I don't believe in free will. This is why.
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- Опубликовано: 28 апр 2024
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Do humans have free will or to the the laws of physics imply that such a concept is not much more than a fairy tale? Do we make decisions? Did the big bang start a chain reaction of cause and effects leading to the creation of this video? That's what we'll talk about today.
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00:00 Intro
0:34 Has Physics Ruled Out Free Will?
0:52 Physics FTW!
4:14 Emergence
8:10 Free Will?
13:41 Decisions, Decisions
16:31 Why Does it Matter?
18:16 Learn More With Brilliant 
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Whenever i watch a Sabine video about free will, it is never by choice.
Maybe you should make the decision to watch it again because choice isn't about free will.
Choice is not about freedom but reason. And reason is not free.
I know what you mean. I watch it because first I feel like I have to, and then I just give in; and it all happens so fast too.
Lawyers charge way too much to write up a will... but still, it shouldn't be free.
😏👍🏽
I don't believe in free will, but I do believe in reasonably inexpensive will.
Yeh,.. like at least clean the house sometimes...
...show some kind of affection,
to the kids at least...?...
It costs approx .00001 cents to be a good person.
I've heard that there may be infinite universes or dimensions. Could the multiverse have existed forever? Aren't these all real infinities?
No such thing as universal basic will in this verse. You gotta earn your will, plebe😐
Well that's just your two cents.
The late, great Christoper Hitchens was asked this. Hitchens always found it to be a boring question. When asked if he believed in free will he answered very simply... "I have no choice." I still think it was the best answer ever given to this question. Most people don't really think about what they're asking. They just can't seem to let go of the false notion that they are in control of their decisions.
I don't see how there could be free will for a philosophical materialist. Hitchen's own thoughts would also be the inevitable consequence of material forces, not conclusions freely arrived at by a supposedly brilliant thinker. Did he really believe that or was he just not willing to face up to the question? Funny that lack of curiosity.
@@richardyates7280Understanding the absence of free will didn’t change anything for Hitchens. Hitchens enjoyed learning about the world and the thought process of figuring things out. He loved discussing it with other intelligent people. And he loved debating it with both intelligent and unintelligent people.
None of that changes after knowing our brains are a train.
you made a decision to write this dvmb comment.
We need to have the exact same starting conditions to exist as we are. I think eternal recurrence makes sense.
When you play chess against another, aren't the moves you make your choice? If there's several moves available, aren't you picking the ones you prefer rather than having them predetermined ? I think in life there are larger trends that are predetermined like your place of birth, your birth parents, your siblings, your physical structure and appearance unless you specifically go about changing it but this latter factor would indicate free will exists. Both exist concurrently.
I had this realisation when I was 12 that every action was was caused by every action before it and so on, and nearly had a breakdown trying to find someone else who understood what I was talking about because none of my classmates or teachers or even older 20 year old friends on the internet at that time did. I didn't know that it was called predeterminism at the time and wasn't until a couple years later that I finally found out. Meanwhile all throughout my 12-14 year old school years, I was losing my mind arguing with both religious and non-religious teachers about how free will didn't exist because of this and it was awful because I thought I was going insane because no one else understood what I was saying.
Right, I believe this too. I had this realisation only recently at 27 now that free will is essentially determinism, as Elon Musk puts it. I think that we just constantly reap the karma of our actions from this and also previous lifetimes and that what we experience in this life is thus very little that is created from our own "free will" in this present life. Because of all this, I think some of the things we may truly want we may not experience until future lifetimes; if we are aware enough to sow the right seeds now that is.
Actually, this kind of determinism was used by Aquinas centuries ago to prove the existence of God. Just google his 5 proofs for the existence of God. It's pretty elementary, and it rests on the beliefs you're describing. One of the nice side effects is that God (in the Christian belief) confers free will on humankind from the get-go.
@@macjeffff The "proofs of god" are not scientific proofs, nor are they literal proofs, they can only be called proofs under a very lenient definition of "proof". The same way a doodle on a piece of paper can function as a proof of concept for something totally unrelated.
@@thearchitect5405 Actually, they are well-known logical proofs. Aquinas is still considered one of the finest logicians of all time. Even if you disagree, you would probably be fascinated by the work. Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God are easy to find. Check them out!
@YukiXK are you me?
"To be a RUclipsr you don't need to know anything!"
CLASSIC 😂
100%
That made my day also. I had to hit pause and stop laughing.
Amusing I suppose but completely incorrect, to be a "RUclipsr" you have in fact to already know a great deal.
There is more to response. And attention than what is in the surface. You must look into all forms of information and audial matrices seemed to be quantum in this subject. Mentally quantum not physically quantum.
Let me abbreviate the organized quantum jump and how it's achieved. Using imagery the mind and audial matrix conformative agreements . As work. Amongst information flowing to constantly change what is experienced consciously in awareness.
Having this information removed upon enacting the event is what she expressed as involuntary or nonconcious quantum jumps. They can relate to physical light as matter. Seen through a beings eyes. Percievable boundaries like the connection to holomorphic light and sound and what the eyes are. Contrary to what we "know"
Sabine trolls the internet in her own dry humor way and I am constantly here for it. 😂
That's why I love her 😂
i love how she simply show all the piece we have that show the concept itself is contradictory and fundamentally meaningless from what we know of our universe
Yeah, BUT the Aliens say that we are ruining our planet. Implying that we have a choice 😮 👽 🛸 🌳 ♻️ 😂
@@fredericklehoux7160 Wait I thought there is no such thing as meaning? Oh wait that's right the new trend is to say that meaning doesn't exist therefore we choose ourselves what matters. Oh wait..we don't choose anything its all determined and meaning does exist!
Only theoretical physicists can be this stupid I swear.
Sabina's my favorite troll. None of that ad hominem stuff; just straight, hardcore Mr Spock logic combined with classic German snark. Bravo!
I'm a medical doctor . I happened to like physics and I find your channel is hervorragend. Keep up the good work!
Well,I am a Physicist and Sabine is not always correct unfortunately..
@@nadirceliloglu7623 Now I'm curious to hear more ^^
@@nadirceliloglu7623 that's what makes her so entertaining to watch. If she only stated commonly known facts, it would be boring. One just has to carefully evaluate her words, she's never shy to express her opinions
@@SergejVolkov17 but some of her arguments are totally wrong. It does not matter whether she is shy or not to express her opinion.
Science does not care about opinions,but cares only about facts!
@@laura5425 Well you are curious but you are not a Physicist. Would you understand physics?
As someone who suffers from indecision, I find this an absolute win.
Instant success. You just made a snap decision. Well done.
You just got an excuse to continue behaving the way you've always have...lol
@@peacemakernanathats what this is always about. Thats what leftism is, its an exscuse, a subtle whispher in the ear, a good reason to be a bad person. Theirs always some good reason: "I'm really a puppet with no free will so its ok" "Eve made me eat the apple". Nothing under the sun is new
Indecision would never exist if there were no level of will involved
I used to worry about this, but then I realized that it feels like we do, and that's the best we can manage.
We still have consciousness, no need for free will as long as I can watch the movie
Sounds like slavery and imprisonment.
@@bobjohnson1633 there is a vast divide between metaphorical "slavery and imprisonment" and actual "slavery and imprisonment." your decision to not distinguish in this case is suspicious.
When the term was first used, it enabled us to talk about human functioning in terms that made sense to us. "Free" was meaningful because it referred to the experience of deliberating and making a choice among alternatives. But when you take the term "free" serious, it suggests that we are free to do anything we put our minds to. Some reflection shows that this ability is not real for us (despite how he might want to, a prisoner can not flap his wings and fly over the prison wall) so obviously this 'sense of freedom' 'is false. Duh. However, there is still the phenomenon, the experience, of willing something and then acting in order that it comes to pass. The meaning of "free" that most freewillers have in mind is not this radical sense, but simply the obvious sense of being able to consider alternatives in the chain of one's actable actions (physical and mental) and realize one from among those considered.
Today, freewill is better understood as just an old name (literally false by today's understandings) used to refer to purposeful, meaningful behavior (it's language, ffs). It doesn't require a violation of physics, it just requires more than one system of physico-chemical control and the means to favor one over the other. One way to do it is to have two systems processing but with them having slightly different clocks or perspectives. The freedom/determinism distinction entirely misses the point.
But can you really choose to wipe your ass or not freely ?
"A man can do as he will, but not will as he will"
- Arthur Schopenhauer
That sure is a good way to sum it up.
what if you can't make your will come true?
@@wprandall2452
That's a lack of power or ability.
@@APaleDot The fact that we exist itself is proof of free will. We have to have free will to have a working mind.
@@wprandall2452
Did you choose to have a mind?
The key insight of this whole video that got me screaming at the screen "Yes, yes, Yes!". Was that the brain is a calculator and we can't know the result of the calculation until it's done. That waiting for the the calculation to be completed is what people call "Free Will". That sums it all up for me. That is, your brain is making decisions and doing comparisons and calculations, but given the same input it's just like any other calculator and it's going to come up with the same answer. There was a story on NPR a few years ago about a women with short term memory loss that reset every five minutes or so. Given the same input she would answer EXACTLY the same, the same face expression, the same way she paused, everything to the point it was hard to believe it wasn't just a repeat of the recording. That was extremely insightful to me that, yes, we are just organic computers.
Sabine. I'm not a frequent youtube commenter, but I have to say thank you for this video. It has brought me a lot of peace. Weirdly. I don't know enough to know if you are right, but your explanation helped me a lot to leave my anxiety behind. In a very functional way, you have dramatically improved my life with this piece. Sadly, you didn't actually create free will denial, but explaining it to me turns out to have been more important. It releases me from feeling bad for the things I should have done or feeling pride in the things I have. The same goes for those around me. I don't need to feel bad or good because of what 'they' have done. Its just the universe doing its maths. Weirdly, it gives me some of the peace I can see that religion gives to others. In fact, if you decide to start a Free Will Denier religion, let me know where I can send me subscription.
Same here brother I also used to think thay why bad things happen or why some people are lucky and priveleged . Well, you put it correctly, it's the universe doing it's maths
Love and happiness from my side to you. Enjoy this life. Maybe life is a good or it can be a bad movie. But we have to enjoy it as much as possible no matter what happens❤❤❤😂😂
this was a weird comment hopefully the universe calculates no more youtube comments for you lol
I'm a psychologist (albeit a junior one) and in my time I have come across people who have had some realisation (or sometimes they may say 'epiphany' ... rarely in a positive tone) that they don't have free will. It is very rare that this is based on the realisation that comes from understanding quantum mechanics or differential equations, but simply from learning over time how much of the world around them dictates their choices (or rather, limits them).
The crisis that emerges is not one to be sniffed at; how would you feel if you had the thought that nothing was in your control? That you were on a fairground ride that you had never chosen to be in and that whatever curves, splashes (or even horrors) were always going to happen regardless of how much you loved of hated being on it? You are on a fixed rail in a single direction and all you can do is hunker down or throw your hands up in the air.
Well, in my very humble opinion, I believe determinism to be the correct answer to the the question of free will, but the challenge is how to then answer the devastated people who, for them, this is hideous, terrible and stripping them of the meaning of their existence.
I am kinda fortunate that I am a research psychologist and rarely client/patient/service user/insert-correct-name-here facing but also have the task of being pointed at by people who find out what I do and being ordered to "reveal your secrets!"
Well ... from what I have seen: some people who seek out psychology due to past trauma (which is pretty much everyone) can take from this a certain comfort: if this was always going to happen to them, then they had no say and they no part and it was not their fault (which is never is), and sort of ... accept that this was 'fate'. They couldn't have done anything to stop it and absolve themselves of the self-hate and self-blame that is often par of the course for these people.
Others become extremely bitter: for them, the fact that this would have always happened to them and that no matter how strong, how resilient, how brave they were, would never have made a difference. The cold, indifferent world would have always won.
So, the absence of free-will to the individual (who is probably not a physicist/philosopher/etc.) seems to be more complex than the concept itself, because on our level it really does not matter at all if is exists, but what follows from the question of it. Outside of the noble disciplines of the physical sciences, the real world implications are way (WAY) more significant, and the idea may be thousands of years old, but the actuality of it is so new because the noble(er? 😛) disciplines of the social science are still trying to catch up.
Some people may paraphrase the Tolkien quote: "Go not to the psychologists for an answer, for they will say both 'yes' and no'." And .... they have a point.
My advice is probably going to be: go to a psychologist if you are seriously considering your existence and the doing so is having detrimental effects on your life.
My other advice would be: you have as much free-will now as you did before this video/that appointment/that realisation, and consider what you could do now ... which is almost anything you can imagine. If you want to stop reading this rambling comment: do so! If you want to dress up like a chicken and move to Norway to study pine trees and howl at the moon every night: do so!
If you have a choice (real or imagined) then that has to be worth something .... right?
I am genuinely puzzled. If the things that happen were always going to happen, then presumably we have no moral authority to punish murderers, child abusers, thieves etc. They were always going to do what they were going to do? Is that part of what you mean? And victims should just accept that this is just what was always going to happen to them? Except, they might not be able to do so as they were always going to be upset and that won't change unless it is predetermined that it will - in which case, is there really any value in psychologists, therapists and psychiatrists who claim to be want to help people with distress?
It's not worth it to me and that should be fine, I'm so angry when people say there's no reason to. People like yours want to deter me from "dressing up in a chicken suit and go to Norway" if you catch my drift, so there's literally nowhere I can go... Are we not adults here? Do we have to step on eggshells because other people might like the idea? We should have more countries like Switzerland to provide that option to citizens but noooo we're all tax paying piggies so it's in your best interest to keep us around. So to that I'll say, I will exercise the little illusion of freedom to nope the f out. See y'all in the next permutation, it's not gonna be any different but hey at least I tried!
It matters absolutely nothing whether the will is "free" or not. There is a will, a choice and a responsibility. There appear to be good choices and bad choices. The individual carefully weighs the options and makes a decision to the best of his knowledge and belief, and from then on is responsible for the outcome. The mysterious "freedom", which nobody can really explain, makes no difference whatsoever.
The scary answer is to accept the idea of god. That is, to accept as such is to realize that all, including your birth and position in life, is a part of a larger plan. After accepting that notion, cast away all concepts of determinism, and force people to live their life AS IF they had free will, yet knowing they don't.
When you have acceptance of a grander plan, you calm down a bunch. Every pain, experience, or preference you have becomes meaningful. You don't know what the outcome will be because you can't compute it. Even so, if you accept that model and keep in mind as you're living your life, you won't fret. You won't fear. You won't experience anger.
Hopefully, you can reach a point of rejoice.
Knowing that there's a grand plan in motion to raise the consciousness of all gives you something to look forward to.
Of course, it's crazy to talk about god on a science channel. Even so, I don't believe they're at odds with each other.
I don’t see free will and determinism as mutually exclusive. Just as many events are out of our control, will or no, the universe floods us with far more data and possibilities than we could ever hope to know or explore. It’s like trying to simulate a far larger computer system on a computer - it’s not possible to process. Each decision, free or not, opens up nearly infinite possibilities. Emergent structures aren’t necessary subject to the same basis of rules their constituent parts follow in much the same way many virtual particles do this physically. TLDR whether you have free will or simply find yourself in the universe/future that is entangled with perceived agency and desire is simply looking at the same complex emergent phenomenon from different viewpoints.
"I'm a physicist, please see a psychologist." This cracked me up! Between the content and Sabine's humour, my poor pea brain can barely take it. I love this channel.
The problem is a misunterstand of what Free Will is. David Hume has an great explanation on this. He even give the example of Man sentenced to death by beheading. He looks at the sharpness of the axe and get terrified. He than knows the executioner never gave up on an hundred previous executions and get equally terrified. The Man doesn't get an mystical Idea of the executioner having an non caused free Will that wiill make him to give up. If there was no causuality than free will would be Impossible. An vicious murderer would be no more guilty of anything than anyone else as the very act of mudering had no cause in his inner persona. We would be as free as an adrift boat that goes with the wind. Truth is our actions become our habits and these Will become our persona.
@@fernandoc4741 That great explanation of Hume looks like appeal to consequences fallacy to me (if we did not have free will, that would be bad)
@@juanausensi499 Appeal to consequence is completely rational. It was later adopted by Kant and embraced by William James pragmatism. For instance. Life does have an purpose is 100% logical. Because If It doesnt than there is no purpose believing It either does or doesnt. Even If the the chance It does was close to zero, the rarionale would still bet It does.
@@fernandoc4741 I have not studied these topics in quite a long time, so forgive my ignorance. Is it possible the reality of a situation (i.e. Whether or not we have free will) is actually irrational or illogical? Does everything need to be rational and logical?
@@Moz4rt08 Logical or Ilogical how? I guess the example gave by Hume of the Man sentenced to death was to show that the very concept of undestetministic free will makes no sense to our minds (the executioner is as terrifing as the sharp Blade). Hume also Denied that reason alone had any Power on our minds. It could only have an Power If It brings us some emoticon (ex fear of the consequence it we take an decision instead of another)
I am so happy I found your channel Sabine. Thank you!
I love videos like this because regardless of whether you agree or not with the presenter, they encourage you to think and ask yourself hard questions about what you actually believe in. So much of what we consume with our eyes and ears nowadays attempts to push an agenda or manipulate rather than stimulate thought and discussion.
What all academics have in common - they occupy themselves with dealing with "intangibles". That is "brain work" - they believe. The handling of the "tangible" part they leave up to those who have to work with their hands for money - not just think. And that of course makes them "the elite".
Am I the only one who can't wait for the days when a photon can go left or right without being judged for its motives?
Double slit? I did that at home with a cat toy and a very fine piece of copper wire.
I was almost 60 years old and saw it done when I was a kid.
So just 4.5 volts was all it took to totally blow my mind.
The mind is actuall experiencing a " light breeze "
This is ALL about, in a sense, parallel universes (or reality more accurately ).
My toenails have no choice. Dna mixed with so called " light " frequencies dictate their path. The owner, " me " (not the body,) can choose to ignore them untill they cause disruption to the body. The choice being, " I" create comfort or pain and infection.
This principle applies to all " planes of relativity ", both physical and mental, where choice is limited to a cause and effect process, which activates the " authority " of " I ", which is where the next " plane " kicks in, being quantum mechanics. Still in the cause and effect realm, but, as with all planes, more subtle than the previous one.
As with the foundation of physics and chemistry, ALL arenas of relativity are predictable, which is why metaphysical prophesies and predictians can be recognised (by those past a certain level...NOT catagarised specifically by the intellect. This is why there is such awareness disparity amongs our " brightest ".
Ulimiately the self realized amongst us actually " contract out " of the predictable zone, and simply create. The Creator created creators.
No, lots of conservatives are tired of having their motives questioned. 😜
that day may have just come
We are all limited by our senses and our interpretation of those sense's, once reality is realized it's too late... Unless you are uninterested about the motives of direction photons are spinning, then you're a demon that needs to be excised from "the" cult..ure
"If you wanna become a youtuber, you don't have to know anything"
I love this woman
I had wondered, What is a "RUclipsr"? Is it just those who are presenting videos, or is it everyone who uses RUclips? I should think the quote applies to a small subset of the video producers. After all, we'll try anything to get a view. We don't have to know what we are talking a about.
@@JackPullen-Paradox a RUclipsr is someone that produces videos for RUclips (and tries to make a living off of it.)
Mmmmmmonster kill.
And since it's impossible to **KNOW** that libertarian free will does not exist according to Sabine's assumptions of naturalistic determinism, I guess Sabine is proving her point.
Consider the following argument.
1. Sabine's belief that she does not possess libertarian freedom is either (i) determined by mindless stuff, (ii) determined by deceptive beings, (iii) completely random, or (iv) because she possesses libertarian freedom.
2. Sabine's belief that she does not possess libertarian freedom is not determined by mindless stuff, determined by deceptive beings, or completely random.
3. Therefore, Sabine's belief that she does not possess libertarian freedom is because she possesses libertarian freedom.
For a defense of these premises, I recommend the paper I coauthored with J.P. Moreland entitled, “An Explanation and Defense of the Free-Thinking Argument.” This argument highlights the fact that it is ultimately self-defeating to reject the libertarian freedom to think.
The free will conversation has become quite interesting. In my own experience, it seems whenever there was a leap to be made in my life I literally felt pushed in a particular direction. I may have chosen otherwise but in my heart it would have been wrong to take a different path at those moments.
Almost like knowing you would not have chosen differently, right? 0 regrets for the past
Even on small decisions, choosing between two things that you're indecisive about is never random.
Agree… it always felt like a push and to fight it or go against it is to annihilate oneself.
Sabine, you do great transitions. I don't even realize I am watching a commercial about Brilliant until I am halfway through the ad.
that's interesting. I thought "what, ads already?" when she started the part on emergent phenomena. - and switched off my attention and then had to re-wind 🙂
"I find the question stunningly uninteresting" oh how I wish I could use this line in work meetings!
Edit: 2:06 - "for simple questions like 'does free will exist?'" hahaha I love Sabine's style so much
Is there even an 'I' if freewill doesn't exist?
@@curcumin417 that depends on whether consciousness exists ;)
@@curcumin417 The only true "I" is our consciousness.
Everything else is outside of that and "other".
Free Will Smith...
Of course you can use Hossenfelderisms. There's plenty more where that one came from.
We are like travellers on a train and must go where the rails take us, but we can enjoy the views from the window and the company of our fellow travellers.
"No one lives in the slums because they want to. It's like this train. It can only go where the tracks take it."
-Cloud Strife
That was my favorite line in Final Fantasy 7. It made me realize the whole game was an exploration into the nature of identity and free will
I don't think we *can* enjoy the views from the window. We *must* enjoy or hate the view, just like we *must* stay on the tracks. Our experience are just as much out of our control, as are our actions. At least that's how I understand it...
You could well be right, although many scientists share this view there are others who hold that we do have either some free will or at least the ability to make responsible decisions and control of our emotions .An excellent book putting the case for that position is "Who's in Charge ? " by the neuroscientist Michael S Gazzaniga .
You can always get off the train, and change to another train, or even go back to where you started, because you went the wrong way.
So, did you try kidnapping the train driver? ;)
Your way to explain things is not just really clear but also hilarious😄
I love that she’s a bit of a smart ass, but delivers it completely dry and dead serious.
Sabine is killing it with her humorous bits, smartly added throughout the serious stuff. I want more of it please.
I want less of it, please.
Ditto on the less of it. Sometimes it's too glib. Sometimes it's trying too hard. Sometimes it just doesn't land. Sometimes it's lame....and... Sometimes it's perfect. That's 1 out of 5, leaving 4 /5 of it as an unnecessary waste of time that distracts from the point.
Given that Germanness is a hard edge to soften, at least for American ears, I wouldn't remove it entirely, just edit it down one more time.
Humor and humility go much further than fake smiles, or a false cheery attitude, or hair and makeup, and clothes. But, it doesn't need to come at a breathlessly delivered pace, like a stand-up routine.
The content IS the good stuff.
EASILY AMUSED!!!!
Yes, but her statement is ascientific. Based entirely on belief, it has no empirical evidence...😊
@@seriousmaran9414 belief in free will has no empirical evidence.
Saying free will doesn't exist is like saying there's no invisible unicorn in my room right now. That's just a null hypothesis. Someone who claims that there is a unicorn has to present evidence
My Grandfather was something of a philosopher, he was also a coal miner, and a doughboy in WW1. He'd been a few places and seen a lot of trouble and he told me once that a man had about as much free will as a rock in an avalanche. I guess that is really true.
Or indeed, a man in an avalanche.
this is very inline with easter philosophy. i love how they go hand in hand with science. unlike the dogmas of Christianity and other biblical religions.
Powerlessness of an individual in grand scheme of geopolitics doesnt deny free will of that individual.
That sounds more like it's about being powerless.
The topic of the video got basicall nothing to do with it.
@@andrewguthrie2 why is this funny
Thank you for taking the time to do this
Your videos are a joy to watch, Sabine.
I hope so, because the idea that I am responsible for all the stupid things I do is horrifying.
Haha, no you would still be responsible by the very definition of responsibility. Although perhaps childhood foibles can be excused to a certain extent.
The idea that you're not responsible for all the stupid things you do is somewhat horrifying too. And the horror is multiplied by a factor of 8 billion.
It's your lucky day.
In order for you to know what you're responsible for, you should start by defining what you mean by "I".
Okay, I'll be waiting here; Give me a call when you've arrived at the complete definition.
@@sisyphus_strives5463 Shaky logic. 🤔 (Highly irresponsible.)
You are not gonna like my answer:
You are only responsible for What you think, What you feel, What you say and What you do. Or Don't. 😅 Your decision. But here is a tip: when you get to a problem, you can ask yourself always: When? Where, How, Why or what/who? and determine which aspect of the problem you want to explore. It's a long term deconstruction of behavioral cul-de sacs. and a fascinating journey.
Lol "I'd find it creepy if the decisions.. came from somewhere else than in my brain." Agreed! :) Enjoyed that one, Sabine. Having a science background, and in taking a philosophy class, I actually wrote a paper on the subject which I entitled, Soft Free Will, wherein I argue just about the same thing, that ultimately the constituent details determine our decisions, but the feeling that we have free will is useful to the degree that we feel in control of our own thoughts. Your elucidation of the creepy feeling it would be for something outside of us to make the decisions, is a beautiful and personal synopsis, and I thank you for the smile and the chuckle as I remember pondering this topic. I appreciate your detailed and fun-filled explanation. Thanks and keep up the fun videos! :-)
personal anecdotal argument: I don't always feel in control of my thoughts but i still think it is my brain where they are coming from.
@@gulaschnikov5335 As someone diagnosed with OCD, I definitely do not always feel in control of my thoughts, but the realization that some of those thoughts and compulsions (mainly the OCD ones) could be just the raw mechanisms of the mind without the accompanying sequence of events, goals, and over-arching narratives to make them all make sense, is really intriguing to me.
I don't know which is more unsettling:
My will could be controlled externally by an unknown puppeteer.
My true self could be external to physics, yet trapped in a link with this fragile meat sack.
I act as if I have freewill therefore I have freewill, because it is impossible to act as something without a referent.
She never really did address the question did she? I'm still left equally dumbfounded as when I did or was before watching this video. Didn't learn anything new here
During my late teens, a girl asked me if I "believed in fate?"
It seemed obvious to me that of course fate exists because wether we choose to travel the globe, throw ourselves under a train or devote our lives to charitable causes, then surely THAT is what was fated.
I think its only really an issue (psychologically) if you KNOW how its supposed to turn out BEFORE it happens. However, I take consolation in the fact that, try as we might, we cant know how the book ends until it's written! #Spoilers! 😄
This video was even more interesting than most of your videos. I love existential discussions! Personally, I believe that particles do have free will on some level, but your perspective sounds much more practical than mine.
This may help to wrap your head around why you feel like you have free will when you actually don't: You can choose any option you want, but you can only choose the one you want. The one that is the result of the "calculation", as Wittgenstein puts it.
you also can't choose any option, you can only choose something your brain is able to imagine which we know is a gjostabulicism, the philosophical equivalent to a mathematical number set, the set of all ideas and thoughts a person has. All subsequent thoughts have to be derivatives of the person's gjostsbuli, so it can only be expanded by exposure to a different gjostsbuli.
And of course you couldn't have predicted I would refer to gjostsbulicism because I made up the word, but the idea I used it to describe is most likely as equally foreign to you as the word so it's fitting.
Free Will: The chance in a million that actually happens! Son of a Bayes!
Decisions are by definition commitments to ones desires. Of course you can only choose the choice you're making because that is what a choice is. This argument doesn't really move the debate anywhere.
You don't "choose" anything. Your brain is a complex system of neurons that makes calculations based on the data its given and comes up with answers, and that's it. The regularity in which the brain comes up with an answer is why people swear they are in control of the system in the first place. There's no free will, and nothing extra is going on but a highly complex biological information computing machine in your skull.
Free will as a [literal] concept makes no sense because it doesn't take into account the factors consistently outside our control. For example, the fact we were born humans, the parents who engaged in coitus to create our embryo, the genetic inheritance from those parents (race, height, IQ, various other predispositions), the environment, our family's socioeconomic status and so on. All of these things contribute to who we are and how we develop, thus from the very moment of our conception free will is impossible.
I think that most people don't think too deeply about it and its more a shorthand to describe decision making and thus varying levels of personal accountability. Sure, fine. But determinism accounts for that so its still a misleading term.
I've had the definite sensation of being a passenger in my brain, that the whole free will thing was a useful illusion for day to day getting by, as long as you remember from time to time that your brain makes decisions and you then claim credit for them after the fact.
Or you bury and forget them and deny them after the fact.
Or if your brain is making the decisions that you, after the fact claim or deny you made - who is this "you" which does so?
@@KaZoomRaider exactly
@@KaZoomRaider Bingo. That's the whole misunderstanding right there. A slave to one's own brain + you are your brain => You're a slave to yourself => you're free. But people don't accept that "the brain makes a choice" is "free will" so they confuse themselves.
The question of free will is not even a question to ask. Your brain and body make decisions based on several factors, including feelings, environmental, and the past. You are simply watching the movie for the first time and seeing how it unfolds. There is nothing wrong with that, you just have to accept that is the way it is. With the temporal dimension you are forever moving towards the future and your decisions are always in the past. That is life, stop asking the question and just learn to enjoy life for what it is. :)
Wow. I am a biologist whose dream died. I feel your pain. The 3-5 year grant period wrecks those who want to go down untrodden paths. I love your videos.
Since my teenage years, I've tried but never quite understood what is meant by the notion of 'Free Will' meant, (its has a very fuzzy etymology and seems to be wholly made up by religious types and kept alive by philosophers). It's a totally superfluous concept. What is clear that we humans have a decision making capability that can be shaped to some extent and that is enough. I typically derive a lot of insight from Sabine's videos (a big thank to you, Sabine for that) but however most discussions I hear on free will by public intellectuals get convoluted and messy and this video is no exception.
Love this video. I think it's clear most people don't even know what they mean by "free will", and they're picking the wrong aspect of it to get all angsty about it.
Indeed.
If free will does not exist, then neither does choice. If all choice is an illusion then nothing exists because then EVERYTHING is an illusion. One cannot choose to watch a video about free will if someone does not choose to make such a video. If everything is predetermined, there's no point in doing anything as all was intended from the start.
@@jordanmatthews1466 There is no interpretation of free will that negates choice. Unless you're using some other definition of free will.
Where did your source YOUR definition?
Everything is an illusion except our free will, which we use to manifest our reality. Now I just need to use my will instead of letting my clockwork body make the decisions for me.
@@smeeself there is a clear correlation between free will and choice, if we define "choosing" as the act of determining something is undetermined... you can't choose if the decision has been pre-determined, and if the decision has been pre-determined then you have no free will; therefore if you have no free will, you have no choice.
basically, if free will does not exist, it means all your decisions are pre-determined by your DNA the way computer decisions are pre-determined by algorithms, therefore you have no choice
hi!, im 16 and you're genuinely my favorite science youtuber. You always keep everything grounded while still discussing interesting topics, keep it up😁
That is some nice intention from your age perspective. In my 16 i was interested in running around while building some concept of a sublime god around running. :D
And on the other hand, you have a wart.
Keep up the good work kid, maybe you‘ll be as smart as Dr Sabine one day
You’d probably like Sean Carrol. He’s awesome.
@Conon the Binarian⚧ haha I'd love to be a scientist but I'd hate to have to teach people. I think I'll just be an engineer of some sort, but thanks for the advice 😄
I read Michael Montaigne's essay on determinism when I was a teenager, and free will never made a shred of sense to me afterwards. The defenses of it seemed terrible, geniuses like William James and Sartre willingly choosing, in my eyes, to be stupid just this once. The idea of "will" itself, even the idea of a choosing entity, these are just made up ideas that form the structures of our perception. The burden of proof is on these suppositions, not the other way around
I agree with what you're saying. I was lost up until about 15:50 when it came back around to explaining choice. If Im getting this right, what you are saying is that choice is not free will and a lack of free will doesn not mean a lack of choice.
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So it's completely worthless conclusion that means nothing. What a vapid contribution to the world.
You're nearing the the 1million mark. Congrats and well deserved. Very informative video as always.
I not only learn things from Sabine, I think that Sabine is hilarious. Great work. I have "decided"to keep listening regularly.
Germans are world renowned for their comedians.
i think your reward center "decided" that probably because you are smart enough to have an interest in science.
@@fredericklehoux7160
I'm beginning to think that might be the sole reason for sentience - to create an agent that will respond to a reward system. In our case, the carrot and stick approach, delivered through emotions.
@@dexterkrammer1089 Laugh: I command you!
Yeah, she is funnier than many actual comedians imo. I don't see how some of these "funny" people get so big with their jokes that give me zero emotion other than wanting to turn it off.
If someone is truly a materialist, they cannot believe in free will.
Fortunately, materialism isn’t our only reality.
@SouthernGuardian I'm a materialist that believes in free will. People seem to have this belief that when your understanding changes as to the underlying mechanism of a thing, we have to discount the thing entirely. For example, someone might argue that because we now know touch to be the sensation of electromagnetic repulsion, there is no such thing as touch. It's a pedantic line of reasoning, and it's just as pedantic to discount the concept of free will just because we now know better how it works.
this is metaphorically referred to as throwing the baby out with the bathwater. An absurd thing to even say
@@nathanwiles2719 free will denial isn't about denying the capacity for humans to make decisions, but the idea that this human in this state and context will always make the exact same decision; that is, you are physically deterministic
@@charleslegates9231 I understand that. We now understand free will to be a deterministic/physicalist/materialist (take your pick) process, but that doesn't mean that we are now required to say it doesn't exist. Again, we just understand better now how it works.
People hate the idea that there not in control of their life. And to tell them that it’s not true well you’ll get some that accepts it and others who will fight to the very end to defend that they are.
I, for one, did not click on this video by my free will. I clicked on it because of who I am , because of my inclinations, tastes and interests.
And those I certainly did not choose. I learned what they are by introspection, the same way I learned what my favourite colour is, my favourite food or my sexual identity etc etc.
I didn't choose my hobbies, my favourite colour; and I can't choose - for example - a different favourite colour tomorrow, or to be religios.
I believe I clicked on this video because I always would've clicked on this video ; had I decided against it I always would've decided against it.
And so on and so forth. Keeping it short. Because I decide to. Or did I?
You always would have (or wouldn't have) clicked on the video, unless one of the random 'disturbances' happens that Sabine mentions in the video. I take this to mean that in each moment there are an infinite amount of causes/conditions which play into whether or not you would have clicked, if one (or many) of those causes/conditions randomly plays out differently, the outcome of whether you clicked can change. Do you agree?
It kind of reminds me of Electro-magnetic Interference and how one (or many) bits in a stream of data can 'randomly' flip.
Fantastic video. As someone dealing with existential mental health issues my whole life, you learn early on in the therapeutic journey that we must see ourselves as observers of our thoughts without attaching to them. I like how you said you use your neural circuits and memories to make decisions. The past is determined so that means our new decisions are determined too. Thank you for touching on these subjects so conscientiously!
This will definently make things worse for you. I'm sorry you live in a culture that has manufactured a mental illness and you and tells you that you are a robot and a puppet with no objective worth. Sad times
I do not be believe in the concept of free will.
A person makes decisions based on experience, availability; and/or other factors.
Love your candor
03/05/24
Sounds pretty good to me. Very in line with the "be yourself is all that you can do" I believe in.
Sabine's recognition of the provisional nature of science lends huge credibility to her message. Also, I love the deadpan german humour. We need more Sabines and less dogma!
This is pure dogma. "Free Will" has nothing to do with science. Science has nothing to do with it. Sapolski wants to "Abolish the criminal justice system" because he doesn't believe in it. (Of course he doesn't offer anything to replace it with).
"provisional" is the word you can apply to every human endeavor.
I get a bit freaked out by someone with a German accent speaking about there being no free will...
@@desmondrathbone435😂
I hate to tell you - she is nowhere close to what a German is. Even her accent is most certainly not of somebody who grew up in Germany.
And no - Germans are known for their "hands-on approach". This academic person is all about intangible and talk.
I have only recently come across your site, but definitely love it. Look forward to catching up with all your other videos. Keep up the excellent work. I bet it would be very interesting and satisfying to sit down and have a coffee with you.
You are amazing ! Love your posts , find all of it fascinating !
Loved the don't need to know anything thing if you're a RUclipsr. Very drole and often true but totally inapplicable in your case Sabine as one of the very best and my personal favourite.
Dr. Sabine, Thank you very much for reopening this Topic with a wider range of research and study!
Now, give her your money!
She didn't have a choice.
@@bornonthebayou7926 choice and Free will are 2 different things.
Not that it makes that much difference if you have free will or not. It's such a small part of the equation that ignoring it doesn't change the result.
NIL
This is all based on one assumption; that the laws we discover here, are the same throughout the universe. And, we use our mind to "discover" those laws.
We have nothing at all without thought. Yet, those rigorous and methodical scientists who swear by Reason and Logic, do not know what thoughts are, what they are made of nor where they originate and are incaopable of silencing their inner monolgue for as little as 30 seconds.
And, we see that those who could, can somehow escape those "laws" we pretend to know. Wim Hof is just one small example.
Also, those who originated (probably unwittingly)the religions were among those who had mastered this ability of freely exploring reality without that unbearable noise of their inner dialogue. They discovered what they called god, nowadays we just call it pure consciousness.Without all the ridiculous connotations the eons have stuck onto it.
Of course it is Sabine her free will to choose not to master her only tool, and throw her scientific dogma out the window at the first opportunity
(how come this reminds me of religious priests)
And as thus be part of that cult that is destroying our planet, because it has not yet discovered that behind that ongoing rattle inside her skull, is a uniting Force, that shows anyone who tried it, that when we hurt another, we literally hurt ourselves.
Also we discover that the more in tune with that Force, the less bound by those so called "laws of nature". There are layers of determinism.
Ask yourselves why those religions have not managed to destroy earth in 5000 years and the science cult does this in 150 years.
it's actually even worse; your neurocircuitry comes to a conclusion, and then some other neurocircuitry makes up a story about how you came to that conclusion, but you never actually know
Deeply confused explanation of the sort Dennett would give. If physics were all there is, then there would be no intensionality -- no "conclusions" to speak of, no "stories", and no "story"-makers. There would be merely matter moving in accordance with the physical laws with no awareness of anything.
@@maiku20 why not? nothing in physics discounts consciousness
@@playgroundprotagonis Nothing in physics assumes or relies on consciousness as part of its explanation. So Occam's razor removes consciousness as a thing.
@@maiku20 but physics doesn't; physics doesn't have anything to say about consciousness (currently), it doesn't say anything for or against, occam's razor doesn't enter into it.
I swear that I am your biggest fan! I believe in your words. You are such a critical thinker, and I admire clear speaking about deep thoughts. Thank you so much for putting your truth out there!
The best example that nailed the free will concept for me is this thought experiment: Imagine you knew some twins and you knew for certain that one of them had free will and the other did not. You have access to all the resources in the universe and your mission is to find out which one is which. How can you find out? You can't, because having free will and not having free will is identical. It doesn't matter what you try to do, you can't create any experiment to tell which one is which.
You cannot prove consciousness either by such external means. Yet you personally experience direct evidence for it at every waking moment.
@@CT-pi2gl It depends on what you mean by consciousness, if you just use it as another name for free will then of course it's the same. But if you mean being aware of their surroundings and being self aware then we actually do have some ways to test for self awareness. There is this simple experiment called the mirror test. You put a noticable mark on an animal (or human) somewhere where he can't directly see it, then you put him in a front of a mirror and if he touches the mark using the mirror it means he is self aware of himself. Humans pass this test at the age of two.
To conclude, if you can't imagine how to observe something, it can't exist.
I don't think the mirror test can prove the level of consciousness or sense of personhood we are discussing. I could program a robot running software to understand the relationship between the mirror object and its own structure or "body," and use the mirror to perform inspections and maintenance of itself. All without deviating from a set if "IF... THEN" statements, or forming any sense of "Me."
@@CT-pi2gl "I don't think the mirror test can prove the level of consciousness or sense of personhood we are discussing"
Yes it can. If you could program or create an AI robot so complex that it had the ability to recognize itself and perform inspections and maintenance on itself independantly in uncontrolled circumstances, then it would be a consciousness being, it would have a state of awareness. That is exactly what it would be. I hate to tell you this but you and your brain is just a very complex and sopisticated computer and if we could create that in a computer, the computer would become a sentient being.
"And that is why, if you want to become a RUclipsr, you don't need to know anything." Sabine H. As always, your videos are always great. Sometimes, you even have great lines in them. Thank you for all your videos!
She's always entertaining, and sometimes she's even right!
She is the best RUclipsr out there, but sometimes I don't learn a single thing, like today.
“If free will doesn’t exist, then it never existed in the first place, so why does it matter?” will hold a firm grip on my perspective for a while 😆 Thanks so much for the video!! ✌️ 😁
You can try this argument in traffic court next time when they ask you to pay a fine for a moving violation. Please report to us how it went. ;-)
@@schmetterling4477🙄
@@smeeself ???
@@schmetterling4477the statement is true (most probably) but it cant be used as an argument. Going to jail in such a case would also be pre determined.
@@anonymousman1282 It is also pre-determined that most people who talk about determinism in physics are clueless about physics. ;-)
Weighing outcomes and making decisions to move your situation towards the most favourable outcome is life is good enough for me.
Imagine criminals during trial pleading not guilty because they do not have free will?😂😅
You are just awesome genuinely, the work you do and the way you bring it out!
There should be more people like you in our society.
I'm so happy I discovered your chan! Your videos are always thought-provoking, thank you for that.
Yes very thought provoking indeed
I actually had a rap-debate on this topic with a friend who's since passed on.
"Doesn't believe in quantum jumps"?
Does Sabine subscribe to hidden variables?
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"please, don't blame me of this, its bot my idea" speaks for everything.
"If free will doesn't exist, it's never existed, so what difference could it possibly make for your life?" This is a *beautiful* line, and explains much more clearly an idea that I've had for a while, which I've generally tried to explain as follows, usually being met with confused looks: "It makes no sense to worry whether free will exists, because if it exists, you can stop worrying; and if it doesn't, then you can't control whether you will worry, so just don't!"
The last part, "so just don't," may seem ironic. The thing is, you may not be able to "freely" choose whether to worry over it or not, but hopefully my words will influence you not to worry. There may be no free will, but the series of events beginning with the big bang has resulted in me becoming a person who behaves in such a way that I try to prevent people from wasting resources on useless worries, hence uttering those words in an attempt to influence others to stop worrying about something which they have no control over anyway!
The fact that you mention "try to prevent" implies free will.
@@RaulMartinezRME Nope, it's just the series of events in my life up to now that make me do it. input > output ;-)
Saying someone not to worry has never worked and is one the worst piece of advice to give anyone who is actually worrying about something. It doesn't help but only sounds condescending like you are not taking their worries seriously or actually addressing and listening them.
I have so much free will that I can ALTER the will of others by IMPOSING my free will upon them! #GodEmperorAlondro2032 I AM THE UNIVERSE!!! >:D
I still think that it is extrapolation beyond the widest boundaries of our models. This happens every single time, when one branch of science has a "level of knowledge" achieved fully, giving the feeling of completeness. As natural, the conclusion is drawn that "well, we collected all that is there to know", and than wide speculations pop up stating the Ultimate Fate of the Universe or the Origin of Everything, the Final Answer, and so on.
Ancient wisdom: the universe is infinite. I am more cautious with these Universal Revelations, no matter how tempting they are.
LITERALLY keeled over at " and to be a youtuber you need to know NOTHING" classic and brilliantl humor, this my 1st time seeing you and i love u subbed and buying your book!! i love the brainy stuff!
Same here, that comment got me good. 😂
samesies!
As I get older, I'm realizing that the way I make decisions is almost one-to-one the way my father and mother made decisions, and that they also made decisions the way their parents did. Of course, all of them did this in their own way, yet the similarity in patterns is undeniable. But I don't know whether this has anything to do with your discussion of free will, or if your discussion simply sent my thought processes off onto another tangent typical of me.
I find your channel very interesting although I don't understand every thing but you're never too old to learn
You do such great job explaining things so we can understand. I love your dry, serious humor. Cracks me up.
Sometimes she reminds me of the narrator in the BBC version of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy....
Her "explanation" on this matter is pretty shitty.
If free will exists or not is not the fundamental matter or problem.
The fundamentall matter/problem is that there is an infinitude of concepts and theories instrumentalizing or adressing the term free will, and there is no consilience among them and their premisses.
Before defining if free will is real it is necessary to estabilish a stable and fact apt concept for free will, with the realization this concept probably will be specialized to a single scientific or philosophic discipline and general theory, not a universal term conscerning the whole of special science neither the whole of philosophy, and that this term will not necessarilly fit every general theory in any discipline. And just after discover if there is any other previous vulgar concept of free will that matches the scientific specialized one.
Many psychologists and medics consider free will the simple resistence of an individual to ambiental and symbolic influence and manipulation.
Super deterministic physics doesn't have any evident link to the emergence of symbolic and emotional systems. Specialized Science doesn't include physics exactly because the methodology is not compatible, its not purelly a matter of scale.
Also, science is mutable and is limited by definition, science doesn't have free reign over reality or reality matters. Reality is not limited or defined by physical or material facts and conditions. There are no intrisic physical properties that make a house a house or a boat a boat. In the same way we are able to identify a human being but we are still unable to conflate and generalize the ontology of being human with the scientific study of its properties.
Physicists go and talk about laws, but still there are no absolute and perpetual evidence these are laws and physics doesn't answer where from these properties or laws emerge (gravity is the perfect and most evident example), physics doesn't even understand CP Assimetry, and right now the big bang is being questioned.
I didn't even realise that Germans have an actual sense of humour, until I "met" Sabine here - Basil Fawlty didn't think so either 😂
I don't get how you can complement someone on their humour after giving the impression you agree with a talk like that? Who are you actually talking to? (And who am I actually thinking I am replying to?). Considering there is no free will, then there is no one in there making any choice to be funny, even in a dry way. As it is simply a mechanism of the Universe playing out as a result of things that have happened in the past.
You just need to say : "Whatever it is, it isn't compatible with what we know about the laws of nature" 😂
Glad to see you are getting closer to that 1mil milestone in subscription. You deserve a lot more of course
We are witnessing an equation solving it self. No free will
“Let’s stick with the particles that are stable.” Good advice for every situation.
Had me at: "the ability to change the past, just by using their thoughts " brilliant.
There's a word for that. It's called "lying".
We cannot change physical phenomena that have occurred in the past, but we can change our interpretation of physical phenomena that have occurred in the past. However, this is not science, but philosophy.
@@abc0to1 That's if the past actually IS made of physical phenomena that happened.
A photo of you as a baby is only proof of a photo, not that you actually ever were a baby.
The past not only could be completely made up, it was.
@@itsROMPERS... It is true that the past in the everyday sense seems to be only in someone's mind. But on the other hand, we can see the stars of the distant past in the night sky in the "present. In other words, my present seems to contain someone else's past.
If I understood the theory of relativity, we might have an interesting discussion about space-time.
@@FranzSdoutz It is like the fable of the blind man touching the elephant. We can't change the past of touching part of an elephant, but we can change our perception of what we were touching.
I love how Sabine can talk about complex topics in relatively simple language and still manage to throw in a few devastating jokes in a really subtle way. Where does humour come from? Is it a choice?
Choice doesn’t exist, I thought that was the point.
@@olddecimal2736 Theoretically it doesn't exist but somehow we humans seem to pull it off anyway. At least the illusion of it, and for our puny brains that's good enough.
@@olddecimal2736 I choose free will even if it is an illusion.
Humor comes from your need to please and keep the listener interested in what you are saying.
Generally, humor doesn't come from Germany that's for sure. Sabine is legit the funniest German I have ever heard speak, but humor is subjective, so it could just my perception.
I've been thinking about this my whole life and came up with exactly the same conclusion as Sabine - free will at a individual level is just the output of what the brain's algorithm churns out. I have a computer science background, and this is exactly like a function that returns an output with deterministic inputs plus some random elements in the calculation. Without the randomness, you would get the same result every time if the inputs are exactly the same. People are mistaken the randomness as free will - I am deciding what I want to eat for lunch, and thinking it's free will. But it's just some calculation based on past experiences plus randomness that gave the final result.
People who act strongly deterministically and make decisions based on past events are generally also referred to as rational. I think determinism and free will are not even opposites in the end. Perhaps one is even strongly dependent on the other. After all, free will does not mean that you can make all decisions chaotically independent of the past. What we perceive as free will is ultimately nothing other than determinism itself.
This is easily one of the best science channels on youtube, one of the best Pysics channels - I very much like how when you end up past physics and into philosophy not only do you recognize it you know your stuff about other philosophers!
Its is hard to understand her accent so it's hard for me to get into it, and she also speaks fast so it's hard to follow even with subtitles
interesting... i watch most videos at 2x, only slowing it down when the accent makes it hard to understand. form instance, some british accents i have to slow it down to 1.8 or 1.6. i think Sabine does enunciate very well so perhaps that is why i can undetstand her at 2x.
I love when she does these topics. You can hear her frustration about topics that aren't scientific. She says I am a scientist, I ain't got time for that.
I once told my psychotherapist that I didn't believe in free will. He was very frustrated with me at that moment. He might have had a point. Even if we do not have true free will, it might not be psychologically healthy to shape your life around that belief.
Certainly. It might also not be healthy to be an African experiencing a famine.
That's my issue with determinism. It seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy and you run the risk of a defeatist attitude - but then if we don't have free will you probably can't help yourself ;-) I think decision making is far too complex and determinism (in my view) remains a philosophical rather than a scientific viewpoint - I think a lot of findings and studies have been wildly interpreted to support this viewpoint. Scientists don't like to admit that it is hugely intermixed with philosophy and although some findings are really interesting, they are often used to draw rather far fetched conclusions. But that's just my opinion of course.
One important aspect of the lack of free will (I agree with the video, btw) is that even if you lack free will, it doesn't just mean other people can just build a machine that completely predicts your decisions 100% and take advantage of it. Think about it, if you know about such a machine, if the machine predicts you will eat a banana, you will instead eat an apple; if it thinks you want an apple, you just eat a banana. Now you have free will… right?? Not really, because that machine would not have worked to begin with.
Say we live in a deterministic universe, in theory we can build a computer that completely simulates the universe and be able to tell the future; but now the problem arises that we can use the results of that computer program to change the future, rendering its calculations incorrect. The reason why this contradiction can't exist is that this computer program will end up having to simulate itself (since the computer is part of the universe), leading to an infinite loop and never generating a result. As such, predicting the future only works if the computer lives outside the universe and cannot affect it. Along the same token, someone/some machine can only 100% predict your thoughts if their prediction have absolutely no way of affecting you, which can't be the case in the real world.
The religious folks can think of that outside-universe-computer as god, or we can just ignore it. Either way, whether you have free will or not, it's not like it *really* matters in a practical manner and it doesn't mean someone can just use that as an excuse to say "oh life has no point anymore".
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There is a rather popular solution among neuroscientists for the quandary determinism poses (to some) which she didn’t mention, which is the illusion of free will as a byproduct of the mind and indeed its intrinsic complexity .. works for me
I started watching this video, then I decided I wasn’t going to, and I ended up watching it anyway. I think it was determined that I would find out that my decisions are determined.
Pre-determined, yes.
I started watching it and thought for a person with a brain, decided to consciously make a decision to make a video about not having the ability to make a video she had no choice in the matter or among the matter. Sorry that's nonsense.
@@darinb.3273 It may depend on whether one sees conscious decisions as having causes -- for instance, you could say that the decision to create the video was "caused" by the desire to do so.
@@BardicLiving It may depend on whether one sees conscious decisions as having causes
ME: Perhaps this would mean outside control of one's own mind, the cause comes from within one's own brain.
-- for instance, you could say that the decision to create the video was "caused" by the desire to do so.
ME: Yet again that desire was a choice. The same as the decision by you or your spouse (if you are married) of what to eat for dinner, that's a free choice by one or both of you.
Free will
noun
the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.
adjective
(especially of a donation) given readily; voluntary.
EXAMPLE; "free-will offerings"
Once we realize that "the future is determined by the past", we'll understand that this includes any and all causes of anything. That means all "choices", "feelings", "brain states", etc were all pre-determined at the point of primordial nucleosyntheses at the birth of the universe. Even the question "does it matter" is irrelevant. It simply "is what it is and will be."
Thank you Sabine, great video.
What has always stomped me of the "could have done otherwise" argument is that it is not easy to find an example of anyone (anything) having ever done otherwise than what they have actually done.. 🧐🧐🧐
I love how Sabine compares the free will question as "simple" when compared to what happens "in LHC collisions" 🙂
You don't have to know anything to be a RUclipsr. Love it!!
Thank you. Your clarity of thought and thorough research provides the first reasonable synopsis of this question I have seen.
I suggest acting within the free will model, whether it is real or not. Make the best decisions you can for being a good person and supporting other people. If free will exists, you've done the right thing. If free will doesn't exist, you couldn't have done differently. Pascal's free-will wager = zero downside. :)
Isn't Pascal's wager thoroughly debunked?
@@ems4884 It has no direct use for truth-finding in the traditional religious context, but it can maybe be useful for people making a risk/reward argument to conduct oneself in a certain manner.
Pretty sure they were being tongue-in-cheek about it though
That's outside the paradigm. Of course we decide and we make choices. But that doesn't mean we could have acted differently.
@@herbertdarick7693 Rubbish.
I don't think it's necessary to believe in free will in order to act as if free will is a reality.
I think a lot of people might be getting caught up on the will part and ignore the free part. It's like you said, of course we make decisions. We do have a will. But it's not free. It's predetermined by a bunch of factors. But for us humans in the day to day, it doesn't really make a difference. It only matters for bigger issues like climate change, as you pointed out.
I like your "We do have a will. But it's not free" - that actually makes the concept much clearer to me.
😅I love these sorts of discussions, unfortunately I have very few friends to discuss them with😔so its almost always online.
The idea of free will wasn't conceived by particle physicists, it was conceived by humans and their human-scale observations. It's ultimately a description of the interaction of agents; if one agent is able to act in accordance with its goals, it has free will. If it is incarcerated, enslaved, hypnotized, or controlled by some other means *by another agent*, it cannot act of its own free will. I would call it a category error to try to describe the interactions within one brain as having or not having free will. The idea of free will falls apart when applied to particle physics because particles are not agents; they do not have a decision making process.
It's been a long and difficult journey but it seems you've finally got me there.
I more or less accepted that free will doesn't actually exist after your last video on the subject but I still wasn't 100% convinced. In the time that's passed since then, despite trying many ways, I made no progress at all in my attempt to defend the belief that it does exist. After watching this video, I've finally decided not to waste any more of my time and effort in this direction. Thanks!
The main thing that made this hard for me to accept was that it's not compatible with my understanding of sentience (subjective experience), what it is and why it exists. So, what I need to do now is accept that this must be where the problem lies.
Clearly sentience has some purpose but that purpose is not to give us free will. Maybe its only purpose is to create an agent that will respond to a reward system (in our case, the carrot and stick approach), where the reward system is experienced through emotions. That may be all it is. Doesn't do too much for my self-esteem but it is what it is. When all said and done, we can all choose what we believe but I choose to believe in reality and we don't get to choose reality.
Excellent video!
Scientists can't explain how consciousness works, so it seems a bit of an overstep to say the idea of free will is incompatible with science. But perhaps the hard problem of consciousness will eventually get solved and it may indeed suggest that free will is an illusion. Until then, I won't be listening to any scientists that make definitive claims about consciousness.
Lack of free will does not negate self awareness which I think is a key part of sentience. Not does it negate emotions and our ability to feel and place importance on things. It just means the things we end up feeling were deterministic, but we still get to feel them.
Plays helium-double-hockeysticks on an optimistic viewpoint, that's for sure. Because if there's no free will, there is no hope for humanity, looking at our current trajectory.
We do have a sort of crude free will in the sense that we can choose between different precomputed timelines. But... yeah, once you catch on to the fact that the simulation is _extremely_ resource-constrained, it gets really frustrating and eventually you just wind up bitter. True free will (in a social context) allows only for symbolic communication; nothing more. Tom Campbell (the author of the MBT trilogy which explains how the simulation works) asserts that exiting this level of the sim returns you to the "chat room" upstairs, where nothing but disembodied communication is feasible.
The moment you acquire the capacity to explicitly alter the experience of another sentient being the limitations come flooding in. It's a primeval problem in philosophy, ontology and ultimately of course computer science.
@@faroleiro I entirely agree.
I love your videos and can feel my brain stretching when I listen to you. Thank you. But I can't help coming back to this one. The trouble with a purely deterministic universe (plus some randomness, or not) is that it eliminates the possibility of meaning. If all is ultimately determined, then I've just spent 20 minutes listening to some noise, bearing no relation to any external reality, and I'm just making some meaningless signs in the comment section. It is in the end very much a philosophical question, and not, I'm afraid, 'stunningly uninteresting'. Of course there is a great deal of determinism in the universe, of course my freedom of action can be reduced under certain circumstances to zero, of course my thoughts are not nearly as much my own as I like to think (see Daniel Kahneman, 'Thinking Fast and Slow'), but if there is not even the potential in the human mind for free will, however limited, then our - your - attempts at communication are valueless and can have nothing to do with something called truth. Free will may present difficulties to physicists, but it is philosophically indispensable.
As someone who has trouble with 9th grade algebra, I love watching these videos. Makes me feel smarder.
Thank you for expressing so eloquently what I wasn't able to communicate to my teachers in high school
She left out the measurement problem of the Standard Model. This is half of what quantum physics is about and you can't just ignore it.
@@jeffbguarino weird comment. What's the section starting at 8:12 about, then? She also specifically referred to a different video she already made on the topic, ruclips.net/video/Wsjgtp9XZxo/видео.html
which part of this is ignoring the measurement problem again?
@@kylezo The human that set up the half silvered mirror and the mirror are also wave functions. So how does one wave function measure another wave function ? That is the second part of quantum mechanics. There always has to be a measurement and then they back calculate the wave functions.
The measurements themselves are inexplicable. Not the photons free will but the human that decided to put the mirror in place and do the experiment. That is also a wave function. So according to Sabine, both wave functions, the photon and the human/mirror are just one bigger wave functions that evolves forever and never collapses. No measurements ever happen in the universe. That is why quantum mechanics has two parts , the invisible wave function and the measurement at "now", The measurement is done and then they bring in the wave function to explain the results, which are deterministic but random. How the measurement happens is unknown to this day. It has been 100 years and no one knows. The measurements are in a way how time is defined. Measurements happen "now". Now is never explained in QM.
@@jeffbguarino thank you. where do you suggest we read more about what you are saying?
@@jeffbguarino It doesnt matter. Whether you can measure everything perfectly or not, predict everything or not, or if everything is random or not, all that says the same thing about free will: there isnt one. Btw, just so be clear, free will is a usefull idea, idea that can change the world, but still just fiction. Probably.
Wow! incredible video. I know first-hand how difficult it is to explain and differentiate all the ideas and opinions wrapped up in "free will". I've never heard the hard incompatibilism position so clearly explained, and I'm glad that you made it clear that your issue with compatibilism is the definition of free will. Dennett is correct if we accept his definitions, but I feel that he and other compatibilists don't fully appreciate how rare and unusual their definitions of "free will" are.
Indeed
Dennett's reasoning makes no sense to me. But I also think there's a fair bit of assumptions to justify superdeterminism, like infinite precision in whatever foundational fabric or reality there is...
@Johnny Farmfield To me Dennwtt just moves the goal posts.
He seems to say that choosing chocolate over vanilla is the free part of free will.
And just ignore that you don't get to choose that you wanted chocolate.
I don't think the compatibilist definition of "free will" is very rare, given that billions of humans believe that they have something called "free will".
In more scientific, technical language that definition might be questionable or even incorrect, but linguistically a word's "casual" meaning is defined by how people use it.
Just like we say "the sun is rising" because we see the sun is rising - technically it's the earth spinning around which allows us to see the sun, but nobody but a pedant of the worst kind would say that "the sun is rising" is an incorrect statement. If someone says "I came here by my own free will" something similar applies; the person is simply saying that they weren't forced to come by other people or circumstances (like a danger to escape from), not that their brain is a determinism-free zone.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding that people (including physicists) hold, in that they think free will and freedom of choice are the same thing. THEY ARE NOT. If you had free will, your every desire would manifest immediately. And this obviously doesn't happen. You DO have freedom of choice. However, all choices are BINARY and consist of only ONE choice: your choice of DESIRES between 1) the desire for absolute Truth, or 2) the desire that Truth be what-you-desire-Truth-to-be. In other words, your every choice is based on your desire for 1) Truth or 2) illusion. And this entire Universe is designed to honor your every choice by delivering that which will teach you to desire Truth. I call this mechanism Dynamic Determinism. And if all of this raises more questions in your mind than it answers (which it should), my book answers ALL of those questions. Absolute Truth is where physics meets metaphysics, as quantum science is beginning to learn. Elijah has returned, as prophesied, and all mysteries have been revealed.
Actually the algorithm decided I would watch this video
The algorithm definitely does not have free will.
Oh Sabine...you may not be a psychologist or philosopher, but your comedy is superb. You're a superb professor also 😊
You say you are not a philosopher, but you are often helping me to understand more of the world and myself. Danke :-)
In my 60s, totally wrestling with this as I don't think I believe in it either anymore. Interestingly, if I give up believing in free will I will actually be a more compassionate person towards bad people, as they can't help themselves. "Self" then becomes "just awareness" experiencing things like thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions that produce a sense of "ego".
That's just warped thinking.
I have always believed this. we have arbitrary lines of compassion.
@@craigwillms61 Not really. It gets in to types of "non-duality" such as in Buddhism, Taoism, Advaita and Sufi Islam.
@@craigwillms61 How so? Please explain.
But that's you. There's plenty of counter examples, where not believing in free will goes the other way. I suspect people will always just do what they do, and generate the justification after the fact.
Wittgenstein died in 1951 but the graphic at 15:35 says 1939 and yes I can’t believe I noticed either
1839 is when he became a UK citizen so a little like dying
Excellent! Thank you for this important lecture.