I think it was Jeffery Swartz in his book 'The Mind and the Brain' he talked about "free won't". True we don't come up with the idea of what to do, but we can cancel the decision after we are aware of it...
You can only cancel it if your brain does the evaluation and forces you to cancel the decision. You don't just willy nilly reject or accept things. There is a physical process that determines whether you cancel the decision or not.
There are some studies that show our subconscious decides our action way before we are even aware there is a choice. So you wouldn't actually get to choose by the time you were aware, your subconscious already decided for you.
@@84superninja this is only true if you act on auto pilot. It is possible to become aware of the choice before you act by being more mindful and then censor it. This is what mindfulness practice is all about.
I think free will is a spectrum. This is why: Meditation, self awareness and lucid dreaming- meditation and self awareness are kind of synonymous. When you're more self aware you're less likely to make split second decisions like you normally would on autopilot. You also tend to be better at judgement as well. In a lucid dream you know you are dreaming (self awareness and meditation feed into this as well) and often times can gain control over the dream. You could follow the storyline or branch off into your own adventure or create any possible scenario you can think of depending on how much control you have. You're literally experiencing the most actualized form of freedom Another thing i'd like to add to the list: Drug addiction. It takes a tremendous amount of willpower to quit some drugs for certain people especially if they decide not to go to rehab which honestly I can't blame them. For some the addiction lingers their whole life until they either relapse and/or die. The ones with I guess the stronger willpower would be able to ignore these cravings better. I think there's times when we have free will and times where we don't (being on autopilot and/or dissociation) for the most part
I also think the studies forgot to account for these factors as most of the time we are indeed on autopilot unless you're practicing something like all day awareness
@@shadw4701 Your desire and/or ability to practice meditation, self awareness, lucid dreaming is on a spectrum, and COMPLETELY dependent of factors you have ZERO control over. You can not self author or self create anything, including your desire/ability to be self aware. Free will is an illusion.
@@knowfreewill8765 Except you can control these factors, all you gotta do is learn how the subconscious mind operates and use it to your advantage. An example with lucid dreaming is changing your beliefs to control the environment. Your every day life normally dictates how dreams go, even lucid dreams however once you change your beliefs about something within the dream it will mold to that belief. Let's say you can't fly in dreams. Try thinking you're in VR and that alone will make it more possible The subconscious mind can be controlled, it's just not as easy or as simple as our conscious mind. It all depends on what you feed into it and changing your belifs/expectations around what you'd like to achieve
@@shadw4701 I didn't say you or I can't control those factors, I said everyone's ability is on spectrum. You can't help where you are on that spectrum. If you have a cognitive impairment (Which we all do to some extent) you will have greater difficulty (In fact for some it is an impossibility) then others. I have practiced lucid dreaming, specifically flying and having wild sex fantasies with females. I have no control over the fact that those two activities are what i desire to lucid dream about,
There is no free will when it comes to having good luck or bad luck. There is no free will about being mobbed, hurricane destroys your home, cancer…. We can go on and on. That would be going deeper into believe, karma etc…
Ten minutes in and I have no idea what they are even nudging toward, other than 53 minutes. I may not make it to the end, but it reminded me of a neat experiment Chomsky talked about, where the processing of the conscious decision to move was measured to have occurred AFTER the processing that controlled the movement itself. That makes my brain pre-hurt.
Well, Chomsky is a buffoon..... so I'd dismiss him entirely and completely. But the fact that consciousness is not magic and happens with the brain means your statement isn't spooky or strange at all. Your brain has different components with different complexity and different chronology in terms of evolutionary development. So if your choice involves needing to fire nerve endings in muscles to get your own arm to move.... it isn't surprising at all that the muscle firings may occur before you open your mouth to tell your Test researcher that you have made a decision about whether to move your arm or not.
The moment an individual decides it exists and has authority over others, intelligence and alike wise the forest of the mind can only grow into a jungle. The individual was created by the collective factor, why the pride and why the struggles ? They say every action has a counteraction. What if these both are the same thing, the individual that took the action took the counteraction at the same time. Do ignorant people exist ? No, everyone is enlightened. Ignorance and knowledge are the same thing like the particle and the antiparticle. Both exist in the mind until both disappear one day.
@@laertesindeed Do you actually understand what that means though? Society today is built upon concepts of control and free will. What you just said is that those concepts "obviously do not exist" which leads to "the foundation of our current human society is a lie." I don't disagree, but you do realize that you are an outcast minority for believing such things? Anyone who believes that free will and control are non-existent in the real physical world are "crazy people" according to the majority of the rest of humanity. Most people believe in free will, control, and consciousness beyond the physical process... and thus most people are WRONG because we are not in control scientifically speaking.
I don't personally ascribe to what she is saying because there has only ever been the present moment that is always occurring in real-time. Everything prior is the material manifested as a result from the enduring present actions that are taken that we have no choice but to experience in perpetuity. Therefore, since the present moment is all that we have, that is free will.
Not a person of religion myself but am an admirer of individual faith simply because it encourages folks to aspire to be more than the machine (or beast!) they are, despite the often-absurd space-fairy stories!....new 'science' thinking can easily feel more apathetically self-justifying/serving and then nihilistic unfortunately (despite science being great for simply and always questioning!) We have a symbol for infinity for a reason when we can easily think ourselves into madness while often missing the simple points straight in front of us!
16:07 ...no, but if a person has significant damage to their body and are no longer alive, their organs (like the plant) can be put into an environment that it is 'familiar with' (like keeping the plant in a warm, moint area...replicating it's original state) by putting it into another living body....and it will continue to function. A part of the whole doesn't have to die or cease functioning simply because it's removed, so long as the conditions are correct.
Imagine you are at night trying to not eat to loss weight, but you are hungry at same time!! Conscious is not the decision to eat or not! Conscious is our ability to see this happening in front of us! And keep watching and also understand we are struggling to avoid eating, and even watch when we lose the battle and start eating! But even when eating, that decision was a lot not a choice because we were compelled to do so by our body! But based on that, people develop the ability to train themselves to change their behavior!! But, at same time, that's a lot of other decisions where there is not any kind of "body pressure" against us, when we decide to open or close our hands, for example, without any special reason!! So, in other hands, you are free to wait a lion run in your direction in order to eat you! But you body will try to run desperately (and that's for sure not free will)!
She should read Milner’s work on memory with H.M. who had a bilateral medial temporal lobectomy for epilepsy and subsequently could not form new memories.
Freewill is surely Not an illusion! it is the fundamental function of consciousness! It is central to the operation of consciousness. Without free will, we would be automatons at the mercy of physical events Without any ability to choose. Choice is at the very heart of our existence. Reality is not merely a physical phenomenon as science would have us believe. We choose within the context of beliefs at every moment of our lives!
@@KarmicWealth Yes, I wrote them! My consciousness and response of understanding put them together. If someone else chooses our choices who would that be?
Was it not your past experiences, beliefs and assumptions that were beyond your control using language you didn’t choose to learn, in an environment you didn’t choose from parents you didn’t choose from dna you didn’t choose with a brain that operates mostly from the unconscious that wrote that?
@@michellesecrett1 It is an assumption to view that we do not choose every aspect of our physical manifestation! We actually define it all in minute detail. The physical follows ur choice and intent! We choose our parents too! And nothing is 'unconscious'! Every aspect of reality is a choice!
She's just trying to explain determinism. If we measured every atom in the universe we could predict what anyone is thinking at any time, and their every action. This would only not work if there is some "magic" or true randomness in the universe
It's also important to note that randomness also doesn't permit free will. It would just mean that if you could re-run the system then outcomes could be different. They would still ultimately be deterministic and immune to any conscious entity interrupting that process and exerting non deterministic outcomes. What most people mean when they talk about free will is fundamentally incompatible with determinism and all of the scientific evidence points to a deterministic universe.
@GunZoR Perhaps as a lay person then determinism is not the right word to use on my part. What I mean in the usage is that there are two known processes. One is perceived randomness like radioactive decay and the other is causality. Neither of those create space for the popular definition of free will to exist because it would require being able to interrupt and assert dominance over those two fundamental processes. Though going back to determinism I understand there is also the idea of super determinism which seems to be a favoured theory by a number of scientists that I follow and as a layperson I and leaning on their much more relevant experience than my own since I don't have the time and knowledge to read every paper published on such topics.
Time is an illusion, Space is an illusion, Reality is an illusion, Matter is an illusion, Free wheel is an illusion.... There's not a more exploited term than "illusion". We are in the age of illusion.
"Free Will", or, "Conscious Will", are probably terms to confuse and muddle the overall psychic ability of "will". The adjectives of "free" and "conscious" for the noun "will", is an approach to ambiguate "will" altogether. The truth is that "will" in of itself is a psychic ability of consciousness, that enables humans, and nonhumans like my Being, to impel, compel, scheme, plan, influence and inspire ideas and approaches to manifest beyond what is instinctual. So the adjectives "free" and "conscious" for the noun "will" is really unnecessary and ambiguous. "Will" in of itself is evident.
I really dont get this topic when people make it to a yes or no question. This is a huge topic. I have several inputs into this. First of all most things about your body is not volountary and nothing you have control over by willpower. Name something of all things happening in your body you can control. It has its own intelligence. Your heart pumps, your cell divides. Its I dont know million or billions things about you that you have no control over. Do you choose which cells shall die or divide or your hair to grow. Thoughts happening automatically. Outside your control. Try to silence them they come back louder, try to ignore them they will return, repress them and they come back stronger. Some people even say a motion happen before thoughts. The reason we talk about free will is because its one of the few million or billion things happening inside and outside that we can control. You think you control your inner world and the outside. You are illussional and you need that to be able to survive and feel good. When the illussion breaks to the ground you are absolutely miserable and almost dying. So people overestimate themself and come up with all sorts of illussions of their own capacities and importance. You would be very miserable without it but also with to much illussions. Addictions fir an example. Its an illussion of anything. To create an illussion of you to cope with life. Thats the whole idea when you feel you are so secure in how you work hinestly, that you even dare to investigate your shadow and do some shadow-work and those whom done it is most likely to be or remain good, descent moral, loving beeings. Free will is not to control but to know you have capacity for doing wrong, doing evil, beeing an asshole and then just dont act on the impulses. Imagine everything was deterministic. Then you are just a machine a slave. You cant even have a society with laws, or a society at all, If we had no free will. That would be like sending your pets to prison for acting on learned behavior or instincts. People may have impulses and urges and many unacceptable impulses or innapropriate feelings or thoughts but Free will is finally what makes it dangerous, harmful, evil and everything. You probably heard enough hirrible awful stories of people living normal lives and poffff absolutely horrible crimes of violence or malevolence of any sort reveals and everyone gets shocked how such things happens. No free will and responsibility, welcome to mayham. Its also when you dare to investigate your shadow you already know before it that you are not bad, not evil, not abnormal or having any major frightening twists of your persona, emotions, desires. It can be things that happened in your life, nothing you done, you can be dragging around with doubts and shame about what other done as well. That is the greatest thing you can do if you want to act as good as possible for everyone. If people been cruel to you or done you bad many people repeat it in cycles. Generation after generation. It has been absolutely devastating. Someone investigates that. Doing the shadow work and can be the man you admire. His father was an alcoholic and a nasty soon of a gun does not at all make it necessary for him to be like that. He have done some shadow-work. And you may just oooh shit. That man is admirable. How did he do that. What a hero. Free will. It does not make you worse but as well as the process of more enlightenment you may tend to get worser in your behavior because you have opened the gates and light into all rooms and people may be see it and you are vulnerable at hell. Armor of defensive mechanisms dressed of and you are wide open. Afraid people cant do that. It can be awful inside their and they they must shade it and hide it and the free will may turn evil just one day.
If free will didn't exist you couldn't know it. You could not know anything whatsoever. Why do so many seemingly intelligent people take this childish nonsense seriously?
This obsession with negating free will is akin to the Zeno's Paradox of our day. It is a byproduct of a hypertrophied IQ in a person incapable of deeper thought (i.e., they can think quickly, but not deeply -- about 95% of "intellectuals"). Zeno of Alea in his day used "airtight logic" to prove that motion is an illusion. Today we understand why this reasoning was fundamentally mistaken, back then they didn't. But back then someone took Zeno by the shoulders and gave him a shake and said: "Zeno! put down that pipe and come with me. See that fig tree up yonder, let's go old man... just a few more steps. There! We made it. Now STOP THE NONSENSE." When intellectuals arrive at a conjecture that flatly contradicts a level of common sense evinced by children and probably chimps, well it's time to put down that pipe. Ironically we all have a perfectly good example of an entity that utterly lacks free will right in front of us. That MacBook you're staring at can play chess, write poetry, compose music, carry on a decent conversation with you and much more. It is completely devoid of intentionality and freedom of any kind. Attributing free will to a computer is "not even wrong", as is denying it in humans.
The idea that free will is ‘undeniable’ only occurs if you don’t pay enough attention to the decision-making process imo. The decisions we make are ultimately obtuse even to us - if I say “think of a person” and a person pops into your head, why any given person (as opposed to another) would pop into your head is totally unknowable. Why did you choose that person and not another? You could say it was because you saw that person earlier, maybe, but that wouldn’t explain why it was that person and not, for example, someone you saw on TV the night before. All examples of ‘free will’ are like this imo. Thoughts bubble up into consciousness, decisions are made and then also bubble up into consciousness *after the fact*. You have no real idea why you make the choices you do. All this is further underlined by the fact that your entire life, your predispositions, your decisions, is influenced so heavily by the environment in which you grew up and your genetics - if you ‘decide’ to behave in one way or another, you’re never free of all the conditioning that led to you making that choice, and if presented with the choice again with no memory of the time before, you’d make the same choice again, because the sum total of your experiences led you to make the choice the first time, and all those experiences would be the same. I don’t think it’s denying anything about human experience to say free will is an illusion - I think it’s the result of actually paying deeper attention to what we call ‘free will’ is actually like.
There never will be a way to prove or disprove the existence of "free will". Similarly, there will never be a way to prove or disprove that an entity is "conscious". Her assertion that what she "feels" are her agency decisions are "really just more brain processing..." is similarly unprovable.
What makes the decision??? Sure all of our decisions are influenced by events occurring in this universe and happen as a result of this universes processes. We also assume we know how this universe operates in its entirety which is simply untrue.
Damn, I have no free will, so I can't choose to watch this video! Well, too bad! 🤣🤣 Seriously, I will watch the whole conversation with Annaka Harris later today.
I literally experience no free will. It’s not even a belief for me. It’s not a popular statement and people actually get offended by it. But maybe use your “free will” to not get offended 😁.
She contradicted herself. She said some people are not susceptible to conspiracy theories, while others are and yet she thinks scientific discoveries are more likely to be from those that don't follow their intuition. Thats completely false in my mind. Thinking outside the box, taking risks, being curious are compatible with conspiracy theorists and scientific discovery. Not the opposite.
Are you Maybe conflating conspiracy theories with anti-intuition? Not sure I see the connection as one builds a case on seemingly objective evidence and the other is based on baser subjective feelings...
@@davidgeffeney1283 I think there are handful of conspiracy theories that have turned out to be true because people have used science to uncover the truth.
That’s not even true. Most scientific discoveries come from data collection, collaboration, and peer review. We romanticize the lone scientist thinking his way to profound thoughts but more often than not, profound discoveries come from good ol’ fashioned sweat.
what if you leave out your brain in a tough decision making process and do everything based on a dice roll or coin flip? i guess one could argue it's all been played out already from a fifth dimensional perspective
A plant does not have conscious experience, period. She's smart, but she also really needs to know when to use different words for things that are separate from the currently understood definition to not confuse the general population. "Deciding" is entirely a neural brain response, something plants do not have in any relevant form. What they DO have is stimulus responses to chemical touch and other reactions, an entirely different method and in no way a conscious experience, something we need to be very careful about anthropomorphizing.
Huh? Are you aware that you just proved her point? Brain is just electro chemical and physical reaction that reacts to stimulus of the environment. Sound (Air) waves, photons, touch, ETC. Plant example is just a simplified chemical process. And she said "imagine" or "hypothetical consciousness" of the plant would fool the plant that it decided itself to coil, but it would just be a simple chemical reaction. Human is fooled the same way, just with the enormous complexity of the chemical reactions happening inside the brain. That is her point
@@milannesic5718 Umm, no I didn't. Yes, that's what it is, but look up complexity and emergence and how brains make things like consciousness possible. Understand also what processing and feedback in complex systems means. This is not that.
I think most of the time - maybe > 95%? - people are on the automatic pilot; something happen, you react instinctively; you have to make a decision, there again, no thinking, you jump on the first alternative. That said, I believe we have free will when we take time to think and decide between alternatives which one seem best to you. 🤔🤔 An example, if you go to the restaurant and you have to choose between, say 5 or 6 dishes, then you can exercise your free will. Annaka Harris and Sam Harris would probably say that's not free will and I wouldn't agree with them.
Why is 5-6 dishes necessary to have free will? If I offer you 2 dishes, a plate of spaghetti or a plate of mealworms, one will be more appealing because you prefer the taste, one will be more appealing for health/weight maintenance, etc. Your eventual choice is made by factors for which you do not control. You can not self author or self create your dietary preferences any more then you can ANY preferences.
@@knowfreewill8765 I said why I think we have free will. If you, Annaka Harris, Sam Harris think we don't have free will, I won't even try to convince you that we have because it would be a colossal waste of time; you will NEVER change your mind.
@@Age_of_Apocalypse I'm willing to engage in a dialogue and have my arguments scrutinized and taken apart. I was a compatibilist who believed in some form of free will, I can't help that on upon further research, the idea became illogical and incoherent. If someone can show how flawed my current beliefs are, I am helpless to how my brain reacts to the new information. Does my spaghetti/mealworm analogy not make any sense at all?
@@knowfreewill8765 As I said, I think the vast majority of people are on the automatic pilot most of the time. I still believe we have "free will", but a very few exercises it and only, from time to time. In the vast majority of situations, we simply react without - if any - thought.
@@Age_of_Apocalypse But the reason why a small minority are not on autopilot, and are very deliberate in thier decision making is due to mental abilities like intelligence, self discipline, and emotional control. Mental abilities are like physical abilities, you can't help what you were born with. If I say that you have causal will and not free will, is that something you disagree with?
We were made psycho under the tyrannical delusion of human exceptionalism. We have such a hard time with the fact we are generic life. PS: Jesus was murdered because he could explain why pride is bullcrap. Augustine's contribution was hiding that fact.
She is at times trying too hard to think of something witty she trips iver her words or previous thoughts. She is smart & doing a live podcast is a little nerve-racking I understand. Yes, she goes way off topic and at times forgets the question asked. Was that premeditated hmmm?
•Deja vu = UFO flies near. •Speed of light = Future time travel by physics. •Faster than light = Information time travels back. Quantum entanglement was measured FTL.
I have a hard time with some of the supposed smart folks Lex has on, especially when they speak and feel more like TED talk fanatics with something to sell-grift on (and sell to themselves) related to science and modern thinking. Lex is well intentioned but probably too much so.....It's far more simple than folks like to over-think and self-justify to themselves.....free will is not an illusion, when you realise that you are ultimately just a binary machine like all things that originated from the first binary event the big bang....you CAN aspire to be more with a more knowing/considered binary thinking....or you can just take the apathetic approach and become a self-justifying nihilist instead!
you CAN aspire to be more with a more knowing/considered binary thinking....or you can just take the apathetic approach and become a self-justifying nihilist instead! Agree, EXCEPT how aspirational or apathetic you are is determined by factors outside your control.
@@secretgoldfish Your ability to realize something is also determined by factors outside your control. I have varied levels of aspiration and apathy around every area of my life, and I can't help which areas I "realize" need more or less aspiration or apathy.
I could listen to her all day. She is so graceful and effortless.
"we must believe in free will, we have no choice"
A 53+ minute clip? 😉 How long is the full interview?
Ha! I came here to the comments to see this reaction.
We don't know the future. Therefore we have free will, however limited.
I think it was Jeffery Swartz in his book 'The Mind and the Brain' he talked about "free won't". True we don't come up with the idea of what to do, but we can cancel the decision after we are aware of it...
You can only cancel it if your brain does the evaluation and forces you to cancel the decision. You don't just willy nilly reject or accept things. There is a physical process that determines whether you cancel the decision or not.
There are some studies that show our subconscious decides our action way before we are even aware there is a choice. So you wouldn't actually get to choose by the time you were aware, your subconscious already decided for you.
@@84superninja this is only true if you act on auto pilot. It is possible to become aware of the choice before you act by being more mindful and then censor it.
This is what mindfulness practice is all about.
That's just another decision.
I think free will is a spectrum. This is why:
Meditation, self awareness and lucid dreaming- meditation and self awareness are kind of synonymous. When you're more self aware you're less likely to make split second decisions like you normally would on autopilot. You also tend to be better at judgement as well.
In a lucid dream you know you are dreaming (self awareness and meditation feed into this as well) and often times can gain control over the dream. You could follow the storyline or branch off into your own adventure or create any possible scenario you can think of depending on how much control you have. You're literally experiencing the most actualized form of freedom
Another thing i'd like to add to the list: Drug addiction. It takes a tremendous amount of willpower to quit some drugs for certain people especially if they decide not to go to rehab which honestly I can't blame them. For some the addiction lingers their whole life until they either relapse and/or die. The ones with I guess the stronger willpower would be able to ignore these cravings better.
I think there's times when we have free will and times where we don't (being on autopilot and/or dissociation) for the most part
I also think the studies forgot to account for these factors as most of the time we are indeed on autopilot unless you're practicing something like all day awareness
@@shadw4701 Your desire and/or ability to practice meditation, self awareness, lucid dreaming is on a spectrum, and COMPLETELY dependent of factors you have ZERO control over.
You can not self author or self create anything, including your desire/ability to be self aware.
Free will is an illusion.
@@knowfreewill8765 Except you can control these factors, all you gotta do is learn how the subconscious mind operates and use it to your advantage. An example with lucid dreaming is changing your beliefs to control the environment. Your every day life normally dictates how dreams go, even lucid dreams however once you change your beliefs about something within the dream it will mold to that belief. Let's say you can't fly in dreams. Try thinking you're in VR and that alone will make it more possible
The subconscious mind can be controlled, it's just not as easy or as simple as our conscious mind. It all depends on what you feed into it and changing your belifs/expectations around what you'd like to achieve
@@shadw4701 I didn't say you or I can't control those factors, I said everyone's ability is on spectrum. You can't help where you are on that spectrum. If you have a cognitive impairment (Which we all do to some extent) you will have greater difficulty (In fact for some it is an impossibility) then others.
I have practiced lucid dreaming, specifically flying and having wild sex fantasies with females. I have no control over the fact that those two activities are what i desire to lucid dream about,
There is no free will when it comes to having good luck or bad luck.
There is no free will about being mobbed, hurricane destroys your home, cancer…. We can go on and on. That would be going deeper into believe, karma etc…
Amazing conversation as always.
Ten minutes in and I have no idea what they are even nudging toward, other than 53 minutes. I may not make it to the end, but it reminded me of a neat experiment Chomsky talked about, where the processing of the conscious decision to move was measured to have occurred AFTER the processing that controlled the movement itself. That makes my brain pre-hurt.
Well, Chomsky is a buffoon..... so I'd dismiss him entirely and completely. But the fact that consciousness is not magic and happens with the brain means your statement isn't spooky or strange at all. Your brain has different components with different complexity and different chronology in terms of evolutionary development. So if your choice involves needing to fire nerve endings in muscles to get your own arm to move.... it isn't surprising at all that the muscle firings may occur before you open your mouth to tell your Test researcher that you have made a decision about whether to move your arm or not.
The moment an individual decides it exists and has authority over others, intelligence and alike wise the forest of the mind can only grow into a jungle.
The individual was created by the collective factor, why the pride and why the struggles ? They say every action has a counteraction. What if these both are the same thing, the individual that took the action took the counteraction at the same time. Do ignorant people exist ? No, everyone is enlightened. Ignorance and knowledge are the same thing like the particle and the antiparticle. Both exist in the mind until both disappear one day.
@@MihaiLatRUclips Total nonsense reply of no value whatsoever..... and internally self contradictory. Moving on.
@@laertesindeed Do you actually understand what that means though? Society today is built upon concepts of control and free will. What you just said is that those concepts "obviously do not exist" which leads to "the foundation of our current human society is a lie."
I don't disagree, but you do realize that you are an outcast minority for believing such things? Anyone who believes that free will and control are non-existent in the real physical world are "crazy people" according to the majority of the rest of humanity.
Most people believe in free will, control, and consciousness beyond the physical process... and thus most people are WRONG because we are not in control scientifically speaking.
@@lostinbravado You are deluded and you are factually wrong about the science.
I don't personally ascribe to what she is saying because there has only ever been the present moment that is always occurring in real-time. Everything prior is the material manifested as a result from the enduring present actions that are taken that we have no choice but to experience in perpetuity.
Therefore, since the present moment is all that we have, that is free will.
Not a person of religion myself but am an admirer of individual faith simply because it encourages folks to aspire to be more than the machine (or beast!) they are, despite the often-absurd space-fairy stories!....new 'science' thinking can easily feel more apathetically self-justifying/serving and then nihilistic unfortunately (despite science being great for simply and always questioning!) We have a symbol for infinity for a reason when we can easily think ourselves into madness while often missing the simple points straight in front of us!
Free will might be an illusion, but Freewill is a song by Rush.
I choose not to decide.
"the way we talk about things affects our decisions" Anika... So how we talk to ourselves can affect our will or decisions....
Free thinkers with no free will 😂😂
This is one hella of a 'clip'. Even my freewill concurs
16:07 ...no, but if a person has significant damage to their body and are no longer alive, their organs (like the plant) can be put into an environment that it is 'familiar with' (like keeping the plant in a warm, moint area...replicating it's original state) by putting it into another living body....and it will continue to function.
A part of the whole doesn't have to die or cease functioning simply because it's removed, so long as the conditions are correct.
I wonder how “cause and effect” will be looked at in the future and the debunks in the use of its terminology and the lack of complete evidence.
Once a person experiences separation from self and integration with All, even if just for a moment, this alters the following linear experience.
I wonder if consciousness as identity without "content" (experience, objects or illusory subject) is possible.
determinism changes with consciousness. change my mind.
Actually illusion is an illusion.
Nah, it only appears to be...
Mind blown by that comment. wow!
Imagine you are at night trying to not eat to loss weight, but you are hungry at same time!! Conscious is not the decision to eat or not! Conscious is our ability to see this happening in front of us! And keep watching and also understand we are struggling to avoid eating, and even watch when we lose the battle and start eating! But even when eating, that decision was a lot not a choice because we were compelled to do so by our body! But based on that, people develop the ability to train themselves to change their behavior!! But, at same time, that's a lot of other decisions where there is not any kind of "body pressure" against us, when we decide to open or close our hands, for example, without any special reason!! So, in other hands, you are free to wait a lion run in your direction in order to eat you! But you body will try to run desperately (and that's for sure not free will)!
She should read Milner’s work on memory with H.M. who had a bilateral medial temporal lobectomy for epilepsy and subsequently could not form new memories.
Freewill is surely Not an illusion! it is the fundamental function of consciousness!
It is central to the operation of consciousness. Without free will, we would be automatons at the mercy of physical events Without any ability to choose. Choice is at the very heart of our existence. Reality is not merely a physical phenomenon as science would have us believe. We choose within the context of beliefs at every moment of our lives!
Did you create these thoughts you just commented with or did they just arise in you? Be honest.
@@KarmicWealth Yes, I wrote them! My consciousness and response of understanding put them together. If someone else chooses our choices who would that be?
Was it not your past experiences, beliefs and assumptions that were beyond your control using language you didn’t choose to learn, in an environment you didn’t choose from parents you didn’t choose from dna you didn’t choose with a brain that operates mostly from the unconscious that wrote that?
@@michellesecrett1 It is an assumption to view that we do not choose every aspect of our physical manifestation! We actually define it all in minute detail. The physical follows ur choice and intent! We choose our parents too! And nothing is 'unconscious'!
Every aspect of reality is a choice!
Hallucination is the homeostasis for human cognition
Translation: Life Is A Trip
My horse is blue and my piano is red.
If I claim any higher, I’ll be in over my head.
She's just trying to explain determinism.
If we measured every atom in the universe we could predict what anyone is thinking at any time, and their every action. This would only not work if there is some "magic" or true randomness in the universe
It's also important to note that randomness also doesn't permit free will. It would just mean that if you could re-run the system then outcomes could be different. They would still ultimately be deterministic and immune to any conscious entity interrupting that process and exerting non deterministic outcomes. What most people mean when they talk about free will is fundamentally incompatible with determinism and all of the scientific evidence points to a deterministic universe.
@GunZoR Perhaps as a lay person then determinism is not the right word to use on my part. What I mean in the usage is that there are two known processes. One is perceived randomness like radioactive decay and the other is causality. Neither of those create space for the popular definition of free will to exist because it would require being able to interrupt and assert dominance over those two fundamental processes. Though going back to determinism I understand there is also the idea of super determinism which seems to be a favoured theory by a number of scientists that I follow and as a layperson I and leaning on their much more relevant experience than my own since I don't have the time and knowledge to read every paper published on such topics.
The assertion is utter nonsense, regarding common sense as well as science.
Time is an illusion, Space is an illusion, Reality is an illusion, Matter is an illusion, Free wheel is an illusion.... There's not a more exploited term than "illusion". We are in the age of illusion.
"Free Will", or, "Conscious Will", are probably terms to confuse and muddle the overall psychic ability of "will". The adjectives of "free" and "conscious" for the noun "will", is an approach to ambiguate "will" altogether. The truth is that "will" in of itself is a psychic ability of consciousness, that enables humans, and nonhumans like my Being, to impel, compel, scheme, plan, influence and inspire ideas and approaches to manifest beyond what is instinctual. So the adjectives "free" and "conscious" for the noun "will" is really unnecessary and ambiguous. "Will" in of itself is evident.
Bring Sabine Hossenfelder to the show please!
Nobody is gonna know.. how would they know..?
I really dont get this topic when people make it to a yes or no question. This is a huge topic. I have several inputs into this. First of all most things about your body is not volountary and nothing you have control over by willpower. Name something of all things happening in your body you can control. It has its own intelligence. Your heart pumps, your cell divides. Its I dont know million or billions things about you that you have no control over. Do you choose which cells shall die or divide or your hair to grow. Thoughts happening automatically. Outside your control. Try to silence them they come back louder, try to ignore them they will return, repress them and they come back stronger. Some people even say a motion happen before thoughts. The reason we talk about free will is because its one of the few million or billion things happening inside and outside that we can control. You think you control your inner world and the outside. You are illussional and you need that to be able to survive and feel good. When the illussion breaks to the ground you are absolutely miserable and almost dying. So people overestimate themself and come up with all sorts of illussions of their own capacities and importance. You would be very miserable without it but also with to much illussions. Addictions fir an example. Its an illussion of anything. To create an illussion of you to cope with life. Thats the whole idea when you feel you are so secure in how you work hinestly, that you even dare to investigate your shadow and do some shadow-work and those whom done it is most likely to be or remain good, descent moral, loving beeings. Free will is not to control but to know you have capacity for doing wrong, doing evil, beeing an asshole and then just dont act on the impulses. Imagine everything was deterministic. Then you are just a machine a slave. You cant even have a society with laws, or a society at all, If we had no free will. That would be like sending your pets to prison for acting on learned behavior or instincts. People may have impulses and urges and many unacceptable impulses or innapropriate feelings or thoughts but Free will is finally what makes it dangerous, harmful, evil and everything. You probably heard enough hirrible awful stories of people living normal lives and poffff absolutely horrible crimes of violence or malevolence of any sort reveals and everyone gets shocked how such things happens. No free will and responsibility, welcome to mayham. Its also when you dare to investigate your shadow you already know before it that you are not bad, not evil, not abnormal or having any major frightening twists of your persona, emotions, desires. It can be things that happened in your life, nothing you done, you can be dragging around with doubts and shame about what other done as well. That is the greatest thing you can do if you want to act as good as possible for everyone. If people been cruel to you or done you bad many people repeat it in cycles. Generation after generation. It has been absolutely devastating. Someone investigates that. Doing the shadow work and can be the man you admire. His father was an alcoholic and a nasty soon of a gun does not at all make it necessary for him to be like that. He have done some shadow-work. And you may just oooh shit. That man is admirable. How did he do that. What a hero. Free will. It does not make you worse but as well as the process of more enlightenment you may tend to get worser in your behavior because you have opened the gates and light into all rooms and people may be see it and you are vulnerable at hell. Armor of defensive mechanisms dressed of and you are wide open. Afraid people cant do that. It can be awful inside their and they they must shade it and hide it and the free will may turn evil just one day.
Animals are instinctive. People think. A big mistake.
A 53 minutes "clip"?
If free will didn't exist you couldn't know it. You could not know anything whatsoever. Why do so many seemingly intelligent people take this childish nonsense seriously?
This obsession with negating free will is akin to the Zeno's Paradox of our day. It is a byproduct of a hypertrophied IQ in a person incapable of deeper thought (i.e., they can think quickly, but not deeply -- about 95% of "intellectuals"). Zeno of Alea in his day used "airtight logic" to prove that motion is an illusion. Today we understand why this reasoning was fundamentally mistaken, back then they didn't. But back then someone took Zeno by the shoulders and gave him a shake and said: "Zeno! put down that pipe and come with me. See that fig tree up yonder, let's go old man... just a few more steps. There! We made it. Now STOP THE NONSENSE." When intellectuals arrive at a conjecture that flatly contradicts a level of common sense evinced by children and probably chimps, well it's time to put down that pipe.
Ironically we all have a perfectly good example of an entity that utterly lacks free will right in front of us. That MacBook you're staring at can play chess, write poetry, compose music, carry on a decent conversation with you and much more. It is completely devoid of intentionality and freedom of any kind. Attributing free will to a computer is "not even wrong", as is denying it in humans.
They start from a paradigm that objectifies everything and therefore very logically conclude that everything is an object 😂
The idea that free will is ‘undeniable’ only occurs if you don’t pay enough attention to the decision-making process imo. The decisions we make are ultimately obtuse even to us - if I say “think of a person” and a person pops into your head, why any given person (as opposed to another) would pop into your head is totally unknowable. Why did you choose that person and not another? You could say it was because you saw that person earlier, maybe, but that wouldn’t explain why it was that person and not, for example, someone you saw on TV the night before. All examples of ‘free will’ are like this imo. Thoughts bubble up into consciousness, decisions are made and then also bubble up into consciousness *after the fact*. You have no real idea why you make the choices you do.
All this is further underlined by the fact that your entire life, your predispositions, your decisions, is influenced so heavily by the environment in which you grew up and your genetics - if you ‘decide’ to behave in one way or another, you’re never free of all the conditioning that led to you making that choice, and if presented with the choice again with no memory of the time before, you’d make the same choice again, because the sum total of your experiences led you to make the choice the first time, and all those experiences would be the same.
I don’t think it’s denying anything about human experience to say free will is an illusion - I think it’s the result of actually paying deeper attention to what we call ‘free will’ is actually like.
There never will be a way to prove or disprove the existence of "free will". Similarly, there will never be a way to prove or disprove that an entity is "conscious".
Her assertion that what she "feels" are her agency decisions are "really just more brain processing..." is similarly unprovable.
What makes the decision??? Sure all of our decisions are influenced by events occurring in this universe and happen as a result of this universes processes. We also assume we know how this universe operates in its entirety which is simply untrue.
Damn, I have no free will, so I can't choose to watch this video! Well, too bad! 🤣🤣
Seriously, I will watch the whole conversation with Annaka Harris later today.
I literally experience no free will. It’s not even a belief for me. It’s not a popular statement and people actually get offended by it. But maybe use your “free will” to not get offended 😁.
This woman is enlightened
Seems like smashing only one marble would've been sufficient proof.
One cannot "choose" to believe, however, one may "believe" they can choose to believe.
Wow, mind blown by that comment!
She contradicted herself. She said some people are not susceptible to conspiracy theories, while others are and yet she thinks scientific discoveries are more likely to be from those that don't follow their intuition. Thats completely false in my mind. Thinking outside the box, taking risks, being curious are compatible with conspiracy theorists and scientific discovery. Not the opposite.
Are you Maybe conflating conspiracy theories with anti-intuition? Not sure I see the connection as one builds a case on seemingly objective evidence and the other is based on baser subjective feelings...
@@davidgeffeney1283 I think there are handful of conspiracy theories that have turned out to be true because people have used science to uncover the truth.
That’s not even true. Most scientific discoveries come from data collection, collaboration, and peer review. We romanticize the lone scientist thinking his way to profound thoughts but more often than not, profound discoveries come from good ol’ fashioned sweat.
Yup
Want to bet?
Boom.
53 minutes “clip”😂 I will watch the full episode instead 😂
We create are own stories in the mind and we jump the gun and run towards fantasy and myths nothing wrong we can not help it.
what if you leave out your brain in a tough decision making process and do everything based on a dice roll or coin flip? i guess one could argue it's all been played out already from a fifth dimensional perspective
When I decided to write a book about free will it was a I illusion.
Lets not talk 👆
What's the matter, Sam not allowed to do public speaking anymore? 🤣
Horses are fully conscious....at least the non completely domesticated ones
How can Lex understand these complex theories on free will and not just think of me as a pea tendril instead of a demon or a killer whale?
All truths are half truths.
A plant does not have conscious experience, period. She's smart, but she also really needs to know when to use different words for things that are separate from the currently understood definition to not confuse the general population. "Deciding" is entirely a neural brain response, something plants do not have in any relevant form. What they DO have is stimulus responses to chemical touch and other reactions, an entirely different method and in no way a conscious experience, something we need to be very careful about anthropomorphizing.
Huh? Are you aware that you just proved her point? Brain is just electro chemical and physical reaction that reacts to stimulus of the environment. Sound (Air) waves, photons, touch, ETC. Plant example is just a simplified chemical process. And she said "imagine" or "hypothetical consciousness" of the plant would fool the plant that it decided itself to coil, but it would just be a simple chemical reaction. Human is fooled the same way, just with the enormous complexity of the chemical reactions happening inside the brain. That is her point
@@milannesic5718 Umm, no I didn't. Yes, that's what it is, but look up complexity and emergence and how brains make things like consciousness possible. Understand also what processing and feedback in complex systems means. This is not that.
There have to be ufos…I keep losing all my things…those things don’t just disappear…
so cause and effect is an illusion.
This discussion has some major Buddhism vibes…😂
.....and Buddism can have it's own issues while often looking for a different view/way like perhaps the over-acceptance of things for what they are.
I think most of the time - maybe > 95%? - people are on the automatic pilot; something happen, you react instinctively; you have to make a decision, there again, no thinking, you jump on the first alternative.
That said, I believe we have free will when we take time to think and decide between alternatives which one seem best to you. 🤔🤔
An example, if you go to the restaurant and you have to choose between, say 5 or 6 dishes, then you can exercise your free will. Annaka Harris and Sam Harris would probably say that's not free will and I wouldn't agree with them.
Why is 5-6 dishes necessary to have free will? If I offer you 2 dishes, a plate of spaghetti or a plate of mealworms, one will be more appealing because you prefer the taste, one will be more appealing for health/weight maintenance, etc. Your eventual choice is made by factors for which you do not control.
You can not self author or self create your dietary preferences any more then you can ANY preferences.
@@knowfreewill8765 I said why I think we have free will. If you, Annaka Harris, Sam Harris think we don't have free will, I won't even try to convince you that we have because it would be a colossal waste of time; you will NEVER change your mind.
@@Age_of_Apocalypse I'm willing to engage in a dialogue and have my arguments scrutinized and taken apart.
I was a compatibilist who believed in some form of free will, I can't help that on upon further research, the idea became illogical and incoherent. If someone can show how flawed my current beliefs are, I am helpless to how my brain reacts to the new information.
Does my spaghetti/mealworm analogy not make any sense at all?
@@knowfreewill8765 As I said, I think the vast majority of people are on the automatic pilot most of the time. I still believe we have "free will", but a very few exercises it and only, from time to time. In the vast majority of situations, we simply react without - if any - thought.
@@Age_of_Apocalypse But the reason why a small minority are not on autopilot, and are very deliberate in thier decision making is due to mental abilities like intelligence, self discipline, and emotional control. Mental abilities are like physical abilities, you can't help what you were born with.
If I say that you have causal will and not free will, is that something you disagree with?
The obvious question…is Sam piggybacking on her work, or vice versa? I mean, he wrote a book about the topic several years ago.
You are free to do what you will!! But you are free to will what you will!
We were made psycho under the tyrannical delusion of human exceptionalism. We have such a hard time with the fact we are generic life.
PS: Jesus was murdered because he could explain why pride is bullcrap. Augustine's contribution was hiding that fact.
So funny seeing Lex struggle to define its humanity.
Lex Fridman is 100% darvinist manki, hu biliv in mun lending 1969
fReE wIlL iS nOt ReAl!!!!! C'mOn GuYs, YoU hAvE tO bElIeVe Me!!
Bro your keyboard is jacked up
@@shamusosullivan5650 I didn’t have a choice
@@preyevite6785
If your life is random
Random = Not free
If your life isn't random = Not free
27:00
You are just an illusion too.
😊 👁 👀 😲 ? birth. a worm, human nature , binding , wealthy, or poor. Celebration. A tunnel. Flow, Consciousness 🤔 😢 🤨 🤫
I'm less than impressed with her blathering.
It's just a roundabout way of describing determinism
You can't help that it you find her boring, illogical, upsetting, or anything else you may feel about her blathering. You have no free will.
she has to consume 'airtime' which is spins $$s..
She is at times trying too hard to think of something witty she trips iver her words or previous thoughts. She is smart & doing a live podcast is a little nerve-racking I understand.
Yes, she goes way off topic and at times forgets the question asked. Was that premeditated hmmm?
Aliens control our will. Aliens manipulate time.
•Deja vu = UFO flies near.
•Speed of light = Future time travel by physics.
•Faster than light = Information time travels back. Quantum entanglement was measured FTL.
A 53 minute clip? Lol
Classic 54 minute clip 😂
👍
I have a hard time with some of the supposed smart folks Lex has on, especially when they speak and feel more like TED talk fanatics with something to sell-grift on (and sell to themselves) related to science and modern thinking. Lex is well intentioned but probably too much so.....It's far more simple than folks like to over-think and self-justify to themselves.....free will is not an illusion, when you realise that you are ultimately just a binary machine like all things that originated from the first binary event the big bang....you CAN aspire to be more with a more knowing/considered binary thinking....or you can just take the apathetic approach and become a self-justifying nihilist instead!
you CAN aspire to be more with a more knowing/considered binary thinking....or you can just take the apathetic approach and become a self-justifying nihilist instead!
Agree, EXCEPT how aspirational or apathetic you are is determined by factors outside your control.
@@knowfreewill8765 agree but if you realise they are out of your control then you can aspire to work around those issues too!
@@secretgoldfish Your ability to realize something is also determined by factors outside your control.
I have varied levels of aspiration and apathy around every area of my life, and I can't help which areas I "realize" need more or less aspiration or apathy.
@@knowfreewill8765 This is why we always (or should) try harder :)
@@secretgoldfish Agree, but that in no way gives anyone free will. Free will is an illogical and incoherent concept. Why not use causal will instead?
2nd
AAAAh….no…. I still don’t understand…need some silocibin…
Second
Flat earth for the win
Bullshit.
first
FrEe wiLl iS rEaL yOu hAvE tO bElLiEvE mE