Hello you beauties. Access all episodes 10 hours earlier than RUclips by Subscribing on Spotify - spoti.fi/2LSimPn. Here’s the timestamps: 00:00 What Robert Wished People Knew About Stress 06:00 Where is the Threshold of Short-Term Stress Becoming Long-Term? 12:29 How Brain Development is Influenced by Mother’s Socioeconomic Status 25:50 Does Your Stress Impact Your Descendants? 29:00 Finding Solutions to Manage Stress 35:52 How to Better Enjoy the Good Things in Life 42:50 Can You Actually Detox from Dopamine? 53:18 Why Robert Wanted to Study Our Lack of Free Will 1:01:46 How Having No Conscious Agency Impacts Justice 1:11:10 The Myth of the Self-Made Man 1:32:43 How to Acknowledge Your Lack of Agency & Not Feel Depressed 1:40:22 Where to Find Robert
Free will exists as long as we can individually want different things. We need a word for that, and that word is "free will", as you can see in any English dictionary. Beware, people who fight the dictionary may have antisocial tendencies.
He's ideas about the lack of freedom of will are stupid. With his logic all prisoners should be freed because they had no choice in their criminality even the ones of higher socio economic status.
I love how Dr Sapolsky is recording this episode in his kitchen complete with family member and dog cameos. He seems to be such a grounded and wise human being. Thank you so much for the work that you both do!
@@oil_of_lahollywood4894 The entire thing was just really unpretentious and relatable despite his prestige. I died when he showed his dog with a ball. It was absolutely adorable. :)
Great to see Robert’s pantry, sad to see so many processed foods. Glad he got a fire extinguisher, that’ll avoid the stress of your house burning down when you burn the dinner. 😅
He hasn't proven there is no such thing as "Free Will". The "nuanced" argument "Abolish the Criminal Justice System" and replace it with what? Crickets. If they have no control they should be in jail, that's why they are there.
Real gentlman and scientist.....15 years ago I have sent him some data on Croatian war veterans asking for his opinion...He replied immediately together with unpublished version of his new article...World needs more people like dr. Sapolsky❤
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 🧠 Stress has detrimental effects on the brain, reducing empathy and tolerance, leading to a self-centered focus. 01:09 🧾 The anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region, is key to understanding and interpreting pain in oneself and others. 03:09 💔 Stress diminishes empathy, generosity, and moral compass, impacting how we relate to others and narrowing our concerns to a self-centric focus. 04:18 🎭 Stress challenges the notion of free will, emphasizing the role of environment and biology in shaping behavior and responses to stressors. 06:16 ⏳ Short-term stress is a biological response to immediate threats, while chronic stress leads to detrimental health effects, requiring attention to societal, cultural, and personal factors. 11:10 📺 Continuous exposure to global crises and catastrophes through media can significantly impact our stress responses and overall well-being. 15:57 🤰 A mother's socioeconomic status and stress during pregnancy can epigenetically influence a fetus, affecting brain development and long-term health outcomes. 20:08 🧬 Genetic predispositions interact with environmental factors, such as childhood stress, determining vulnerability to mental health conditions like depression. 22:09 🧪 Behavioral genetics emphasizes that genes interact with the environment, illustrating the complexity of how genes influence behavior and outcomes. 24:38 🔧 Epigenetics highlights the enduring impact of experiences on gene regulation, influencing health, behavior, and disease risks across the lifespan. 25:33 🧬 The regulation of genes and their interaction with the environment is more fascinating than the genes themselves. 25:49 🧠 Stress and bad experiences can leave lasting effects not only on individuals but potentially on future generations. 26:16 🧪 Environmental factors can influence gene regulation, impacting how individuals raise their children and pass on cultural values and neuroses. 27:12 💡 Stress during fetal life can cause epigenetic changes in the amygdala, affecting fear and anxiety responses in adulthood. 27:50 🔄 Epigenetic changes can be reversed through appropriate therapeutic interventions, modifying gene regulation and brain function. 28:17 👶 Multigenerational transmission of adverse regulatory consequences for genes can occur through parenting styles and environmental factors. 29:00 💡 Strategies to reduce stress should focus on control, predictability, outlets for frustration, and social support. 29:39 ⏸️ Stress management techniques should be personalized, enjoyable, and integrated into daily routines to be effective. 30:33 🔑 Cultivating a sense of control, predictability, and social support can mitigate the effects of stress on mental well-being. 31:30 🌟 Providing predictive information and a sense of control can buffer against stress, enhancing coping strategies in mild to moderate stressors. 33:19 🌿 Regularly engaging in stress-reducing activities and valuing one's well-being are essential for effective stress management. 34:25 🕰️ Setting aside dedicated time for stress management activities is crucial, prioritizing personal well-being in daily routines. 35:07 😄 Enjoying the chosen stress management technique is essential for its effectiveness, focusing on individual preferences and interests. 35:47 🚀 Avoiding stress management techniques that don't resonate with you is crucial, as forcing oneself into ineffective methods may exacerbate stress. 36:43 🎉 Creating positive experiences and savoring moments of joy can counteract habituation to pleasurable stimuli, extending their positive impact. 37:37 🤯 Dopamine is more about anticipation and striving than the actual reward, driving our motivation and excitement towards future possibilities. 39:26 ⚖️ Our constant pursuit of more and better is rooted in dopamine-driven anticipation, a fundamental aspect of human behavior and innovation. 45:11 🔀 Introducing uncertainty or the possibility of reward amplifies dopamine levels, emphasizing the role of uncertainty in driving motivation and anticipation. 49:34 💫 Humans have a unique ability to sustain anticipatory dopamine levels, envisioning future rewards and motivations beyond immediate gratification. 50:16 🔄 The pursuit and anticipation of future events or rewards drive much of human behavior, highlighting the value we place on anticipation and striving. 51:11 🧠 Stress & Dopamine Detraining: Detraining from dopamine can occur by reducing stimuli for about 30 days, potentially resetting the brain's response and impacting pleasure perception. 51:52 🧬 Individual Variation in Dopamine: Factors like early life stress, genetics, and neural makeup influence dopamine production and its impact on pleasure and anticipation. 53:15 💭 Understanding Individual Differences: Each person's dopamine system works differently due to a mix of genetics, life experiences, and environmental factors, affecting responses to stimuli. 54:00 🕊️ Discovering Lack of Free Will: A personal realization during adolescence led Dr. Sapolsky to the belief that there's no free will, which has influenced his work and writing. 56:27 🌍 Embracing Determinism: Dr. Sapolsky advocates that humans are a sum of biology and environmental interactions, lacking fundamental control, challenging conventional notions of free will. 57:20 ⚖️ Rethinking Criminal Justice: The current criminal justice system is flawed, punishing individuals for actions over which they had no control, needing a transformation to a more rational approach. 01:11:16 💼 Challenging Meritocracy: Meritocracy perpetuates entitlement by rewarding attributes individuals did not choose, necessitating a reevaluation of societal values and systems. 01:13:34 🌌 Grappling with Reality: Accepting the lack of control over one's efforts and desires can be disheartening, but it paves the way for a more nuanced understanding of human existence. 01:14:18 🧠 The importance of competent individuals, like neurosurgeons, necessitates appropriate incentives and training. 01:19:51 🌍 Realizing we are products of chance and circumstance can lead to a more humane understanding of individuals and their circumstances. 01:27:17 💡 Incremental actions challenging our sense of entitlement can promote a shift in how we perceive success and responsibility. 01:37:33 🧠 Mindfulness involves stringing together mindful moments, achievable through practice and repetition, leading to a more present and less judgmental mindset. 01:38:13 🤔 Applying the concept of incremental change to the understanding of free will, acknowledging the potential for reform and a shift in perspective towards others and circumstances. 01:39:07 ❤️ Striving to let go of hatred and resentment by recognizing the lack of free will and viewing individuals and their actions with understanding and empathy.
Positive vibes! As i get older im beginning to realize this is an aquired skill (to both have and learn to see it in others). Im trying to surrouns myself and listen to those with such a voice, and avoid the opposite.
One of the first teachers on YT, that I couldn't get enough of. Human Behavior Stanton - learned from those 25 x ca 100 minutes than from 12 years of "real" school.
@@CONEHEADDK are you referring to the Stanford lecture series? If so, then yes 💯. Between that, a TED talk by Carin Bondar and learning about the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, that basically completely transformed my understanding of how everything in human society works. And I just now went back to that playlist and saw that lecture series was actually Sapolsky 😅. Crazy.
@@jayrezvani3821 No doubt (I keep on f*cking those two up :S - CPTSD, depression and stress brain doesn't help me much :D ) The other two you mention I don't know, but I will google them. I usually use Jordan Peterson's "Are you depressed? or low in the dominence hierarchy?" (3 min.) to explain to people, why I can't "just pull my self together, and get things done".
We can’t change parents, the time we are born into, our environment, our genes and so much more, but we can just be grateful we are alive and use our curiosity to do investigate this strange world.
yeah i remember him from back in the day on these, havent heard anything from him since then. might pick up his books if i feel like i wanna dive into those topics. really like the idea of my free will tho.
"Abolish the Criminal Justice System" is not nuanced, it's extremist click bait, he has nothing to replace it with and it will never happen. He hasn't proven there is no such thing as "Free Will", he has proven to me he doesn't understand the concept. So polite and well mannered though.
Thank you for having Dr. Sapolsky on! He is an important scholar. As someone who spent a lifetime thinking and reading about subjects like "free will," I came to the same conclusion as Dr. Sapolsky, and for the same reasons. All of his examples boil down to the reality of the physical world - there are only two types of actions - indeterministic and deterministic. Indeterministic (random) are outside of our control by definition in that if they were controllable, they'd be predictable, and, of course "random" requires unpredictability. Deterministic - those that evolve according to the laws of Physics. For these, if you don't control the initial state, you can't control any subsequent states. All subsequent states are determined by previous states. Brains are just physical matter and must evolve according to the laws of Physics, so any current brain states are just an evolution of previous brains states, all of which are outside of your control. No matter what combination of indeterminism and determinism are involved in any particular action, there is no room for this "magical" free will to shoe horn in and assert control. Once you really understand this is the way it MUST work, then it is liberating. I find myself incapable of getting angry at criminal behavior I read in the news, for example. I don't get angry at murderers. Of course, we still need to protect society from them, so they may need to be incarcerated. But, we shouldn't try to make their lives a living hell in prison. We should treat them like any other human being - with empathy. They didn't ask for their lives to turn them into that. I also find myself less likely to pat myself on the back for my accomplishments. I'm not responsible for my capabilities.
Same. I feel lucky to have the gifts I have, but also unlucky for some of the hard things I had to deal with, and I am grateful that I am not a psycho killer or some other mess of a human being, and grateful that I do not have the desire to be a "bad" person.
I am currently a graduate student doing neuroendocrinology research and it is largely due to the influence that Robert Sapolsky's work has had on my thinking and interests. Great interview with one of the best science communicators there is.
Great episode! I especially love the quote, "A relationship is the price you pay for the anticipation of it." In some way, I think this is part of the uphill battle with internet dating: we see all the best photos and considered statements about someone's personality, message and talk on the phone with them - ramping up the anticipation to an unrealistic amount - to then find they are an average person. The date has already been oversold before you've even met. Whereas meeting someone at work or in IRL, for the most part, avoids this problem.
I chose truck driving, got rid of debt, increased exercise, and stopped eating so much processed food. Took a little time but eventually stress dropped significantly.
It’s a truly confusing paradox to consider we have no free will. Djxurbsksidbr. I randomly typed that set of letters. Why? What made me do that? What point am I trying to make here??? Robert makes a lot of sense and he’s been convinced since he was young that there’s no free will. A revelation he had. Maybe he’s correct. I’m still digesting the idea. Can’t there be a sliding scale here? Why must it be this or that? How about thinking that some things we have no control over and other things we do. I can live with that. Not sure if I can accept the concept of NO freewill whatsoever. Dbtjdhrhrndkidrbrkenebdi😢🎉🎉😊😂🎉🎉🎉 😅😅 Ughh You’re killin me smalls!!!!!😂
@@sonicaftermath5776 I think it's more fair to say that we have very limited free will rather than no free will. If you think about it, none of us have chosen to be who we are whatsoever. It all just landed the way it did in how our lives played out and the circumstances we were born into. We enact our "free will" based on these conditions but our whole livelihood has not been something we chose out of free will. You could argue that because we didn't choose any of it, that we also don't really have a lot of choice for what we do going forward, because of the foundation everything is built on. It's hard to wrap my mind around it. We have the choice to act however we like, but if we didn't choose to be who we are, is it actually our choice, or is it the choice of our collective identity (experiences, childhood, environment, etc.)? I think this is what Robert means when he refers to having no free will. 45ngwq4o3qjtq
I love Dr. Sapolsky. So much passion for his work and so much heart and empathy... There's something incredibly endearing to me about an expert in his field who readily admits that his work has raised more questions than it has provided answers... The fact that he doesn't insert himself as some sort of guru is so refreshing. If you haven't read his book, 'A Primate's Memoir', you're missing out.
Dr. Sapolsky is brilliant and I often watch his lectures online for inspiration in my own lecturing. He's the college professor's professor. Mad respect for this man.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve slowly come to a very similar conclusion to Dr. Sapolsky’s, and it truly does give a lot of freedom; freedom from judgement, of oneself and others. It increases empathy, and one really does begin to see that we are all in the same boat.
Dr. Sapolsky is so awesome. He gives off this wise older uncle vibe who's evolved beyond the mundane and trivial and become a beacon of wisdom and kindness. Could listen endlessly to him speaking. He's a seeker of knowledge for the joy of knowledge itself.
This was an amazing interview! Such insight. I especially like the part where meritocracy is questioned. I have reflected on this a lot. When I was young, and much worse off in life, I leaned towards success in life being mostly about luck. Then, when I was becoming quite successful, I started thinking success was much more due to ones own efforts. Lately, as I've reflected even more on it, I am once again back to thinking it's largely about luck. And I fully recognize how privilaged I am. And the greatest privilage of all is that I was born in a wealthy western country. Had I been born in a poor country, or 100 years ago, I would not have been able to accomplich much in life I think. I hope you bring Robert back for a second interview at some point.
Sapolsky's vigorous mind is clearly not slowing down and he has a great deal of ethical courage which requires a TON of mental and physiological energy. Don't let his gray hair and white beard fool you. I think he's got a lot of humble wisdom left to challenge us with!
That explains a lot. My grandma punched my mom in the stomach while pregnant with me. I witnessed my parents fight just around the time I started to walk. Parents divorced at 5 years old. Narcissistic abusive stepdad comes in the picture around 6 years old. More domestic violence and abuse continued all the way til I was 17 years old. I’m 28 now and still try not to let my past overcome my present moment. I’m sure there are many people with similar stories. I truly sympathize with people that have come from broken homes when all you know is chaos and stress. What’s done is done, all we can do is learn and practice ways to become stronger. Accepting God in my life has been a life changer for me. We all need to have some faith to follow.
"It's not the pursuit of happiness, it is the happiness of the pursuit." Exactly. Basically retelling the old wisdom: Life is about the journey, not the destination. Still, I like his way better, sounds like more people would be able to grasp this wording. Totally gonna say this, with proper reference. Personally, I learned the truth about chasing when I kicked a stim habit back when I was 19. The secret to a total recovery for me was to find something I wanted so badly that nothing could stop me. Then go for it. Like Chris says, "Just do the thing."
Thankes for the wonderful conversation with Robert Sapolsky! His Stanford lectures on the human evolution of behaviour are legendary. He gives so many examples, it is mindblowing and overwhelming. Love to see the man at his best today.
As a nurse I know and see how stress effects people everyday and ppl brush it off because stress doesnt have a "face" as in people can look fine and be under stressed.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:28 🧠 Stress impacts empathy: Stress narrows your focus and reduces empathy, making you less tolerant and less willing to consider others' perspectives, primarily affecting the anterior cingulate cortex in the brain. 02:56 🤝 Stress reduces generosity: Stress makes people less generous, more likely to cheat, and less morally inclined, leading to a focus on self-interest and a diminished range of concern for others. 05:49 💭 The role of agency in stress: Stress is not just an external force; it depends on our perception of agency and control. Dr. Sapolsky suggests that free will is a myth, and our experiences are shaped by biology and environment. 08:48 ⏳ Short-term vs. long-term stress: The impact of stress depends on various factors, including individual differences, cultural context, and species. Short-term stress can be useful, but chronic stress can be detrimental to health. 15:57 🧬 Socioeconomic status and fetal brain development: A mother's socioeconomic status can impact a fetus's brain development through the transmission of stress hormones, potentially affecting cognitive and emotional functions in later life. 25:33 🧬 Genes are less interesting than their regulation and how the environment changes gene regulation. Stress and anxiety can lead to epigenetic changes in genes, affecting future generations. 26:16 🧠 Our experiences as adults can influence how we raise our children and pass on cultural values and behaviors. 28:31 ⚙️ Multigenerational epigenetic changes can occur due to stress during fetal development and continue to affect future generations, but interventions can mitigate these effects. 30:06 🤔 Psychological stress is not just about external circumstances but also about the perception of control, predictability, and social support. 42:39 💭 To extend the duration of pleasure from experiences, one can practice mindfulness, savor the moment, and focus on helping others experience similar joys. 51:11 🧠 Understanding the brain's response to dopamine and stimulus can help us manage stress and pleasure. 53:42 🤔 Dr. Sapolsky believes that there is no free will and discusses the impact of this belief on society. 57:20 🚀 The concept of free will is animated because it challenges our fundamental beliefs about responsibility and punishment. 01:02:10 🛡️ Dr. Sapolsky suggests that the criminal justice system needs to be reformed, moving away from punishment and towards containment and addressing root causes. 01:11:31 ⚖️ The idea of meritocracy is challenged, as Dr. Sapolsky argues that we often reward people for factors beyond their control, which can lead to entitlement and injustice. 01:14:18 🧠 Understanding free will and determinism: Dr. Robert Sapolsky discusses the concept of free will, emphasizing that our behavior is shaped by biological factors and environmental influences, challenging the traditional notion of personal responsibility. 01:25:51 🌍 The humane implications of recognizing lack of free will: Sapolsky highlights that acknowledging the lack of free will can lead to a more compassionate world, where people realize that many aspects of their lives are the result of chance. 01:30:58 🤔 Challenging the sense of entitlement: Sapolsky suggests that recognizing the role of chance in our lives can help reduce entitlement and encourage individuals to consider the needs of others equally. 01:33:54 🙌 Taking small steps towards rejecting free will: Sapolsky advises taking incremental actions like practicing random acts of kindness or reconsidering judgments to gradually shift one's perspective on free will. 01:37:06 ⏳ Continuously integrating insights: Similar to mindfulness, Sapolsky suggests that consistently revisiting and applying these insights into our daily lives can help create a more thoughtful and compassionate existence. 01:37:21 🧘 Mindfulness and stringing together moments: Similar to mindfulness, embracing the concept of lack of free will involves stringing together individual instances where we recognize the role of chance and practice non-judgment. 01:38:13 🚀 Incremental reform vs. revolution: While recognizing the absence of free will may seem revolutionary, Sapolsky suggests that implementing this perspective in small, reformist ways on a daily basis can help reduce hatred and judgment. 01:38:54 🌌 Exploring altered states of consciousness: Sapolsky humorously suggests that experimenting with heavy psychedelics might provide insights into the nature of free will. 01:39:36 💔 Letting go of hatred: Sapolsky advocates for finding ways to let go of hatred and resentment towards individuals like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, aligning with the idea that it makes as little sense to hate them as it does to hate a volcano. Made with HARPA AI
Odd that those are the individuals he would note regarding hatred. The people most advocating for anti anything are largely the most hateful and ignorant people I've met. Instead of worrying about hate of people we have no personal connection with let's reduce judgement and hate for people we do.🤷♀️
This is awesome! I love listening to/watching Dr. Sapolsky. I found the videos of his lectures at Stanford on youtube several years ago and I was hooked. To me, those are the REAL red pill (all of the "buckets", not just sexual dynamics or economics of relationships type stuff that seems to be what most of the channels focus on). And its meant for everyone, women and men. I've watched them all, (including anything else I could find from him) at least 3 times from the first class to the last. Theres so much information to absorb. Anyway, thank you Chris and Dr. Sapolsky for a great interview!
Yes, same here. I stubbled across his Stanford lectures about 3 years ago and turned my brother onto them. He made sure to order this most recent book a month before it even came out. The buckets will surely stay in the minds of those students for life. LOL
Chris, I’ve been watching your videos for a couple years now all of them helping me to shape the person I am today. At this point, I consider your videos valuable for life. Thank you, Professor Chris.
Thanks Dr. Sapolsky. Thanks to your wife too. I was challenged and I sat through many years and hours of your lectures and work. Yes. It was worth every moment.
A little bit of pushback would be useful although i understand Chris prefers to let him speak. Strong statements like 'there is no damn free will whatsoever' is silly.
Thanks so much Dr. Sapolsky and Mr Williamson for providing this information. I'm in a relationship with someone who has experienced some trauma and want to apply some of these insights into helping her heal.
I read Behave, without knowing very much about the brain and behavior. It was a great book. It takes some effort, but it is very rewarding, especially if you have had a traumatic childhood. It helped me to realise the reason why I am the way I am.
I would really like to know what Robert has to comment about Lisa Feldman's affirmations regarding amygdala not being about fear but actually being activated in all kinds of other regular activities and emotions. It would actually be amazing to have the two of them together.
This is easily one of the best talks I have watched this year. Thank you to both of you and everyone who helped make this available to humans around the globe.
I've discovered that all my suffering is: difficult feelings and the resistance to those difficult feelings. The problem is that when distracted, it happens subconsciously (automatically). The solution is to remain conscious of it, in the now, welcoming and handling it instead of resisting it
I took up piano 8 years ago at 50 years old. I didn't do it to reduce my stress but if it would good, I thought. It has to be one of the most stress inducing things in my life. I still do It. I won't stop. I enjoy it more now then years ago. My recommendation for stress: stretching, slow breathing.
I've first seen sapolsky in stanford youtube channel and I was amazed with the opportunity to have those courses free, I am in deep gratitude that I live in a time where this information is free halfway across the globe and how this person lectures is amazingly organic and passionate, even the way he speaks has a beneficial stress relieve effect. best wishes
22:55 I don't think it's a matter of digging 8 hours without back pain, I think it's more of a matter of being able to dig through 8 hours of back pain.
I have also come to the realization that we have no free will. It’s great to hear this from an admired scholar! If I said this to others in my circle, it would upset them. I had been pushing myself to succeed financially for years, burned out my thyroid, almost ruined all my relationships, and neglected my health. After finding very little success I consider myself lucky to have ended up a little wiser than when I started. At first I was angry and depressed about it. But, I can still find joy. For me, joy never occurs in a profitable way. Much the opposite! 😂
One big problem that I see with Sam Harris and Robert discussing freewill is a failure to distinguish fault and responsibility, determinism removes fault but maintains responsibility
I really liked Sapolsky's lecture on chronic depression. Interestingly, I am unconvinced by many of his arguments in this discussion. I notice a strong maternal/empathic interpretation of the subject matter despite his employment of several ironically cold and logical statements. This is reasonable cause for suspicion that this natural bias is driving his arguments toward those conclusions. Claiming that nobody has free choice cannot be used as a strong argument for trying to alter anyone's behaviors. If nobody has free choice then nobody can alter behaviors by choice. This includes responsive behaviors. I.e. if criminals can't stop committing crimes then law enforcers can't stop punishing them. They are both contained within the same system.
I feel like another thing that points out that we are far more deterministic then we like to think is empathy itself. We like to think that humans are capable of being unselfish but I’d disagree. Empathy is the ability to feel the emotions of others. Meaning those with empathy have there inherent selfishness tied in with others and there emotions. So if you where trying to find a control group and see how truly unselfish and benevolent humans are without there inherent selfish motivations motivating them to act in such a way you would use human without empathy as your control group. And that would be psychopaths and uh we KNOW they don’t act benevolently 😂😂
He says that knowledge of knowledge alters your brain. You have no free will is simply to say, your will is a mechanistic outcome, but it can be altered by what is put into the mechanism, or changed about it.
Thank you for how intelligently you added value to this conversation. I am one of the people that don’t have much to be proud of and don’t understand how there’s no free will but I decided what to eat yesterday and to go to work today and that sort of stuff. I would love an explanation and thank you in advance 🌹🌹
We don’t have free will, we have the will to be free to be! And through the process of our sense of aliveness by detaching we can experience with fuller presence, straying from the control of mind to linger more with the attraction of ❤️
Amazing Sapolsky! Simply amazing. Modern wisdom bringing actual MODERN wisdom! And honestly, very well done Chris, you are making great progress (through no free will of you own 😂).
I don’t think we really have to worry about people being de incentivized. Superior ability whether it’s athletic ability or intellectual ability tends to be self rewarding. The ability to do the amazing thing is your reward. The reward for the ability to make amazing music is making amazing music. It feels super great to do things you’re good at.
One of the first teachers on YT, that I couldn't get enough of. Human Behavior Stanton - learned from those 25 x ca 100 minutes than from 12 years of "real" school.
I was 16yo when I've got an intrusive thought saying everything is written. It's there free will stopped existing for me. But it's also there I started to study which mind structures that led me into impulsivity, cognitive dissonances and also study the chains of causes and effects. Recognizing all the conditions that make a situation give the power to restructure the mindset and build a better life with an adjusted mindset. This saved my life and I'm happy to see a scientist saying that free will doesn't exist. It's where my life became a study laboratory to reprogram what was wrong in my thinking and free myself from my traumas impacts.
What a great surprise! Behave is my absolute favorite nonfiction book, and I never get tired of listening to Sapolsky. Chris is doing an excellent job at creating an unique podcast for those interested in psychology and neuroscience. Btw, I would love to see Haidt here too.
I think it's more accurate to say 'we all have reactions to stimuli' than, 'there's no free will', although some may argue that's a synonym... To me, it feels similar to saying 'of course it's destiny, it happened'. One other angle this could be looked at is artistic - If a baby was born and never shown music, but was given a Guitar and left to mess around on it for years - What music would he or she write? And where did it come from? Super interesting conversation from 2 of my favourites. Thank you sirs!
1st x listening to Dr. Sapolsky; OMG ; I'm 66 yo and I've always felt that way and now I have finally found 2 people that I agree with! Thank you guys. Made my day 😎
@@johnodonoghue651 hardly, finally happy someone else other than a handful of peeps now sees this. I was shown through a friend from UK the absurdity of ‘free’ will. Closer than ever to that field Rumi speaks of.
@@alwynkotze9891 The notion that our choices are freely expressed based upon another notion that ‘freedom’ exists. Trying to say you are free to do but not free from consequences is horsemalarkey, short-sited and disparages creativity. Not having an internal compass and letting the ‘universe’ decide…..Ya no. Even giving it up to God” (Gods in my personal practice) is still a Feedback loop. Feedback loops of time are always in charge long before we’ get a chance to weigh(Ma’At) in. We can walk away from many things of ‘our’ ‘free will’ but that’s not what happens. Our guts, our hearts our ‘souls’ react differently and are discerning what life throws at us. Our responses are measured as pointed out in the talk in our responses. Even outside of the brain auto responses, it’s to stimuli. Order in the chaos isn’t always symmetrical. It often is brutal when the balance meted out. Morality is and has been based on this merit scale yet the merit scale is grossly exaggerated for multiple gains and losses of the few that have control paradigms. Manipulations at play too often because life used the boot straps logic to makes fools of many. The Great Game was set upon false foundations and willing participants who wanted little to no accountability. Choice isn’t freedom when the options are shite from go by design. How do you see free will?
Chris, thank you for the excellent interview of Robert Sapolsky -- the best I've seen -- who I greatly enjoy listening to/reading. Your wit and humour really brought the conversation to a higher level.
I suppose one of the scarey possibilities of the "no free will" argument is that, if people see people as machines without free will, that "shutting down" (i.e. unalive them) bad people seems more reasonable. This is what we do with wild animals who attack people. We don't put dangerous wild animals in prison, we kill them to prevent more attacks. If there were robots walking around and some of them were dangerous, we wouldn't put them in prison, we'd just shut them off permanently.
".. we can take this 150 million year old circuity and we can abstract it over space and time like nothing that's ever walked this planet before" -- Dr Robert Sapolsky. Wow. Some of the most moving words I've ever heard. Totally Saganesque in changing my opinion of the importance of humanity in the cosmos.
One of the ironies of "no free will" is that correction and incentives work. So if we treat people and ourselves as if we have free will and thus we must discipline ourselves to do exercise we WILL modify behaviour as if we had free will to do so. Coupled with that if you BELIEVE you have free will you mind can come up with the erroneous result that you do and this result is you finally going to the gym. There are so many advantages to believing in free will regardless of the truth of it. Also INCENTIVES work in a free will or no free will situation so setting up incentives as if you have free will regardless of the truth, will result in people achieving better results. So you have to set up society with incentives to reward those people lucky enough to have all the pieces in place to be successful as if free will exists. This is the major problem with "No free will / Free will" debate is that it becomes almost a pointless discussion. And the best defense is I don't believe we have no free will and it is not my fault for believing in free will so you might as well shut up about it. Also look how no free will people talk, "Once a week when you are about to judge someone harshly don't." That entire sentence it incoherent dribble if we have no free will. How do you "Don't or Do" if you have no free will? Exactly how do you act incrementally if you have no free will at all? The fact that no free will proponents have no way of expression expect using terms that require you the person to exercise free will show exactly how hollow their arguments are in terms of PRACTICAL use. Regardless of the truth of the claims we must ACT as if we have free will.
Well, correction and incentives often work because they are vital for our survival and that automatically excludes our free will, it is simply based on survival and reproduction instincts. But our makeup is so complex that even that can be overridden, but that isn't our totally independent choice. Maybe it is easier to understand our lack of free will when we recognize how dependendent everything is from anything (cause and effect) You are right that in order to function we need some concept of free will, the same is true for seeing us in a better light than we truly are. We can't truly escape ourselves so let's just pretend...
You don’t need the concept of free will to exist to be an agent in the world capable of making decisions. You just have to realize instead of magic sentient pixie dust making the decisions (‘you’), it is a composite of your past experiences/biology/knowledge which shapes your decision. Think of it more like using your knowledge to steer yourself and not some magical form of existence that is making decisions independent of everything else. All it requires is a shift in perspective and everything works fine.
@@GearForTheYear I don't think you understand what FREE WILL means. You can't "make decision" with out free will. You can't USE your knowledge to STEER without free will. You can't talk about this WITHOUT using agency terminology. Steering is an active act so you cant say steer. Make a decision is an act of agency again you can't use that terminology. Try to explain your position without using any term that requires action or agency it is impossible.
@@theG0thfather not true. Your past experiences/biology/knowledge and the environment you are in steer you. You are the sum of your parts. This ethereal ‘you’, independent of your biology, doesn’t exist in this universe, so agency is still compatible in a universe without free will, it’s just not as simple as the concept of an independent soul. Decisions are made by computers all the time and they don’t have free will. 🤦♂️
@@theG0thfatheryou(like most people, including Robert) misunderstand free will as being synonymous with agency. It's not. Lack of free will merely means that the universe is deterministic. A deterministic world can still have agents. You just need a (coherent) theory for agency, which most free will advocates lack.
Great episode as always. It'd be interesting to hear Sapolsky and Peterson discuss free will. He's making a lot of sense but so does Peterson when encouraging the adoption of responsibility. I'm struggling to reconcile the two as it seems like they maybe conflicting views as far as meaning is concerned.
Peterson said to Harris, “I act as though I have free will” I think it’s fine to adopt as much responsibility as you can sustain within your own volition. Free will is more about understanding that plenty of variables exist outside conscious awareness that affect human behavior. That the sense of being your ‘self’ is just as much an appearance in consciousness as hearing a knock at your door. You didn’t author the knock, but it appeared in consciousness all the same. Desiring to be responsible is also an appearance in consciousness. It’s an act of self-protection because you may believe responsibility will lead you to happiness or fulfillment of some kind. The drive influencing you to want such happiness exists outside of your own will even though the entire process of attaining the happiness, by means of responsibility for example, is simultaneously within your realm of conscious awareness so we tend to identify with it. However, we don’t identify with that knock on the door that also appeared within the same realm of consciousness as the feeling of being a ‘self.’ But neither are anymore or any less ‘you’ Therefore, we can better assess psychopathy, the misfortune of poverty, and things of that nature. Since we know that several factors contribute towards each human condition respectively, it’s more appropriate to support people who exist in worse circumstances than others by no fault of their own. This is because we understand circumstances matter and human behavior is heavily influenced by one's environment. Therefore, we stop blaming people for their misfortunes. Also, to distinguish the dangers of certain actions such as trying heroine. To know you are susceptible to addiction in ways beyond your 'will' can help deter one from ever experimenting with it in the first place, for example. Understanding that there is no free will unlocks an understanding of how to utilize those inclinations that we are a self with more accuracy. I think of it like a ship becoming better prepared for its journey by adjusting its sails and flowing with the winds. The sails are how we think about free will. The winds are our understanding of it. As our understanding changes, so should the way we conceptualize it going forward. That’s how I think about the two, anyway. For what it worth.
Cant *stress*(haha) enough how lovely it is that the interview immediately starts. No bullshit, no music, no intro, no "so how've you been lately"; just right into the meat and potatos.
Mind blowing talk with a skilled interviewer. I literally said "Wow" out loud to myself tonight during the part about the relationship between Genetic "pre- dispositions" and the environment they are subject to. "Opportunity & Vulnerability". Watched the gadcin😮Professor Sopalski's lectures during COVID lockdown. Great to get re- acquainted. Thank you 🎉
Love Sapolsky by the way. having my reservations at 1:06 though. So, to protect others you need to "quarantine" people, not punish them. Punishment though is in the eyes of the beholder. You are limiting their ability to integrate and interact freely with the world at large. Your intentions may be good and morally noble, but that will be perceived, by the person, as a punishment. the result of this is the aforementioned increased negative hormonal and epigentetic response, and therefore, the potential "punishment" apriori of his prodigy although, as we have already established, they can have no fault because it was determined. If the world gets free biscuits except for for 10 people, because when they eat biscuits they go ape and kill people, those 10 are going to see it as a punishment regardless of the fact that society is trying to prevent considerable potential deaths or not. They still don't get the free biscuits that everyone else gets. There is an inequality there that they are going to see as a punishment.
1:29:15 thanks for that answer :) This is one of my pet peeves when talking with people about this. We are training people from a very young age to think in certain ways and appreciate and value certain things. How people get motivated and how they get to feel meaningfulness and appreciation is not set in stone in the way we do it now.
Understanding we don't have free will in the way we've thought about it doesn't mean you won't feel accomplished in pursuing a goal. Our brain rewards us with dopamine as a result. Still, the drive to want to make something of one's life is influenced by mechanisms beyond any individual's free will. I don't see this as devastating news but rather liberating. Like Sapolsky said, "It isn't the pursuit of happiness, it's the happiness of the pursuit."
I think a simpler solution to economic equality is recognition that envy is the core issue, not that others have more. if economic equality were achieved, it would turn into fixations on other inequalities, like social skill, height, beauty, and so on. what we should strive for is an economic system that reflects fairness. I personally like the idea of a pay equation with common factors that apply to all types of work, like time/travel, skill/knowledge, environment (better pay in more dangerous/uncomfortable environments), social (rating from customers n coworkers), and maybe a few others. flat income turns into little incentive to work hard or even work at all. the less our society works, the less services and products available... all to try n offset their sense of envy. Those with rarer skills are of more value, since most of us can't do what they do. same as those that work longer and harder. its rational to reward these behaviors, which also incentivizes others to do the same.
You'd also need penalties for the basis of deterrence. Both deterring that person from doing again (when they are not in jail or killed), and deterring others.
Sapolsky is one of the most brilliant biologists of our time. His pivotal book ‘Behave’ brings evolution, neuroscience and biology together in a seamless and meaningful way. Such a gifted scientist!
That feature of stress to feel less empathy must be a HUGE evolutionary advantage as tribal groups under food stress will ALWAYS raid vs die hungry. So that natural suppression of empathy allows people to save their village in dire circumstances that cause stress. Defending against raids, outright war, food shortages, predation attacks and so on. So often we think negatively about stress and similar "negative" feelings but they help us survive.
Great interview/discussion.. still not sold on the idea of no free will.. more sold on the idea of high probability of certain outcomes, but not certain absolute outcomes.
Love that man. Amazing scientist and fascinating human. Have watched many of his lectures online and first saw him in a Nat Geo documentary(I believe) on stress. He was far ahead of others in the free will argument and his work with primates backs it up. I am never bored when I watch him as a guest in any podcast. He had a mind blowing talk on toxoplasmosis that will scare the crap out of anyone with a cat. Mostly I love that he’s just hanging out on his computer in a real looking house and not some staged room from a magazine. Coolest ever.
So grateful for this interview! Your question at 43' is GOLD! And his answer is the mic drop! And when his dogs show up with the ball, and he says "maybe" spikes dopamine...and there's this BAM! moment, seeing the dog's wagging tail with red ball in mouth, anticipating that MAYBE he'll get to play...ot all just comes crashing in...we are The Dopamine Machine. So dope!!!
Hello you beauties. Access all episodes 10 hours earlier than RUclips by Subscribing on Spotify - spoti.fi/2LSimPn. Here’s the timestamps:
00:00 What Robert Wished People Knew About Stress
06:00 Where is the Threshold of Short-Term Stress Becoming Long-Term?
12:29 How Brain Development is Influenced by Mother’s Socioeconomic Status
25:50 Does Your Stress Impact Your Descendants?
29:00 Finding Solutions to Manage Stress
35:52 How to Better Enjoy the Good Things in Life
42:50 Can You Actually Detox from Dopamine?
53:18 Why Robert Wanted to Study Our Lack of Free Will
1:01:46 How Having No Conscious Agency Impacts Justice
1:11:10 The Myth of the Self-Made Man
1:32:43 How to Acknowledge Your Lack of Agency & Not Feel Depressed
1:40:22 Where to Find Robert
Is it crazy to suggest this might be wrong…
😮
Free will exists as long as we can individually want different things. We need a word for that, and that word is "free will", as you can see in any English dictionary. Beware, people who fight the dictionary may have antisocial tendencies.
Laura abouri
❤❤❤❤❤😊😊😊😊😊🎉🎉🎉🎉😮😮😮😮😮
I could listen to Robert Sapolsky all day.
“It’s not the pursuit of happiness, but it’s the happiness of the pursuit.” Love that.
Yes! I wrote that one down 🙂
I like your comment just discovered Sapolski recently 😂
He's ideas about the lack of freedom of will are stupid.
With his logic all prisoners should be freed because they had no choice in their criminality even the ones of higher socio economic status.
This guy is gold🥇 so much awareness
@@commissarkitty3553Did you even watch the video?
I love how Dr Sapolsky is recording this episode in his kitchen complete with family member and dog cameos. He seems to be such a grounded and wise human being. Thank you so much for the work that you both do!
@@oil_of_lahollywood4894 The entire thing was just really unpretentious and relatable despite his prestige. I died when he showed his dog with a ball. It was absolutely adorable. :)
Yes
His Human Behavioral Psychology Course from Stanford can be found a lot of places including on RUclips. It's fantastic.
Great to see Robert’s pantry, sad to see so many processed foods. Glad he got a fire extinguisher, that’ll avoid the stress of your house burning down when you burn the dinner. 😅
He hasn't proven there is no such thing as "Free Will". The "nuanced" argument "Abolish the Criminal Justice System" and replace it with what? Crickets. If they have no control they should be in jail, that's why they are there.
Finally a podcaster who respects the guest and lets him talk! I love it! Thank you!
Cause its fake
Alex O'Connor
@@InfinityReptar stumbled upon him a few months back! Epic guy, nice recommendation!
@@tugevpuder no problem!
Real gentlman and scientist.....15 years ago I have sent him some data on Croatian war veterans asking for his opinion...He replied immediately together with unpublished version of his new article...World needs more people like dr. Sapolsky❤
Wow. Thanks for sharing, it just puts a smile on my face. Quite intrigued what was the objective for sharing such niche data.
I haven't seen Sapolski smile so much in an interview. Great job, Chris.
THIS
I love how we are a community of 100 people plus who care about sapolsky's happiness, ty for commenting this 😊❤
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 🧠 Stress has detrimental effects on the brain, reducing empathy and tolerance, leading to a self-centered focus.
01:09 🧾 The anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region, is key to understanding and interpreting pain in oneself and others.
03:09 💔 Stress diminishes empathy, generosity, and moral compass, impacting how we relate to others and narrowing our concerns to a self-centric focus.
04:18 🎭 Stress challenges the notion of free will, emphasizing the role of environment and biology in shaping behavior and responses to stressors.
06:16 ⏳ Short-term stress is a biological response to immediate threats, while chronic stress leads to detrimental health effects, requiring attention to societal, cultural, and personal factors.
11:10 📺 Continuous exposure to global crises and catastrophes through media can significantly impact our stress responses and overall well-being.
15:57 🤰 A mother's socioeconomic status and stress during pregnancy can epigenetically influence a fetus, affecting brain development and long-term health outcomes.
20:08 🧬 Genetic predispositions interact with environmental factors, such as childhood stress, determining vulnerability to mental health conditions like depression.
22:09 🧪 Behavioral genetics emphasizes that genes interact with the environment, illustrating the complexity of how genes influence behavior and outcomes.
24:38 🔧 Epigenetics highlights the enduring impact of experiences on gene regulation, influencing health, behavior, and disease risks across the lifespan.
25:33 🧬 The regulation of genes and their interaction with the environment is more fascinating than the genes themselves.
25:49 🧠 Stress and bad experiences can leave lasting effects not only on individuals but potentially on future generations.
26:16 🧪 Environmental factors can influence gene regulation, impacting how individuals raise their children and pass on cultural values and neuroses.
27:12 💡 Stress during fetal life can cause epigenetic changes in the amygdala, affecting fear and anxiety responses in adulthood.
27:50 🔄 Epigenetic changes can be reversed through appropriate therapeutic interventions, modifying gene regulation and brain function.
28:17 👶 Multigenerational transmission of adverse regulatory consequences for genes can occur through parenting styles and environmental factors.
29:00 💡 Strategies to reduce stress should focus on control, predictability, outlets for frustration, and social support.
29:39 ⏸️ Stress management techniques should be personalized, enjoyable, and integrated into daily routines to be effective.
30:33 🔑 Cultivating a sense of control, predictability, and social support can mitigate the effects of stress on mental well-being.
31:30 🌟 Providing predictive information and a sense of control can buffer against stress, enhancing coping strategies in mild to moderate stressors.
33:19 🌿 Regularly engaging in stress-reducing activities and valuing one's well-being are essential for effective stress management.
34:25 🕰️ Setting aside dedicated time for stress management activities is crucial, prioritizing personal well-being in daily routines.
35:07 😄 Enjoying the chosen stress management technique is essential for its effectiveness, focusing on individual preferences and interests.
35:47 🚀 Avoiding stress management techniques that don't resonate with you is crucial, as forcing oneself into ineffective methods may exacerbate stress.
36:43 🎉 Creating positive experiences and savoring moments of joy can counteract habituation to pleasurable stimuli, extending their positive impact.
37:37 🤯 Dopamine is more about anticipation and striving than the actual reward, driving our motivation and excitement towards future possibilities.
39:26 ⚖️ Our constant pursuit of more and better is rooted in dopamine-driven anticipation, a fundamental aspect of human behavior and innovation.
45:11 🔀 Introducing uncertainty or the possibility of reward amplifies dopamine levels, emphasizing the role of uncertainty in driving motivation and anticipation.
49:34 💫 Humans have a unique ability to sustain anticipatory dopamine levels, envisioning future rewards and motivations beyond immediate gratification.
50:16 🔄 The pursuit and anticipation of future events or rewards drive much of human behavior, highlighting the value we place on anticipation and striving.
51:11 🧠 Stress & Dopamine Detraining: Detraining from dopamine can occur by reducing stimuli for about 30 days, potentially resetting the brain's response and impacting pleasure perception.
51:52 🧬 Individual Variation in Dopamine: Factors like early life stress, genetics, and neural makeup influence dopamine production and its impact on pleasure and anticipation.
53:15 💭 Understanding Individual Differences: Each person's dopamine system works differently due to a mix of genetics, life experiences, and environmental factors, affecting responses to stimuli.
54:00 🕊️ Discovering Lack of Free Will: A personal realization during adolescence led Dr. Sapolsky to the belief that there's no free will, which has influenced his work and writing.
56:27 🌍 Embracing Determinism: Dr. Sapolsky advocates that humans are a sum of biology and environmental interactions, lacking fundamental control, challenging conventional notions of free will.
57:20 ⚖️ Rethinking Criminal Justice: The current criminal justice system is flawed, punishing individuals for actions over which they had no control, needing a transformation to a more rational approach.
01:11:16 💼 Challenging Meritocracy: Meritocracy perpetuates entitlement by rewarding attributes individuals did not choose, necessitating a reevaluation of societal values and systems.
01:13:34 🌌 Grappling with Reality: Accepting the lack of control over one's efforts and desires can be disheartening, but it paves the way for a more nuanced understanding of human existence.
01:14:18 🧠 The importance of competent individuals, like neurosurgeons, necessitates appropriate incentives and training.
01:19:51 🌍 Realizing we are products of chance and circumstance can lead to a more humane understanding of individuals and their circumstances.
01:27:17 💡 Incremental actions challenging our sense of entitlement can promote a shift in how we perceive success and responsibility.
01:37:33 🧠 Mindfulness involves stringing together mindful moments, achievable through practice and repetition, leading to a more present and less judgmental mindset.
01:38:13 🤔 Applying the concept of incremental change to the understanding of free will, acknowledging the potential for reform and a shift in perspective towards others and circumstances.
01:39:07 ❤️ Striving to let go of hatred and resentment by recognizing the lack of free will and viewing individuals and their actions with understanding and empathy.
thank you for that 🙏
❤
Nature bless you with more children than others! thanks
@@szymonbaranowski8184 Do you really want an AI to have children?
❤
Whenever I hear this man talk, I feel like I'm being spoken to and understood by someone who really cares about my wellbeing.
He doesn‘t judge
try to be that voice for someone
@@billjones642 I'll try. Thank you for replying, I hope I can be helpful to someone else like him.
Positive vibes! As i get older im beginning to realize this is an aquired skill (to both have and learn to see it in others). Im trying to surrouns myself and listen to those with such a voice, and avoid the opposite.
true.
Sapolsky is a legend and neurobiology rockstar. Just an amazing researcher and science communicator. Always a joy to see him on a podcast.
great voice too....
yeah. he da man!
Robert rocks, no doubt! He's definitively my favourite neurobiologist🙂!
@@pvilla24 Agreed. He has blown my mind many times in his lecture series.
I love how this podcast is slowly turning into a course on applied evolutionary psychology.
One of the first teachers on YT, that I couldn't get enough of. Human Behavior Stanton - learned from those 25 x ca 100 minutes than from 12 years of "real" school.
@@CONEHEADDK are you referring to the Stanford lecture series? If so, then yes 💯. Between that, a TED talk by Carin Bondar and learning about the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, that basically completely transformed my understanding of how everything in human society works. And I just now went back to that playlist and saw that lecture series was actually Sapolsky 😅. Crazy.
Yes!!!!! ❤
@@jayrezvani3821 No doubt (I keep on f*cking those two up :S - CPTSD, depression and stress brain doesn't help me much :D ) The other two you mention I don't know, but I will google them. I usually use Jordan Peterson's "Are you depressed? or low in the dominence hierarchy?" (3 min.) to explain to people, why I can't "just pull my self together, and get things done".
Applied evolutionary psychology == Living life.
We can’t change parents, the time we are born into, our environment, our genes and so much more, but we can just be grateful we are alive and use our curiosity to do investigate this strange world.
Among my favourite Professors. Love this man's recorded Stanford lectures on YT.
yeah i remember him from back in the day on these, havent heard anything from him since then. might pick up his books if i feel like i wanna dive into those topics. really like the idea of my free will tho.
"Abolish the Criminal Justice System" is not nuanced, it's extremist click bait, he has nothing to replace it with and it will never happen. He hasn't proven there is no such thing as "Free Will", he has proven to me he doesn't understand the concept. So polite and well mannered though.
That's where I first saw him too. Such an amazing man.
Thank you for having Dr. Sapolsky on! He is an important scholar.
As someone who spent a lifetime thinking and reading about subjects like "free will," I came to the same conclusion as Dr. Sapolsky, and for the same reasons. All of his examples boil down to the reality of the physical world - there are only two types of actions - indeterministic and deterministic. Indeterministic (random) are outside of our control by definition in that if they were controllable, they'd be predictable, and, of course "random" requires unpredictability. Deterministic - those that evolve according to the laws of Physics. For these, if you don't control the initial state, you can't control any subsequent states. All subsequent states are determined by previous states. Brains are just physical matter and must evolve according to the laws of Physics, so any current brain states are just an evolution of previous brains states, all of which are outside of your control. No matter what combination of indeterminism and determinism are involved in any particular action, there is no room for this "magical" free will to shoe horn in and assert control. Once you really understand this is the way it MUST work, then it is liberating. I find myself incapable of getting angry at criminal behavior I read in the news, for example. I don't get angry at murderers. Of course, we still need to protect society from them, so they may need to be incarcerated. But, we shouldn't try to make their lives a living hell in prison. We should treat them like any other human being - with empathy. They didn't ask for their lives to turn them into that. I also find myself less likely to pat myself on the back for my accomplishments. I'm not responsible for my capabilities.
Same. I feel lucky to have the gifts I have, but also unlucky for some of the hard things I had to deal with, and I am grateful that I am not a psycho killer or some other mess of a human being, and grateful that I do not have the desire to be a "bad" person.
I am currently a graduate student doing neuroendocrinology research and it is largely due to the influence that Robert Sapolsky's work has had on my thinking and interests. Great interview with one of the best science communicators there is.
Has anyone ever used you as a lab-rat?
@@paulheydarian1281 Maybe.
Regarding the free will discussion and problem with lack of feeling of accomplishment: the solution is to replace pride with gratitude.
Exactly the ego is such a big component of that debate
Gratitude in what sense?
Dr. Sapolsky is a legend!! Thank you for interviewing him! ❤
If you're born to a poor and stressed mother you have a rough road ahead.
Great episode! I especially love the quote, "A relationship is the price you pay for the anticipation of it." In some way, I think this is part of the uphill battle with internet dating: we see all the best photos and considered statements about someone's personality, message and talk on the phone with them - ramping up the anticipation to an unrealistic amount - to then find they are an average person. The date has already been oversold before you've even met. Whereas meeting someone at work or in IRL, for the most part, avoids this problem.
I chose truck driving, got rid of debt, increased exercise, and stopped eating so much processed food. Took a little time but eventually stress dropped significantly.
You didn't choose that. Remember, there's no such thing as free will. lol
@@TheFreedomGypsywell then he got lucky that his upbringing and surroundings allowed him to choose a path that was actually relieving
It’s a truly confusing paradox to consider we have no free will. Djxurbsksidbr.
I randomly typed that set of letters. Why? What made me do that? What point am I trying to make here???
Robert makes a lot of sense and he’s been convinced since he was young that there’s no free will. A revelation he had. Maybe he’s correct. I’m still digesting the idea.
Can’t there be a sliding scale here? Why must it be this or that? How about thinking that some things we have no control over and other things we do. I can live with that. Not sure if I can accept the concept of NO freewill whatsoever.
Dbtjdhrhrndkidrbrkenebdi😢🎉🎉😊😂🎉🎉🎉 😅😅
Ughh
You’re killin me smalls!!!!!😂
@@shadamyandsonamylover Facts. I would've seen jail time if it weren't for having my dad.
@@sonicaftermath5776 I think it's more fair to say that we have very limited free will rather than no free will. If you think about it, none of us have chosen to be who we are whatsoever. It all just landed the way it did in how our lives played out and the circumstances we were born into. We enact our "free will" based on these conditions but our whole livelihood has not been something we chose out of free will. You could argue that because we didn't choose any of it, that we also don't really have a lot of choice for what we do going forward, because of the foundation everything is built on.
It's hard to wrap my mind around it. We have the choice to act however we like, but if we didn't choose to be who we are, is it actually our choice, or is it the choice of our collective identity (experiences, childhood, environment, etc.)? I think this is what Robert means when he refers to having no free will.
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I love Dr. Sapolsky. So much passion for his work and so much heart and empathy... There's something incredibly endearing to me about an expert in his field who readily admits that his work has raised more questions than it has provided answers... The fact that he doesn't insert himself as some sort of guru is so refreshing. If you haven't read his book, 'A Primate's Memoir', you're missing out.
Fabulous book. Scientific educational and entertaining.
Dr. Sapolsky is brilliant and I often watch his lectures online for inspiration in my own lecturing. He's the college professor's professor. Mad respect for this man.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve slowly come to a very similar conclusion to Dr. Sapolsky’s, and it truly does give a lot of freedom; freedom from judgement, of oneself and others. It increases empathy, and one really does begin to see that we are all in the same boat.
Dr. Sapolsky is so awesome. He gives off this wise older uncle vibe who's evolved beyond the mundane and trivial and become a beacon of wisdom and kindness. Could listen endlessly to him speaking. He's a seeker of knowledge for the joy of knowledge itself.
Like an older uncle suffering delusion and dementia.
@@go9ro367 wow what a kind and mature observation! Really appreciate your useful feedback and actual criticisms of his theories!
Check out his stanford lecture series on Human Behavorial Biology, it restored my interest in science! a top notch teacher.
@@go9ro367 Why, bro?
If i was a lazy guy with no self esteem and entitlement i would love Robert Sapolsky.
This was an amazing interview! Such insight. I especially like the part where meritocracy is questioned. I have reflected on this a lot. When I was young, and much worse off in life, I leaned towards success in life being mostly about luck. Then, when I was becoming quite successful, I started thinking success was much more due to ones own efforts. Lately, as I've reflected even more on it, I am once again back to thinking it's largely about luck. And I fully recognize how privilaged I am. And the greatest privilage of all is that I was born in a wealthy western country. Had I been born in a poor country, or 100 years ago, I would not have been able to accomplich much in life I think.
I hope you bring Robert back for a second interview at some point.
Omg, what a wonderful surprise this is! I didn’t think we would see much more of the GREAT Robert Sapolsky! ❤
My thoughts exactly 😂
Sapolsky's vigorous mind is clearly not slowing down and he has a great deal of ethical courage which requires a TON of mental and physiological energy. Don't let his gray hair and white beard fool you. I think he's got a lot of humble wisdom left to challenge us with!
My thought exactly
That explains a lot.
My grandma punched my mom in the stomach while pregnant with me.
I witnessed my parents fight just around the time I started to walk.
Parents divorced at 5 years old.
Narcissistic abusive stepdad comes in the picture around 6 years old.
More domestic violence and abuse continued all the way til I was 17 years old.
I’m 28 now and still try not to let my past overcome my present moment.
I’m sure there are many people with similar stories.
I truly sympathize with people that have come from broken homes when all you know is chaos and stress.
What’s done is done, all we can do is learn and practice ways to become stronger.
Accepting God in my life has been a life changer for me.
We all need to have some faith to follow.
I send you a hug!
You made a better choice. All strength to you.
❤
Yeah but how can you do any of that if you have no free will!?
@@michaelross4959exactly
"It's not the pursuit of happiness, it is the happiness of the pursuit."
Exactly.
Basically retelling the old wisdom:
Life is about the journey, not the destination.
Still, I like his way better, sounds like more people would be able to grasp this wording.
Totally gonna say this, with proper reference.
Personally, I learned the truth about chasing when I kicked a stim habit back when I was 19.
The secret to a total recovery for me was to find something I wanted so badly that nothing could stop me.
Then go for it.
Like Chris says, "Just do the thing."
Pursuit.
Thanks, but seems like you missed the story for my misspelling.
Maybe tomorrow you will see something useful.
Thanks for reading.
Thankes for the wonderful conversation with Robert Sapolsky! His Stanford lectures on the human evolution of behaviour are legendary. He gives so many examples, it is mindblowing and overwhelming. Love to see the man at his best today.
As a nurse I know and see how stress effects people everyday and ppl brush it off because stress doesnt have a "face" as in people can look fine and be under stressed.
What a legend Sapolsky. And Chris the best person to do this. Awesome.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:28 🧠 Stress impacts empathy: Stress narrows your focus and reduces empathy, making you less tolerant and less willing to consider others' perspectives, primarily affecting the anterior cingulate cortex in the brain.
02:56 🤝 Stress reduces generosity: Stress makes people less generous, more likely to cheat, and less morally inclined, leading to a focus on self-interest and a diminished range of concern for others.
05:49 💭 The role of agency in stress: Stress is not just an external force; it depends on our perception of agency and control. Dr. Sapolsky suggests that free will is a myth, and our experiences are shaped by biology and environment.
08:48 ⏳ Short-term vs. long-term stress: The impact of stress depends on various factors, including individual differences, cultural context, and species. Short-term stress can be useful, but chronic stress can be detrimental to health.
15:57 🧬 Socioeconomic status and fetal brain development: A mother's socioeconomic status can impact a fetus's brain development through the transmission of stress hormones, potentially affecting cognitive and emotional functions in later life.
25:33 🧬 Genes are less interesting than their regulation and how the environment changes gene regulation. Stress and anxiety can lead to epigenetic changes in genes, affecting future generations.
26:16 🧠 Our experiences as adults can influence how we raise our children and pass on cultural values and behaviors.
28:31 ⚙️ Multigenerational epigenetic changes can occur due to stress during fetal development and continue to affect future generations, but interventions can mitigate these effects.
30:06 🤔 Psychological stress is not just about external circumstances but also about the perception of control, predictability, and social support.
42:39 💭 To extend the duration of pleasure from experiences, one can practice mindfulness, savor the moment, and focus on helping others experience similar joys.
51:11 🧠 Understanding the brain's response to dopamine and stimulus can help us manage stress and pleasure.
53:42 🤔 Dr. Sapolsky believes that there is no free will and discusses the impact of this belief on society.
57:20 🚀 The concept of free will is animated because it challenges our fundamental beliefs about responsibility and punishment.
01:02:10 🛡️ Dr. Sapolsky suggests that the criminal justice system needs to be reformed, moving away from punishment and towards containment and addressing root causes.
01:11:31 ⚖️ The idea of meritocracy is challenged, as Dr. Sapolsky argues that we often reward people for factors beyond their control, which can lead to entitlement and injustice.
01:14:18 🧠 Understanding free will and determinism: Dr. Robert Sapolsky discusses the concept of free will, emphasizing that our behavior is shaped by biological factors and environmental influences, challenging the traditional notion of personal responsibility.
01:25:51 🌍 The humane implications of recognizing lack of free will: Sapolsky highlights that acknowledging the lack of free will can lead to a more compassionate world, where people realize that many aspects of their lives are the result of chance.
01:30:58 🤔 Challenging the sense of entitlement: Sapolsky suggests that recognizing the role of chance in our lives can help reduce entitlement and encourage individuals to consider the needs of others equally.
01:33:54 🙌 Taking small steps towards rejecting free will: Sapolsky advises taking incremental actions like practicing random acts of kindness or reconsidering judgments to gradually shift one's perspective on free will.
01:37:06 ⏳ Continuously integrating insights: Similar to mindfulness, Sapolsky suggests that consistently revisiting and applying these insights into our daily lives can help create a more thoughtful and compassionate existence.
01:37:21 🧘 Mindfulness and stringing together moments: Similar to mindfulness, embracing the concept of lack of free will involves stringing together individual instances where we recognize the role of chance and practice non-judgment.
01:38:13 🚀 Incremental reform vs. revolution: While recognizing the absence of free will may seem revolutionary, Sapolsky suggests that implementing this perspective in small, reformist ways on a daily basis can help reduce hatred and judgment.
01:38:54 🌌 Exploring altered states of consciousness: Sapolsky humorously suggests that experimenting with heavy psychedelics might provide insights into the nature of free will.
01:39:36 💔 Letting go of hatred: Sapolsky advocates for finding ways to let go of hatred and resentment towards individuals like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, aligning with the idea that it makes as little sense to hate them as it does to hate a volcano.
Made with HARPA AI
Odd that those are the individuals he would note regarding hatred. The people most advocating for anti anything are largely the most hateful and ignorant people I've met. Instead of worrying about hate of people we have no personal connection with let's reduce judgement and hate for people we do.🤷♀️
Thank you for the STAMPS 📌
@@optimismrules2512 maybe its easier to start there
thanks for taking the time to write this out
@@ryan.1990 depends on what kind of liberality one is talking about. if its say accepting homosexuality then whats the problem?
This is awesome! I love listening to/watching Dr. Sapolsky. I found the videos of his lectures at Stanford on youtube several years ago and I was hooked. To me, those are the REAL red pill (all of the "buckets", not just sexual dynamics or economics of relationships type stuff that seems to be what most of the channels focus on). And its meant for everyone, women and men. I've watched them all, (including anything else I could find from him) at least 3 times from the first class to the last. Theres so much information to absorb. Anyway, thank you Chris and Dr. Sapolsky for a great interview!
Yes, same here. I stubbled across his Stanford lectures about 3 years ago and turned my brother onto them. He made sure to order this most recent book a month before it even came out. The buckets will surely stay in the minds of those students for life. LOL
Absolutely love Dr. Sapolsky! So glad you got to do this interview, thank you!
Chris, I’ve been watching your videos for a couple years now all of them helping me to shape the person I am today. At this point, I consider your videos valuable for life. Thank you, Professor Chris.
Sapolsky is a legend. His lectures are the best online.
Dr. Sapolsky is an amazing human being. This was a wonderful interview.
For years around 2 a.m. the RUclips algorithm has fed me Robert Sapolsky's Stanford lectures... So this is right on time. 🤘
I hear you.
Thanks Dr. Sapolsky. Thanks to your wife too. I was challenged and I sat through many years and hours of your lectures and work. Yes. It was worth every moment.
Robert Sapolsky is a legend. Thank you for interviewing this fabulous teacher!!!
A little bit of pushback would be useful although i understand Chris prefers to let him speak. Strong statements like 'there is no damn free will whatsoever' is silly.
@@Tony-cj6jy It's only silly if we actually use it to kill our moral compass. It is scientifically accurate but humanly untrue : )
@@Tony-cj6jy Silly is throwing a claim like that into a thread like this.
@@antonyshadowbanned Humanly untrue how?
@@CONEHEADDK It SEEMS like we do, that is what is meant by that.
Thanks so much Dr. Sapolsky and Mr Williamson for providing this information. I'm in a relationship with someone who has experienced some trauma and want to apply some of these insights into helping her heal.
This man is such an inspiration for humanity 🙏🏼
Sapolsky has to be one of the most fascinating academics to listen to.
I read Behave, without knowing very much about the brain and behavior. It was a great book. It takes some effort, but it is very rewarding, especially if you have had a traumatic childhood. It helped me to realise the reason why I am the way I am.
I would really like to know what Robert has to comment about Lisa Feldman's affirmations regarding amygdala not being about fear but actually being activated in all kinds of other regular activities and emotions. It would actually be amazing to have the two of them together.
This is easily one of the best talks I have watched this year. Thank you to both of you and everyone who helped make this available to humans around the globe.
The best video I’ve ever seen in my life. Thanks Chris and Robert.
I've discovered that all my suffering is: difficult feelings and the resistance to those difficult feelings. The problem is that when distracted, it happens subconsciously (automatically). The solution is to remain conscious of it, in the now, welcoming and handling it instead of resisting it
Wow exactly what I'm currently dealing with.
Sounds like cognitive behavioral therapy basically. Stay mindful and consciously choose to feel differently about things
@@anonony9081you can’t “choose “ to feel different lol
I took up piano 8 years ago at 50 years old. I didn't do it to reduce my stress but if it would good, I thought. It has to be one of the most stress inducing things in my life. I still do It. I won't stop. I enjoy it more now then years ago. My recommendation for stress: stretching, slow breathing.
I love watching lectures and interviews with Sapolsky. Brilliant.
I've first seen sapolsky in stanford youtube channel and I was amazed with the opportunity to have those courses free, I am in deep gratitude that I live in a time where this information is free halfway across the globe and how this person lectures is amazingly organic and passionate, even the way he speaks has a beneficial stress relieve effect. best wishes
22:55 I don't think it's a matter of digging 8 hours without back pain, I think it's more of a matter of being able to dig through 8 hours of back pain.
So excited to see a new interview with Robert Sapolsky. Thanks Chris!
I have also come to the realization that we have no free will. It’s great to hear this from an admired scholar! If I said this to others in my circle, it would upset them.
I had been pushing myself to succeed financially for years, burned out my thyroid, almost ruined all my relationships, and neglected my health. After finding very little success I consider myself lucky to have ended up a little wiser than when I started. At first I was angry and depressed about it. But, I can still find joy.
For me, joy never occurs in a profitable way. Much the opposite! 😂
One big problem that I see with Sam Harris and Robert discussing freewill is a failure to distinguish fault and responsibility, determinism removes fault but maintains responsibility
Im not sure I buy the determinism, BUT I absolutely find Robert fascinating and Im so glad we all live in world with people as smart as this guy.
I really liked Sapolsky's lecture on chronic depression.
Interestingly, I am unconvinced by many of his arguments in this discussion.
I notice a strong maternal/empathic interpretation of the subject matter despite his employment of several ironically cold and logical statements. This is reasonable cause for suspicion that this natural bias is driving his arguments toward those conclusions.
Claiming that nobody has free choice cannot be used as a strong argument for trying to alter anyone's behaviors. If nobody has free choice then nobody can alter behaviors by choice. This includes responsive behaviors. I.e. if criminals can't stop committing crimes then law enforcers can't stop punishing them. They are both contained within the same system.
I feel like another thing that points out that we are far more deterministic then we like to think is empathy itself. We like to think that humans are capable of being unselfish but I’d disagree. Empathy is the ability to feel the emotions of others. Meaning those with empathy have there inherent selfishness tied in with others and there emotions. So if you where trying to find a control group and see how truly unselfish and benevolent humans are without there inherent selfish motivations motivating them to act in such a way you would use human without empathy as your control group. And that would be psychopaths and uh we KNOW they don’t act benevolently 😂😂
He says that knowledge of knowledge alters your brain. You have no free will is simply to say, your will is a mechanistic outcome, but it can be altered by what is put into the mechanism, or changed about it.
Thank you for how intelligently you added value to this conversation.
I am one of the people that don’t have much to be proud of and don’t understand how there’s no free will but I decided what to eat yesterday and to go to work today and that sort of stuff.
I would love an explanation and thank you in advance 🌹🌹
Brilliant conversation to watch. Both of you shined. What a pleasure. Thanks.
We don’t have free will, we have the will to be free to be! And through the process of our sense of aliveness by detaching we can experience with fuller presence, straying from the control of mind to linger more with the attraction of ❤️
Amazing Sapolsky! Simply amazing. Modern wisdom bringing actual MODERN wisdom! And honestly, very well done Chris, you are making great progress (through no free will of you own 😂).
I don’t think we really have to worry about people being de incentivized. Superior ability whether it’s athletic ability or intellectual ability tends to be self rewarding. The ability to do the amazing thing is your reward. The reward for the ability to make amazing music is making amazing music. It feels super great to do things you’re good at.
One of the first teachers on YT, that I couldn't get enough of. Human Behavior Stanton - learned from those 25 x ca 100 minutes than from 12 years of "real" school.
I was 16yo when I've got an intrusive thought saying everything is written. It's there free will stopped existing for me. But it's also there I started to study which mind structures that led me into impulsivity, cognitive dissonances and also study the chains of causes and effects. Recognizing all the conditions that make a situation give the power to restructure the mindset and build a better life with an adjusted mindset. This saved my life and I'm happy to see a scientist saying that free will doesn't exist. It's where my life became a study laboratory to reprogram what was wrong in my thinking and free myself from my traumas impacts.
Man I love Robert Sapolsky... His lectures available on Stanford channel are awesome 👌
Chris Williamson. You are an excellent interviewer. Thanks. Your last words are profound.
I’ve enjoyed MANY of your podcasts now, but this was so much better than any other!
Wait, what? I love looking in his pantry! Good for him, not having the library facade behind him. He is a truly wonderful human!
What a great surprise! Behave is my absolute favorite nonfiction book, and I never get tired of listening to Sapolsky. Chris is doing an excellent job at creating an unique podcast for those interested in psychology and neuroscience. Btw, I would love to see Haidt here too.
If i was a lazy guy with no self esteem and entitlement i would love Robert Sapolsky.
@@jasonolinger7585 didn't ask
I think it's more accurate to say 'we all have reactions to stimuli' than, 'there's no free will', although some may argue that's a synonym... To me, it feels similar to saying 'of course it's destiny, it happened'. One other angle this could be looked at is artistic - If a baby was born and never shown music, but was given a Guitar and left to mess around on it for years - What music would he or she write? And where did it come from?
Super interesting conversation from 2 of my favourites. Thank you sirs!
Robert Sapolsky is my spirit animal!!!
1st x listening to Dr. Sapolsky; OMG ; I'm 66 yo and I've always felt that way and now I have finally found 2 people that I agree with! Thank you guys. Made my day 😎
Looking at the world through reasoned will vs free is a game changer. It’s a whole new level of humility.
a lot of buzzwords there. are you paid?
@@johnodonoghue651 hardly, finally happy someone else other than a handful of peeps now sees this. I was shown through a friend from UK the absurdity of ‘free’ will.
Closer than ever to that field Rumi speaks of.
@@Cliodhna3ltlbrdsheal Genuinely curious - what do you mean by "absurdity" of free will?
@@alwynkotze9891 The notion that our choices are freely expressed based upon another notion that ‘freedom’ exists. Trying to say you are free to do but not free from consequences is horsemalarkey, short-sited and disparages creativity. Not having an internal compass and letting the ‘universe’ decide…..Ya no. Even giving it up to God” (Gods in my personal practice) is still a Feedback loop. Feedback loops of time are always in charge long before we’ get a chance to weigh(Ma’At) in. We can walk away from many things of ‘our’ ‘free will’ but that’s not what happens. Our guts, our hearts our ‘souls’ react differently and are discerning what life throws at us. Our responses are measured as pointed out in the talk in our responses. Even outside of the brain auto responses, it’s to stimuli. Order in the chaos isn’t always symmetrical. It often is brutal when the balance meted out. Morality is and has been based on this merit scale yet the merit scale is grossly exaggerated for multiple gains and losses of the few that have control paradigms. Manipulations at play too often because life used the boot straps logic to makes fools of many. The Great Game was set upon false foundations and willing participants who wanted little to no accountability. Choice isn’t freedom when the options are shite from go by design.
How do you see free will?
Also what from Camus? Is your favourite.
Chris, thank you for the excellent interview of Robert Sapolsky -- the best I've seen -- who I greatly enjoy listening to/reading. Your wit and humour really brought the conversation to a higher level.
I suppose one of the scarey possibilities of the "no free will" argument is that, if people see people as machines without free will, that "shutting down" (i.e. unalive them) bad people seems more reasonable. This is what we do with wild animals who attack people. We don't put dangerous wild animals in prison, we kill them to prevent more attacks. If there were robots walking around and some of them were dangerous, we wouldn't put them in prison, we'd just shut them off permanently.
".. we can take this 150 million year old circuity and we can abstract it over space and time like nothing that's ever walked this planet before" -- Dr Robert Sapolsky. Wow. Some of the most moving words I've ever heard. Totally Saganesque in changing my opinion of the importance of humanity in the cosmos.
This isn't gold. This is an entire mine of precious everything. Thank you both for everything ❤
This is a pure blessing to listen to. Professor has an incredible mind. Thank you both.
One of the ironies of "no free will" is that correction and incentives work. So if we treat people and ourselves as if we have free will and thus we must discipline ourselves to do exercise we WILL modify behaviour as if we had free will to do so. Coupled with that if you BELIEVE you have free will you mind can come up with the erroneous result that you do and this result is you finally going to the gym. There are so many advantages to believing in free will regardless of the truth of it. Also INCENTIVES work in a free will or no free will situation so setting up incentives as if you have free will regardless of the truth, will result in people achieving better results. So you have to set up society with incentives to reward those people lucky enough to have all the pieces in place to be successful as if free will exists. This is the major problem with "No free will / Free will" debate is that it becomes almost a pointless discussion. And the best defense is I don't believe we have no free will and it is not my fault for believing in free will so you might as well shut up about it.
Also look how no free will people talk, "Once a week when you are about to judge someone harshly don't." That entire sentence it incoherent dribble if we have no free will. How do you "Don't or Do" if you have no free will? Exactly how do you act incrementally if you have no free will at all? The fact that no free will proponents have no way of expression expect using terms that require you the person to exercise free will show exactly how hollow their arguments are in terms of PRACTICAL use. Regardless of the truth of the claims we must ACT as if we have free will.
Well, correction and incentives often work because they are vital for our survival and that automatically excludes our free will, it is simply based on survival and reproduction instincts. But our makeup is so complex that even that can be overridden, but that isn't our totally independent choice. Maybe it is easier to understand our lack of free will when we recognize how dependendent everything is from anything (cause and effect) You are right that in order to function we need some concept of free will, the same is true for seeing us in a better light than we truly are. We can't truly escape ourselves so let's just pretend...
You don’t need the concept of free will to exist to be an agent in the world capable of making decisions. You just have to realize instead of magic sentient pixie dust making the decisions (‘you’), it is a composite of your past experiences/biology/knowledge which shapes your decision. Think of it more like using your knowledge to steer yourself and not some magical form of existence that is making decisions independent of everything else. All it requires is a shift in perspective and everything works fine.
@@GearForTheYear I don't think you understand what FREE WILL means. You can't "make decision" with out free will. You can't USE your knowledge to STEER without free will. You can't talk about this WITHOUT using agency terminology. Steering is an active act so you cant say steer. Make a decision is an act of agency again you can't use that terminology.
Try to explain your position without using any term that requires action or agency it is impossible.
@@theG0thfather not true. Your past experiences/biology/knowledge and the environment you are in steer you. You are the sum of your parts. This ethereal ‘you’, independent of your biology, doesn’t exist in this universe, so agency is still compatible in a universe without free will, it’s just not as simple as the concept of an independent soul.
Decisions are made by computers all the time and they don’t have free will. 🤦♂️
@@theG0thfatheryou(like most people, including Robert) misunderstand free will as being synonymous with agency. It's not.
Lack of free will merely means that the universe is deterministic. A deterministic world can still have agents. You just need a (coherent) theory for agency, which most free will advocates lack.
So good see Dr Sapolski again, his YT videos from Uni help me a lot long time ago to deal with myself. I love him❤ thanks
Great episode as always. It'd be interesting to hear Sapolsky and Peterson discuss free will. He's making a lot of sense but so does Peterson when encouraging the adoption of responsibility. I'm struggling to reconcile the two as it seems like they maybe conflicting views as far as meaning is concerned.
Peterson said to Harris, “I act as though I have free will”
I think it’s fine to adopt as much responsibility as you can sustain within your own volition.
Free will is more about understanding that plenty of variables exist outside conscious awareness that affect human behavior. That the sense of being your ‘self’ is just as much an appearance in consciousness as hearing a knock at your door. You didn’t author the knock, but it appeared in consciousness all the same.
Desiring to be responsible is also an appearance in consciousness. It’s an act of self-protection because you may believe responsibility will lead you to happiness or fulfillment of some kind. The drive influencing you to want such happiness exists outside of your own will even though the entire process of attaining the happiness, by means of responsibility for example, is simultaneously within your realm of conscious awareness so we tend to identify with it. However, we don’t identify with that knock on the door that also appeared within the same realm of consciousness as the feeling of being a ‘self.’ But neither are anymore or any less ‘you’
Therefore, we can better assess psychopathy, the misfortune of poverty, and things of that nature. Since we know that several factors contribute towards each human condition respectively, it’s more appropriate to support people who exist in worse circumstances than others by no fault of their own. This is because we understand circumstances matter and human behavior is heavily influenced by one's environment. Therefore, we stop blaming people for their misfortunes. Also, to distinguish the dangers of certain actions such as trying heroine. To know you are susceptible to addiction in ways beyond your 'will' can help deter one from ever experimenting with it in the first place, for example. Understanding that there is no free will unlocks an understanding of how to utilize those inclinations that we are a self with more accuracy. I think of it like a ship becoming better prepared for its journey by adjusting its sails and flowing with the winds. The sails are how we think about free will. The winds are our understanding of it. As our understanding changes, so should the way we conceptualize it going forward.
That’s how I think about the two, anyway.
For what it worth.
Cant *stress*(haha) enough how lovely it is that the interview immediately starts. No bullshit, no music, no intro, no "so how've you been lately"; just right into the meat and potatos.
Thank you Chris for this amazing podcast , absolutely love your content .
Mind blowing talk with a skilled interviewer.
I literally said "Wow" out loud to myself tonight during the part about the relationship between Genetic "pre- dispositions" and the environment they are subject to.
"Opportunity & Vulnerability".
Watched the gadcin😮Professor Sopalski's lectures during COVID lockdown.
Great to get re- acquainted.
Thank you 🎉
Such a musical, eloquent articulation: I am beholden to Sapolsky, my Guru.
Listening and watching Dr. Sapolsky relieves all my stress :)
Love Sapolsky by the way. having my reservations at 1:06 though. So, to protect others you need to "quarantine" people, not punish them. Punishment though is in the eyes of the beholder. You are limiting their ability to integrate and interact freely with the world at large. Your intentions may be good and morally noble, but that will be perceived, by the person, as a punishment. the result of this is the aforementioned increased negative hormonal and epigentetic response, and therefore, the potential "punishment" apriori of his prodigy although, as we have already established, they can have no fault because it was determined.
If the world gets free biscuits except for for 10 people, because when they eat biscuits they go ape and kill people, those 10 are going to see it as a punishment regardless of the fact that society is trying to prevent considerable potential deaths or not. They still don't get the free biscuits that everyone else gets. There is an inequality there that they are going to see as a punishment.
I haven't heard much about the power of our mind to be grateful for each day & choose peace as our baseline
1:29:15 thanks for that answer :) This is one of my pet peeves when talking with people about this. We are training people from a very young age to think in certain ways and appreciate and value certain things. How people get motivated and how they get to feel meaningfulness and appreciation is not set in stone in the way we do it now.
Understanding we don't have free will in the way we've thought about it doesn't mean you won't feel accomplished in pursuing a goal. Our brain rewards us with dopamine as a result. Still, the drive to want to make something of one's life is influenced by mechanisms beyond any individual's free will. I don't see this as devastating news but rather liberating.
Like Sapolsky said, "It isn't the pursuit of happiness, it's the happiness of the pursuit."
I think a simpler solution to economic equality is recognition that envy is the core issue, not that others have more. if economic equality were achieved, it would turn into fixations on other inequalities, like social skill, height, beauty, and so on. what we should strive for is an economic system that reflects fairness. I personally like the idea of a pay equation with common factors that apply to all types of work, like time/travel, skill/knowledge, environment (better pay in more dangerous/uncomfortable environments), social (rating from customers n coworkers), and maybe a few others. flat income turns into little incentive to work hard or even work at all. the less our society works, the less services and products available... all to try n offset their sense of envy. Those with rarer skills are of more value, since most of us can't do what they do. same as those that work longer and harder. its rational to reward these behaviors, which also incentivizes others to do the same.
❣️🌎 Every single moment is wonderful in our life ☀️✨️🪂 Thank you for warm and peace 🌍❣️
You'd also need penalties for the basis of deterrence. Both deterring that person from doing again (when they are not in jail or killed), and deterring others.
Sapolsky is one of the most brilliant biologists of our time. His pivotal book ‘Behave’ brings evolution, neuroscience and biology together in a seamless and meaningful way. Such a gifted scientist!
That feature of stress to feel less empathy must be a HUGE evolutionary advantage as tribal groups under food stress will ALWAYS raid vs die hungry. So that natural suppression of empathy allows people to save their village in dire circumstances that cause stress. Defending against raids, outright war, food shortages, predation attacks and so on. So often we think negatively about stress and similar "negative" feelings but they help us survive.
Great interview/discussion.. still not sold on the idea of no free will.. more sold on the idea of high probability of certain outcomes, but not certain absolute outcomes.
Fascinating episode! A great companion to Sam’s thinking. Pre-ordered the book. Thanks 🙏🏼
Love that man. Amazing scientist and fascinating human. Have watched many of his lectures online and first saw him in a Nat Geo documentary(I believe) on stress. He was far ahead of others in the free will argument and his work with primates backs it up. I am never bored when I watch him as a guest in any podcast. He had a mind blowing talk on toxoplasmosis that will scare the crap out of anyone with a cat. Mostly I love that he’s just hanging out on his computer in a real looking house and not some staged room from a magazine. Coolest ever.
So grateful for this interview!
Your question at 43' is GOLD! And his answer is the mic drop!
And when his dogs show up with the ball, and he says "maybe" spikes dopamine...and there's this BAM! moment, seeing the dog's wagging tail with red ball in mouth, anticipating that MAYBE he'll get to play...ot all just comes crashing in...we are The Dopamine Machine.
So dope!!!
Dr sapolsky we ❤you and need more of you. Upvote this
Looking forward to this podcast with much older huberman
No disrespect to Huberman, but Sapolsky is orders of magnitude more of a scientist.
This is really funny! 🤣
I can’t get enough of Dr Sapolsky…thank you for a great interview! Will be watching more of your podcasts…