I think we're free to comment on things, or rather, to have opinions about things. but the actions are determined based on our comments. we think that free will fails when our comment isn't realized, but that doesn't mean that we can still keep the comment on things despite the impossibility to achieve. basically, if I think that flying is good for me, that's all I'm free to do. failing to fly doesn't mean that I am not free to keep thinking that I can fly. perhaps in the end, I'd end up creating the airplane, so we would attribute the invention to my freedom, yet the invention is on the side of action and stems from my comment on flying.
Anyway. I agree! It's a very beautiful way to connect with people. You can see how excited they got answering a question. I want to get into STEM because of this sort of atmosphere
@@sarahchoi2657His response at 4:35 is way worse than saying let's have a debate. It's 2 v 1 to begin with, he didn't have to question his usefulness to the conversation for "comparing notes".
Charles Liu was my professor in 2015. One of the very few that left a lasting impression on me. It's good to see his enthusiasm has remained unchanged.
chaos is just our inability to understand/interpret the order in things. it doesnt mean its true randomness, the things are still happening predispositionally
And just to think that, under different life circumstances, you might have clicked on a playlist of cute kitten videos to happily binge watch for the entire day. Curse this blasted lack of free will!
@@mikel5582 I think the cat videos were destined to happen. As now based on your response I feel compelled to go watch some. ...what a cute kitty named Jocasta.
But uncertainty doesn't have anything to do with free will. Things or situations can be as chaotic and random as they'd like, but that doesn't choose that. Your response to that thing is predicated off of everything that's ever happened before that and you didn't get to pick that. And even if at some points you did make a choice, you didn't get to choose that you would prefer to make that choice. That preference was already predicated on everything that you've experienced in your own psychological makeup
@@consciousfreshness7677 but you are still sentient throughout the process or part of it anyway, so even if just subjective, there is still some "will" involved. how could any sentient being not exert any free will, just as how can any physical object not exert any gravitational attraction? it would be a metaphysical absurdity. i guess if you were just a mechanism in the universe going on a predetermined course, then yes objectively you would have no control over the outcome. but what if you were part of or even one with the entire universe? then whatever you "will" will happen...
@@OlJackBurtonyou misunderstand. Probabalism and determinism exclude free will. Unless you think consciousness exists on another dimensional plane, under these circumstances, you don’t have free will.
@@consciousfreshness7677 Real question because I don't understand this view. If everything comes from before how does that work with a baby's actions when they are first born?
@@consciousfreshness7677this is insane levels of denial. Murderers didn’t get to choose that they would prefer making the choice of killing someone?? Choices are not predicated, and there are a myriad of potential outcomes that each choice can have. The idea that our choices are not our own is a coping mechanism for those unable to control themselves. The “peace of acceptance” is the very thing that causes their downfall.
@@HoD999xmy feelings as well. The problem is that it can be a very heavy topic, where being in a setting like this would leave the topic less productive.
Omg!! I clicked on this video because I swore I'd seen this man before, and then I realized Charles Liu was my college professor two semesters ago! I was going through a really tough time, I wasn't living at home and didn't really have a settled place to stay, and a few months later my mom got diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. When I told him that I needed extra time to finish out the semester he told me it's not about the deadlines. It's about whether or not I learned anything from him; the speed at which I learned it or the date I learned it by was meaningless because we are always learning. I want to be a teacher one day. He said I'm sure as a future educator you will care more about your students making meaning of your class then stressing over it. He wished me all the best, and I got him a gift to show my appreciation, but I never made it back to the campus in person full time, so I still have it sitting in my room. This reminds me that when I finally go back to school full time this year, I need to make my way over there, so I can finally give it to him!
@NelsonLovell that's actuslly not necessarily true, Terrence Howard sent him 36 pages on an idea he had that would revolutionize mathematics and Neil did what he would do with any of his other peers. He gave him an honest peer review with many notes stating where he was wrong and where he should build more a foundation. He wasn't condescending at all. And that's towards an actor not a scientist
7:43 hit. I love how Tyson tied the lack of free will to a need for more compassion. "The more I add up and explore the human condition, I'm forced to conclude ... that we are all products of an absence of free will and as a result, society needs more compassion for those that do not fit in."
While its a nice sentiment, his arguments for free will not being absolute don't really extend to free will not existing at all. He uses examples in which there is a lack, but you cannot cover every example just by using examples
@@GetMeintocollege yeah but most of the world is in lack, and suffering. It is easy for us in the developed world to say we have free will when we can choose 60 different flavors of ice cream. It's not so easy when you're in a country or situation where you have to choose between starving or selling your body. And when the only other option is death, if you still argue for free will, you must admit that the scope of that free will is extremely limited.
@@darkmystic9 1. You don't know where I live. 2. Again, just because there are things which are impossible, doesn't mean that you can't control anything
@@GetMeintocollege I don't need to know where you live. Your username, access to youtube, and competence of the English language tells me you are connected to a grid and living comfortably enough to have time to debate on Startalk videos. Control is based on perception, and if perception is already pre-programmed, you can see where Neil is coming from.
@@darkmystic9 You also didn't respond to my criticism in any of your responses, although I'm sure "darkmystic9" is an intellectual of the highest order and I'm too out of touch to understand common sense right?
My personal opinion….Charles Liu has a very beautiful and sophisticated perspective that speaks to the connection that we all have with each other. That connection is thrown around a lot but is actually a very deep and meaningful truth.
I agree. And I thought the main point of his premise wasn't clearly identified in the discussion and it can be stated in one word - intelligence. He's basically saying that intelligence is the mechanism that exercises and demonstrates the existence of free will. And I don't say this lightly. I tend to lean toward the idea that we do not have free will. So taking his intelligence premise in to consideration is very interesting.
Chuck really became part of the conversation tbh, instead of in the early days just being comic relief. He actually adds useful perspectives and engages with the matter that is a unique but contributing perspective.
Chuck has come a long way. He still adds comedy here and there and it's the perfect amount. The ONLY cringe part is when they bring up politics, but they rarely do that
@@otaldobet That's just a nasty thing to say. If you don't like the show, nobody's forcing you to watch. Plenty people don't mind the light entertaining aspect of Star Talk. There are plenty other channels on YT if you prefer plain old boring. The entertaining factor is attracting people who would otherwise probably not even watch anything science minded. If you care anything about it, you should just appreciate that more and more people are getting educated in areas they would otherwise not have a clue about and just go on your own merry way.
@@jakke1975 imagine if all talk shows let their side kick chime in whenever they wanted. The guy in the middle is a hindrance on this clip whether you like it or not.
Stellar work! My life has been a pursuit of new information. I have been working to unlearn the conditioning of my mind. So much of my life was decided at birth: political party, religion, cultural identity/customs, dialect, and even emotional intelligence. Despite that, it has been my desire to exercise free will and learn new things by traveling, reading, and crossing cultural lines to gain new perspectives. This journey is in perpetuity but most rewarding as the more I learn the more I unlearn. Along this path I have lived many lives. The man I was when I started is not the man I am today…nor the man I will be. Who i am is but the sum of my experiences and I continue to seek more experience. I do believe free will is accessible but not required. Yet ironically I do feel that simulations (religions, politics, gangs, cultures, factions, sports) are required for the masses to coexist. Only a few will pursue freewill due to burden it brings. It is far easier to cooperate. Peace
There really seemed to be a "negative things show no freewill" and "positive things show freewill" assumption. Charles repeatedly would say there was free will to help someone but never seemed to consider the possibility that people who "choose" to help someone had no more ability to make that decision than the person on the other side of the example.
yes, even I felt that he assumed if someone has a positive thought that contradicts their negative actions, it is an example of free will, which is clearly an incorrect way to think about this whole concept
Totally agree. Compassion and selfishness can both easily be caused through genetic predisposition and reinforced environmental and sociological conditions. Cooperation is a successful survival strategy for evolution. Obviously, everyone would Like to think they have free will. Take a look at the concepts of Egodeath and the Frozen Time Block theories of determinism. Above all, apply critical thinking and work things through in your own mind rather than parroting "experts"
The nature of will is positive. It’s a force, that’s why it’s called will power. If you chose to remain still, that’s a choice and you are exercising free will, but not in any demonstrable way. You not moving is indistinguishable from you not having the free will to move. Hence, it’s pointless to discuss ‘negative’ free will.
@@pablolasha238Weren't they speaking about positive and negative in terms of morality or preference (right and wrong, good and bad)? As in trying to say that good actions were more aligned with free will whereas bad actions were deterministic. In this way you can adequately have both positive and negative expressions of free will. Of course, this is regardless of whether you believe in it as a true mechanism for behavior
@@mikeonthetube79 Uncertainty surrounds us everyday. All the measurements of planetary and celestial motion, atmospheric conditions, even the functions within our own body all have a degree of uncertainty. There is no way we can accurately measure anything EXACTLY. Edward Lorenz learned this, when simulating a weather system with a minuscule rounding error on his computer back in the 60s. This accident led to the birth of chaos theory. With it, the idea that no matter how small the difference between the initial conditions of two systems (e.g. a single flap of a butterfly's wings), given enough time, the two systems will diverge in behavior, so much so that nobody would have ever thought they once shared an almost identical state. Combine this with the notion that was brought up at the beginning of the video, the idea of 'stochastic uncertainty'. There exists a degree of randomness in the universe. Our understanding of quantum physics supports this with the discovery we can never know the position of an electron around a nucleus precisely, and are better described as "cloud-like regions of probability" with predictions for where the electron may reside. I admit that I may have brought you more questions than answers, but I do not think that we can so readily assume that free will exists or does not exist. The history of science and philosophy reveal to us that often ideas sprout with a thesis (e.g. Free will exists), which an antithesis opposes (e.g. Free will does not exist), to ultimately fuse together in a synthesis (e.g. Existence is governed by spaces of determinism and spaces of free will interacting with one another). Going back to chaos, if you haven't seen it yet, check out the visualizations of the Mandelbrot set. Beautiful stuff. The Mandelbrot set is defined by a recursive function, and for every set of initial conditions as input, the plot is color coded. Black regions denotes those initial conditions that never 'escape to infinity' during the recursion, and the colored regions denote how quickly a point reaches the escape point (an absolute value greater than 2). As you delve into deeper detail into the Mandelbrot set, a beautiful and complex fractal pattern emerges. No matter how fine the detail, you will infinitely encounter pockets of 'black' spaces (points which do not escape to infinity) and pockets of colored points (points which do escape to infinity) that consistently repeat earlier motifs in the pattern. These fractal patterns tend to feel very organic and mimic the natural world and universe in many ways, so much so that these recursive fractal equations are used in computer generated graphics that try to resemble nature. They can even describe natural dynamical processes such as population growth over time or the dynamics of the flow of fluid through a medium. While we do not have sufficient observation to understand and declare with certainty whether free will exists or not, I think the answer is likely a synthesis of the two opposing points of view. Just like in the Mandelbrot set, there infinite recursive pockets of points which do not escape to infinity and points that do with varying degrees of quickness. My hypothesis is that the nature of free will is similar, in that, there are pockets of reality and the universe in which determinism rules absolutely, while there are other areas in which the free will of conscious beings such as ourselves, can influence. I hope this sparks great thought and that you had as much fun reading that as I did writing it! Cheers :)
@mikeonthetube79 Uncertainty surrounds us everyday. All the measurements of planetary and celestial motion, atmospheric conditions, even the functions within our own body all have a degree of uncertainty. There is no way we can accurately measure anything EXACTLY. Edward Lorenz learned this, when simulating a weather system with a minuscule rounding error on his computer back in the 60s. This accident led to the birth of chaos theory. With it, the idea that no matter how small the difference between the initial conditions of two systems (e.g. a single flap of a butterfly's wings), given enough time, the two systems will diverge in behavior, so much so that nobody would have ever thought they once shared an almost identical state. Combine this with the notion that was brought up at the beginning of the video, the idea of 'stochastic uncertainty'. There exists a degree of randomness in the universe. Our understanding of quantum physics supports this with the discovery we can never know the position of an electron around a nucleus precisely, and are better described as "cloud-like regions of probability" with predictions for where the electron may reside. I admit that I may have brought you more questions than answers, but I do not think that we can so readily assume that free will exists or does not exist. The history of science and philosophy reveal to us that often ideas sprout with a thesis (e.g. Free will exists), which an antithesis opposes (e.g. Free will does not exist), to ultimately fuse together in a synthesis (e.g. Existence is governed by spaces of determinism and spaces of free will interacting with one another). Going back to chaos, if you haven't seen it yet, check out the visualizations of the Mandelbrot set. Beautiful stuff. The Mandelbrot set is defined by a recursive function, and for every set of initial conditions as input, the plot is color coded. Black regions denotes those initial conditions that never 'escape to infinity' during the recursion, and the colored regions denote how quickly a point reaches the escape point (an absolute value greater than 2). As you delve into deeper detail into the Mandelbrot set, a beautiful and complex fractal pattern emerges. No matter how fine the detail, you will infinitely encounter pockets of 'black' spaces (points which do not escape to infinity) and pockets of colored points (points which do escape to infinity) that consistently repeat earlier motifs in the pattern. These fractal patterns tend to feel very organic and mimic the natural world and universe in many ways, so much so that these recursive fractal equations are used in computer generated graphics that try to resemble nature. They can even describe natural dynamical processes such as population growth over time or the dynamics of the flow of fluid through a medium. While we do not have sufficient observation to understand and declare with certainty whether free will exists or not, I think the answer is likely a synthesis of the two opposing points of view. Just like in the Mandelbrot set, there infinite recursive pockets of points which do not escape to infinity and points that do with varying degrees of quickness. My hypothesis is that the nature of free will is similar, in that, there are pockets of reality and the universe in which determinism rules absolutely, while there are other areas in which the free will of conscious beings such as ourselves, can influence. I hope this sparks great thought and that you had as much fun reading that as I did writing it! Cheers :)
@@mikeonthetube79you don't need to have full understanding of your consequences or the situation to have free will. I can start swimming in the Pacific and not know how long I will last until I die. It's still a decision taken with freedom of will.
@@hazesummer8328 The point is why is that something you would want to do? Why did you choose that example in the first place? Why wasn’t it I could start to walk through a desert? Why specifically the Pacific Ocean, Why not the Atlantic? Why did you comment at all? It’s all causality, the brain makes the choice based on what it knows and wants and is shaped by outside causality. Not trying to change your opinion, I just disagree.
I love this discussion. I as a recovering addict feel there was a place that I had no choice to do what I was doing but at the same time I had to make the choice to get help and do better. I am now 11 years clean and like to think i chose to get clean.
I think it's probably true that we technically don't have "free will," because our choices are always the result of everything that has ever happened to, within, and around us previously. However, that set of factors ("everything that has ever happened to, within. and around us previously") is so *_unimaginably_* complex that it's impossible in practical terms to predict or unravel it with perfect accuracy, so in the world as actually experienced by humans, the illusion of free will is unlikely to ever fall apart for us.
Right. It may be impossible to predict outcomes, because of the high amount of variables, but complexity does not give rise to true randomness or free will.
It may be impossible to predict outcomes (to quote Ryan), but that doesn't mean it's not deterministic. So, I don't know how to calculate the outcome but I know the outcome could be calculated. For me, that meant being free from my sense of guilt and overwhelming responsibility. It's like it turned out in a "belief" of "not believing" in free will which made my life better.
@@RyanJesseParsons We still have free will. You are just referring to things we can't control outside our scope. It is what we have control over that is our free will.
You may be able to calculate the future in theory, but the calculation would involve the exact same complexity as playing out the sequence of events that would happen in reality. So yes, deterministic but unpredictable in advance of the events actually happening. Only retrospectively predictable.
@@akinibitoye7908 "We still have free will. You are just referring to things we can't control outside our scope." You mean like the very nature of existence, the very rules you cannot even comprehend to disobey? Because that still don't particularly look like free will to me. "It is what we have control over that is our free will." Yes, and the main argument is that we have no control over anything that has not already been a direct consequence of something outside our control. You coming to be as you are has 13 billion years of history at a minimum (if not infinitely more) preluding the very notion of control. Choose? The elementary particles building up that very thought process seem to disagree, as they've had no choice but exist as themselves with their interactions exactltly the same as they have for the 13 billion years prior of them being apart of that set of chemicals and neurons. Can't add up to 0 of you only have positive integers.
Ive for a while now believed that there is a distinct difference between free will, and will power, in that we do have will power, but we do not have free will.
@@elementalds Yes, that seems quite reasonable. Will power enables life to fight through struggles and continue to live and reproduce, thus carrying on the genes that lead to those behaviors. It's perhaps the most fundamental requirement of ecological success. Evolution can also select for the capacity to make choices with higher and higher levels of sophistication; but evolution can't endow a species with the ability to defy natural laws and suddenly have a ghost in the machine.
Watching these two (Neil and Charles, and even to a great extent this time, Chuck) discuss the differences between their opinions is like watching two enormous beings, gigantic in their intellect, awesome in the thoroughness that they thought things through, and inspiring in their articulation, pitting all of their knowledge, understandings, and skills in communication, in a titanic effort to overcome one another. Yet, in the end, they shook hands in unadulterated respect for one another, because while neither has managed to defeat their opponent, both have learned great things from the encounter.
We are all products of the environment we’ve been placed in. Because of that fact, we make choices based on our own experiences. It is not a matter of whether the behavior/actions are perceived as good or bad by the observer(s) but rather that the person made a choice to respond to certain stimuli the way they felt necessary. Everyone has free will.💯 To reference the discussion on mental illness or seizures being out of one’s control does not equate to the absence of free will. We all still have it PERIOD. Losing control of your avatar or your consciousness leaving the body at any specific point does not dismiss the fact that one still has free will, perhaps, just in other areas. If you can have free will “sometimes”, you most definitely have free will as it is not absent and non existent 💯 One’s awareness of this WILL is what is truly absent.
1 Environmental and Experiential Determinism: I get that environment and experiences play a big role in shaping us, but saying we still “make choices” as if we’re in control doesn’t really hold up. From a determinist perspective, we think we’re making choices, but in reality, those choices are just the result of things we didn’t decide-like biology, upbringing, and society. We don’t truly have the freedom to choose otherwise; our choices are just part of a long chain of causes. 2 Mental Illness and Loss of Control: Losing control over your “avatar” or consciousness doesn’t mean you lose free will. But this is exactly why determinism makes sense. When something like mental illness or trauma changes how you behave, it shows that your “will” isn’t independent. If your actions can be altered by things you can’t control, how is that free will? It’s just biology and external forces at work. 3 Partial Free Will: If free will exists “sometimes,” that’s enough to prove it’s real. But that’s not how determinists see it. Even those moments where we feel free are part of the same causal chain. They may feel free, but they’re just illusions created by factors we didn’t choose. Everything we do is influenced by prior causes-so there’s no real autonomy, even when it seems like we have it. 4 Awareness of Will: The idea that we’re just unaware of our will misses the point from a determinist perspective. Just being aware of your will doesn’t mean it’s actually free. It’s still just your brain processing decisions that were already determined by factors beyond your control. It feels like you’re in charge, but that’s just the illusion of control.
What I conclude from this debate is the best way to live life is for each individual to assume that they have free will to change things (Liu's perspective) will but also assume that nobody else does (Neil's perspective)
Wow, the conclusion they came to is eye opening. Just to translate for my own thoughts: Free will potential exists outside of the boundaries of the known, and there is always a limit/line because there is always something we don't know.
I see it that way: in all things there is a path of least resistance. When you leave a system alone, everything follows that path of least resistance. Planets orbit around the sun in a predictable manner. Now, when you purposely shoot a rocket into space to escape Earth's gravity, that's going against the path of least resistance. You disrupt the system, you exercise free will. Same thing goes in our lives. Most of the time we follow the path of least resistance, the easy way. But when you force yourself out of this path and do something difficult, you exercise free will. The system is disrupted until it finds a new equilibrium, a new path of least resistance. So there is a fight between these two forces. Sometimes the path of least resistance wins (addiction, illness etc), sometimes it can be overcome.
@@ejlahti Maybe. The Jesuits (Gods Stormtroopers) used to argue over how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. This is a little like that. What's with this freewill obsession? Too much spare time meets a sky-fairy groomed general population? I'd be somewhat curious to have a Yes-No answer from scientists on do they believe in god. Especially these social media celebrity scientists. 70% of the humans on Earth believe some fairy story or other so the conversation is at best rarified. At worst hypocritical.
For any system that appears non-deterministic, there exists a set of variables that have been overlooked. This means that, if we were to consider all variables of a system, every system could be understood as deterministic. Often, we ignore certain variables to simplify our analysis. Now, imagine a system that could be fully described by an almost infinite number of variables , this system will practically appear as non-deterministic. My point here is that our perception of free will arises from our limited ability to recognize all variables or factors involved in certain systems or situations. If hidden variables are infinite but follow underlying patterns, then perhaps our universe is far more orderly than we perceive it to be. Even infinite systems could ultimately be governed by a set of simple principles or laws-like how a fractal pattern, despite being infinitely complex, can be described by a simple recursive rule.
Yes. And the most tangible collection of variables that we can almost understand to explain a lack of free will in the setting of feeling like we have it is the totality of one’s synapse patterns, or neural patterns. If you perfectly recreated all of your brains neurons and synapses in a computer and gave it an input, it would output the same thing your brain does. All of us have a different pattern thus we give different outputs, but it’s still deterministic at the level that the decisions are made wholly based on a neural pattern. The idea that you can de novo generate a synapse firing in a way OTHER than what your neural makeup allows (i.e.: free will) is antithetical to reality. The moment you generate an output other than what your neural makeup requires you to generate, you are no longer yourself but rather a now-different still equally pre-determined entity, and the mapping was simply incorrect.
I loved this! This is what debating should be like more often: leaving the egoes at the door, listening intently and openly to what one another are saying, respecting each other, and also genuinely trying to better understand the subject at hand vs. one-upping the other person. I found the conversation very interesting and entertaining. Thanks y'all!
There’s some moments Neil Degrasse Tyson interrupted Charles Liu and Chuck Nice instead of letting them finish. And you can see Neil’s face tense up and he’s pinching his thumb.
I much prefer Charles Liu's perspective. Why tell yourself you and everyone else doesn't have free will? That just locks you down to making the most safe/comfortable choices. We as people have the potential to challenge ourselves and take risks, we just need that self-belief that we can be different
If free will doesn't exist, then the people who were going to challenge themselves and takes risks will do so anyway because they can't choose to do otherwise. In that scenario, the thing "locking people down" is not the action of telling them that free will doesn't exist... but rather that they are locked down by the absence of free will in the first place.
@@bobwilliams4895 But are those changes themselves the result of prior causes that people have no control over? What if our "choices" to change are inevitable, predetermined outcomes that come from the particular state/configuration of neurons in our brain? If you didn't choose the exact configuration/placement of every neuron and electrical signal in your brain that's making those choices... then your choices are being made by something you don't control. Our brains may be like an algorithm where given some input, it will always return the same output. But given the complexity of the algorithm, combined with the fact that the algorithm is being constantly changed in response to prior causes, it may give the illusion of choice. It would be very interesting if we could somehow take a digital snapshot of someone's brain in the moments prior to them feeling as if they made a choice... and then run a simulation where you feed the snapshot the same choices over and over again. Something like, "pick a number between 1 and 1000". My guess is that no matter how many times you run it, it will always pick the same number.
It's one of those questions I don't think can ever be proven with 100% certainty, but believing that you don't have the ability to change is is a destructive mindset, be it a preordained mindset or not. I personally like to think it's sort of a mixture of both. Genetics and environment write most of your story but you still have some ability to recondition your mind to overcome the effects of those factors. If that's the case i still feel like those two factors can still limit the expression of free will. A lot of people are more robotic and go with the weather, while others are much more individualistic in their thought. If it exists it's probably on a spectrum.
i love how this debate permiates through so many different branches of study, from philosophy, to psychology and sociology, to physics, to neuroendocrinology. my only dog in the debate is that how can we build an objective justice system on something like free will, something we can't even be sure exists. they bring it up here of moving to a more reformative form of justice, but it is hardly overtaking our current punitive system any time soon.
They seem to be saying that if you show empathy, you are exercising free will, but if you act badly, you are not. Given your genetics and environment, maybe your niceness or badness are both predetermined.
Tyson did seem to try to sway Liu away from that stance, but failed. Rather than oppose the idea outright, he began to provide opposing examples, and then he ended up not making a strong enough point. I wouldn’t say he was mollifying Liu, but he was definitely trying to keep the debate non confrontational. They discussed restorative justice as free will, but ignored the death penalty. Out of the entire discussion, the idea that just some tiny portion of what you choose is free will made the least sense to me. If we have free will, then it makes more sense that every choice is free will with options limited by our place in spacetime.
@@catgrin Thanks for your comment and accurate summary. I think they were showing some professional courtesy and respect by not being too forceful in an otherwise polarizing controversy. Let me suggest that "some tiny portion" could make sense. Looking at this as an “all or nothing” is maybe why there are such strong opinions both ways. (Is this human nature, like political opinions?) How would you even know when/if you are using your will? Recent studies indicate there seems to be subconscious brain activity taking place before you feel you are making a choice. Not sure if that is proof at this point but it might be indicative. Subconscious gets messy because you can also argue that subconscious is or is not making automated, mechanical calculations of some kind. We know we do some things habitually, including some of our thought patterns. It is natural that we would like to feel like a unified, centrally controlled director of our lives. At the same time, we see all kinds of cause/effect things going on, like billiard balls bouncing around. Maybe even some of our thought patterns are automated and mechanical. Would you make the same decision if you are exhausted or angry? So, people in different moods, emotional states, levels of impulsiveness, even using different drugs - easily make differing decisions. Is that an actual expression of will, or are they, to some extent, at the mercy of those conditions, with or without realizing it, at least some of the time? If it exists, free will would seem to have something to do with difficult and focused efforts. What about someone who is obsessive compulsive? It might come down to perception of “self” - who is the “you” making decisions. Various meditation practices ask that question. Lately I’m thinking about recent studies that show some people have an ongoing internal monolog (guilty here!) while others seem to think more visually or in other ways. I’m wondering if that impacts their perception of self and free will. Sorry about the rambling rant. I’m attempting an act of will by stopping here. At least I think so, arguably. Because as much as I like cogitating, I have some work to do. Thanks for listening!
Quick addendum - we don't really know what Consciousness is. Does it somehow spontaneously arise from the proper physical structures that somehow developed or evolved? That would seem to imply a deterministic system. How could free will just pop out of an arrangement of stuff? Or, does it come from "somewhere else", whatever that means. Maybe that a particular arrangement of stuff, our brain, acts as kind of a transmitter of something from elsewhere, somehow outside our physical system. That would be a mystical perspective. No answers, just questions.
@@JohnShramko-lv2pd Hi John - Thanks for the full answer. I didn’t think you were ranting, and I apologize that this will be long. This is one of those questions that can drop anyone willing to consider it down a rabbit hole. While also commenting on a few people’s observations, I also wrote a much longer standalone comment. I’ll repeat some of that info here, but I promise this doen’t just repeat it. I started my other long comment by explaining that I am an epileptic. Over the past 30 years I’ve had various forms of epilepsy, and have even had some interesting (?!?) responses to various anti epileptic drugs (AEDs). I’ve even been in the unique position to experience “waking” from what is effectively sleepwalking, living for days with hallucinations (toxic reaction to an AED), and then at other times having a brain that operates in an apparently totally healthy way. In my other comment, I discussed the idea that free will may only be our perception of choice while conscious (defined most simply as “internally aware of our actions”). Here’s an example I didn’t discuss previously. A few years ago, while out for a walk, I had a febrile seizure (caused by onset of fever) which caused me to fall and break my shoulder. I then walked myself home. I only recall leaving my home for the walk, and then coming to back on my own sofa with a broken shoulder and a fever. Seizures can disrupt the both ability to form and retain memories, so I honestly don’t/can’t know if I was aware of doing so when I walked home. There was no outside observer to later tell me if I was responding as though conscious at the time. On certain AEDs, I have had instances of witnessed absence seizures, so it’s possible that I walked back home (doing what I needed to do, short of getting myself to an ER) fully on autopilot. If that’s the case, it’s possible I made that choice while not conscious at all. My subconscious may have made a far more complex choice than typically recognized. Having lived with this odd perspective for many years now, I am definitely a person who believes that “free will” is an idea which exists straddling both choice and determinism. That confusion seems largely based on how you choose to limit your definition of free will. If you say “free will is our ability to make a choice from situationally limited options” then free will does seem to exist all the time and can still be bound by the flow of time. At some level, we can be aware of making some active choices, and every choice - good or bad - is still a selection between provided options. If instead you say “free will would be the option to make any active choice, but every choice is predetermined by a multitude of preexisting influencing factors and all those factors originated from one action which began this reality” then free will may effectively not exist at all. Predeterminism is not an outrageous claim, but the argument against it would be that consciousness may act apart from physics allowing us to not simply be bounced around a billiard table. I said that I couldn’t agree with Liu’s stance that free will might just be a 1% of the time thing (when we make what he considers good conscious choices) because that stance excludes conscious choice when making choices which someone else believes are “bad”. I don’t agree with his stance that free will must lead us to more considered and better choices. If we have free will at all, then that should mean we have the option to freely select “bad” as well as “good” 100% of the time. You can’t have purely free will without also having the option to choose poorly. If free will is defined as leading you toward making choices which only drive you toward a single “good” goal, then it’s no longer free will. At that point, we’re preprogammed to work toward “good” as we ourselves evolve. So, I was just suggesting that the idea of free will seems to be associated with conscious choice, and every active choice - one where you actually have options and are consciously deciding between them - can be called “an act of free will”. Then the question becomes an issue of “do we really have options at all or is our movement through spacetime fully predetermined”? We know that, on some level, we do make active choices. The boundary we can’t seem to draw is whether preexisting conditions of our place in spacetime limit those choices even more than we can understand. My stance on that issue is that I’m unconcerned by it. I’m OK with just being able to appreciate whatever conscious life I’m given. With my condition, even prior to my death, I have had precious waking hours and memories stolen from me. So, even if all I am is a conscious observer and recorder, I still really appreciate being granted that experience.
@@JohnShramko-lv2pd If you haven’t already seen it, I can recommend the October 2001 Nova episode “Secrets of the Mind”. It discusses people whose rare neuro/psych disorders are useful for better understanding brain function. One patient, Graham Young, is a man who has blindsight. He can’t consciously see. That path in his brain was damaged, but his eyes still function and a separate (evolutionarily older) path in his brain is still intact. That path allows him to still respond to stimuli which he has no conscious recognition of seeing. So he responds as though aware even though he’s not aware at a conscious level to that input. Unfortunately, we humans tend to assign consciousness to ourselves as a sign of us being separate from “lower” animals. One contributor to conscious thought is apparently a sense of self - “cogito ergo sum”. In recent decades, science has been more accepting of that ability in other animals, even in some insects. A recent study found that elephants, which live in cooperative groups, identify other individuals by name. They use certain tones in low rumbles to address one another. One conclusion being drawn as a possible evolutionary cause for conscious thought is the benefit of being able to live cooperatively in complex societies.
@@tomwozne You felt the need to argue with the original commenter and other commenters like them, even though they weren’t presenting an argument. Behavior like yours is the reason people fawn over a civil discussion.
For a lot of people, the goal of a debate is to "win" and make the other person feel like an idiot, no matter whos right or wrong. A civilized debate is meant to fill knowledge gaps from both parties, because both sides know at least a few things the other doesnt. Even if one side is completely wrong, they (hopefully) have arguments that help the other learn something. Often times however, opinions become identities and debates turn into yelling competitions, and whoever is louder "wins" despite learning absolutely nothing.
Hey, Neil. I'm Sabian, cognitive scientist. I also lean towards determinism, because based on all the research and testing that I've done, from psychology to sociology, therapy, hypnosis, physics, and more, I'm currently putting together a "Standard Model of Consciousness" (among other things) that details how information deterministically travels through the "mind" as thoughts & emotions and comes back out as behaviours, all in a predictable (if still chaotic) way, without requiring any "free will". But as with any abstract concept, it depends on how you define "free will". Is it "the ability to make independent decisions"? Then what exactly is a "decision"? Is it a thought or idea, is it an emotion (e.g. confidence in an idea), or is it a behaviour (e.g. acting upon an idea)? And what is "independent"? Is it one "person"? Then what is a "person"? Is it the entire body of a human? Is it just the brain? Or is it even just a part of the brain? Or maybe there are multiple "people" inside one brain and the "person" we observe is actually an amalgamation of them? How many neurons and firing patterns are needed to cause this lump of electric fat to finally qualify as a "person"? Is there even a line, or is it a gradient? If it is, then what does that mean? Focusing back on "free will", I think we (and I use "we" very broadly, for more than just humans) are only able to think and act based on the information we have and the situations in which we find ourselves at any moment; the idea that we are explicitly choosing what we do is an illusion, and that this illusion is only reinforced by confirmation bias; we are organic machines taking in complex inputs (senses), processing them in complex ways (thoughts), and spitting out complex outputs (behaviours), where, just like the particles of physics are interacting and combining in complex ways to form atoms, stars, galaxies, molecules, cells, and animals, we as "people" are cycling information within and between our neurons, our nervous systems, the people around us, and our environment, forming a larger and more complex "consciousness" from which greater and greater things are emerging. I'm super fascinated by all of this, so if you, Neil, or anyone, wants to chat, let me know.
Agreed, compatibilists often commit conflation and reification fallacy as well as adding an unwarranted metaphysical assumption that is absent from the body of evidence when they presuppose free-will exists. Self-reflection isn't decision making, but we fool ourselves into thinking it is based on all the evidence from neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophical logical coherence in Theory of the Mind. Our self-reflective strange loops, if that is what compatibilists are reifying as 'decision making' don't equate to free-will, even in the compatibilist sense from any logically coherent argument I have found in any of the research. Sam Harris so eloquently argued, "Our thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control.", I struggle to find anything that would be an exception to this rule.
I think we have the capacity to make choices. That being said, all choices we make seem to be bound by internal processes and external events outside of our control. Our desires, whatever they may be, are the root cause of our choices, yet it seems to be the case that we cannot "freely" choose our desires. It simply is the case that I like cheeseburgers. I cannot force myself to hate cheeseburgers and like eating chicken feet. In the words of Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills". Do you agree?
Very cool to think about. I’m no expert but isn’t quantum mechanics currently probabilistic and not deterministic. Unless you have some sort of higher dimensional mathematical framework in mind. And you said predictable, but that’s still probabilistic. Determinism is not the same thing as approximate predictability. Even if most of the time you know the outcome, there’s still a degree of uncertainty. I think that’s what Dr. Liu was refering to. And chaotic systems are unpredictable look at the n-body problem. I’d love to look at some of your work though. Where’s the best place to find it? I’m by no means an expert on any of this I just like to think about this stuff. My intuition would tell me that quantum entanglement and energy are 2 key areas in this problem. If the thought is like potential energy and the action is kinetic energy, and nature prefers to minimize the difference between these quantities over time, then maybe that can explain some sort of predictability. But adding a second brain to the equation likely makes it way more complicated which is why we humans seem to be free will machines. Because humans can affect other humans and overrule natures preference to choose that path of least action. The thought about entanglement came from an idea I had that the appeared predictable nature of the local universe is a result of all systems being entangled with each other. And unpredictable behavior or “free will” is the result of disentangled states.
@@YvngHomieRyanhow do you account for knowledge in determinism? Are you surrendering ethics because in this worldview, there is no grounding for ethics. No truth or falsehood. No good or bad. Answer that for me please. Do you believe knowledge is possible in this world?
That's what usually happens when educated people have discussions or debates. They are guided by mutual respect for each other's input and the possibility of learning from each other, instead of being driven by ego or emotions.
In English class in 9th grade we read the Fatalist. Our teacher then had us split into two groups and debate this. He left in the middle of it to do something and honestly we debated this until the bell ring and we were so engrossed that we didn’t realize he was gone at first.
I gotta say, Chuck Nice is great. Ive followed Star Talk since it was a TV show set in The Hayden Planetarium and Chuck was always there but my guy has brought so much to the podcast since then, big ups to my guy. Keep going guys
Chuck has incredible insight and skill paired with incredible discipline over his own ego, which allows him to play whatever role makes the moment successful, including the fool. Immense respect for that.
NDT becomes beligerent and impossible to talk to if you push back. He held himself back in this one but he still could not help himself interrupting all the time.
I think what I got from this discussion, is that free will is there, its whether or not an individual can obtain and utilize it. Not only if one can obtain it, but how much of it can we utilize at a given moment.
I love this conversation! I was diagnosed with epilepsy at a young age and was told I was using drugs before finally being diagnosed 3 years later, I Was the outcast and was diagnosed with a lot of these struggles yet I’ve worked on myself to get to where I am today. I had free will/power within myself even though I wasn’t showed much compassion. Healing is possible!! Our minds can become limitless! Everything happens for a reason!!
Hi! I’m also an epileptic, and I have also been misdiagnosed by more than one hospital. For safety, I now carry a note from my neurologist wrapped around my insurance i.d. cards. Congratulations on sticking with it and getting through the dark times. Life really is beautiful! 💖👍
@@blackallday the Bible’s laws are or can be considered man made to people. Free will is we have a choice to follow those laws are not. We have free will to live a life we want to live doesn’t mean it’s gonna be easy or perfect or just go the way we plan yet that’s life. It’s much bigger than free will
Herr Tyson, have you noticed how much Chuck have advanced in science department from the moment he started working with you on this channel ? That is INCREDIBLE !!!
I always liked to see the free will as a limited amount of different options to take in front of a situation, based on the limited experience of life that could be useful to resolve or survive that situation, the more experience in life regarding those situations you have, the bigger are the amounts of options you have to find an answer, but it's still limited, which makes free will somehow limited and not as absolute as many think; it was an amazing conversation to follow. Thanks
What you're describing sounds like the concept of wisdom. Free will would be the ability to take one of those choices while wisdom would be the ability to see X number of choices.
Charles Liu is kinda inspiring in a way. He wants to believe in free will-or rather, he wants to perceive that there is free will, even if, deep down, he knows there really isn’t. The way he speaks is very clear and engaging.
@@bazingacurta2567 It's not increasingly "outdated" though. Even as neuroscience and biology and astrophysics develop, things like consciousness and "free will" have not been thoroughly refuted or staunchly disproven in any meaningful way for us to say it does NOT exist. I think he shows a kind of humility in his outlook. We might be able to predict many things, but many things are unknown. Epistemically, there exists a sense of self, a unique "you". If said you exists perhaps beyond a particular line, there exists free will like Charles is saying. Maybe countless things are predetermined but there is that 1% where the agent can choose freely, even if they are influenced---influence after all doesn't necessitate 1 outcome with no other choice. Who is to say there isn't until we prove there isn't 101%? Will we ever get there? I doubt it.
Something very reassuring to me is watching Dr. Tyson getting louder and speaking quicker and interrupting a bit more when he's becoming especially passionate and energized about a debate. None of these things are necessarily the right approach to a healthy debate, but they reassure me that Neil and I are both just as human in that way.
1:22 There is a difference between "does free will exist" and "do humans have free will". The issue is that humans are bad examples to study. We understand that our cognition uses 5 senses along with fight/flight and memories. All of these things take time to process, therefore we are constantly reacting to the past. By the time we're ready to "make a decision" new information has come in to the processor. We are constantly reacting to old information, and playing catch up. Even if we were to make a "spontanious decision", it was a process to make it happen, and could not truely be spontanious - it just feels that way. Since we are constantly processing and reacting to old information, what we think of as free will isn't possible because the future has already happened. There's just an illusion of the possibility of free will, becaiuse we haven't processed the future we're currently living in - which is the now or the present.
We are stuck in our loop of understanding. Before humans have any lived experience to go off of, we are creating them as we grow up. We are laying the groundwork for our future decision-making process, which is grounded in free will.
but we can also plan for the future, which is proof of free will. like a basketball player who practices his jump shot 3000 times so that he is ready to make his shot during the game. the decision to practice and prepare is free will.
I’m no theoretical physicist, but I can’t help but wonder how useful it is to look at this question from a real life examples/“case studies” perspective rather than a physics one… How it appears to me is that, since the laws of physics are deterministic and the laws of physics are what govern the universe, there is no room there for free will to supersede these deterministic laws. Of course, the universe has inherent randomness (quantum mechanics), but that just means that events occur randomly, and again, there is no room for free will to change or drive probabilities in a certain direction. For example, I’m not quite sure I follow Professor Liu’s point at 11:52… why did this person have the free will to write the letter? In the same way he was predetermined-by his genetics and environment, which are ultimately governed by the laws of physics-to have a mental condition, those same mechanisms drove him to write a letter. Looking at it from a slightly different perspective, it was specific neural synapses that fired that led him to write the letter, and the chemical reactions behind neurons firing are purely driven by what’s most thermodynamically favourable. So how can a distinction be made here? I’d be happy to hear what people think!
I agree completely free will implies independence from causes and conditions both biologically, socially ect we all are driven to do things both positively and negatively
I feel like Neil is being misunderstood and seen more in an emotional light. I find what he has to say super refreshing and important. My mental health sometimes gives me no option and to say otherwise is naive and ignorant and to say that then because I’m aware of it I’m in control is also factually incorrect. He’s pointing out that sometimes nature and life has control and we do not and after this conversation I will 100 percent be exploring the idea that we do have no free will we just are pushed and pulled by the waves of reality and life and this experience
There are obviously major factors where free will doesn't exist. If I fall off a cliff I don't have the choice to float there. If you have a hormone disorder you don't have the choice to have a normally functioning endocrine system. If you died in the womb you simply don't exist. This is the "chaos" they are talking about. The laws of physics mixed with randomness. It's a roll of the dice and whatever happens shapes reality in certain ways. But even if we're in a simulated universe, there are still "choices" to be made. This randomness can't be predetermined or else it's not actually random. If I'm asked to pick heads or tails on a coin, I can't always choose the same thing. Was it predetermined that I ate pizza tonight for dinner? Or was there a randomness dice roll between 10 different meals? In this sense there still wouldn't be free will, but there also wouldn't be fate written in stone. Every action you take the rest of your life would have these dice rolls that change the universe on a tiny scale and change the outcome of your story. Unless every possible action and outcome of every particle that exists in the universe has been programmed, fate cannot exist. We either have free will or an illusion of making choices. Either way, these forks in the road have not been determined and our future can still be shaped.
A rolled die is entirely dependent upon the forces that act on it. If you apply Newton's laws, a die thrown in exactly the same way on exactly the same surface with identical atmospheric conditions will always roll exactly the same way. It is only functionally impossible for us to measure and recreate those exact conditions. In short: just because humans cannot predict the universe does not mean the universe is not predictable.
@@Cool-Vest Dice is just the term for RNG. You're getting pedantic for no reason. Even in a programmed universe, RNG has to exist. There are too many particles and too many variables to be controlled at every point throughout time.
@@Cool-Vest Also, being predictable isn't the same as having no free will. If everything was predictable, we'd be able to see the future before it happens. And if that were the case, in a fated universe, we couldn't change our future even if we tried. Too many paradoxes.
I think it's simple as, if pain is felt, the choice to heal, or continue the anguish, or learn to even avoid this pain is the NATURAL PROOF OF FREE WILL. THE ELEMENTAL SUBJECTION TO EFFECT OF CAUSE SHOULD NOT BE ARGUMENTIVE
My dad thought me something once, I was like maybe 12 or so; He said: remember, you are free but the thing is not completely about being free, but what you do with that freedom. I now think that we naturally by the fact we live, we are born with it. The cimscurtances of your life helped to build your free will, you hey experience en knowledge and so you are choosimg what you want to learn in order of using your free will the way serves the most for the context you live in, of course when you have been using your will I turns a litte automatic, but not less yours. Great topic, thanks for the video
I really like how Mr. Liu explained how he felt about people with mental disorders. I totally agree and have felt the same way. A good example is if you know something you would say would trigger or upset the person, then you have the decision to say it or not and or way to have the best encounter possible.
Holy moly, time to find more videos featuring Charles Liu. I don’t know that I necessarily agree with his argument here, but I adore the level of humanity he brings to that argument (also extra points for the Arrival mention).
I just gave a huge "Like" to this video. This conversation was utterly awesome! I think it is the most "down to Earth" exchange I've heard in a long time on the subject of free will. Thank you Neil, Chuck, and to your guest Charles Liu!
Neil’s position - that we have gradually found biological reasons for behaviors, and pushed the line for free will back over time again and again for various behaviors, and so we should be compassionate rather than judgmental - is basically the thesis of the book Determined by Robert Sapolsky, a previous StarTalk guest.
It's a very common view among many scientists, I have come across very few accomplished scientists who believe in free will, did you actually have a point?
As soon as Neil brought up the epilepsy point, I could tell immediately that Sapolsky had a huge impact on his thinking. Sapolsky is an awesome guy, so that was great to see.
Man, I love this. Please do more videos like this. I feel validated because of conditions I have but then also not perceiving them as excuses because I have been able to see them and realize they exist in myself. Science, therapy, and humor all in one video. And the understanding and caring is just the icing on the cake. These are the types of videos that motivate and I beg you to continue to make more content like this. I hope that I wrote this of my own free will but regardless I would have done so anyway. Thank you so much, love everything StarTalk does!
It's quite the psychological upheaval when you realize that everything you were disparaged for growing up is simply who you are, and in fact nothing but the flip side of everything you were praised for.
The topic of free will and mental disorders/suicidal ideation is very interesting. I can only speak from my personal experience with clinical depression and SI, but it’s my opinion that we do indeed have the free will to make or not make a decision that could lead to our own deaths, but at the same time we are under incredible pressure to go one way
I hope you find the strength to carry on... just be aware that a lot of these negative feelings and thoughts are a product of your environment. A better, more supportive and accommodating environment will make your body and brain react in a more positive way (doesn't specifically need to be a physical place, could be different people as well). I have AuDHD and have struggled with similar issues throughout my life. For me personally, THC works to numb the pain so I can put it all aside, continue with my life and not let it consume me, but you should seek professional advice from specialists to see what works for you. Everybody's different and reacts differently to different things. That being said, I strongly "believe" in physics and it does not allow for neurons to break the laws of physics. However, people giving you advice, encouragement, etc can help create a reaction that would change the course of your life in a positive way... and I truly hope you can find those positive things that let you enjoy life enough to drag yourself through those depressions. Life is a 1 time opportunity and even though so many bad things are happening around us that pull us down, there are also the most wonderful experiences that make it all worthwhile. Hang in there, much love ❤
Speaking from experience as well I was confounded hearing that. His point was that of our genetic history and makeup as well as experiences throughout life all culminate to the precipice of this decisive moment in which it wasn’t really a choice. This line of thinking is really “easy” to me. It’s easy to say my decisions/ my life is out of my control and to give credit or blame for all these seeming inequities. I share the reality like you that I am in control of my actions whether they are disappointing or good from lenses. It’s like the inability being a choice- the inability wasn’t an inability it was a direct choice or action to do nothing. So to hear that well no… every death by suicide per each individual was always gonna play out like that based on their backgrounds and genomic history is such bs. You have given too much power to the idea that it’s out of control. Tbh I have not agreed with Neil’s ideas and theories for a while now.
@@brycel.8291 if you want to make the argument against free will from a physics perspective, sure, I can accept it. But his argument is overly simplistic and frankly dumb for someone who claims to be smart
@@brycel.8291 The problem there then is if you want to assert that free will exists... what actual evidence is there and how would that even work? There's nothing inherently special about human consciousness. Believing that free will exists is useful, and even if it doesn't actually exist, that doesn't impact anything. Putting blame in or giving credit to fate for your actions doesn't make too much sense when it's still your decisions that are affecting your life, even if the decisions you make were predetermined.
Sometimes I just get excited when I get the notification.. running from work to watch the full video..I don't even know which video I have missed😅😅..totally brilliant
Free will is a byproduct of a choice dynamic + equal intent/desire being present. If we expand the word "will" to "willingness"; that's what separates the concept of it being a potential predetermined reaction from an ability to make a decision absent of influence. The willingness is the engine of the concept.
banger conversation, charles has such an interesting perspective and neil is phenomenal at framing these abstract concepts (i love how he uses geometrical analogies like "perimeter"). chuck had me laughing at the end. hope these guys come together again!
I was extremely excited to watch this!!! I’ve been having this internal debate with myself for a long time, the idea of free will vs predestination ❤ Thank you for always making me think about subjects larger than myself. i think this was a very interesting debate! i think the idea of free will existing not for OURSELVES but how we influence the world around us is very interesting. I find myself siding with your argument for most of it, I think the idea of “a moving goalpost vs a perimeter of ignorance” is also EXTREMELY interesting and I can absolutely see how both arguments can be made.
This whole conversation kinda reminds me of an H.P. Lovecraft quote I like: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all it's contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance amidst black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."
Charles Liu is just thinking that being reflective constitutes free will because you’re considering the situation from a position of possibilities. But which possibilities appear in your mind and which possibility you find to be most actionable is still the result (neurological reaction) of the previous moment (and all previous moments).
What’s super interesting to me is that this scientific analysis of free will also seems to parallel the theological arguments. Calvinists vs Wesleyan. Catholic vs Protestant. All of your arguments parallel the theological discussions. Predeterminism does not negate personal responsibility. Predeterminism means that god knows how everything will play out. Not us. Does that mean we don’t play a part in our own lives? No. We still have choices (will) that we make every day hour minute. All factors that influence those choices are known (to god not us) and we in some ways are bound by our nature to choose a certain way. We cannot choose outside of our nature which would imply that our will isn’t “free” but ultimately it comes down to eschatology. How “free” is our will. Your number of choices is what limits the freedom of your will. As an infant you can’t move on your own. The possibilities are enormous but you are limited by your circumstances. Learn to walk and your choices increase. Learn to drive and your choices increase. Learn to fly and your choices increase. Learn to travel through time and your choices increase. We are limited in our “will” by the choices at our disposal. Theologically, we can only choose evil until God changes us to be able to choose the good.
We have free choice then not free will. We choose within a predetermined plan whether it's by the universe or by God? Is that the gist? I like it. It's a nice holistic way to balance both sides.
I’ve been thinking about this for a few years now. This is the topic that got me into journaling. I come back to it every so often and I still haven’t come to a conclusion. But, I like their final thoughts-it doesn’t have to be absolute in either direction. Thank you having and sharing this discussion. 🙏🏼
This whole discussion feels so primitive if you have understood the "Karma Theory".. The concept of Sanchita Karma, Prarabdha Karma[ Druda Prarabdha Karma(Fate-that which cannot be changed), Adruda Prarabdha Karma( certain destined circumstances where Free will can be asserted easily] and Druda-Adruda Prarabdha Karma(Alterable destiny with limited success)) and Kriyamāṇa Karma/Aagāmi karma.
I think there are two interesting case points that don’t get explored enough when talking about this. It seems we focus a lot on free will as it applies to one fully developed person. Okay, so how about a new born? What data predicates the exploration and ambulation of a child? Is that only a genetic disposition? Secondly, what about free will of the human collective? If every constituent part of the human collective has some level of free will, we would expect to see this on a larger scale. Is it free will that the whole scientific community generally gave up on Ether once a better explanation was proposed? Was it free will that a country benefiting from slavery also decided to end it? Was it free will that gave women the right to vote? The idea that a powerful system might give up some level of power to reach a more equitable state, and that a child with no predicate information gravitates towards one thing or another are the best cases of free will. However like God, there won’t be definitive proof or proof against in the foreseeable future - all we can do is use inductive reasoning to try and figure out which is more likely.
I don’t think there digging deep enough here. The question is are we making any decisions at all? Does my conscious thought come first or is the thought or action already formulated and in action then we consciously observe it and are then tricked into believing we made that happen? I believe our conscious experience is only a byproduct of our massively complex brain system making the decisions and those decisions are just chemical reaction to the stimulus coming in.
@@rand0mletters1 I don't understand your point. People who did good things in history did it for themselves. I don't believe in true altruism. Every altruistic act of a person is a selfish act because doing something good for others makes them feel good. A baby gravitating towards some specific thing is just a result of genes, evolution, environment and at the most basic level just a result of physics, chemistry and mathematics.
@@vernerireinikainen200 right what you postulate about altruism is true maybe of the individual person, this is the selfish gene explanation of Richard Dawkins. However, there are higher order human activities, like countries, towns etc. Some things countries have done ‘altruistically’ can’t be said to have been done to their own benefit. How do you explain these higher order decisions from an evolutionary point of view.
Did you click on this video out of your own free will?
No
"Did you click on this video out of your own free will?" Answer is yes, anyone want to debate otherwise (bonus it's good for the algorithms).
Neil is a materialist hack but I still love the show. Thumbs up.
Yes
I think we're free to comment on things, or rather, to have opinions about things. but the actions are determined based on our comments. we think that free will fails when our comment isn't realized, but that doesn't mean that we can still keep the comment on things despite the impossibility to achieve. basically, if I think that flying is good for me, that's all I'm free to do. failing to fly doesn't mean that I am not free to keep thinking that I can fly. perhaps in the end, I'd end up creating the airplane, so we would attribute the invention to my freedom, yet the invention is on the side of action and stems from my comment on flying.
I love the scientific community so much because disagreement doesn't end in opposition. It just leads to further quests for knowledge.
It is also the most significant legal global criminal organization.
@@ryleighloughty3307cheers ryleigh
@@ryleighloughty3307 just described the government lol
Anyway. I agree! It's a very beautiful way to connect with people. You can see how excited they got answering a question. I want to get into STEM because of this sort of atmosphere
@@millionmills2440
The difference is that in specific political systems, politicians can get voted out.
“I want to compare notes” I love that friendly way of saying let’s have a debate
is saying “let’s have a debate” unfriendly?
@@LikeIverson3 "debate" just has that automatic connotation that pits two people against each other so that was a nice way of phrasing it
yea fr I’m going to start using this
@@sarahchoi2657His response at 4:35 is way worse than saying let's have a debate. It's 2 v 1 to begin with, he didn't have to question his usefulness to the conversation for "comparing notes".
I loved that post the most lol
Charles Liu was my professor in 2015. One of the very few that left a lasting impression on me. It's good to see his enthusiasm has remained unchanged.
Nice
Nice
Nice
Nice
Or he wasn't 🤔
chaos is just our inability to understand/interpret the order in things. it doesnt mean its true randomness, the things are still happening predispositionally
Never thought about it this way. Thanks.
Interesting thought, and I think you just summed up religion trying to fill in the gaps as the "will of God."
This is such a good, true debate. They aren’t arguing against each other, they are testing ideas in a mutual effort to establish a truth. Beautiful
very well said! wow
Why is the fact they are being civil so important to you that you ignore commenting on the actual topic at hand?
Yeah it’s easy to have a respectful debate when you’re not debating the rights of human beings
@@ebony3406 whay are you trying to achieve with this comment?
This is how all “debates” should take place.
I had no free will in watching this video. Every moment of my life leading up to this point left me with only one option.
Don't be disappointed then.
@@Sammasambuddha
How could I be?
And just to think that, under different life circumstances, you might have clicked on a playlist of cute kitten videos to happily binge watch for the entire day. Curse this blasted lack of free will!
@@mikel5582
I think the cat videos were destined to happen. As now based on your response I feel compelled to go watch some. ...what a cute kitty named Jocasta.
Algorithm chose for me
"there is uncertainty in the universe, I embrace it" that was so powerful. What a good discussion.
But uncertainty doesn't have anything to do with free will. Things or situations can be as chaotic and random as they'd like, but that doesn't choose that. Your response to that thing is predicated off of everything that's ever happened before that and you didn't get to pick that. And even if at some points you did make a choice, you didn't get to choose that you would prefer to make that choice. That preference was already predicated on everything that you've experienced in your own psychological makeup
@@consciousfreshness7677 but you are still sentient throughout the process or part of it anyway, so even if just subjective, there is still some "will" involved. how could any sentient being not exert any free will, just as how can any physical object not exert any gravitational attraction? it would be a metaphysical absurdity. i guess if you were just a mechanism in the universe going on a predetermined course, then yes objectively you would have no control over the outcome. but what if you were part of or even one with the entire universe? then whatever you "will" will happen...
@@OlJackBurtonyou misunderstand. Probabalism and determinism exclude free will. Unless you think consciousness exists on another dimensional plane, under these circumstances, you don’t have free will.
@@consciousfreshness7677 Real question because I don't understand this view. If everything comes from before how does that work with a baby's actions when they are first born?
@@consciousfreshness7677this is insane levels of denial. Murderers didn’t get to choose that they would prefer making the choice of killing someone?? Choices are not predicated, and there are a myriad of potential outcomes that each choice can have. The idea that our choices are not our own is a coping mechanism for those unable to control themselves. The “peace of acceptance” is the very thing that causes their downfall.
I love how contradicting the world is, absolutely beautiful
Indeed, Everything that exists has an equal and corresponding opposite.
Just gotta rightly divide with the sword man, praise Jesus.
Bold of these gentlemen to assume that I exist in the first place.
Cogito, ergo sum
Solipsism is the lazy way out of this question and should be defined as a 4 letter word
Nothing actually exists.
😂😂😂
@@rickwilliams967 Nothing doesn't exist...
Charles Liu is your best guest -- he should be a regular on the show. this guy speaks with crystal clarity
100% agree
i find him... strange. he believes he is right but has no arguments for that
@@HoD999xmy feelings as well.
The problem is that it can be a very heavy topic, where being in a setting like this would leave the topic less productive.
No more of the football guy! Thanks!
@@HoD999x he is strange to those who cant understand
Omg!! I clicked on this video because I swore I'd seen this man before, and then I realized Charles Liu was my college professor two semesters ago! I was going through a really tough time, I wasn't living at home and didn't really have a settled place to stay, and a few months later my mom got diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. When I told him that I needed extra time to finish out the semester he told me it's not about the deadlines. It's about whether or not I learned anything from him; the speed at which I learned it or the date I learned it by was meaningless because we are always learning. I want to be a teacher one day. He said I'm sure as a future educator you will care more about your students making meaning of your class then stressing over it. He wished me all the best, and I got him a gift to show my appreciation, but I never made it back to the campus in person full time, so I still have it sitting in my room. This reminds me that when I finally go back to school full time this year, I need to make my way over there, so I can finally give it to him!
*than stressing over it. not that anyone cares I'm just a stickler for my own spelling lol
He'll appreciate it.
Don’t forget to give him the gift! 🫶🏾
He’s still on campus.. and you know he’ll appreciate these words, even without the gift. Glad to meet A humble man like him
Do it
Boyyy I tried to watch this high n couldn’t keep up past @1:30
Literally me rn, rewinding it for the 15th time
I'm high rn. Let me stop and add this to "watch later"
Being high is best to understand what they are saying. I'm always high listening to this
😅
This is how adult conversations should go. I really enjoyed this
The only time Neil Tyson is respectful is when he's in a room with other astrophysicists. Any other time he's extremely condescending and pigheaded.
proof?
Me too!
@@NelsonLovellReally? Do you have a link to a video showing NDT being pig headed?
@NelsonLovell that's actuslly not necessarily true, Terrence Howard sent him 36 pages on an idea he had that would revolutionize mathematics and Neil did what he would do with any of his other peers. He gave him an honest peer review with many notes stating where he was wrong and where he should build more a foundation. He wasn't condescending at all. And that's towards an actor not a scientist
7:43 hit. I love how Tyson tied the lack of free will to a need for more compassion. "The more I add up and explore the human condition, I'm forced to conclude ... that we are all products of an absence of free will and as a result, society needs more compassion for those that do not fit in."
While its a nice sentiment, his arguments for free will not being absolute don't really extend to free will not existing at all. He uses examples in which there is a lack, but you cannot cover every example just by using examples
@@GetMeintocollege yeah but most of the world is in lack, and suffering. It is easy for us in the developed world to say we have free will when we can choose 60 different flavors of ice cream. It's not so easy when you're in a country or situation where you have to choose between starving or selling your body. And when the only other option is death, if you still argue for free will, you must admit that the scope of that free will is extremely limited.
@@darkmystic9 1. You don't know where I live. 2. Again, just because there are things which are impossible, doesn't mean that you can't control anything
@@GetMeintocollege I don't need to know where you live. Your username, access to youtube, and competence of the English language tells me you are connected to a grid and living comfortably enough to have time to debate on Startalk videos. Control is based on perception, and if perception is already pre-programmed, you can see where Neil is coming from.
@@darkmystic9 You also didn't respond to my criticism in any of your responses, although I'm sure "darkmystic9" is an intellectual of the highest order and I'm too out of touch to understand common sense right?
My personal opinion….Charles Liu has a very beautiful and sophisticated perspective that speaks to the connection that we all have with each other. That connection is thrown around a lot but is actually a very deep and meaningful truth.
I agree. And I thought the main point of his premise wasn't clearly identified in the discussion and it can be stated in one word - intelligence. He's basically saying that intelligence is the mechanism that exercises and demonstrates the existence of free will. And I don't say this lightly. I tend to lean toward the idea that we do not have free will. So taking his intelligence premise in to consideration is very interesting.
Literally just wrote a comment like this. The way he speaks is very engaging and inspiring in a way.
@@beyondvger3682 Intelligence, or compassion and empathy?
if the other two would let him finish his lines, it would be even better
@@beyondvger3682 computers are intelligent too, but deterministic
I hope the algorithm feeds me more stuff like this, I used to talk about this topic with friends and it’s such a fascinating idea
That was a good ending I like how they slowly but surely understood one another as opposed to just blocking one out
That’s the point of a debate
yeah but Charles didn't have to call Neil the n word so much
both of them are smart enough to know that they don’t know for the answer for certain
@fordakacar hence NDT concluding the discussion by firstly describing it as a "perimeter of ignorance." Humility before hostility.
Chuck really became part of the conversation tbh, instead of in the early days just being comic relief. He actually adds useful perspectives and engages with the matter that is a unique but contributing perspective.
yup, a much needed improvement, it elevates the show to a new level
Thanks Chuck ... still appreciate your funny side though ❤
Chuck has come a long way. He still adds comedy here and there and it's the perfect amount.
The ONLY cringe part is when they bring up politics, but they rarely do that
Not nearly enough improvement to have him there. Just Neil and someone else would be absolutely amazing, Chuck is just a distraction.
@@otaldobet That's just a nasty thing to say. If you don't like the show, nobody's forcing you to watch. Plenty people don't mind the light entertaining aspect of Star Talk. There are plenty other channels on YT if you prefer plain old boring.
The entertaining factor is attracting people who would otherwise probably not even watch anything science minded. If you care anything about it, you should just appreciate that more and more people are getting educated in areas they would otherwise not have a clue about and just go on your own merry way.
@@jakke1975 imagine if all talk shows let their side kick chime in whenever they wanted. The guy in the middle is a hindrance on this clip whether you like it or not.
13:54 "some kids need 'em because they have parents." I feel seen. I love this man!
This!!!!!! ❤
Stellar work! My life has been a pursuit of new information. I have been working to unlearn the conditioning of my mind. So much of my life was decided at birth: political party, religion, cultural identity/customs, dialect, and even emotional intelligence. Despite that, it has been my desire to exercise free will and learn new things by traveling, reading, and crossing cultural lines to gain new perspectives. This journey is in perpetuity but most rewarding as the more I learn the more I unlearn. Along this path I have lived many lives. The man I was when I started is not the man I am today…nor the man I will be. Who i am is but the sum of my experiences and I continue to seek more experience. I do believe free will is accessible but not required. Yet ironically I do feel that simulations (religions, politics, gangs, cultures, factions, sports) are required for the masses to coexist. Only a few will pursue freewill due to burden it brings. It is far easier to cooperate. Peace
There really seemed to be a "negative things show no freewill" and "positive things show freewill" assumption. Charles repeatedly would say there was free will to help someone but never seemed to consider the possibility that people who "choose" to help someone had no more ability to make that decision than the person on the other side of the example.
yes, even I felt that he assumed if someone has a positive thought that contradicts their negative actions, it is an example of free will, which is clearly an incorrect way to think about this whole concept
Totally agree. Compassion and selfishness can both easily be caused through genetic predisposition and reinforced environmental and sociological conditions. Cooperation is a successful survival strategy for evolution.
Obviously, everyone would Like to think they have free will.
Take a look at the concepts of Egodeath and the Frozen Time Block theories of determinism. Above all, apply critical thinking and work things through in your own mind rather than parroting "experts"
That is a very interesting way to look at it. Furthermore, our judgement on right and wrong actions is not even free.
The nature of will is positive. It’s a force, that’s why it’s called will power. If you chose to remain still, that’s a choice and you are exercising free will, but not in any demonstrable way. You not moving is indistinguishable from you not having the free will to move. Hence, it’s pointless to discuss ‘negative’ free will.
@@pablolasha238Weren't they speaking about positive and negative in terms of morality or preference (right and wrong, good and bad)? As in trying to say that good actions were more aligned with free will whereas bad actions were deterministic.
In this way you can adequately have both positive and negative expressions of free will. Of course, this is regardless of whether you believe in it as a true mechanism for behavior
"There is uncertainty in the universe, and I embrace it" - Charles Liu, 2024.
What a lovely quote and discussion!
@@mikeonthetube79 Uncertainty surrounds us everyday. All the measurements of planetary and celestial motion, atmospheric conditions, even the functions within our own body all have a degree of uncertainty. There is no way we can accurately measure anything EXACTLY.
Edward Lorenz learned this, when simulating a weather system with a minuscule rounding error on his computer back in the 60s. This accident led to the birth of chaos theory. With it, the idea that no matter how small the difference between the initial conditions of two systems (e.g. a single flap of a butterfly's wings), given enough time, the two systems will diverge in behavior, so much so that nobody would have ever thought they once shared an almost identical state.
Combine this with the notion that was brought up at the beginning of the video, the idea of 'stochastic uncertainty'. There exists a degree of randomness in the universe. Our understanding of quantum physics supports this with the discovery we can never know the position of an electron around a nucleus precisely, and are better described as "cloud-like regions of probability" with predictions for where the electron may reside.
I admit that I may have brought you more questions than answers, but I do not think that we can so readily assume that free will exists or does not exist. The history of science and philosophy reveal to us that often ideas sprout with a thesis (e.g. Free will exists), which an antithesis opposes (e.g. Free will does not exist), to ultimately fuse together in a synthesis (e.g. Existence is governed by spaces of determinism and spaces of free will interacting with one another).
Going back to chaos, if you haven't seen it yet, check out the visualizations of the Mandelbrot set. Beautiful stuff. The Mandelbrot set is defined by a recursive function, and for every set of initial conditions as input, the plot is color coded. Black regions denotes those initial conditions that never 'escape to infinity' during the recursion, and the colored regions denote how quickly a point reaches the escape point (an absolute value greater than 2). As you delve into deeper detail into the Mandelbrot set, a beautiful and complex fractal pattern emerges. No matter how fine the detail, you will infinitely encounter pockets of 'black' spaces (points which do not escape to infinity) and pockets of colored points (points which do escape to infinity) that consistently repeat earlier motifs in the pattern. These fractal patterns tend to feel very organic and mimic the natural world and universe in many ways, so much so that these recursive fractal equations are used in computer generated graphics that try to resemble nature. They can even describe natural dynamical processes such as population growth over time or the dynamics of the flow of fluid through a medium.
While we do not have sufficient observation to understand and declare with certainty whether free will exists or not, I think the answer is likely a synthesis of the two opposing points of view. Just like in the Mandelbrot set, there infinite recursive pockets of points which do not escape to infinity and points that do with varying degrees of quickness. My hypothesis is that the nature of free will is similar, in that, there are pockets of reality and the universe in which determinism rules absolutely, while there are other areas in which the free will of conscious beings such as ourselves, can influence.
I hope this sparks great thought and that you had as much fun reading that as I did writing it!
Cheers :)
@mikeonthetube79 Uncertainty surrounds us everyday. All the measurements of planetary and celestial motion, atmospheric conditions, even the functions within our own body all have a degree of uncertainty. There is no way we can accurately measure anything EXACTLY.
Edward Lorenz learned this, when simulating a weather system with a minuscule rounding error on his computer back in the 60s. This accident led to the birth of chaos theory. With it, the idea that no matter how small the difference between the initial conditions of two systems (e.g. a single flap of a butterfly's wings), given enough time, the two systems will diverge in behavior, so much so that nobody would have ever thought they once shared an almost identical state.
Combine this with the notion that was brought up at the beginning of the video, the idea of 'stochastic uncertainty'. There exists a degree of randomness in the universe. Our understanding of quantum physics supports this with the discovery we can never know the position of an electron around a nucleus precisely, and are better described as "cloud-like regions of probability" with predictions for where the electron may reside.
I admit that I may have brought you more questions than answers, but I do not think that we can so readily assume that free will exists or does not exist. The history of science and philosophy reveal to us that often ideas sprout with a thesis (e.g. Free will exists), which an antithesis opposes (e.g. Free will does not exist), to ultimately fuse together in a synthesis (e.g. Existence is governed by spaces of determinism and spaces of free will interacting with one another).
Going back to chaos, if you haven't seen it yet, check out the visualizations of the Mandelbrot set. Beautiful stuff. The Mandelbrot set is defined by a recursive function, and for every set of initial conditions as input, the plot is color coded. Black regions denotes those initial conditions that never 'escape to infinity' during the recursion, and the colored regions denote how quickly a point reaches the escape point (an absolute value greater than 2). As you delve into deeper detail into the Mandelbrot set, a beautiful and complex fractal pattern emerges. No matter how fine the detail, you will infinitely encounter pockets of 'black' spaces (points which do not escape to infinity) and pockets of colored points (points which do escape to infinity) that consistently repeat earlier motifs in the pattern. These fractal patterns tend to feel very organic and mimic the natural world and universe in many ways, so much so that these recursive fractal equations are used in computer generated graphics that try to resemble nature. They can even describe natural dynamical processes such as population growth over time or the dynamics of the flow of fluid through a medium.
While we do not have sufficient observation to understand and declare with certainty whether free will exists or not, I think the answer is likely a synthesis of the two opposing points of view. Just like in the Mandelbrot set, there infinite recursive pockets of points which do not escape to infinity and points that do with varying degrees of quickness. My hypothesis is that the nature of free will is similar, in that, there are pockets of reality and the universe in which determinism rules absolutely, while there are other areas in which the free will of conscious beings such as ourselves, can influence.
I hope this sparks great thought and that you had as much fun reading that as I did writing it!
Cheers :)
@@mikeonthetube79you don't need to have full understanding of your consequences or the situation to have free will.
I can start swimming in the Pacific and not know how long I will last until I die. It's still a decision taken with freedom of will.
Is it full of uncertainty, though?
@@hazesummer8328 The point is why is that something you would want to do? Why did you choose that example in the first place? Why wasn’t it I could start to walk through a desert? Why specifically the Pacific Ocean, Why not the Atlantic? Why did you comment at all? It’s all causality, the brain makes the choice based on what it knows and wants and is shaped by outside causality. Not trying to change your opinion, I just disagree.
I love this discussion. I as a recovering addict feel there was a place that I had no choice to do what I was doing but at the same time I had to make the choice to get help and do better. I am now 11 years clean and like to think i chose to get clean.
I think it's probably true that we technically don't have "free will," because our choices are always the result of everything that has ever happened to, within, and around us previously. However, that set of factors ("everything that has ever happened to, within. and around us previously") is so *_unimaginably_* complex that it's impossible in practical terms to predict or unravel it with perfect accuracy, so in the world as actually experienced by humans, the illusion of free will is unlikely to ever fall apart for us.
Right. It may be impossible to predict outcomes, because of the high amount of variables, but complexity does not give rise to true randomness or free will.
It may be impossible to predict outcomes (to quote Ryan), but that doesn't mean it's not deterministic.
So, I don't know how to calculate the outcome but I know the outcome could be calculated.
For me, that meant being free from my sense of guilt and overwhelming responsibility.
It's like it turned out in a "belief" of "not believing" in free will which made my life better.
@@RyanJesseParsons We still have free will. You are just referring to things we can't control outside our scope. It is what we have control over that is our free will.
You may be able to calculate the future in theory, but the calculation would involve the exact same complexity as playing out the sequence of events that would happen in reality. So yes, deterministic but unpredictable in advance of the events actually happening. Only retrospectively predictable.
@@akinibitoye7908 "We still have free will. You are just referring to things we can't control outside our scope." You mean like the very nature of existence, the very rules you cannot even comprehend to disobey? Because that still don't particularly look like free will to me.
"It is what we have control over that is our free will." Yes, and the main argument is that we have no control over anything that has not already been a direct consequence of something outside our control. You coming to be as you are has 13 billion years of history at a minimum (if not infinitely more) preluding the very notion of control.
Choose? The elementary particles building up that very thought process seem to disagree, as they've had no choice but exist as themselves with their interactions exactltly the same as they have for the 13 billion years prior of them being apart of that set of chemicals and neurons. Can't add up to 0 of you only have positive integers.
Arthur Schopenhauer said: "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."
woah
Bingo.
Ive for a while now believed that there is a distinct difference between free will, and will power, in that we do have will power, but we do not have free will.
@@elementalds... So what would be the advantage of having a strong will power, if you didn't have free will to exercise it.
@@elementalds Yes, that seems quite reasonable. Will power enables life to fight through struggles and continue to live and reproduce, thus carrying on the genes that lead to those behaviors. It's perhaps the most fundamental requirement of ecological success.
Evolution can also select for the capacity to make choices with higher and higher levels of sophistication; but evolution can't endow a species with the ability to defy natural laws and suddenly have a ghost in the machine.
Watching these two (Neil and Charles, and even to a great extent this time, Chuck) discuss the differences between their opinions is like watching two enormous beings, gigantic in their intellect, awesome in the thoroughness that they thought things through, and inspiring in their articulation, pitting all of their knowledge, understandings, and skills in communication, in a titanic effort to overcome one another. Yet, in the end, they shook hands in unadulterated respect for one another, because while neither has managed to defeat their opponent, both have learned great things from the encounter.
We are all products of the environment we’ve been placed in. Because of that fact, we make choices based on our own experiences. It is not a matter of whether the behavior/actions are perceived as good or bad by the observer(s) but rather that the person made a choice to respond to certain stimuli the way they felt necessary. Everyone has free will.💯
To reference the discussion on mental illness or seizures being out of one’s control does not equate to the absence of free will. We all still have it PERIOD. Losing control of your avatar or your consciousness leaving the body at any specific point does not dismiss the fact that one still has free will, perhaps, just in other areas. If you can have free will “sometimes”, you most definitely have free will as it is not absent and non existent 💯
One’s awareness of this WILL is what is truly absent.
1 Environmental and Experiential Determinism: I get that environment and experiences play a big role in shaping us, but saying we still “make choices” as if we’re in control doesn’t really hold up. From a determinist perspective, we think we’re making choices, but in reality, those choices are just the result of things we didn’t decide-like biology, upbringing, and society. We don’t truly have the freedom to choose otherwise; our choices are just part of a long chain of causes.
2 Mental Illness and Loss of Control: Losing control over your “avatar” or consciousness doesn’t mean you lose free will. But this is exactly why determinism makes sense. When something like mental illness or trauma changes how you behave, it shows that your “will” isn’t independent. If your actions can be altered by things you can’t control, how is that free will? It’s just biology and external forces at work.
3 Partial Free Will: If free will exists “sometimes,” that’s enough to prove it’s real. But that’s not how determinists see it. Even those moments where we feel free are part of the same causal chain. They may feel free, but they’re just illusions created by factors we didn’t choose. Everything we do is influenced by prior causes-so there’s no real autonomy, even when it seems like we have it.
4 Awareness of Will: The idea that we’re just unaware of our will misses the point from a determinist perspective. Just being aware of your will doesn’t mean it’s actually free. It’s still just your brain processing decisions that were already determined by factors beyond your control. It feels like you’re in charge, but that’s just the illusion of control.
What I conclude from this debate is the best way to live life is for each individual to assume that they have free will to change things (Liu's perspective) will but also assume that nobody else does (Neil's perspective)
This is honestly the best takeaway from compatibilism I've ever seen.
💯
Makes you god though...
If free will does not exist, then laws shouldn't exist because people cannot be held accountable for their actions
@@sepg5084I have no choice but to say laws should stay in place
Wow, the conclusion they came to is eye opening. Just to translate for my own thoughts: Free will potential exists outside of the boundaries of the known, and there is always a limit/line because there is always something we don't know.
Wow! That's deep! Actually, freewill acts or reacts to what is known where your potential is always challenged to become actual.
I love how calm and passionate these legends being, damn
Hindu spotted @JinnDima39605
NDT is a legend in his own mind. If you push back on him it is impossible to have a normal conversation with him.
I see it that way: in all things there is a path of least resistance. When you leave a system alone, everything follows that path of least resistance. Planets orbit around the sun in a predictable manner. Now, when you purposely shoot a rocket into space to escape Earth's gravity, that's going against the path of least resistance. You disrupt the system, you exercise free will. Same thing goes in our lives. Most of the time we follow the path of least resistance, the easy way. But when you force yourself out of this path and do something difficult, you exercise free will. The system is disrupted until it finds a new equilibrium, a new path of least resistance. So there is a fight between these two forces. Sometimes the path of least resistance wins (addiction, illness etc), sometimes it can be overcome.
Two Astrophysicists Debate RNG
RNG??
@@pressurewashingwithkoolfel9738Random Number Generation
Facts
What do you mean by that?
Y’all know what he means
Listening to these gentlemen is an addiction we all need
I'm not sure it's an addition. You OK?
@@ejlahti Maybe. The Jesuits (Gods Stormtroopers) used to argue over how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. This is a little like that. What's with this freewill obsession? Too much spare time meets a sky-fairy groomed general population?
I'd be somewhat curious to have a Yes-No answer from scientists on do they believe in god. Especially these social media celebrity scientists. 70% of the humans on Earth believe some fairy story or other so the conversation is at best rarified. At worst hypocritical.
@@ejlahti ya i'm not scratching my arm or anything over this bud 😂
Not really but whatever floats your boat ig👍🏼
uhhh I think that might me a you thing ngl
“It’s not a line of convenience, but rather a perimeter of ignorance.” That’s so eloquent and nuanced I got goose bumps! Brilliant conversation!
For any system that appears non-deterministic, there exists a set of variables that have been overlooked. This means that, if we were to consider all variables of a system, every system could be understood as deterministic. Often, we ignore certain variables to simplify our analysis. Now, imagine a system that could be fully described by an almost infinite number of variables , this system will practically appear as non-deterministic. My point here is that our perception of free will arises from our limited ability to recognize all variables or factors involved in certain systems or situations. If hidden variables are infinite but follow underlying patterns, then perhaps our universe is far more orderly than we perceive it to be. Even infinite systems could ultimately be governed by a set of simple principles or laws-like how a fractal pattern, despite being infinitely complex, can be described by a simple recursive rule.
Yes. And the most tangible collection of variables that we can almost understand to explain a lack of free will in the setting of feeling like we have it is the totality of one’s synapse patterns, or neural patterns.
If you perfectly recreated all of your brains neurons and synapses in a computer and gave it an input, it would output the same thing your brain does.
All of us have a different pattern thus we give different outputs, but it’s still deterministic at the level that the decisions are made wholly based on a neural pattern.
The idea that you can de novo generate a synapse firing in a way OTHER than what your neural makeup allows (i.e.: free will) is antithetical to reality. The moment you generate an output other than what your neural makeup requires you to generate, you are no longer yourself but rather a now-different still equally pre-determined entity, and the mapping was simply incorrect.
I loved this!
This is what debating should be like more often: leaving the egoes at the door, listening intently and openly to what one another are saying, respecting each other, and also genuinely trying to better understand the subject at hand vs. one-upping the other person.
I found the conversation very interesting and entertaining. Thanks y'all!
There’s some moments Neil Degrasse Tyson interrupted Charles Liu and Chuck Nice instead of letting them finish. And you can see Neil’s face tense up and he’s pinching his thumb.
They're not really debating they're just agreeing and adding upon a topic
Brandon Melo!
Neil still shows a lot of hubris.
Yes, your extremely low bar for finding discussions "incredible" is that they don't insult each other
I love the demeanour of Charles!! Please have him on more often! Great conversations fellas!!
I much prefer Charles Liu's perspective. Why tell yourself you and everyone else doesn't have free will? That just locks you down to making the most safe/comfortable choices. We as people have the potential to challenge ourselves and take risks, we just need that self-belief that we can be different
It's obvious everyone does have the ability to change. I find it absurd and useless to claim to people that there is no free will.
People make the same argument you are here to advance the idea that their particular brand of religion is true.
If free will doesn't exist, then the people who were going to challenge themselves and takes risks will do so anyway because they can't choose to do otherwise. In that scenario, the thing "locking people down" is not the action of telling them that free will doesn't exist... but rather that they are locked down by the absence of free will in the first place.
@@bobwilliams4895 But are those changes themselves the result of prior causes that people have no control over?
What if our "choices" to change are inevitable, predetermined outcomes that come from the particular state/configuration of neurons in our brain? If you didn't choose the exact configuration/placement of every neuron and electrical signal in your brain that's making those choices... then your choices are being made by something you don't control.
Our brains may be like an algorithm where given some input, it will always return the same output. But given the complexity of the algorithm, combined with the fact that the algorithm is being constantly changed in response to prior causes, it may give the illusion of choice.
It would be very interesting if we could somehow take a digital snapshot of someone's brain in the moments prior to them feeling as if they made a choice... and then run a simulation where you feed the snapshot the same choices over and over again. Something like, "pick a number between 1 and 1000". My guess is that no matter how many times you run it, it will always pick the same number.
It's one of those questions I don't think can ever be proven with 100% certainty, but believing that you don't have the ability to change is is a destructive mindset, be it a preordained mindset or not. I personally like to think it's sort of a mixture of both. Genetics and environment write most of your story but you still have some ability to recondition your mind to overcome the effects of those factors. If that's the case i still feel like those two factors can still limit the expression of free will. A lot of people are more robotic and go with the weather, while others are much more individualistic in their thought. If it exists it's probably on a spectrum.
i love how this debate permiates through so many different branches of study, from philosophy, to psychology and sociology, to physics, to neuroendocrinology.
my only dog in the debate is that how can we build an objective justice system on something like free will, something we can't even be sure exists. they bring it up here of moving to a more reformative form of justice, but it is hardly overtaking our current punitive system any time soon.
They seem to be saying that if you show empathy, you are exercising free will, but if you act badly, you are not. Given your genetics and environment, maybe your niceness or badness are both predetermined.
Tyson did seem to try to sway Liu away from that stance, but failed. Rather than oppose the idea outright, he began to provide opposing examples, and then he ended up not making a strong enough point. I wouldn’t say he was mollifying Liu, but he was definitely trying to keep the debate non confrontational. They discussed restorative justice as free will, but ignored the death penalty. Out of the entire discussion, the idea that just some tiny portion of what you choose is free will made the least sense to me. If we have free will, then it makes more sense that every choice is free will with options limited by our place in spacetime.
@@catgrin Thanks for your comment and accurate summary. I think they were showing some professional courtesy and respect by not being too forceful in an otherwise polarizing controversy.
Let me suggest that "some tiny portion" could make sense. Looking at this as an “all or nothing” is maybe why there are such strong opinions both ways. (Is this human nature, like political opinions?)
How would you even know when/if you are using your will? Recent studies indicate there seems to be subconscious brain activity taking place before you feel you are making a choice. Not sure if that is proof at this point but it might be indicative. Subconscious gets messy because you can also argue that subconscious is or is not making automated, mechanical calculations of some kind.
We know we do some things habitually, including some of our thought patterns. It is natural that we would like to feel like a unified, centrally controlled director of our lives. At the same time, we see all kinds of cause/effect things going on, like billiard balls bouncing around. Maybe even some of our thought patterns are automated and mechanical. Would you make the same decision if you are exhausted or angry?
So, people in different moods, emotional states, levels of impulsiveness, even using different drugs - easily make differing decisions. Is that an actual expression of will, or are they, to some extent, at the mercy of those conditions, with or without realizing it, at least some of the time? If it exists, free will would seem to have something to do with difficult and focused efforts. What about someone who is obsessive compulsive?
It might come down to perception of “self” - who is the “you” making decisions. Various meditation practices ask that question.
Lately I’m thinking about recent studies that show some people have an ongoing internal monolog (guilty here!) while others seem to think more visually or in other ways. I’m wondering if that impacts their perception of self and free will.
Sorry about the rambling rant. I’m attempting an act of will by stopping here. At least I think so, arguably. Because as much as I like cogitating, I have some work to do. Thanks for listening!
Quick addendum - we don't really know what Consciousness is. Does it somehow spontaneously arise from the proper physical structures that somehow developed or evolved? That would seem to imply a deterministic system. How could free will just pop out of an arrangement of stuff? Or, does it come from "somewhere else", whatever that means. Maybe that a particular arrangement of stuff, our brain, acts as kind of a transmitter of something from elsewhere, somehow outside our physical system. That would be a mystical perspective. No answers, just questions.
@@JohnShramko-lv2pd Hi John - Thanks for the full answer. I didn’t think you were ranting, and I apologize that this will be long. This is one of those questions that can drop anyone willing to consider it down a rabbit hole. While also commenting on a few people’s observations, I also wrote a much longer standalone comment. I’ll repeat some of that info here, but I promise this doen’t just repeat it.
I started my other long comment by explaining that I am an epileptic. Over the past 30 years I’ve had various forms of epilepsy, and have even had some interesting (?!?) responses to various anti epileptic drugs (AEDs). I’ve even been in the unique position to experience “waking” from what is effectively sleepwalking, living for days with hallucinations (toxic reaction to an AED), and then at other times having a brain that operates in an apparently totally healthy way.
In my other comment, I discussed the idea that free will may only be our perception of choice while conscious (defined most simply as “internally aware of our actions”). Here’s an example I didn’t discuss previously. A few years ago, while out for a walk, I had a febrile seizure (caused by onset of fever) which caused me to fall and break my shoulder. I then walked myself home. I only recall leaving my home for the walk, and then coming to back on my own sofa with a broken shoulder and a fever.
Seizures can disrupt the both ability to form and retain memories, so I honestly don’t/can’t know if I was aware of doing so when I walked home. There was no outside observer to later tell me if I was responding as though conscious at the time. On certain AEDs, I have had instances of witnessed absence seizures, so it’s possible that I walked back home (doing what I needed to do, short of getting myself to an ER) fully on autopilot. If that’s the case, it’s possible I made that choice while not conscious at all. My subconscious may have made a far more complex choice than typically recognized.
Having lived with this odd perspective for many years now, I am definitely a person who believes that “free will” is an idea which exists straddling both choice and determinism. That confusion seems largely based on how you choose to limit your definition of free will.
If you say “free will is our ability to make a choice from situationally limited options” then free will does seem to exist all the time and can still be bound by the flow of time. At some level, we can be aware of making some active choices, and every choice - good or bad - is still a selection between provided options.
If instead you say “free will would be the option to make any active choice, but every choice is predetermined by a multitude of preexisting influencing factors and all those factors originated from one action which began this reality” then free will may effectively not exist at all. Predeterminism is not an outrageous claim, but the argument against it would be that consciousness may act apart from physics allowing us to not simply be bounced around a billiard table.
I said that I couldn’t agree with Liu’s stance that free will might just be a 1% of the time thing (when we make what he considers good conscious choices) because that stance excludes conscious choice when making choices which someone else believes are “bad”. I don’t agree with his stance that free will must lead us to more considered and better choices. If we have free will at all, then that should mean we have the option to freely select “bad” as well as “good” 100% of the time. You can’t have purely free will without also having the option to choose poorly. If free will is defined as leading you toward making choices which only drive you toward a single “good” goal, then it’s no longer free will. At that point, we’re preprogammed to work toward “good” as we ourselves evolve.
So, I was just suggesting that the idea of free will seems to be associated with conscious choice, and every active choice - one where you actually have options and are consciously deciding between them - can be called “an act of free will”. Then the question becomes an issue of “do we really have options at all or is our movement through spacetime fully predetermined”? We know that, on some level, we do make active choices. The boundary we can’t seem to draw is whether preexisting conditions of our place in spacetime limit those choices even more than we can understand. My stance on that issue is that I’m unconcerned by it. I’m OK with just being able to appreciate whatever conscious life I’m given. With my condition, even prior to my death, I have had precious waking hours and memories stolen from me. So, even if all I am is a conscious observer and recorder, I still really appreciate being granted that experience.
@@JohnShramko-lv2pd If you haven’t already seen it, I can recommend the October 2001 Nova episode “Secrets of the Mind”. It discusses people whose rare neuro/psych disorders are useful for better understanding brain function.
One patient, Graham Young, is a man who has blindsight. He can’t consciously see. That path in his brain was damaged, but his eyes still function and a separate (evolutionarily older) path in his brain is still intact. That path allows him to still respond to stimuli which he has no conscious recognition of seeing. So he responds as though aware even though he’s not aware at a conscious level to that input.
Unfortunately, we humans tend to assign consciousness to ourselves as a sign of us being separate from “lower” animals. One contributor to conscious thought is apparently a sense of self - “cogito ergo sum”. In recent decades, science has been more accepting of that ability in other animals, even in some insects. A recent study found that elephants, which live in cooperative groups, identify other individuals by name. They use certain tones in low rumbles to address one another. One conclusion being drawn as a possible evolutionary cause for conscious thought is the benefit of being able to live cooperatively in complex societies.
It’s so refreshing to see three grownups sitting together and having a civil discussion about a complex and nuanced topic.
If only society could be more like this.
@@tomwozne because it’s rare to find debates that are discussed this way now lmao ofc people are gonna be shocked
@@tomwozne You felt the need to argue with the original commenter and other commenters like them, even though they weren’t presenting an argument. Behavior like yours is the reason people fawn over a civil discussion.
They're more than grownups, they are senior citizens.
For a lot of people, the goal of a debate is to "win" and make the other person feel like an idiot, no matter whos right or wrong. A civilized debate is meant to fill knowledge gaps from both parties, because both sides know at least a few things the other doesnt. Even if one side is completely wrong, they (hopefully) have arguments that help the other learn something. Often times however, opinions become identities and debates turn into yelling competitions, and whoever is louder "wins" despite learning absolutely nothing.
When I look back at my own life as someone living anxiety, I can clearly see that it has shaped my entire existence. I am where I am because of it.
Hey, Neil. I'm Sabian, cognitive scientist. I also lean towards determinism, because based on all the research and testing that I've done, from psychology to sociology, therapy, hypnosis, physics, and more, I'm currently putting together a "Standard Model of Consciousness" (among other things) that details how information deterministically travels through the "mind" as thoughts & emotions and comes back out as behaviours, all in a predictable (if still chaotic) way, without requiring any "free will".
But as with any abstract concept, it depends on how you define "free will". Is it "the ability to make independent decisions"? Then what exactly is a "decision"? Is it a thought or idea, is it an emotion (e.g. confidence in an idea), or is it a behaviour (e.g. acting upon an idea)? And what is "independent"? Is it one "person"? Then what is a "person"? Is it the entire body of a human? Is it just the brain? Or is it even just a part of the brain? Or maybe there are multiple "people" inside one brain and the "person" we observe is actually an amalgamation of them? How many neurons and firing patterns are needed to cause this lump of electric fat to finally qualify as a "person"? Is there even a line, or is it a gradient? If it is, then what does that mean?
Focusing back on "free will", I think we (and I use "we" very broadly, for more than just humans) are only able to think and act based on the information we have and the situations in which we find ourselves at any moment; the idea that we are explicitly choosing what we do is an illusion, and that this illusion is only reinforced by confirmation bias; we are organic machines taking in complex inputs (senses), processing them in complex ways (thoughts), and spitting out complex outputs (behaviours), where, just like the particles of physics are interacting and combining in complex ways to form atoms, stars, galaxies, molecules, cells, and animals, we as "people" are cycling information within and between our neurons, our nervous systems, the people around us, and our environment, forming a larger and more complex "consciousness" from which greater and greater things are emerging.
I'm super fascinated by all of this, so if you, Neil, or anyone, wants to chat, let me know.
Agreed, compatibilists often commit conflation and reification fallacy as well as adding an unwarranted metaphysical assumption that is absent from the body of evidence when they presuppose free-will exists. Self-reflection isn't decision making, but we fool ourselves into thinking it is based on all the evidence from neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophical logical coherence in Theory of the Mind. Our self-reflective strange loops, if that is what compatibilists are reifying as 'decision making' don't equate to free-will, even in the compatibilist sense from any logically coherent argument I have found in any of the research. Sam Harris so eloquently argued, "Our thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control.", I struggle to find anything that would be an exception to this rule.
I think we have the capacity to make choices. That being said, all choices we make seem to be bound by internal processes and external events outside of our control. Our desires, whatever they may be, are the root cause of our choices, yet it seems to be the case that we cannot "freely" choose our desires. It simply is the case that I like cheeseburgers. I cannot force myself to hate cheeseburgers and like eating chicken feet. In the words of Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills". Do you agree?
This would be cool
Very cool to think about. I’m no expert but isn’t quantum mechanics currently probabilistic and not deterministic. Unless you have some sort of higher dimensional mathematical framework in mind.
And you said predictable, but that’s still probabilistic. Determinism is not the same thing as approximate predictability. Even if most of the time you know the outcome, there’s still a degree of uncertainty. I think that’s what Dr. Liu was refering to. And chaotic systems are unpredictable look at the n-body problem.
I’d love to look at some of your work though. Where’s the best place to find it?
I’m by no means an expert on any of this I just like to think about this stuff. My intuition would tell me that quantum entanglement and energy are 2 key areas in this problem. If the thought is like potential energy and the action is kinetic energy, and nature prefers to minimize the difference between these quantities over time, then maybe that can explain some sort of predictability. But adding a second brain to the equation likely makes it way more complicated which is why we humans seem to be free will machines. Because humans can affect other humans and overrule natures preference to choose that path of least action.
The thought about entanglement came from an idea I had that the appeared predictable nature of the local universe is a result of all systems being entangled with each other. And unpredictable behavior or “free will” is the result of disentangled states.
@@YvngHomieRyanhow do you account for knowledge in determinism? Are you surrendering ethics because in this worldview, there is no grounding for ethics. No truth or falsehood. No good or bad. Answer that for me please. Do you believe knowledge is possible in this world?
"And that's why: you always leave a note"
Thanks for another great talk! Love these
Her?
@@plumbersteve Arrested Development.
@@MenacingBanjoI’ve made a huge mistake.
I like how they were so civil and are still friends even though they kind of disagreed and then came to a sort of agreement at the end
i wanted a punch up. oh well.
I mean, this isn't something that srs
That's what usually happens when educated people have discussions or debates. They are guided by mutual respect for each other's input and the possibility of learning from each other, instead of being driven by ego or emotions.
@@WillieTaggettand usually also are able to hold on to their own belief while still accepting it could be wrong.
How old are you? This is a conversation between adults, what else do you expect?
I appreciate anyone who gets smart people together to speak thoughtfully about big ideas.
In English class in 9th grade we read the Fatalist. Our teacher then had us split into two groups and debate this. He left in the middle of it to do something and honestly we debated this until the bell ring and we were so engrossed that we didn’t realize he was gone at first.
9th grade!? THATs good education
Did you keep debating because you wanted to, or was it predetermined?
Also, the some 9th grade teachers don't do this because their standards and curriculum would not allow for it.
How's that for free will? 😂
I gotta say, Chuck Nice is great. Ive followed Star Talk since it was a TV show set in The Hayden Planetarium and Chuck was always there but my guy has brought so much to the podcast since then, big ups to my guy. Keep going guys
I love how Chuck provides really nice comedic relief when tensions get high. Lightens the mood immediately
Chuck has incredible insight and skill paired with incredible discipline over his own ego, which allows him to play whatever role makes the moment successful, including the fool. Immense respect for that.
@@avrenna agreed!
NDT becomes beligerent and impossible to talk to if you push back. He held himself back in this one but he still could not help himself interrupting all the time.
I think what I got from this discussion, is that free will is there, its whether or not an individual can obtain and utilize it. Not only if one can obtain it, but how much of it can we utilize at a given moment.
I love this conversation! I was diagnosed with epilepsy at a young age and was told I was using drugs before finally being diagnosed 3 years later, I Was the outcast and was diagnosed with a lot of these struggles yet I’ve worked on myself to get to where I am today. I had free will/power within myself even though I wasn’t showed much compassion. Healing is possible!! Our minds can become limitless! Everything happens for a reason!!
Very good thanks for sharing that with us❤❤❤
Hi! I’m also an epileptic, and I have also been misdiagnosed by more than one hospital. For safety, I now carry a note from my neurologist wrapped around my insurance i.d. cards. Congratulations on sticking with it and getting through the dark times. Life really is beautiful! 💖👍
I am happy for you bro but I'm confused if we had free will. Why give us the bible with laws if we had free will? I don't get it
@@blackallday the Bible’s laws are or can be considered man made to people. Free will is we have a choice to follow those laws are not. We have free will to live a life we want to live doesn’t mean it’s gonna be easy or perfect or just go the way we plan yet that’s life. It’s much bigger than free will
10:48 “individuals who haven’t been able to recover from a bombed joke”
Great callback!
Herr Tyson, have you noticed how much Chuck have advanced in science department from the moment he started working with you on this channel ? That is INCREDIBLE !!!
So true!! It's awesome to see
His gained experience has informed his decision to instead of make jokes he is now more inclined to engage in the theory 😂
Chuck is a genius he just plays silly for the camera. He is obviously VERY smart and had a degree before being on the show
He’s gotten to a level I never thought possible. He’s an active participant in debates. Very impressive!
Osmosis. Like my mother us to say: "you can often tell a person by the company they keep"...
I always liked to see the free will as a limited amount of different options to take in front of a situation, based on the limited experience of life that could be useful to resolve or survive that situation, the more experience in life regarding those situations you have, the bigger are the amounts of options you have to find an answer, but it's still limited, which makes free will somehow limited and not as absolute as many think; it was an amazing conversation to follow. Thanks
What you're describing sounds like the concept of wisdom. Free will would be the ability to take one of those choices while wisdom would be the ability to see X number of choices.
Excellent conversation!! Charles Liu is great at explaining/ communicating his ideas. Wonderful!
Yeah and NDG is great at communicating nonsense! 😆
You all have filled my heart with joy. Thank you for your kind words!
Charles Liu is kinda inspiring in a way. He wants to believe in free will-or rather, he wants to perceive that there is free will, even if, deep down, he knows there really isn’t. The way he speaks is very clear and engaging.
I don't find him the least bit inspiring. I find him biased and too emotionally attached to an increasingly outdated and just plain wrong idea.
@@bazingacurta2567 sure! to each their own.
His argument for free will is very weak unfortunately
Yeah I came to the conclusion that his argument isn't based in science but emotion and his world view
@@bazingacurta2567 It's not increasingly "outdated" though. Even as neuroscience and biology and astrophysics develop, things like consciousness and "free will" have not been thoroughly refuted or staunchly disproven in any meaningful way for us to say it does NOT exist. I think he shows a kind of humility in his outlook. We might be able to predict many things, but many things are unknown. Epistemically, there exists a sense of self, a unique "you". If said you exists perhaps beyond a particular line, there exists free will like Charles is saying. Maybe countless things are predetermined but there is that 1% where the agent can choose freely, even if they are influenced---influence after all doesn't necessitate 1 outcome with no other choice. Who is to say there isn't until we prove there isn't 101%? Will we ever get there? I doubt it.
Something very reassuring to me is watching Dr. Tyson getting louder and speaking quicker and interrupting a bit more when he's becoming especially passionate and energized about a debate. None of these things are necessarily the right approach to a healthy debate, but they reassure me that Neil and I are both just as human in that way.
I thoroughly enjoy the 'testing of ideas' among these gentlemen. I really like the perspectives offered by Dr. Charles Liu.
I love that these videos are never too long
1:22 There is a difference between "does free will exist" and "do humans have free will". The issue is that humans are bad examples to study. We understand that our cognition uses 5 senses along with fight/flight and memories. All of these things take time to process, therefore we are constantly reacting to the past. By the time we're ready to "make a decision" new information has come in to the processor. We are constantly reacting to old information, and playing catch up. Even if we were to make a "spontanious decision", it was a process to make it happen, and could not truely be spontanious - it just feels that way. Since we are constantly processing and reacting to old information, what we think of as free will isn't possible because the future has already happened. There's just an illusion of the possibility of free will, becaiuse we haven't processed the future we're currently living in - which is the now or the present.
We are stuck in our loop of understanding. Before humans have any lived experience to go off of, we are creating them as we grow up. We are laying the groundwork for our future decision-making process, which is grounded in free will.
Interesting
but we can also plan for the future, which is proof of free will. like a basketball player who practices his jump shot 3000 times so that he is ready to make his shot during the game. the decision to practice and prepare is free will.
Just because you have a pen doesnt mean you know how to write; whether u choose to learn or copy from a book is your choice.
Reaction is different than analytical decision. The latter takes time to process; the former is free of will.
I’m no theoretical physicist, but I can’t help but wonder how useful it is to look at this question from a real life examples/“case studies” perspective rather than a physics one…
How it appears to me is that, since the laws of physics are deterministic and the laws of physics are what govern the universe, there is no room there for free will to supersede these deterministic laws. Of course, the universe has inherent randomness (quantum mechanics), but that just means that events occur randomly, and again, there is no room for free will to change or drive probabilities in a certain direction.
For example, I’m not quite sure I follow Professor Liu’s point at 11:52… why did this person have the free will to write the letter? In the same way he was predetermined-by his genetics and environment, which are ultimately governed by the laws of physics-to have a mental condition, those same mechanisms drove him to write a letter. Looking at it from a slightly different perspective, it was specific neural synapses that fired that led him to write the letter, and the chemical reactions behind neurons firing are purely driven by what’s most thermodynamically favourable. So how can a distinction be made here?
I’d be happy to hear what people think!
I agree completely free will implies independence from causes and conditions both biologically, socially ect we all are driven to do things both positively and negatively
@ Thank you for wording it so much more eloquently and concisely than I did, haha!
I love when Dr. Lou is on because you discuss subjects I normally do not ponder. Thank you.
I've thought about free will at least once a week for 30 years. If I had free will, I would make myself stop. Believe me
I feel like Neil is being misunderstood and seen more in an emotional light. I find what he has to say super refreshing and important. My mental health sometimes gives me no option and to say otherwise is naive and ignorant and to say that then because I’m aware of it I’m in control is also factually incorrect. He’s pointing out that sometimes nature and life has control and we do not and after this conversation I will 100 percent be exploring the idea that we do have no free will we just are pushed and pulled by the waves of reality and life and this experience
There are obviously major factors where free will doesn't exist. If I fall off a cliff I don't have the choice to float there. If you have a hormone disorder you don't have the choice to have a normally functioning endocrine system. If you died in the womb you simply don't exist.
This is the "chaos" they are talking about. The laws of physics mixed with randomness. It's a roll of the dice and whatever happens shapes reality in certain ways.
But even if we're in a simulated universe, there are still "choices" to be made. This randomness can't be predetermined or else it's not actually random. If I'm asked to pick heads or tails on a coin, I can't always choose the same thing. Was it predetermined that I ate pizza tonight for dinner? Or was there a randomness dice roll between 10 different meals?
In this sense there still wouldn't be free will, but there also wouldn't be fate written in stone. Every action you take the rest of your life would have these dice rolls that change the universe on a tiny scale and change the outcome of your story.
Unless every possible action and outcome of every particle that exists in the universe has been programmed, fate cannot exist. We either have free will or an illusion of making choices. Either way, these forks in the road have not been determined and our future can still be shaped.
A rolled die is entirely dependent upon the forces that act on it. If you apply Newton's laws, a die thrown in exactly the same way on exactly the same surface with identical atmospheric conditions will always roll exactly the same way. It is only functionally impossible for us to measure and recreate those exact conditions.
In short: just because humans cannot predict the universe does not mean the universe is not predictable.
@@Cool-Vest Dice is just the term for RNG. You're getting pedantic for no reason. Even in a programmed universe, RNG has to exist. There are too many particles and too many variables to be controlled at every point throughout time.
@@Cool-Vest Also, being predictable isn't the same as having no free will. If everything was predictable, we'd be able to see the future before it happens. And if that were the case, in a fated universe, we couldn't change our future even if we tried. Too many paradoxes.
Most mesmerizing thing in this startalk is that exquisite hair line of Chuck.
Man's always on point...
I think it's simple as, if pain is felt, the choice to heal, or continue the anguish, or learn to even avoid this pain is the NATURAL PROOF OF FREE WILL.
THE ELEMENTAL SUBJECTION TO EFFECT OF CAUSE SHOULD NOT BE ARGUMENTIVE
love these types of conversations. Very captivating dialogue..
I thought it said "Free Wifi"
😁😁😁
😂
i'm disappointed too, i already have a free nelson mandela.
You just feel like you have free wifi, but you're actually being puppeteered by your provider. Your wifi is predetermined 😉
Neil lives in Manhattan. Free wifi is the last of his problems
I like these types of discussions. We argue intelligently and respectfully. We don’t get offended.
Until someone pushes back on NDT. Civil conversation over in no time.
My dad thought me something once, I was like maybe 12 or so; He said: remember, you are free but the thing is not completely about being free, but what you do with that freedom. I now think that we naturally by the fact we live, we are born with it. The cimscurtances of your life helped to build your free will, you hey experience en knowledge and so you are choosimg what you want to learn in order of using your free will the way serves the most for the context you live in, of course when you have been using your will I turns a litte automatic, but not less yours.
Great topic, thanks for the video
I really like how Mr. Liu explained how he felt about people with mental disorders. I totally agree and have felt the same way. A good example is if you know something you would say would trigger or upset the person, then you have the decision to say it or not and or way to have the best encounter possible.
Doesnt make it free though
What an awesome guest! Even better discussion between the three. I think we’re all happy with their final resolution
Excellent conversation guys, thank you!!
“It’s not a line of convenience. It is, in your words, a perimeter of ignorance”
Amazing talk brothers 🙌
Holy moly, time to find more videos featuring Charles Liu. I don’t know that I necessarily agree with his argument here, but I adore the level of humanity he brings to that argument (also extra points for the Arrival mention).
I just gave a huge "Like" to this video. This conversation was utterly awesome! I think it is the most "down to Earth" exchange I've heard in a long time on the subject of free will. Thank you Neil, Chuck, and to your guest Charles Liu!
Neil’s position - that we have gradually found biological reasons for behaviors, and pushed the line for free will back over time again and again for various behaviors, and so we should be compassionate rather than judgmental - is basically the thesis of the book Determined by Robert Sapolsky, a previous StarTalk guest.
It's a very common view among many scientists, I have come across very few accomplished scientists who believe in free will, did you actually have a point?
My point was, “if you liked this discussion, search for the Star Talk episode with Sapolsky for a lot more of it.”
As soon as Neil brought up the epilepsy point, I could tell immediately that Sapolsky had a huge impact on his thinking. Sapolsky is an awesome guy, so that was great to see.
Surely we don't know everything there is to know about will itself. Their conclusion was very satisfying to me.
Man, Charles is not only smart but WISE!! This was a great conversation!
Man, I love this. Please do more videos like this. I feel validated because of conditions I have but then also not perceiving them as excuses because I have been able to see them and realize they exist in myself. Science, therapy, and humor all in one video. And the understanding and caring is just the icing on the cake. These are the types of videos that motivate and I beg you to continue to make more content like this. I hope that I wrote this of my own free will but regardless I would have done so anyway. Thank you so much, love everything StarTalk does!
It's quite the psychological upheaval when you realize that everything you were disparaged for growing up is simply who you are, and in fact nothing but the flip side of everything you were praised for.
The topic of free will and mental disorders/suicidal ideation is very interesting. I can only speak from my personal experience with clinical depression and SI, but it’s my opinion that we do indeed have the free will to make or not make a decision that could lead to our own deaths, but at the same time we are under incredible pressure to go one way
I hope you find the strength to carry on... just be aware that a lot of these negative feelings and thoughts are a product of your environment. A better, more supportive and accommodating environment will make your body and brain react in a more positive way (doesn't specifically need to be a physical place, could be different people as well). I have AuDHD and have struggled with similar issues throughout my life.
For me personally, THC works to numb the pain so I can put it all aside, continue with my life and not let it consume me, but you should seek professional advice from specialists to see what works for you. Everybody's different and reacts differently to different things.
That being said, I strongly "believe" in physics and it does not allow for neurons to break the laws of physics. However, people giving you advice, encouragement, etc can help create a reaction that would change the course of your life in a positive way... and I truly hope you can find those positive things that let you enjoy life enough to drag yourself through those depressions. Life is a 1 time opportunity and even though so many bad things are happening around us that pull us down, there are also the most wonderful experiences that make it all worthwhile. Hang in there, much love ❤
Speaking from experience as well I was confounded hearing that. His point was that of our genetic history and makeup as well as experiences throughout life all culminate to the precipice of this decisive moment in which it wasn’t really a choice. This line of thinking is really “easy” to me. It’s easy to say my decisions/ my life is out of my control and to give credit or blame for all these seeming inequities. I share the reality like you that I am in control of my actions whether they are disappointing or good from lenses. It’s like the inability being a choice- the inability wasn’t an inability it was a direct choice or action to do nothing. So to hear that well no… every death by suicide per each individual was always gonna play out like that based on their backgrounds and genomic history is such bs. You have given too much power to the idea that it’s out of control. Tbh I have not agreed with Neil’s ideas and theories for a while now.
@@brycel.8291 Neil is honestly not that smart. He is just a media personality at this point.
@@brycel.8291 if you want to make the argument against free will from a physics perspective, sure, I can accept it. But his argument is overly simplistic and frankly dumb for someone who claims to be smart
@@brycel.8291 The problem there then is if you want to assert that free will exists... what actual evidence is there and how would that even work? There's nothing inherently special about human consciousness. Believing that free will exists is useful, and even if it doesn't actually exist, that doesn't impact anything. Putting blame in or giving credit to fate for your actions doesn't make too much sense when it's still your decisions that are affecting your life, even if the decisions you make were predetermined.
It's not that I could not choose between watching this video or not, it's that I WILL always choose to watch it.
Sometimes I just get excited when I get the notification.. running from work to watch the full video..I don't even know which video I have missed😅😅..totally brilliant
Me too. I could watch, debate, and think about Star Talk all day! I love it!
Pure love Charles Neil and Chuck, please continue
Great discussion! I'm a long-time fan of this show and a newly minted Charles Liu fan. Great work, all!
Free will is a byproduct of a choice dynamic + equal intent/desire being present.
If we expand the word "will" to "willingness"; that's what separates the concept of it being a potential predetermined reaction from an ability to make a decision absent of influence.
The willingness is the engine of the concept.
A heated AND respectful discussion. Enjoyed watching it. Thank you.
This has been my favorite RUclips video in a very long time.
I love that we can watch and listen to this. This is so interesting and I feel like my brain is getting a real workout from following along with this
That's a strange thing to say
@@Superpig500 it's a bot
The second time I’ve watched this! The words “not your fault, but your responsibility” keeps coming to mind 💭
What an amazing StarTalk episode. Really loved this one.
banger conversation, charles has such an interesting perspective and neil is phenomenal at framing these abstract concepts (i love how he uses geometrical analogies like "perimeter"). chuck had me laughing at the end. hope these guys come together again!
I was extremely excited to watch this!!! I’ve been having this internal debate with myself for a long time, the idea of free will vs predestination ❤ Thank you for always making me think about subjects larger than myself.
i think this was a very interesting debate! i think the idea of free will existing not for OURSELVES but how we influence the world around us is very interesting. I find myself siding with your argument for most of it, I think the idea of “a moving goalpost vs a perimeter of ignorance” is also EXTREMELY interesting and I can absolutely see how both arguments can be made.
This whole conversation kinda reminds me of an H.P. Lovecraft quote I like:
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all it's contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance amidst black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."
I am very impressed with Chuck’s insightful comments and quick responses.
He said nothing of value
Says a lot about you lol
Charles Liu is just thinking that being reflective constitutes free will because you’re considering the situation from a position of possibilities.
But which possibilities appear in your mind and which possibility you find to be most actionable is still the result (neurological reaction) of the previous moment (and all previous moments).
I'm LOVING the Dr. Liu and Hayden Planetarium vidoes!
What’s super interesting to me is that this scientific analysis of free will also seems to parallel the theological arguments. Calvinists vs Wesleyan. Catholic vs Protestant. All of your arguments parallel the theological discussions. Predeterminism does not negate personal responsibility. Predeterminism means that god knows how everything will play out. Not us. Does that mean we don’t play a part in our own lives? No. We still have choices (will) that we make every day hour minute. All factors that influence those choices are known (to god not us) and we in some ways are bound by our nature to choose a certain way. We cannot choose outside of our nature which would imply that our will isn’t “free” but ultimately it comes down to eschatology. How “free” is our will. Your number of choices is what limits the freedom of your will. As an infant you can’t move on your own. The possibilities are enormous but you are limited by your circumstances. Learn to walk and your choices increase. Learn to drive and your choices increase. Learn to fly and your choices increase. Learn to travel through time and your choices increase. We are limited in our “will” by the choices at our disposal. Theologically, we can only choose evil until God changes us to be able to choose the good.
We have free choice then not free will.
We choose within a predetermined plan whether it's by the universe or by God?
Is that the gist? I like it.
It's a nice holistic way to balance both sides.
I’ve been thinking about this for a few years now. This is the topic that got me into journaling. I come back to it every so often and I still haven’t come to a conclusion. But, I like their final thoughts-it doesn’t have to be absolute in either direction. Thank you having and sharing this discussion. 🙏🏼
This whole discussion feels so primitive if you have understood the "Karma Theory".. The concept of Sanchita Karma, Prarabdha Karma[ Druda Prarabdha Karma(Fate-that which cannot be changed), Adruda Prarabdha Karma( certain destined circumstances where Free will can be asserted easily] and Druda-Adruda Prarabdha Karma(Alterable destiny with limited success)) and Kriyamāṇa Karma/Aagāmi karma.
I think there are two interesting case points that don’t get explored enough when talking about this. It seems we focus a lot on free will as it applies to one fully developed person. Okay, so how about a new born? What data predicates the exploration and ambulation of a child? Is that only a genetic disposition? Secondly, what about free will of the human collective? If every constituent part of the human collective has some level of free will, we would expect to see this on a larger scale. Is it free will that the whole scientific community generally gave up on Ether once a better explanation was proposed? Was it free will that a country benefiting from slavery also decided to end it? Was it free will that gave women the right to vote?
The idea that a powerful system might give up some level of power to reach a more equitable state, and that a child with no predicate information gravitates towards one thing or another are the best cases of free will. However like God, there won’t be definitive proof or proof against in the foreseeable future - all we can do is use inductive reasoning to try and figure out which is more likely.
I don’t think there digging deep enough here. The question is are we making any decisions at all? Does my conscious thought come first or is the thought or action already formulated and in action then we consciously observe it and are then tricked into believing we made that happen? I believe our conscious experience is only a byproduct of our massively complex brain system making the decisions and those decisions are just chemical reaction to the stimulus coming in.
@@rand0mletters1 I don't understand your point. People who did good things in history did it for themselves. I don't believe in true altruism. Every altruistic act of a person is a selfish act because doing something good for others makes them feel good. A baby gravitating towards some specific thing is just a result of genes, evolution, environment and at the most basic level just a result of physics, chemistry and mathematics.
@@vernerireinikainen200 right what you postulate about altruism is true maybe of the individual person, this is the selfish gene explanation of Richard Dawkins. However, there are higher order human activities, like countries, towns etc. Some things countries have done ‘altruistically’ can’t be said to have been done to their own benefit. How do you explain these higher order decisions from an evolutionary point of view.