
I'm just amazed that we can have this discussion in the first place. Life is so amazing.
There is no free will, there is no argument.
It's not free will, its a response to what you're convinced of.
I love this topic, so fun to see the different perspectives of very smart people. I would probably try to reframe the discussion if I was invited to participate. Let me make choice, am I going to eat a slice of pizza or have a salad? Sounds simple enough, I'm going to weigh my options and focus on what is important to me: am I more interested in taste or function? Did I have a salad recently? Did I have pizza recently, and do I care if I did. When I ask myself, why do I like the taste of pizza better than salad, I can't really answer it. Is it a product of my taste buds and my brain structure? Is it because my parents made pizza night a special event in our house growing up. It gets muddy real quick about how I make that simple decision. At some level my like of pizza over salad is beyond my control. I did make the choice to eat the pizza in the end, but I had limited say into the data I made the decision from.
So I'm betting in the experiment where the people were more likely to cheat after reading the free will is not real excerpt was affected in a similar fashion. Hearing that information affected the decision pathways of the brain through a justification. You may have seen the exact opposite affect if the passage they read said, free will may not be real but every person can positively affect their path by exposing themselves to social acceptable behaviors such as not cheating and treating others with respect.
There was another study I heard about where they had people swear on a bible, even if they were ashiest, to not cheat on a test. Then they left the subjects in a position to easily cheat. The people that swore on the bible cheated less than those that didn't.
Manipulating the data that choices are made upon is a product of environment in cases such as these. The test subjects were not in control of the priming of the behaviors that the experiment ultimately targeted. This is more evidence of brain washing than the existence or non-existence of free will, though I can see the two being very interconnected.
All of this points to a level of uncontrolled action. Our choices are ours but our understanding of those choices are limited to the level we understand the variables and the data that we base our choice from. At best we have limited free will, I would venture to guess it is virtually none, BUT we likely have the ability to affect the data that our choices ultimately come from and thus can manipulate that data to support a desired outcome. The question then comes down to if you are a behaviorist, invoking a set of desired outcomes or an educator wanting to see where other's take newly acquired knowledge.
I'm not above taking the behaviorist approach but then someone is going to have to take ownership of that process, regulate it to ensure there is no misuse, and maintain it as new information becomes available. I feel, though difficult, success would be more realistic in educating people how their minds work and giving them the tools to set the data points of decision themselves.
If you want to know why there's no such thing as free will just look up the definition of free and independently of Will and then look up the definition of Will and put the two definitions together and don't look up the definition of what free will actually it is because if you look up the definitions independently you get something totally different... there is no free will everything you do here just leads to more suffering it doesn't matter your goals on this planet all of your actions lead to a doubling of potentiality Y branches. There was a study done on people who are on their deathbed they are in a sealed chamber at the moment of their death 20 something grams of mass leaves their body... this consistently happens with every single human this is the soul this given to us by the creator of creators to protect us from our own creation so we can control physical time and move through time and space without the confinement of time and space this keeps us protected from our own invention allowing us to soul transfer. There is no objective reality in the third dimension in order to have objective reality you need to Observer to exist from the very beginning of time all the way to the end of time and even if such hypothetical Observer exists the end of time has not came yet so therefore objective reality does not exist and only subjective reality because everything is constantly changing and undefinable and there are no Baseline anything all of the Higgs bosons all of the fundamental particles are not fundamental at all they are constantly changing. Reality is completely subjective. All humans share the same water of Earth use your tears and manifest selfless thoughts into those tears and All Humans will share those tears and those thoughts in the future when you are cycled out of existence. All that exists is Destiny you have a limited amount of choices that you can choose you cannot choose to take off and fly around the earth with Superman powers and change everything it's not possible it is not a choice that you can make... you have limited predetermined choices that you can make. Technically everything is possible but playing the odds logically almost nothing is possible except for our day-to-day activities. It is all an illusion of choice there is nothing but Destiny and what is meant to be. You are not smart and you have no control embrace the reality of the situation.
@@AquarianSoulTimeTraveler I'm not sure I track on all that and some of that sounds depressing and I'm not sure how losing some small amount of mass at death relates to free will but i hope you find something joyful to hold on to, free will or not. Good luck to you.
Very well observed and expressed your opinions about the topic with interesting examples to prove your points.👍
Grooving on Joscha's Commodore T-Shirt such an 80's throwback reference
Michio Kaku's argument is deeply flawed after 9:12, here's why: Let's grant him that he's right that there is an element of randomness in the universe, how does this at all justify free will as I can not influence or determine randomness. 'No one can determine your future events' he states. No single individual dictates the future (maybe perhaps God when he created the big bang) but every person, action, and variable put together dictates our morals, thoughts, emotions, actions, etc. Every atom in my body (+ randomness) put together is exactly who I am. We do not choose to choose what we choose. What will we do to influence our influences? More influences?
Free will requires effort. Most of us don't expend the necessary energy.
There is no free will in the choice to get that energy
Why would anyone choose to be lazy if they had free will?
@@cosmicprison9819 You answered your own question. Choosing to be lazy is a free act. It would apply to anyone who was a workaholic and choses to take a vacation.
@@stevelenores5637 But WHY would anyone make this choice? You didn't answer that question at all. Being lazy is pretty much universally seen as a bad thing, so why would anyone consciously choose it?
In a deterministic and evolutionary framework, meanwhile, it's easy to explain: Laziness is an instinct serving the evolutionary purpose of resource conservation, and that was useful for survival in most prehistoric environments, where resources were scarce.
But I have yet to hear anyone say "no, I wasn't lazy, I consciously decided to conserve my resources". ^^ Instead, people catch themselves procrastinating and still have trouble stopping that behaviour, even though they know what they should be doing instead.
@@cosmicprison9819 I think I explained extremely well. We have natural inclinations. When ever we brake bad habits to form good ones we require will. The use of will is choice. This is true even if the will is to throw off the yoke of labor if that is something we feel compelled to do. If you think doing more and more shows free will you are mistaken. That is a neurotic compulsion not free will.
Note: Critical thinking is not intuitive. It is why it is called critical thinking, it goes against intuition and examines issue in detail. Schools today automate thinking not necessarily encourage free thinking. But your chief error is equating not doing labor with laziness. You can be a hard working (a cog in the machine) and be a lazy thinker. Free will is metaphysical exercise applied to the physical world to bend it our will.
Now before you challenge what I just told you here try to answer your own questions first before seeking out others to explain every step to you. To not do so is a form mental laziness.
I don’t agree that free will exists, it’s only an illusion; we just want to believe that we are free of our choices but actually we are not because the background of the decisions we make come from the stuffs we can’t control. Remember: We can’t choose what we will feel, want and need next, and they (feelings, wants and needs) attribute our decisions and none of us can’t control them. Therefore destiny is real too.
Good point 👍🏼
Free will is Nivirna ❤❤❤ if u can reach there🧘🏽🧘🏽🧘🏽 the way that u can get really free will is the enlightenment
You mean Nirvana? From the deterministic point of view described in this video, the environment in which you received life experience determined the inevitability of your achievement of nirvana
I think "free will" is very far far from Nirvana.🙏
2:00 Well, someone might argue that being able to state the reasons for doing something is NOT a sign of free will. Also, all this resistance and even fear of "giving up" one's free will is completely unfounded, because if we possess it, it can not be extracted from us, and if we don't there's nothing to loose.
People seem to be confusing (in my understanding) choices based on knowledge/benefit and choices made by just not thinking or not taking into account everything a person comprehends at the moment. We are part of the reality of cause and effect, as much as time, reality and space are. We do have free will to a certain extent when we choose what benefits us either as a whole or individual. That in it self is freedom, because we are definitely not choosing what would be detrimental to us by not thinking and being strapped to an uncontrollable choice. Just like some people choose to benefit humanity instead of themselves, or vice-versa. So in that sense we have the freedom to think and then to choose, but obviously under the circumstances of our current knowledge and/or biology (hormones, etc.).
Now our freedom will always be limited or bend, to an extent, to the reality that is cause and effect. I would say a balance between yes and no, depending on the uncontrollable circumstances (biological, material and situational) and the controllable abilities we each have or create. Remember that we also must take into account our natural biological system of learning and development. Much as Kaku and Denett explained, there is a certain degree of randomness and absolute calculation.
It would be nice to have an absolute answer as "yes or no", but you would still be making that answer hindered by your current state of development, knowledge, bias and by the natural law of reality that made and sustains reality in the first place.
I like your response. The ironic thing is, some of our first programming languages were “Basic”, which ran on the “If - Then” set of principles. This lasted until we understood that a computer was capable of so much more, but still within the confines of powerful programming.
@@thorenshammer exactly, the unending cycle of learning
@@thorenshammer
If-then and sth like GOTO is already computationally complete. Basic is also computationally complete. There is nothing more you could even in principle want.
It is one thing to realise that we don't have free will, but it is another thing entirely to realise that our lack of free will is the ultimate pearl of wisdom. When one realises there is no free will then judgement of others becomes foolish, and the same goes for feelings of resentment and regret. We really are the same as everything else in the universe. However this is no easy way out for feelings of great loss or envy, but it still helps to know that we are subjects in this difficult struggle that is life.
Spot on. Great comment.
What is irresponsible, is to affirm that without free will we are doomed to be morally incompetent.
Okay,.. I'll bite,.. just how is it true that *_What is irresponsible, is to affirm that without free will we are doomed to be morally incompetent?_* I believe I know what you are going to say,.. but I'm still interested. Besides,.. what's a RUclips comment thread without some respectful discussion and disagreement. I am a fairly hard-core, 90% Anarcho-Capitalist Libertarian, so I have some heavy stakes in asking this question.
@@davidhunt7427 I'm not the author of the comment but I think he meant that we aren't necessarily, or even likely to be morally incompetent if in fact there's no free will and even if we subscribe to such a belief. I can only speak for myself, but through a study of this topic I came to my current view of free will being an illusion and it actually made me more understanding and empathetic of other people.
Arguments such as the ones that Dennett makes are made by people who are scared of stripping the social construct of belief in free will. You could compare it to people saying that without religion and holy books people would be raping and killing each other in the streets. Guess how that turned out.
@@Casevil669 I would prefer to say that rather than free will being an illusion (which to me suggests willful fraud or misrepresentation, such as a magic trick), it's a construct made by our minds/brains and is no more false than pain, pleasure, lust, boredom,... or any other mental state we may be in. I am very impressed by the phenomenon of multiple personality disorder in which one brain would seem to contain two or more distinct personalities,.. usually as a result of overwhelming trauma that provokes the brain to adapt by breaking the mind apart and trying to hide the worse abuse somewhere where it doesn't have to destroy all that it would otherwise influence. This definitely tells me that,.. yes the mind is an construct,.. but saying therefore it's merely an illusion seems too much.
_I came to my current view of free will being an illusion and it actually made me more understanding and empathetic of other people._ I hear the same thing from Sam Harris,.. and this one really leaves me perplexed (but hey,.. I am autistic,.. which has lead me to suffer all sorts of blind spots that others don't seem to suffer from). To me, if people don't have free will,.. then there can be no moral responsibility, period. An automata, such as a computer, can not be held morally responsible for it's actions. But people are so much more than mere automata. While I don't believe in _Libertarian_ free will (as in there being a Ghost in the Machine where the Ghost runs the Machine unencumbered by the Machine), I don't believe that moral effort, much less moral courage, don't exist either. As a Daoist this seems fairly simple to me that Humanity is an impure mixture of what we are given by our genetics, environment, family,.. but most of all, what _we_ choose to do with all of this. The more we exercise moral strength, like any muscle in the body, the stronger our moral resilience becomes. However we start out,.. over our lifetimes we become more and more the authors of our own souls. We are never entirely free,.. but neither are we entirely a mere victim/product of our circumstances.
Sam Harris accepts that consciousness can not be denied,.. but then proceeds to deny free will,.. because while both would seem to violate the laws of physics as we presently understand them,.. consciousness is the first undeniable primary fact of our existence *_from which every other aspect of our lives comes from,_* but, apparently, not so with free will?!?! Okay,.. how could free will happen in a deterministic/indeterministic (take your pick) universe? Well,.. look at Chaos theory,.. which teaches (at least to me) that sufficiently complex systems, even if provable deterministic,.. will yield wildly varying results,.. all determined by the numerical precision being used in the computer algorithms. Now,.. I ask you,.. what is the _correct_ numerical precision to use when simulating weather patterns, chemical reactions,.. or neurophysiology? Do even known biological processes yield themselves to purely deterministic processes, always yielding the same result each time an experiment is repeated? If Chaos theory shows that indeterminism, in knowing what is the correct numerical precision to use, is always present,.. then I think, given the amount that whoever we are as adults is the result of a lifetime of effort,.. I think there is more than enough room for an adequate free will to accommodate moral choice & responsibility.
Just out of curiosity,.. how do you believe Physics will eventually accommodate and explain consciousness? Why have consciousness at all if there is no free will,.. i.e., no ability to choose differently from what we in the end choose in fact and in deed?
*_Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others._*
~ Aristotle
*_Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts._*
~ Aristotle
*_Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals._*
~ Aristotle
*_First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end._*
~ Aristotle
*_Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives -- choice, not chance, determines your destiny._*
~ Aristotle
*_Anybody can become angry -- that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way -- that is not within everybody's power and is not easy._*
~ Aristotle
*_It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels._*
~ Augustine of Hippo
*_Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual, and the most precious substance in that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in these times of the herd's rampancy. Only he knows that no task on earth is more burdensome and difficult than to maintain one's intellectual and moral independence and preserve it unsullied through a mass cataclysm. Only once he has endured the necessary doubt and despair within himself can the individual play an exemplary role in standing firm amidst the world's pandemonium._*
~ Stefan Zweig, _Montaigne_
@@davidhunt7427 I do agree that free will is a construct of our mind, I just don't care that much for nomenclature to consider 'free will as an illusion' being a bad way to put it, but I get what you mean. It's beneficient to perceive oneself as an agent in the world, judge its actions, and reason about them. You can easily observe this when watching children develop - in the early stages there's no such concept as I or clear perception of being an agent, free will, and other associated constructs are modeled after we spend some time in the world.
I'm not sure how familiar are you with Sam's point of view on this topic, but I can tell you that he doesn't dismiss free will merely because it defies laws of physics (I'm not sure that it does really). It's the fact that the consciousness is prior to everything. When you do mindfulness meditation a lot you begin to realize that all you perceive (inputs) happens on its own. You don't make your ears and brain make sense of sounds. You don't force your eyes to send signals to your brain and make a comprehensive sense of what the electrical inputs really are outside your skull. The same goes for thoughts, they just appear in and out of consciousness. All of these make us who we are, upon which we construct the I. There's no space for free will, because all outputs are generated based on inputs, which are obviously happening on their own.
I would distinguish between claiming that there's no free will and the world being deterministic. I don't think one necessarily follows the other. For all I can say from my own meditation experiences, except for sensual perceptions, thought patterns seem very random. One moment I can be thinking of a nice evening with my wife and at the very next second death of my father pops up, up next we have a thought about what's for dinner tomorrow.
To the point of leaving you perplexed - again, only describing my own experience, but when I came to a conclusion that there's no free will, I got rid of the mentality of blaming others for their actions. Of course, the thoughts can still occur, as it's hard to get rid of almost three decades of mental constructs, but I don't immediately jump a gun, as people often do (I did too). Hope that clears it up a bit, as I was confused too before experiencing this myself.
As for physics explaining consciousness, I'm not sure that we will necessarily come to definite conclusions, but my bet would be that we will first create something that at least resembles a conscious agent in a form of AGI, and only then maybe start to dig deeper into understanding the phenomenon.
The last speaker impressed me the most.