friend 1: man, I am really struggling here, what would you do if you were me? friend 2: well, if I were you, I would literally do the exact same thing you will do
I’ve realized this and I almost wish I would’ve never of tasted this piece of knowledge. It has made me somewhat uneasy. Somehow a part of me wishes I could think outside of the premise of my two brain hemispheres to not be predictable, which is completely crazy. Anyways just loosing my mind here
I’ve realized this and I almost wish I would’ve never of tasted this piece of knowledge. It has made me somewhat uneasy. Somehow a part of me wishes I could think outside of the premise of my two brain hemispheres to not be predictable, which is completely crazy. Anyways just loosing my mind here
I’ve realized this and I almost wish I would’ve never of tasted this piece of knowledge. It has made me somewhat uneasy. Somehow a part of me wishes I could think outside of the premise of my two brain hemispheres to not be predictable, which is completely crazy. Anyways just loosing my mind here
No you decide to bash the brain because you are a follower of your guru Sammy and not Yahuah or his Son Yahushua 2 Timothy 3:1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, not set apart from the world (pw unholy), 3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Praying COVID-19 patient, 82, is bludgeoned to death at Lancaster hospital - atheists in action ??? Yeah no need for moral conviction which they erroneously call faith ( fides goddess) Sammy boy here would say he had no choice but to pick up that oxygen tank and beat his brains out , right? Sammy is fulfilling prophesy as submitted by Apostle Shaul.
***** Both myself and the introducer completely disagree. All Sam Harris DOES is get to the point. As to the throat clearing, It doesn't bother me. Plus, most people are very stupid, and benefit from having a looooong time to process new ideas about abstract, intangible topics. If the pace and speech bother you so much, then I suppose it's good that he's primarily recognised as a writer, and has written a book on the topic, which is plugged in the intro.
We're not machines built out of logical gates, like computers, though I really liked the idea that we can replace neurons and still be the same consciousness :3 As long as evolution can do magical things like trick us into thinking we have free will, why can't it give us free will?
Platypus are monotremes ; 5 species exist and 4 are echidnae. Just tossing that out in case anyone thought that they were birds, reptiles, mammals, or something... We have to pretend to act as though we have free-will just as we have to pretend we're not brains in vats, and SH addresses this, just not enough. Heigh-ho. Maybe I've seen too much presuppositional apologetics nonsense lately...e.g. Sye Ten Bruggencate, Matt Slick, and even the much-vaunted William Lane Craig, no matter how he tap-dances around with crap versions of TAG, CAG, FAG, and SLAG...! XD Sorry couldn't resist it.
vidfreak56 - Every choice is the outcome of countless atoms behaving to simple laws of physics that could not behave otherwise. Some of those atoms and molecules are in my brain and body. Some are in the surrounding environment.
@@Riejdbdhd To not waste my time being angry at people for their actions, holding grudges, etc. Also to realize that it's irrational to think anyone can just "pull themelves up by their bootstraps" or "make the right choice" in ways that people think they can.
@@sparkside217 people on the surface will hear this argument and think that having no free will is a negative and cant be true, but if you look deeper and think about it plus sam explains this, it's actually the ultimate reason for compassion. i think people's egos and closemindedness prevents mainstream conversation of this topic though honestly.
Understanding the limitations of your willpower is one of the keys to escaping depression, or at least mitigating it. It’s the realization that spurs me to change the way I think. I recently began noticing what I have always thought of as “bad habits”. It turns out that mere noticing is the level of control I have over smoking, eating bad food, refusing to exercise and go outside more. And that’s perfectly ok: As I simply notice my habits instead of judging them and uselessly trying to stop them, I am beginning to see an innocent reason for them, and as a result I am beginning to be able to change them naturally and without “effort” I see that my brain is pushing my body a certain way because it has been taught to think a certain way since early childhood. I have been trained to be afraid. I would not have had the opportunity to realize this if I remained married to the assumption that I choose suffering from a state of perfectly clear free will. That ultimate judgment on myself- the assumption that I am making choices from a clear head- is the ultimate cause of my depression, not my “bad habits”. What you resist persists, what you accept you can transform
I believe you're talking about mindfulness. Something that Sam talks about often and from my perspective seems to refute his no free will argument? If you stop to contemplate, are mindful of your immediate negative action, say just before you're about to lift the spoon full of ice cream into your mouth, isn't this a means of at least trying to control that lack of free will? Anyhow, I'm coming to the realization that some of us, me included, who are deficient in habit control, discipline, etc., need more mindfulness and self talk to at the very least, help control our ingrained self direction.
I agree that willpower is very limited... and therefore you need to form/change habits in a way that doesn't rely on willpower. I don't think the best way to change a habit is to stop judging it and stop trying to change. In fact, I don't think this would work at all for most people. Look at the "fat acceptance movement"... becoming complacent with your bad habits doesn't lead to change but rather unsurprisingly it leads to... complacency. Instead you need to fully understand how the brain forms and creates habits and then properly use that process to retrain and reform your habits. This requires much less willpower because you are working with the brain rather than against it. I've read many books on this subject and none of them suggest your method (I'm not saying it doesn't work... just that based on the science I've read and PROVEN working methods of changing habits/brain thought processes I don't see how it could work). The Power of Habit, Habits: A 12-Week Journal to Change your Habit, Atomic Habits, and Feeling Good are some really good books on this subject.
This is life changing. So basically our life is a movie, and we are tricked into thinking we control the main character. But we are just merely watching/feeling from their perspective, in a sense.
Joel Jensen, אתה כלב Schlomo Shillman Shekelstein , you guys are both wonderful and I feel at home as I read a respectful debate between 2 people and 2 different ideas. Personally this concept of no free will came to my attention a week ago and I have not been able to put it down. Your argument has helped me to continue clarifying the concept in my head. My addition to the argument is this: If we had free will then I could have had pizza for breakfast this morning. But that thought never came to my consciousness because I am not free. To truly be free we would have to have the ability to make any decision or perform any humanly possible action at any time. Little Timmy May have been able to have pizza for breakfast because it was in his mind, but I couldn’t have. It wasn’t a choice for me to make. I envision this as a mountain of choices being made. Trillions of decisions at the bottom layer, then a little less based on those decisions, then as you go up the mountain there are less and less options. You go up the mountain and trillions of layers of decisions have been made. Then you get to the top of the mountain. As you near the top, you enter a cloud. This cloud is where the decision making process starts to enter your conscious. As you break through the cloud, you are now in you conscious. At the very tip of the mountain you have a few choices left to make (at least 2). Then you make your final choice. But you weren’t able to make “any” choice. This would be required in order to label the choice as “free”. However you were able to make a conscious choice. We are still able to make choices, but they are limited. And that is what it means to not have free will. It is not the ability to make choices, that we don’t possess, it is the lack of the ability to make any choice.
Joel Jensen He (Sam Harris), does seem to think only his way is the right way. This definitely makes sense as everything he says has lots of thought put into it, and he only says what he is certain of. He is incredibly brilliant. I have been watching his RUclips videos and listening to his podcasts and his debates. However I do find that he is mistaken in this video. He has things mostly correct. What we think and the choices we have are mostly determined. However, he doesn’t have a valid argument for the example of choosing to raise your left or right hand. There is no prior influence that is deciding this decision for you. You carry no weight on either choice. Your nature and nurture couldn’t possibly predict the decision you will make. The study that shows the brain choosing before your conscious does is flawed. Therefore we have 1 example of a non-determined choice that we can make. There is gray area here. I think 99%+ of all the actions we take are not based on free will. However that does not prove, and there is no proof, that free will does not exist.
Carlin is my 'god' - in a weird way. I call myself a "Carlinist". I agree with almost everything he said and his philosophy is cool. He got old and said he doesn't worry about things like politics anymore because he "doesn't have a stake in the outcome". i.e. He's too old to be affected by government decisions. I, too, am getting older - no choice, dammit! I still care, though - about climate change for instance. Personally, I think there's a good chance we'll have a nuclear war or famine or plague or something that will end our technological civilization for millennia - kinda like Planet of the Apes without the apes lol. Detour: I think the ending of Planet of the Apes is the coolest one ever. Instead of Heston SAYING that humans had a nuclear war, they SHOW the Statue of Liberty all bent. And that's why the apes call the area the Forbidden Zone. And THAT is why Hollywood is the envy of the whole world. They have screenwriters who invent this stuff. It's also like Forbidden Planet's "reveal" where the monster is really the projected thoughts of the character. That has to be one of the deepestFreudian reveals in history. Say what you will about Hollywood; When it comes to stuff like that, no place else does it better. RIP George Carlin. Like you, I'm an atheist and think there are mostly idiots in America. I think about 1% of Americans keeps the whole thing going - Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and some others. Who am I forgetting? I would have loved to have dinner with George Carlin and Christopher Hitchens and a few hookers. Did I say that? My bad. See? That's what no free will brings!
Thanks for that great quote, which I can appreciate more than most, knowing the true nature of "free will" and our connection to it. Sam Harris doesn't realize that he is an intelligent bag of contradictions. Because, he believes that we don't have free will, and yet there is no "God." So, exactly who or what's will IS done, Sam? He won't understand until he reads my book, which will never happen. Perhaps in his next life? God's prophet has spoken.
But we all have the ability to discern. The mind is a chatterbox. You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
This video really helped me this last week. A verbally abusive teacher over the last year has shattered my self confidence with constant bullying and toxic behaviour. I’ve removed him from my life but was left feeling angry with low self esteem. The possibility that his cruelty and machismo isn’t fully his choice helps me find room to be less angry. The possibility that my flaws and mistakes are the sum of my experiences and my neurological make-up gives me a great starting point to grow and get rid of shame.
One of the best comments on this issue that I've ever seen !! I'm totally with you on this.... I'm able now not to hate a person for hurting me....I might still hate what they've done to me, and to decide not to be with them if possible, but I no longer see them as having had the "freedom" to have decided to act differently...... Likewise, I couldn't have chosen not to be hurt at the time..... Accepting no free will makes me more aware of the influences other people can have on me - and maybe more importantly, the influences I can have upon them..... I think Christians are supposed subscribe to the commandment "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" I'm not a Christian, but am getting closer to this way of being, through "no free will" It doesn't mean I brush off hurtful things that I've done, but I can shed unecessary guilt, and make better decisions.....no free will doesn't negate learning from experience..... I've noticed that a lot of the anger and bitter comments come from people defending free will from a religious point of view.....very often lacking compassion, understanding, and certainly "love" It's quite striking, tbh...... I'm grateful to have recognised no free will......it became obvious to me years ago.....but I lacked the perspective to have been able to see the positive side of it..... So totally refreshing to read your comment !
I will never understand why this concept bothers people . It makes sense and doesnt change the game for me . It does make me somewhat understanding to other people's decisions. I find I am less judgemental.
This argument is the same as "the god of the gaps" argument. Determinism has relied more and more on the scientific argument because it leads opposition to have to theorize outside of our known world. We know the limits of our current understanding and it's very, very limited. Determinism is not a model to build anything useful from in human social systems like laws, education, parenting, healthcare and so on. I have never met a child that believes in determinism making it a learned theory, that does not make it untrue, but odd that free thought (reasoning) would lead to a conclusion that is predetermined. It is useless to debate on either side it is far more sane and practical to admit we don't know but it at the moment seems far more likely that determinism is correct. we know we are 3 dimensional beings and can mathematically prove the potential for the existence of other dimensions. We know we can't replicate the 4th dimension but can demonstrate what the shadow of a tesseract would look like to us. This could be relevant to this debate if consciousness existed outside of our limited 3D bodies. I can't argue the likelihood of that just the possibility and if that were true and has the potential to be true this whole debate is pointless. If "I think therefore I am" can I prove that you think? Can I prove that you exist? Should I operate on that assumption or the one that doesn't justify me killing you because your a figment of my imagination. Long winded way of saying even if you can argue for a theory that makes perfect sense if its application are not practical why try to convince others unless you had an implicit bias.
@@troyzieman7177 Clearly not. Although, to his credit, the speaker presented one of the lesser crazy versions of this idea. He seems to be almost there understanding where social responsibility etc comes from, but is failing to understand what self is
A long time ago I made a realization that completely changed my perspective on life. I realized that we always do our best in every decision we make. We cannot do better, and we cannot do worse. We can only ever do our very best. I was always so wracked with guilt over the decisions I did not and could not make in life. It came down either accepting that I simply was who I was, or rejecting everything about myself. Given all of your experiences that bring you to that very moment, you simply can make no other choice than the choices you make. That is not to say you can not do better in the future. It simply depends on what state you are in at that moment, taking everything into account. Sam just now took that even further than I ever realized.
"I realized that we always do our best in every decision we make. " false - the decision you make is already flawed when it disobeys Torah - it is set to fail and leads you down the slippery downward spiral to the lake of fire. One Torah transgression leads to another - eg lies can lead to murder which can lead to more lies and more murder
Totally agree with you ! Regarding the other comment, I'd maybe say that we make the choices that make most sense to us.....and we can't choose what makes us feel that a choice is what makes most sense for us.....
@@Mr2TIMOTHY4V2 but why should we be expected to have blind faith in the Torah ? I really struggle with that......and I'm unable to steer my thoughts in any other way..... So that means I should be tortured for eternity ? Can't I live a good, useful life without the faith necessary for your religion ?🤔 And why choose yours above others ? I'm simply unable to override my supposed free will..... So I'm on the road to eternal damnation I guess..... How would you define your "self" ?
@@Mr2TIMOTHY4V2 it seems to me the Torah has lead plenty of people down that slippery path to immorality and murder all on its own. Not sure of the relevance of your comment
"Where is the freedom in doing what one wants, when one's wants are the products of prior causes which one cannot inspect and therefore could not choose and one has absolutely no hand in creating?" End of the argument. 👏👏
Saying this because I haven't seen anybody else bring it up in the comment section. Even if everything Sam has said is wrong, let's not forget that freewill is still a claim, and one that has not met it's burden of proof. Attacking Sam's points against freewill doesn't get us any closer to validating freewill.
God You aren't aware of Sam's book(let) on free will? I am; I read it several times. Somewhere there's a short video of him that came out when he released his book I wish I could find, explaining what he means, though you can just read it in his book. Plain and simple: You're wrong. Sam Harris has explicitly said and written on MANY occasions that you're not really making any decisions and that self itself is just an illusion. It's as though you'd like to deny the production of electric current in generators because you can prove that generators have no electric current in them. But, you can't even come close to acting as though you really believe this; so what is it that you're wanting to accomplish by promoting this twaddle? The only reason I've ever seen speculated was that free will is the foundation of the concept of human rights. Once you've dispensed with free will, you've dispensed with the idea of violating free will. Could you tell me what other possible utility there could be for getting rid of the idea of free will?
Sam Harris is a devoutly religious man. The State is his Religion, the Government is his Church, Politicians are his Clergy, Law is his Bible, and he has lots and lots of Faith!
Just like cruelty, the urge for retribution is an important part of society and not acknowledging it (along with the ignoring of free will) is part of Western societies illnesses.
The urge for retribution takes into account that once an evil or crewl idea is there, people don't veto it, which you always have the freedom to do, but decide to do nothing about it and pursue it instead.
Very true, Jack. For, "the words of the prophets are written on the studio walls." But what most people don't understand is that there is a huge difference between WILL and CHOICE. You can CHOOSE to desire any particular outcome in any particular situation. And maybe that outcome will happen, and maybe it won't. But if you were able to WILL that outcome, it would NECESSARILY come to pass, GUARANTEED! Sam Harris doesn't realize that he is an intelligent bag of contradictions. Because, he believes that we don't have free will, and yet there is no "God." So, exactly who or what's will IS done, Sam? He won't understand until he reads my book, which will never happen. Perhaps in his next life? God's prophet has spoken.
How did I never notice that before!? In no less than 10 seconds of resuming the conversation (after reading your message), he did exactly that! I cannot unhear it now... So thanks a lot for that! :p
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
@@jeffforsythe9514 Lmfao, hilarious. Did a bronze-aged fairy tale book tell you that? Lol it's like you're children. I think it's time the world grows up and stops believing in our imaginary friend.
An easier way to say all of this is that you are free to choose, but you're not free to choose what you choose, which is to say you aren't really free to choose in any way that is meaningfully different than how a lightning bolt chooses where it strikes. A lighting bolt strikes on the path of least resistance. It's important to recognize this because of the moral implications, you don't seek revenge on a lightning bolt, in light of this we should remove "revenge" from the concept of justice. With this enlightenment we realize that truly nobody deserves to be punished and the only moral thing is to protect society from dangerous individuals and rehabilitate these individuals, and if they can't be rehabilitated (yet) then just keep them locked up indefinitely, instead of releasing dangerous people because "they've served their time".
It didnt hold true for most of human history but only recently does it hold true. Just in the 1960 scientist were inflicting std on third world country citizens for human experiments. Not long ago, the ussr was killing millions. And before that slavery was common place. love and compassion has not made sense to humans for most of our history and is not objective truth
Yes! When I tell people we have no free will, they will ask, “Well, why then don’t you just lie in bed all day?” Simply put, getting out of bed makes sense. Just like love and compassion make sense. Just because my will isn’t mine (isn’t free) doesn’t suddenly change the fact that I still desire all the same things that I did before (like being successful and having great relationships). We aren’t free to will anything, but we also aren’t free not to desire things or to be any less intelligent than we actually are. If some people sometimes are not free not to commit crimes, many, many other people are not free not to be good. Sam Harris, for example, is not free not to be a brilliant speaker.
Hey guys before you start a argument about "free will" please define what you mean by it. It is a very confusing and ambiguous concept that needs more clarity.
@@SaetherOfficialThen bacteria or even viruses have free will. They want something on their level of existense (consume shugar for example) and have freedom to do it. Even rocks and stones trends to a physical and chemical balance. Do they have free will too?
@@CirclesOfMotion demonstrate that bacteria have that freedom. That they are not bound to do what their instincts tell them.. To be fair.. I don't believe in free will, so..
Free will as sam states is that you made a decision, now is it possible to have made some other decision in that same situation(same world, atom for atom) .
Actually yes, I chose to click the video, then chose to listen to it, then chose to read your comment, then chose to think about it, then chose to respond to it, then chose my words carefully, then chose to write every letter of my response, then chose to proof read it, then chose to think about it some more, then chose to post my reply. Now I've chosen to repeat the process. That's a shitload of choices. ALL ME BABY!
@@nebulous6660 That's not you. You were compelled to do it based on how you felt. Just like I was compelled to write this comment in order to prove you wrong.
The stories that people create to justify their decision is called post-operative rationalization. Rationalization is a defence mechanism that we use to justify our actions, but it happens after we make the decision. (making it post-op) The unknown reason why we choose one option over the other shows our lack of free will.
For Buddhists, this isn't a hard one to accept for there is no "you" in the first place. We're the universe taking a peek at Itself through many lives experiences. Enjoy the ride folks!
So why do Buddhist and Taoists cultivate separately from one another, or cultivate individually in the first place, if there is no such thing as you and I?
@@AkosM Just saw this. There is a "you" and "I," just not in an ultimate sense. They're created realities formed in perception. In other words, separation (and categorizing into independent things) is a product of the mind, not reality in its basic form which is nondual and interdependent. "You" and "I" have the same substantiality as the lap or a wave. You can sit on a lap or surf on a wave, so they have a reality-just not an absolute or independent one. When the person stands the lap is gone just as after the wave crests it's gone too. So, they're not "things". They're forms the body or ocean takes at different moments in time. Same with "you" and "I". When thought is absent the "you" and "I" disappears.
@Keylanos Lokj Not my conversation really, but for starters, why don't you read everything you've written in this thread so far? Can you see how it reeks of "holier than thou" loftiness? What exactly makes you think anyone should for even an instant grant you the authority to assume such a tone with them? You are addressing people who by your own estimation are essentially worshiping their own intellect. Yet your prose is a near meaningless word salad of religiously seasoned gibberish. What do you think you're accomplishing with this tactic? I used to have a hobby of metaphorically stomping out people like you; because I grew up with people that would turn away from you, embarrassed that you call yourself Christian, as they do, yet make a complete mockery of their quiet faith (still fake, but at least they try) with your self aggrandizing wordiness designed to call attention to yourself and place yourself in a position of unearned glory. So, let's get down to it; shall we? What's your bedrock? Where does all this "truth" come from? The bible? It's innerant? Come now; don't keep us in suspense. We all want to know what THE great Christian with all his many many words of wisdom has to say. Keep it simple though. I'll just skim through the word salad to find the response, if any, that you make to my query.
"We are not authoring them, that would require that we think of them before we think them... If you cannot control your next thought, where is your freedom of thought." Love it, that was so profound. We don't agree on much but on this point we do.
Silly. We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
No capitalism , no communism , no theism no atheism etcetera , no separatism . Separatism is wrong it breeds violence . Favouritism leads to conflicts . RUclips Jiddu Krishnamurti talks at the united nations . Theism and atheism and christianity and islam and gnostic and agnostic are not the truth . The truth is the unity in impartiality principle . Yes unselfishness . Yes mindfulness training . Meditation . Copy that . Magnificent obsession . Maturity .
From what I have learned in therapy, we really do not have that much free will. It is referred to as the unconscious, subconscious or conscious and it is even much deeper than that. My parents were alcoholics. When I started to date I inevitably chose every alcoholic or drug addict around and didn't find until later. This included Narcissists like my mother and sister. Once I stopped with the alcoholics I was attracting Narcissist. That was never in my mind, of course, when I met them.
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
I thought of Milwaukee, even though I've never been there or anywhere close. I don't even know a single fact about Milwaukee. It just entered my mind without any choice of my own.
" We don't choose to choose what we choose". I think that is a great truth. In our relatively short lives, so much depends upon the influences that shape us. Another great truth: some people choose more than others.It seems to me that these truths ,when unrealized, cause a great deal of pain and suffering, especially later in life.
There can be infinte regression on that one. "We don't choose to choose to choose to choose what we choose." So it becomes obvious it is meaningless, which it was in the first place.
@Firebird Infinite Regression is a hallmark of a logical inconsistency. Meaning by introducing it in this instance, Harris is critiquing free will, like he would with the idea of a creator god - after all, who created that creator god? So no, it is not meaningless. In fact, it does exactly what it is meant to, and what you yourself understood; it unveils that free will is an illogical concept.
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
I listen to this video to fall asleep every night. It's soothing to hear a rational argument laid out in civil manner in a world/ life that makes no sense what so ever most of the time.
hat is an idiotic statement. I have two choices. As a law student, i could study for an exam in a couple days or i could go drinking. The best choice would be studying, yet i chose to go drinking. Free will. Same people eat out of stress yet the better option would be exercising. Why not exercise? The most glaring issue is as a volunteer firefighter why would i chose to go into a burning house, even though it puts my life in danger? I am risking my life for someone i will never know for no gain
@@bornfree8073 The point is that our thoughts and actions are informed by everything that has happened to us from conception until now. You are not the curator of any of the things that you are a product of therefore you don't have the freedom to be any way other than the way you are.
We make choices, and we clearly have an individual identity which establishes agency, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that we have free will, only that we have a will.
Kind of but let's be honest, what shows up around you is what you only know. Outside of that, there is no free will, also people are born with certain genetics. People honestly don't choose what they think. I mean effort is real but the origin was never free will rather random thoughts.
What kind of will maybe not your own will if we don't choose how we act and that's a process of random choices that doesn't make you the person that choose for those actions i mean i accept the fact that we have to behave the right way but you can't know for sure that we always have the same control over what we do and i don't mean that for crimes
God gave us free will, life is about discernment. To expand our consciousness and spiritual wisdom, we all need a great teacher.....................falun dafa
Can someone please engage with me briefly? I am having difficulties with some of Sam's propositions. I can accept that I am ultimately not the doer of my actions or thinker of my thoughts in any real sense and that my actions are determined by my neurophysiology. However, I can't seem to understand how this belief in the absence of free will does not lead to fatalism. It seems Sam is just being a product of his thoughts to even suggest that falling into fatalism shouldn't or wouldn't be the outcome. With this belief, I look back on my past failures and joke of a life as not being dictated by MY decisions. I was just a puppet being led along by my bad genetics and a naturally occurring depressive disposition that lead me to accomplish nothing in my life. Now seeing that I don't truly have the free will to suddenly jerk my brain into submission and change my course of life, I remain subject to my genetics and just accept I've been given the short end of the stick and I don't have to take any responsibility for the fact that I'm likely to fail at most things I do without any sense of having been involved in the failure subjectively. Can someone help me understand why my thinking is flawed here?
A good place to start is Nisargadatta Maharaj. Thoughts happen.. we are not our thoughts, we are not our physical bodies as the world is not physical. When one realizes this it does not change the person.. it's described by some as a slight inner shift. Ralph goes on as himself.. in fact he becomes more individualistic the less he identifies with his body and thoughts. Life is happening, nothing has ever happened (Paul Hedderman)
Nakky Dave I always get lost in the reductionism of Eastern thought. Remarks like "the world is not physical" or "nothing has ever happened" seem so semantic, contradictory, and meaningless to me.
Ralph, I hate to be making a mistake here, so correct me if I'm wrong. Wikipedia gives three definitions for fatalism: 1)The view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do. Included in this is that man has no power to influence the future, or indeed, his own actions. 2)An attitude of resignation in the face of some future event or events which are thought to be inevitable. 3)That acceptance is appropriate, rather than resistance against inevitability. It seems to me that fatalists believe that there is nothing we can do because the equation of the universe is written and we are helpless before it as we watch the movie of our lives play out. Determinists seem to believe the same exact thing except they make an important distinction that we are a part of that equation that governs the universe and just because our actions cannot be anything other than what they will be, we are still important actors in this movie where the script is set in stone. Odd, it seems like determinists lock more pieces into place. It seems implicit to me that in the fatalist view you have to stand outside of this all powerful "fate" in order to be the "victim" of it. To be helpless before a fate first implies that you are not an instrument of that fate correct? How can one be "helpless" before themselves?
+Dark Garison I dont understand your last two questions truthfully. The point I'm making is that Sam States that selves do not exist. We are just purely consciousness, watching our bodies in motion acting upon impulses and conditioning. This is hard enough to grasp because I certainly feel like I am orchestrating my actions. Nonetheless, once we accept the belief that we are not controlling our actions in any real sense, what incentive do I have to really go achieve anything? I can't take responsibility for those accomplishments or my failures. I'm just witnessing them through conscious experience. Where does effort or determination even come from then? And how or why would determination to achieve things appear and disappear at a whim depending on what I am doing? I find Harris's argument valid, however, I can't map it onto reality.
I commiserate with you completely, but I suspect you will, though. As stupid or mean-spirited as many of them may be, there usually are one or 2, at least, that may be worth reading.
Sam wants to argue that because we have no choice in our past we lack choice over our future. Saying we didn't pick our brains is similar to saying we don't pick the hand we are dealt. But how we play our hand is how we express our free will. If we say, 'This is a bad hand! Others are bound to have a better hand than me so there's no way I can win', then the consequences really are inevitable - what's the point in even trying? Free will is something that we have if we choose to. Telling people they don't have that choice is destructive to them - if they believe it.
stephen hogg Playing the hand you are dealt is just making choices predicated on thoughts and wants that were not brought into existence entirely by you, so no that is not free will.
@@michaelnickles1986 No doubt from some point of view, we are no more free than rocks. The standard argument against ‘freewill’ is ultimately irrefutable, because it can appeal to an infinite regress of causes. But how is this perspective useful? Does this perspective really have any epistemic authority over other perspectives - those that allow for degrees of freedom? What does it help us to explain, to understand better?
This is essentially a Harry Frankfurt compatibilist argument about behavior happening only because you couldn't have done otherwise. And this is quite important because it posits a real empathy and human understanding of why human beings are doing the behavior they're doing. Sam, I think, knows this argument, and is elucidating it. We're talking about a project of humanity, helping others causally. In order to help and heal others, we've to adopt a more pragmatic worldview about how we've evolved. It's not egotistical, and it's not religious. It's based on what we've evolved with. It has nothing to do with biblical reason. It has everything to do with how we evaluate our habits and supervene on them. But hear me out, even if we don't have free will in the way we think we do, we are responsible for it!
People have lost their moral compass. We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
The brain is like the cockpit of an airplane and the soul is the pilot...To expand our consciousness and spiritual wisdom, we all need a great teacher.....................falun dafa
Adopting this idea that free will doesn’t exist is an idea that can radically change a persons life. If you truly come to believe it your whole outlook changes. It takes a while to convince yourself it’s true, and then a lot longer to fully build that perspective into your life and judgements. Pretty cool.
boson96 I agree that morality is subjective. I’m also more compatibilist than hard determinist. With that being said, I would think that HD would either require subjective morality or no morality
... ... circumstance and nature of choice as question of phenomenology ... all descriptions and interpretations of specific choices comprise 'objectivity' ... 'subjectivity' not being good descriptor of choice instances
... ... ultimately hard determinism governs better if not at the least those benign conscious choices, in upholding equitability-sustainability deliverables ... on both UTILITY (worthwhile benefit) and DEONTOLOGY (impersonal duty) rationales ... empiric-parametric determinants of wellbeing are objectively straightforward to benchmark
@@primeminister1040 Care to say which book Mr PM or do you want to just be inconclusive? oh and don't call me or anyone other than your own son your son. I ain't your son. Funny chap. Go pray or read your bible. You'll get a lot of logic that way. Aight. I'm off to sacrifice a lamb!
Physics (Quantum Mechanics) PROVED PROVED PROVED over 50 years ago that the universe at the quantum level is 0% deterministic. NO PART OF THE UNIVERSE IS PREDETERMINED. Until my fellow atheists get their stupid heads out of the sand and quit pretending Physics and Quantum Mechanics don't exist, we'll never get intelligent Physicists to join atheist societies. You guys don't get it. Harris sounds EXACLY like Deepak Chopra here. It's super, super, super embarrassing for atheists to be so pro-science everywhere except when it comes to the proven parts of Quantum Mechanics. Here's a link that, if you remove the blanks I put in it so it wouldn't get my post removed, talks about this from the world's most intelligent person who is a Physicist. You want him to become part of the atheist society, then denounce Deepak Chopra like statements regarding free will from people like Sam Harris. https: //www. youtube. com/ watch?v=Jint5kjoy6I
True, I’ve had discussions trying to convince people of determinism, and I wonder how people can refute it. It just goes against the illusion that we have of choosing actions that people cannot accept it, but logically determinism makes perfect sense.
Rockhard, you're not getting it, I don't think. He's a neuroscientist and studies how the nervous system works. His observations make you look at how you really "make" decisions, and he appears startlingly correct. It's troubling but not stupid!
Consciousness is an illusion of an egocentric world view. How can someone who has the Budda as his profile pic be so ignorant to this basic notion. If you still believe there is a little you inside your head controlling your actions or that you have any sense on control in a world that is groundless and impossible to understand than you don't understand Buddhism at all. P.S. Mind does not equal Consciousness
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
I agree that one's will or desire to act arises not in consciousness, but rather in underlying complex subconscious mechanisms that lead up to the conscious experience of motive and to the consequent action. But even if the agency is subconscious, the pathway to action arises in that individual person, who should (in my view, and for societal expediency) remain responsible for the act.
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
There is no moral responsibility but there is social responsibility. A dangerous person must be dealt with for the same reason that you cannot ignore a rabid dog.
Unfortunately, there may be people who know their potential to be of harm to society is to a far lesser degree than society presumes. How does one prove they are no harm to society following an act of harm?
I am not a psychologist so I may be wrong, but presently, I see no way for a person to prove that they are not dangerous, especially if they have a history of violence. Probability is the best we can do given our current scientific knowledge.
Cleo Fierro Sorry, but 'i say so' is not a good argument. Especially given the large and increasing body of evidence against it. I realise that the abrahamic faiths need to believe in free will, to get their god off the hook for setting us up to fail in the imaginary garden of eden, but wanting it, does not make it so. What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it. -Eugene Gendlin
Cleo Fierro I did add original content. You appear not to have responded to any of it. I recommend re reading my comment. If what Gendlin said was wrong, please show Where they are wrong, and why. Because i content that what Gendlin said was accurate. Whatever your thoughts about the world are, whether you have an accurate view of reality or not, there is a reality, and you are living in it. Step off a cliff, and you will fall, regardless of what you believe about gravity.
It’s so interesting. Mind blowing in fact. I have no idea what I’m going to do, from one minute to the next, and I have no say in it either. I just hope that I don’t ramble on with my phone keyboard about how I am unable to dictate anything in my life. I’m hoping I don’t do that.
We all change our minds when deciding if some unexpected event happens. We do that while driving. So his arguments that our history fixes our choice falls apart.
he meant to say, that being a great cook is a form of creating an identity out of your ability, this is to say, if let's say he has an accident and he injurs a part of the brain needed for great cooking, will he still be called a great cook? because he has won various awards in cooking...is his identity which was a mental construct still relevant?
People seem to not see The use of this knowledge. As knowledge is for use, this is usefull in the context of perspective, it gives you no choice (pun intended) than to be less judgemental towards others since it is just cause and effect down to a extreme complexity. Which of course in many cases can be altered aswell, this information is more helpfull than not.
David Email I have no quarrel with what you’ve stated, albeit semantically speaking you will always be a student to life or the experience of being ”you”.
I realized that free will does not exist through Advaita Vedanta and contemplating who I am and when I scanned inwardly to try and find "myself". I found I don't exist as a "person" and that what I think of myself as a person is only a thought. The experience of my "true" self is one of pure consciousness which I call "God" and the only will being lived and expressed is consciousness or "God's" will. This, when my person is surrendered to it, gives me peace and trust in my life to unfold on it's own. I have found the lack of free will is replaced by trust and definitely results in an expanded sense of understanding and compassion for others. Forgive them for they know not what they do gives a whole new meaning.
so immediately after this video i went to my kindle to buy his book free will. Took my credit card and stuff and then stopped for a second thinking do "i" want this book or do i want this book
In the end you bought the book, told your self that you did indeed want it, as you think it is interesting, and intellectual, and you're actually getting into this achedemic stuff. Probably read two thirds and haven't been back to finish it.... nothing wrong with that, but how close am I?
This is something that resonates with me and the idea of being beholden to a God at this point in my life. Through any number of past events, the person I am now resists authority figures in general, some of this trait which also may be through specific gene polymorphisms or from genes I inherited, how I was raised, the things I witnessed, how I was treated, how I was perceived by the world, etc. So for any God to condemn me for this, because one, his agents have failed miserably and two, clearly I'm not created in a typical fashion, angers me. I am on the autism spectrum with a dash of ADHD that has made navigating various aspects of life extremely difficult or painful. Between the biology and external environments, I cannot change any of that nor act any different than I do because of it.
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the point or direction that Sam Harris is laying, the free will that we don't have is predetermined up until the last moment. This does not mean you were predetermined to love Sam Harris since your conception, more like you're able to love Sam because of the path you fell down. He makes it a point that we're like open computers, you can continuously keep influencing your mind based on the stimuli in front of your brain. This is the difference between religious superstition and fundamental reality.
Yes, and I've always wondered if we have free will to put our attention where we want? In other words, we can helplessly watch the mental algorithm unfold but is the witness to experience (whatever that is) able to freely decide to focus on one aspect or another of the contents of consciousness or is that decision part of the programming too? I recall an old Buddhist sage saying "You are free to put your awareness where you like."
@@counterculture10 there's no freedom to choose, but there's some freedom to be aware. Practicing meditation helped me become aware of thoughts i find myself in, but never as they begin, and the second you become aware, it's almost like the thought takes notice and disappears back into the shadows of the mind.
This is a very compelling and useful talk. The only concerning part for me is the brief discussion in eradicating evil toward the end. When asked the question, the only answer that does not cause individual and social capatstroohe is “No. Not a good idea. We need exposure to evil and ‘bad stuff’ to pursue the virtuous and ‘good’. “ Then the conversation on judgement….blah.
okay so i didnt even know that other people thought this freewill illusion thing, but im glad they do. another thing ive been pondering that i want to know if others believe is that this makes it possible to tell the future. in fact the only reason we cant tell the future is because we dont know all the variables. and if we did know all the variables, just for a moment, we could know the future forever, for everything is just a reaction of another. but then if we can tell the future, can we then avoid it? even if you knowing the future was a variable considered when telling the future..
Tyson, what you've said would be true if it weren't for the uncertainty principle. If the world worked on Newtonian principles and you took them to their ultimate conclusion, as you say, if you know all the variables (the speed, position and behaviour of every particle in the universe) absolutely accurately, you can predict their future position and speed to the end of time. Of course we cannot, and will never be able to do this in any practical way, but the mere fact that it is THEORETICALLY possible, means that absolute predictability is theoretically possible, which precludes freewill. If the actions of all particles - and therefore our actions - are predictable, then by definition, they have been determined before we carry them out, and we are merely slaves to those accurate predictions. It's only because the uncertainty principle says we cannot define both the position and speed of a particle at the same time that we cannot predict anything with certainty. Which would allow (but not make certain) freewill.
yeah i have a hard time understanding why the uncertainty principle is a true, or even most of quantum mechanics.it all seems so illogical. youre point is very noted, thank you! if anyone has any other perspectives feel free to reply!
tyson wojtowicz The uncertainty principle only tells us why it is impossible to predict the future from a practical perspective, but the inability to know every variable does not mean there are variables missing from our reality. If we measure the position of a particle, then it stills has momentum even if the value will always remain unknown to the observer. Quantum mechanics tells us nothing about free will.
I've always felt that free will is an illusion. My understanding of physics and science in general just seemed to make the concept nonsensical... As if we can somehow detach ourselves from the strict rules of reality to make "metaphysical decisions".... That seems not only absurd to me but reeks of Cartesian Dualism...
what is wrong with you? how can you like this? true or not, this is possibly the most discouraging thing anyone can ever say. how can you take comfort in the notion that you and everyone else is being controlled?
***** There is a fundamental thing here which you must understand. Science tells us that reality is the way it is, regardless of how badly we wish it were otherwise. We can either accept that fact and live on, or we can cling desperately to our illusions out of fear and an emotional need to be important in a universe that doesn't care. I don't find it discouraging at all. I find it liberating.
***** I just told you. Because I would rather believe things to be as they actually are then to believe an illusion. All the problems that we hold up as being so big are shown to be trivial and inconsequential when you consider the universe as a whole. We are here and gone in the blink of a cosmic eye. I have had to take solice in that fact Btw. I never said that I _wanted_ free will to be false, in fact, look at every statement I've made here, including the post itself. What I said is that I've always had a _feeling_ that free will is an illusion, based on everything I know about science. Now I'm simply telling you why I have come to terms with that fact.
that middle paragraph, what makes you say such cynical off-subject things? just because something is small that does not mean it isn't important, the movie men in black talks about that. I mean, what makes the rest of the universe so much better? sure it's big, but it's just a bunch of rocks and fire floating around in nothing and doing nothing in all that time. earth actually has real things happening and it is the only planet that we know of that does. you should not have let that bother you. also, if you and me don't have free will, what would it look like if we did? and how would things be different in terms of making decisions?
***** your totally off the ball here. Criminals are still held accountable for their actions even if they have no free will. If a person commits a violent crime then that person is dangerous and needs to be dealt with, not just pardoned because they don't have free will. The idea of responsibility is a hard concept to get in your head when taking away free will. Responsibility doesn't go away, and if someone fucks up because they are an asshole then they need to be dealt with accordingly. Lack of free will doesn't negate bad people. You still get the psychos and thugs, nothings changed... but fully aware of this there is no hate, only fear.
Glenifir The Great Here's a way to think about crime and punishment without free will. They both don't matter. The criminal couldn't do anything to stop himself from committing the crime because all is predetermined, and the society that punished said criminal couldn't do anything else because all is predetermined. Everything is meaningless, life has no direction or purpose, we're all just clumps of matter suspended in a void crashing into each other, and every single notion about the human experience is a delusion. So there you go. There is an upside to all this though. Sam Harris is so ridiculously and completely wrong, on just about every claim that he makes in this video.
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
Coming to this conversation for the first time has been very interesting as its made me think about how this concept gels with our morality. It's nice and refreshing that from a deterministic view, objective good morality seems to be the natural form of our brain if you believe that our free will isn't the guiding force of our own laws. This means that science is not only giving us the truth to our existence but the mere purpose of it as well.
What do you. Ean by giving us purpose as well? Do you that in having "no free will" then the average brain leans toward the purpose of "being good" and "becoming more advanced beings" ?
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
I believe there are some fundamental issues with Sam's philosophy on this topic.(what I have understood from this vid,only a humble opinion of mine.) 1st: He believes that freedom to make choices isn't free will because they are only consequences of your previous environment and experiences but that is not completely correct when i see this as our choices shape our future actions and environment and experience in some degree not completely but to some extent. 2nd: He demonstrated that we cannot control what to think next. yes, in an instances i cannot control what to think next but in a long period of you can control yout thoughts too by making of now all these books about converting your negative thoughts into positive aren't all useless (you can read them and practice it by your own self that they aren't useless)😅 i think its all about definition, the freedom to make choices now is what can be defined as "free will" to some extent
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
To give into the natural man, is to be a robot controlled by emotions. But to do the right thing when tempted to do wrong, is free will. God created everyone with the ability to choose the right thing, regardless of the situation.
@@hunter_w I used to think our actions were emotional responses only to our lot. However, by becoming born again, God gives us a new heart and we know our sins are made clean and we can learn to discern the right path from the wrong one. Satan waits at the door and deceives those who do not harken to the voice of the Lord. But all who listen to the word of God and find Jesus and believe in Him, shall have everlasting life.
17:20.. If I can predict what you are going to do, a few seconds in advance, does that really mean that you don't have free will? This inference defies logic.
I pretty much agree but isn't consciousness something we experience the world with, rather than what we are? Like when he was talking about thought controlling what we think..we think with our brains and project that into consciousness where we experience it, just because we experience our thoughts later than when we think them doesn't mean it's not us thinking them. Like maybe we live (experience life) a second in the past and maybe our train of thought arrives in our consciousness a bit later to get a more arranged thought or something like that.
People with mental illnesses, neurological disorders, and others become consciously and subjectively aware of exactly what Sam is describing. The obsessive and negative thought patterns that appear to arise from nowhere, do just that, and constantly.
The brain is like the cockpit of an airplane and the soul is the pilot...To expand our consciousness and spiritual wisdom, we all need a great teacher.....................falun dafa
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
The implications of this, if the scientific community does embrace it fully, are indeed very powerful with the potential impact for a lot of things: psychology, philosophy, education, interpersonal relationships, and particularly the justice system... I don't like how much I agree with what he's said, because I can imagine a sort of dystopian future, where any violent criminal could plead "not guilty by lack of free will" or something along those lines, AND actually be a free man regardless of how vile his crimes were. I have the same limitation most common people have: we can identify a problem, maybe it's causes and effects, but we can't figure out a solution... So, I propose to anyone reading this, particularly those who have exceptional critical-thinking skills like Sam Harris: how can we circumvent the potential problems with accepting free will as an illusion? I may have some solution in the future if I think about it for long enough, but at this time, I've got nothing. TLDR; I agree that free will is more of an illusion than what society generally accepts, but I have no idea how to prevent or stop the negative impacts it could have on society, particularly the justice system.
@smeeself That is an excellent point you make, I actually feel a bit reassured after reading that, so thank you very much! If I'm being honest with myself though, I still feel an emotional reaction that makes me not compassionate toward violent criminals at all, even while accepting that every thought and action is essentially predetermined... It's funny, something akin to cognitive dissonance. I understand that 'X-person' only did 'X-crime' as if pre-programmed to do so, but... I can't help but hate those people who hurt innocent people and animals. I suppose empathy and compassion are sort of like mental muscles that can be exercised? Then again, they might just be things that are hard-wired for each individual, however strong or weak they are in that area... I apologize for going off on a tangent, but thank you once again for your insight!
I have arterial sclerosis and blood doesn't circulate very well in my legs. I still have to walk everywhere I go. I pace myself. I walk until my legs hurt too much to tolerate and become stiff. I choose to stop. If I try to keep going (I have) then there comes a point when my legs simply won't move. I stop. I don't choose to, I have to.
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
I hope the people who think the lack of free will means they can do anything illegal and expect no punishment because they had no choice in doing what they did will realise that the police, judges and juries had no choice in prosecuting them and sending them to prison.
free will really makes no sense but almost everyone thinks that we have it and live like we do lol. i wonder what society would be like if we all no longer believed in 'free will'
lolthatsnotswag Freewill being an illusion could have darling consequences. People would be freed from the bondage of responsibility, and guilt. However, the removal of that illusion in a society that is willfully [be it free or not] destructive would be devastating to Human, including all else not involved in politics, religion and institutions [PRI]. If the lack of will should lead that society to be cohesive [by random arrangement, like the body and earth, for instance] then the idea is beautiful, and you would not really need to go on about the idea in that scenario, as it is [would be] already happening. The PRI abuse the natural matrix of freewill, restricting it and redefining it at whim. And were the idea that freewill is an illusion to take hold of mentality, but not reality, especially not of PRI, then the ramification would be devastating, for PRI can carry on ''unwillfully'' doing not nice things. In short the ''freewill'' prescribed by PRI are not members of what ever lack of free will there naturally is, they are but bodies that makes whatever lack of freewill, as Harris puts it, even less freer, by prescribing additional bad-drugs. In total, there is freewill, and there is not freewill. As far as we can see, move, evidence and live-by, there is Freewill. There is no Freewill because we are programmed to be good. If we are not good, there is Freewill. And where there is Freewill and we are not good, it is part of the freeness in that our free-will to make things corrected.
When he says "you didn't pick your parents" I can't help to think that we actually did, in a weird way. The main objective of all living creatures is to pass their genes into the next generation and our bodies (somatic cells) have evolved to choose the best available sexual partner in order to help our genes (carried by our germ cells) survive. So in a sense our parents germ cells did choose each other, and those germ cells still live in ourselves (just with slightly different alleles). Does that makes sense? It's kind of difficult to explain in a youtube comment.
The real question would be: if we can't think about a thought before we think it, would it ever be possible that some other life form can instead think autonomously of every thought generated in their brain? Cause if that's not possible, we can say that we have "free will", in the sense that we are the most free species in the universe. Otherwise, we are just as free as other animals, with only the illusion of freedom.
In which sense would we then be the "most free" species in the universe? I would grant that we would be the - currently known - most conscious and most intelligent being in the sense that we have not yet encountered a being more conscious or more intelligent than us. But this does in no way have any Weingut with regards to freedom, at least not in my understanding of what freedom is.
At 28:00 he says "Where is the freedom in doing what one wants, when one's wants are the product of prior causes which one can not inspect and therefore could not choose and one had absolutely no hand in creating?" I have to insist that he show how one's conscious thoughts have no influence on the subconscious. Saying that because we don't appear to have control over every aspect of our brains means there's no one in control is just biased opinion and without corroborating evidence. My subconscious receives data from my senses (else how could I dream of having dinner with my wife?). It also receives data from the conscious portion of my brain ( how could it not?). So Harris's premise (that we have absolutely no hand in creating the conditions that go into making a decision) are as false as can be.
You're continuing a futile regress: you inherit your mind from your environment, which is determined; subsequent feedback loops are likewise determined, in turn. Your thoughts, which you don't control, influence further thoughts (which you also don't control).
Since I have been about 8 years old, I have seen ALL of these ideas as nothing but obvious. What really freaks me out is that the vast majority of humans do not, and never would unless someone told them. THAT is f'n terrifying!
I've been thinking about this for 6 years. I was just a teenager when this idea literally popped up into my mind. I thought wait a sec, we're the result of only our genes and external inputs so how can I be held responsible for my actions. I thought I'd solved the problem once and for all. But then a worrying realization occurred to me: if all that goes on in our minds is either due to cause and effect or chance, then this thought of mine of considering everything that goes on in my mind the result of either external causes or chance is itself due to either external causes or chance, hence invalid. Because I could just as well "happen" to have a different idea, and there'd be no way of differentiating between the two.
Except the fact that it's part of determinism or random chance doesn't make the realization itself invalid, because the decisions you make and what policies support changes on whether or not you think someone is the ultimate arbiter of their fate. The way to differentiate between the two is following the rules of logic. If you had a different idea, you'd just be wrong. And you're held responsible for your actions not because you ultimately chose who you are, but because who you are might be dangerous to yourself and others. That's why I also tend 100% towards rehabilitative justice, not one that is based on punishment and vengeance. Because that idea doesn't work without free will.
@@Luftgitarrenprofi I totally agree about the second part of your statement. I don't see, however how logic itself can be "saved" in a world without free will. I mean to me, accepting that free will doesn't exist implies a very radical form of epistemological nihilism from which logic is not exempt. Of course, to get to this conclusion, as soon as I say "implies" I'm implicitly assuming logic can be trusted. So basically it's a sort of paradox, I have no idea how to solve this. Maybe it's impossible to solve. Because in order for you to even discuss this idea, you have to postulate that the idea is false. It's crazy! You have something like: 1. if A is false, then A it's true; 2. If A is true, then the last statement has no bearing on truth. Where A is the statement "free will doesn't exist" I can't even word this properly. Buy i hope to learn more about this in the future, maybe I can get to a philosophically satisfying answer...
@@jorgebernal8669 Yes but the logic that a computer works with still came from us humans... So if our logic was faulty to start with, then a computer is just performing a bunch of meaningless operations.
Quantum determinism adds strength to Sam's idea a an ever flowing stream of consciousness and sense of self determination and free will. The universe began from quantum events and too are now set in motion.
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
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friend 1: man, I am really struggling here, what would you do if you were me?
friend 2: well, if I were you, I would literally do the exact same thing you will do
"Exact" and "same" are exactly the same in that, together, they confer nothing beneficial to a phrase.
@@Longtack55 was just trying to emphasize what the joke was sir
Don't you hate it when your stomach drops?
But we have to man up, go through the negative energy motions of our gut brain/soul and accept what is.
Solid
nice
I love this guy. (Not by choice tho)
That’s why he is not impressed 😜
🙌🏻
I think he is wrong (It is my choice tho)
@@joshmiller9559 It is your choice that you think that, yeah?
Nice!!
“If you can’t control your next thought and you don’t know what it’s gonna be until it arises where is your freedom of will.” - Sam Harris.
Wow.
@@Riejdbdhd disagreements is bcs you have pre existing memory of what you experienced
I’ve realized this and I almost wish I would’ve never of tasted this piece of knowledge. It has made me somewhat uneasy. Somehow a part of me wishes I could think outside of the premise of my two brain hemispheres to not be predictable, which is completely crazy. Anyways just loosing my mind here
I’ve realized this and I almost wish I would’ve never of tasted this piece of knowledge. It has made me somewhat uneasy. Somehow a part of me wishes I could think outside of the premise of my two brain hemispheres to not be predictable, which is completely crazy. Anyways just loosing my mind here
I’ve realized this and I almost wish I would’ve never of tasted this piece of knowledge. It has made me somewhat uneasy. Somehow a part of me wishes I could think outside of the premise of my two brain hemispheres to not be predictable, which is completely crazy. Anyways just loosing my mind here
Life is all about karmic retribution.
"I used to believe that the brain was the most interesting part of the body. But then I thought, 'Wait, look who's telling me that.'" -- Emo Phillips
Lol
I got the joke 😀
@Kehnai Bohnyu Lol, his brain!
Lmao
lmfao this is hilarious
No you decide to bash the brain because you are a follower of your guru Sammy and not Yahuah or his Son Yahushua
2 Timothy 3:1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, not set apart from the world (pw unholy),
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
Praying COVID-19 patient, 82, is bludgeoned to death at Lancaster hospital - atheists in action ??? Yeah no need for moral conviction which they erroneously call faith ( fides goddess) Sammy boy here would say he had no choice but to pick up that oxygen tank and beat his brains out , right? Sammy is fulfilling prophesy as submitted by Apostle Shaul.
9:30 "I cannot take credit for the fact that I don't have the soul of a psychopath." *clears throat suspiciously*
***** Both myself and the introducer completely disagree. All Sam Harris DOES is get to the point. As to the throat clearing, It doesn't bother me. Plus, most people are very stupid, and benefit from having a looooong time to process new ideas about abstract, intangible topics. If the pace and speech bother you so much, then I suppose it's good that he's primarily recognised as a writer, and has written a book on the topic, which is plugged in the intro.
We're not machines built out of logical gates, like computers, though I really liked the idea that we can replace neurons and still be the same consciousness :3
As long as evolution can do magical things like trick us into thinking we have free will, why can't it give us free will?
Ayyye!
hahahaha
Platypus are monotremes ; 5 species exist and 4 are echidnae. Just tossing that out in case anyone thought that they were birds, reptiles, mammals, or something...
We have to pretend to act as though we have free-will just as we have to pretend we're not brains in vats, and SH addresses this, just not enough. Heigh-ho. Maybe I've seen too much presuppositional apologetics nonsense lately...e.g. Sye Ten Bruggencate, Matt Slick, and even the much-vaunted William Lane Craig, no matter how he tap-dances around with crap versions of TAG, CAG, FAG, and SLAG...! XD Sorry couldn't resist it.
I had to comment. I have no choice.
Exactly.
+Joe Jr.
LOL!!
I am freely choosing not to comment.
You can't freely choose to not comment because every choice is motivated.
vidfreak56 - Every choice is the outcome of countless atoms behaving to simple laws of physics that could not behave otherwise. Some of those atoms and molecules are in my brain and body. Some are in the surrounding environment.
Coming back to this talk 6 years later, it's still one of the most important lessons I've ever learned.
Coming back 9 yrs later and still Great.
Very relatable. I've read the book previously, but learned so much from this talk!
@@Riejdbdhd To not waste my time being angry at people for their actions, holding grudges, etc. Also to realize that it's irrational to think anyone can just "pull themelves up by their bootstraps" or "make the right choice" in ways that people think they can.
@@sparkside217 people on the surface will hear this argument and think that having no free will is a negative and cant be true, but if you look deeper and think about it plus sam explains this, it's actually the ultimate reason for compassion. i think people's egos and closemindedness prevents mainstream conversation of this topic though honestly.
The word conscience is the prefix con(with) and the word science, conscience.
Understanding the limitations of your willpower is one of the keys to escaping depression, or at least mitigating it. It’s the realization that spurs me to change the way I think. I recently began noticing what I have always thought of as “bad habits”. It turns out that mere noticing is the level of control I have over smoking, eating bad food, refusing to exercise and go outside more. And that’s perfectly ok: As I simply notice my habits instead of judging them and uselessly trying to stop them, I am beginning to see an innocent reason for them, and as a result I am beginning to be able to change them naturally and without “effort”
I see that my brain is pushing my body a certain way because it has been taught to think a certain way since early childhood. I have been trained to be afraid.
I would not have had the opportunity to realize this if I remained married to the assumption that I choose suffering from a state of perfectly clear free will. That ultimate judgment on myself- the assumption that I am making choices from a clear head- is the ultimate cause of my depression, not my “bad habits”. What you resist persists, what you accept you can transform
H
Timothy Stratton thank you Timothy! Your words are very helpful
I believe you're talking about mindfulness. Something that Sam talks about often and from my perspective seems to refute his no free will argument? If you stop to contemplate, are mindful of your immediate negative action, say just before you're about to lift the spoon full of ice cream into your mouth, isn't this a means of at least trying to control that lack of free will? Anyhow, I'm coming to the realization that some of us, me included, who are deficient in habit control, discipline, etc., need more mindfulness and self talk to at the very least, help control our ingrained self direction.
I agree that willpower is very limited... and therefore you need to form/change habits in a way that doesn't rely on willpower.
I don't think the best way to change a habit is to stop judging it and stop trying to change. In fact, I don't think this would work at all for most people. Look at the "fat acceptance movement"... becoming complacent with your bad habits doesn't lead to change but rather unsurprisingly it leads to... complacency. Instead you need to fully understand how the brain forms and creates habits and then properly use that process to retrain and reform your habits. This requires much less willpower because you are working with the brain rather than against it. I've read many books on this subject and none of them suggest your method (I'm not saying it doesn't work... just that based on the science I've read and PROVEN working methods of changing habits/brain thought processes I don't see how it could work). The Power of Habit, Habits: A 12-Week Journal to Change your Habit, Atomic Habits, and Feeling Good are some really good books on this subject.
Life is all about karmic retribution.
This is life changing. So basically our life is a movie, and we are tricked into thinking we control the main character. But we are just merely watching/feeling from their perspective, in a sense.
thats the argument, but come on, thats not true
The idea is that even that "feeling" of being able to choose is an illusion.
Joel Jensen, אתה כלב Schlomo Shillman Shekelstein , you guys are both wonderful and I feel at home as I read a respectful debate between 2 people and 2 different ideas. Personally this concept of no free will came to my attention a week ago and I have not been able to put it down. Your argument has helped me to continue clarifying the concept in my head. My addition to the argument is this: If we had free will then I could have had pizza for breakfast this morning. But that thought never came to my consciousness because I am not free. To truly be free we would have to have the ability to make any decision or perform any humanly possible action at any time. Little Timmy May have been able to have pizza for breakfast because it was in his mind, but I couldn’t have. It wasn’t a choice for me to make. I envision this as a mountain of choices being made. Trillions of decisions at the bottom layer, then a little less based on those decisions, then as you go up the mountain there are less and less options. You go up the mountain and trillions of layers of decisions have been made. Then you get to the top of the mountain. As you near the top, you enter a cloud. This cloud is where the decision making process starts to enter your conscious. As you break through the cloud, you are now in you conscious. At the very tip of the mountain you have a few choices left to make (at least 2). Then you make your final choice. But you weren’t able to make “any” choice. This would be required in order to label the choice as “free”. However you were able to make a conscious choice. We are still able to make choices, but they are limited. And that is what it means to not have free will. It is not the ability to make choices, that we don’t possess, it is the lack of the ability to make any choice.
Joel Jensen Lmbo, no, not this morning there wasn’t 😆
Joel Jensen He (Sam Harris), does seem to think only his way is the right way. This definitely makes sense as everything he says has lots of thought put into it, and he only says what he is certain of. He is incredibly brilliant. I have been watching his RUclips videos and listening to his podcasts and his debates. However I do find that he is mistaken in this video. He has things mostly correct. What we think and the choices we have are mostly determined. However, he doesn’t have a valid argument for the example of choosing to raise your left or right hand. There is no prior influence that is deciding this decision for you. You carry no weight on either choice. Your nature and nurture couldn’t possibly predict the decision you will make. The study that shows the brain choosing before your conscious does is flawed. Therefore we have 1 example of a non-determined choice that we can make.
There is gray area here. I think 99%+ of all the actions we take are not based on free will. However that does not prove, and there is no proof, that free will does not exist.
"No one knows what’s next, but everybody does it." George Carlin
Carlin is my 'god' - in a weird way. I call myself a "Carlinist". I agree with almost everything he said and his philosophy is cool. He got old and said he doesn't worry about things like politics anymore because he "doesn't have a stake in the outcome". i.e. He's too old to be affected by government decisions. I, too, am getting older - no choice, dammit! I still care, though - about climate change for instance. Personally, I think there's a good chance we'll have a nuclear war or famine or plague or something that will end our technological civilization for millennia - kinda like Planet of the Apes without the apes lol. Detour: I think the ending of Planet of the Apes is the coolest one ever. Instead of Heston SAYING that humans had a nuclear war, they SHOW the Statue of Liberty all bent. And that's why the apes call the area the Forbidden Zone. And THAT is why Hollywood is the envy of the whole world. They have screenwriters who invent this stuff. It's also like Forbidden Planet's "reveal" where the monster is really the projected thoughts of the character. That has to be one of the deepestFreudian reveals in history. Say what you will about Hollywood; When it comes to stuff like that, no place else does it better.
RIP George Carlin. Like you, I'm an atheist and think there are mostly idiots in America. I think about 1% of Americans keeps the whole thing going - Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and some others. Who am I forgetting?
I would have loved to have dinner with George Carlin and Christopher Hitchens and a few hookers. Did I say that? My bad. See? That's what no free will brings!
Carlin is a genius love the guy
@@The22on you're not part of the 1%, ergo why the fuck would they care what you think. in fact, by your lights, why should anyone care what you think?
Thanks for that great quote, which I can appreciate more than most, knowing the true nature of "free will" and our connection to it. Sam Harris doesn't realize that he is an intelligent bag of contradictions. Because, he believes that we don't have free will, and yet there is no "God." So, exactly who or what's will IS done, Sam? He won't understand until he reads my book, which will never happen. Perhaps in his next life? God's prophet has spoken.
Life is all about karmic retribution.
Those who judge, never understand; those understand never judge.
But we all have the ability to discern. The mind is a chatterbox. You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
This is the best to listen to when youre drunk and depressed
I agree😂
Ummm...I am not sure this kind of comment is especially flattering to the idea of this video...unless this is some kind of dark humor
😂😂😂
The 80s were so good. They don't make music like this anymore.
not a cellphone in sight, things were so real, back then!
This video really helped me this last week. A verbally abusive teacher over the last year has shattered my self confidence with constant bullying and toxic behaviour. I’ve removed him from my life but was left feeling angry with low self esteem. The possibility that his cruelty and machismo isn’t fully his choice helps me find room to be less angry. The possibility that my flaws and mistakes are the sum of my experiences and my neurological make-up gives me a great starting point to grow and get rid of shame.
One of the best comments on this issue that I've ever seen !!
I'm totally with you on this....
I'm able now not to hate a person for hurting me....I might still hate what they've done to me, and to decide not to be with them if possible, but I no longer see them as having had the "freedom" to have decided to act differently......
Likewise, I couldn't have chosen not to be hurt at the time.....
Accepting no free will makes me more aware of the influences other people can have on me - and maybe more importantly, the influences I can have upon them.....
I think Christians are supposed subscribe to the commandment "You shall love your neighbor as yourself"
I'm not a Christian, but am getting closer to this way of being, through "no free will"
It doesn't mean I brush off hurtful things that I've done, but I can shed unecessary guilt, and make better decisions.....no free will doesn't negate learning from experience.....
I've noticed that a lot of the anger and bitter comments come from people defending free will from a religious point of view.....very often lacking compassion, understanding, and certainly "love"
It's quite striking, tbh......
I'm grateful to have recognised no free will......it became obvious to me years ago.....but I lacked the perspective to have been able to see the positive side of it.....
So totally refreshing to read your comment !
Naw fuck him bro
Well said. I'm trying to do the same in my own life but it really is quite inconvenient that as it seems to me, holding a grudge is in my nature.
Life is all about karmic retribution.
To expand our consciousness and spiritual wisdom, we all need a great teacher.....................falun dafa
I will never understand why this concept bothers people . It makes sense and doesnt change the game for me . It does make me somewhat understanding to other people's decisions. I find I am less judgemental.
Same
This argument is the same as "the god of the gaps" argument. Determinism has relied more and more on the scientific argument because it leads opposition to have to theorize outside of our known world.
We know the limits of our current understanding and it's very, very limited. Determinism is not a model to build anything useful from in human social systems like laws, education, parenting, healthcare and so on.
I have never met a child that believes in determinism making it a learned theory, that does not make it untrue, but odd that free thought (reasoning) would lead to a conclusion that is predetermined.
It is useless to debate on either side it is far more sane and practical to admit we don't know but it at the moment seems far more likely that determinism is correct.
we know we are 3 dimensional beings and can mathematically prove the potential for the existence of other dimensions. We know we can't replicate the 4th dimension but can demonstrate what the shadow of a tesseract would look like to us. This could be relevant to this debate if consciousness existed outside of our limited 3D bodies. I can't argue the likelihood of that just the possibility and if that were true and has the potential to be true this whole debate is pointless.
If "I think therefore I am" can I prove that you think? Can I prove that you exist? Should I operate on that assumption or the one that doesn't justify me killing you because your a figment of my imagination.
Long winded way of saying even if you can argue for a theory that makes perfect sense if its application are not practical why try to convince others unless you had an implicit bias.
This "free will is illusion" is just silly nonsense and it gets really frustrating hearing the same misconception spread time and time again
@@gJonii it is obvious to anyone that has looked at it
@@troyzieman7177 Clearly not. Although, to his credit, the speaker presented one of the lesser crazy versions of this idea. He seems to be almost there understanding where social responsibility etc comes from, but is failing to understand what self is
A long time ago I made a realization that completely changed my perspective on life. I realized that we always do our best in every decision we make. We cannot do better, and we cannot do worse. We can only ever do our very best. I was always so wracked with guilt over the decisions I did not and could not make in life. It came down either accepting that I simply was who I was, or rejecting everything about myself. Given all of your experiences that bring you to that very moment, you simply can make no other choice than the choices you make. That is not to say you can not do better in the future. It simply depends on what state you are in at that moment, taking everything into account.
Sam just now took that even further than I ever realized.
"I realized that we always do our best in every decision we make. " false - the decision you make is already flawed when it disobeys Torah - it is set to fail and leads you down the slippery downward spiral to the lake of fire. One Torah transgression leads to another - eg lies can lead to murder which can lead to more lies and more murder
Totally agree with you !
Regarding the other comment, I'd maybe say that we make the choices that make most sense to us.....and we can't choose what makes us feel that a choice is what makes most sense for us.....
@@Mr2TIMOTHY4V2 but why should we be expected to have blind faith in the Torah ?
I really struggle with that......and I'm unable to steer my thoughts in any other way.....
So that means I should be tortured for eternity ?
Can't I live a good, useful life without the faith necessary for your religion ?🤔
And why choose yours above others ?
I'm simply unable to override my supposed free will.....
So I'm on the road to eternal damnation I guess.....
How would you define your "self" ?
@@Mr2TIMOTHY4V2 it seems to me the Torah has lead plenty of people down that slippery path to immorality and murder all on its own. Not sure of the relevance of your comment
@@orias12 brilliant
Of course we have free will, We have no other choice.
You would say that, wouldn't you?
You tell me. You know me better than anyone else sweetheart.
Hitch said that right?
Yes sir, He did!
Hey just curious, would you happen to know which vid or book says that i would love to watch or read it
"Where is the freedom in doing what one wants, when one's wants are the products of prior causes which one cannot inspect and therefore could not choose and one has absolutely no hand in creating?"
End of the argument. 👏👏
Saying this because I haven't seen anybody else bring it up in the comment section.
Even if everything Sam has said is wrong, let's not forget that freewill is still a claim, and one that has not met it's burden of proof. Attacking Sam's points against freewill doesn't get us any closer to validating freewill.
Great point. Leaving a comment so that it gets bumped up, hopefully :)
BradGatton Exactly.
Yep
Everytime you decide anything you're showing that YOU don't think what your saying is true.
God You aren't aware of Sam's book(let) on free will? I am; I read it several times. Somewhere there's a short video of him that came out when he released his book I wish I could find, explaining what he means, though you can just read it in his book. Plain and simple: You're wrong.
Sam Harris has explicitly said and written on MANY occasions that you're not really making any decisions and that self itself is just an illusion.
It's as though you'd like to deny the production of electric current in generators because you can prove that generators have no electric current in them.
But, you can't even come close to acting as though you really believe this; so what is it that you're wanting to accomplish by promoting this twaddle?
The only reason I've ever seen speculated was that free will is the foundation of the concept of human rights. Once you've dispensed with free will, you've dispensed with the idea of violating free will.
Could you tell me what other possible utility there could be for getting rid of the idea of free will?
Revisiting this talk. Thank you, Sam. ❤
Sam Harris is a devoutly religious man. The State is his Religion, the Government is his Church, Politicians are his Clergy, Law is his Bible, and he has lots and lots of Faith!
#Jew
His consciousness gave a great speech.
LOL
Life is all about karmic retribution.
His consciousness was aware that he was giving a speech, not the consciousness itself giving the speech
*his subconscious
@@robertjsmith bro you might want to delete all these comments lol
"The urge for retribution is actually an artifact of us not seeing the true causes of human behavior" - 47:50
Just like cruelty, the urge for retribution is an important part of society and not acknowledging it (along with the ignoring of free will) is part of Western societies illnesses.
@@pashute12
Western society doesn’t ignore free will. By and large, it (mistakenly) believes free will exists.
@@pashute12 free will is coded into US constitution, Sam mentions it
The urge for retribution takes into account that once an evil or crewl idea is there, people don't veto it, which you always have the freedom to do, but decide to do nothing about it and pursue it instead.
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice” RUSH -
I was thinking of Rush when this was starting!
More accurately, the quote is from Neil Peart (requiescat in pace). Epic, as are all his lyrics :-)
"slappin da base!
Very true, Jack. For, "the words of the prophets are written on the studio walls." But what most people don't understand is that there is a huge difference between WILL and CHOICE. You can CHOOSE to desire any particular outcome in any particular situation. And maybe that outcome will happen, and maybe it won't. But if you were able to WILL that outcome, it would NECESSARILY come to pass, GUARANTEED! Sam Harris doesn't realize that he is an intelligent bag of contradictions. Because, he believes that we don't have free will, and yet there is no "God." So, exactly who or what's will IS done, Sam? He won't understand until he reads my book, which will never happen. Perhaps in his next life? God's prophet has spoken.
I love how he says, "K" Before every sentence, really fast and quiet. lol. Also, he is totally right. To quote Bill Hicks, "it's just a ride."
How did I never notice that before!? In no less than 10 seconds of resuming the conversation (after reading your message), he did exactly that! I cannot unhear it now... So thanks a lot for that! :p
@@Legac3e Ahahahha, suffer like I do! lol
Life is all about karmic retribution.
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
@@jeffforsythe9514 Lmfao, hilarious. Did a bronze-aged fairy tale book tell you that? Lol it's like you're children. I think it's time the world grows up and stops believing in our imaginary friend.
Can you make choices? Yes. But can you make free choices? No.
Do you experience a will? Yes. But it should be obvious that your will cannot be free.
Alex Spevak Not a shred of evidence, my friend. Baseless assertions. Utter nonsense.
dubunking simply overwhelming evidence.
Alex Spevak There is not a shrewd of evidence. Quote some scientific for once please? Lol.
dubunking repeating. One track record lol
Alex Spevak There is not a shred of scientific evidence to prove that Free will is an illusion. If there is, quote it.
An easier way to say all of this is that you are free to choose, but you're not free to choose what you choose, which is to say you aren't really free to choose in any way that is meaningfully different than how a lightning bolt chooses where it strikes.
A lighting bolt strikes on the path of least resistance.
It's important to recognize this because of the moral implications, you don't seek revenge on a lightning bolt, in light of this we should remove "revenge" from the concept of justice. With this enlightenment we realize that truly nobody deserves to be punished and the only moral thing is to protect society from dangerous individuals and rehabilitate these individuals, and if they can't be rehabilitated (yet) then just keep them locked up indefinitely, instead of releasing dangerous people because "they've served their time".
People often choose the paths of most resistance. Go frog man go.
53:56 "Love and Compassion make sense" - Sam Harris
No matter who you are or whatever you believe this statement should hold true.
Great video
@@jamesiaustin4517 legit. regardless of free will there are things obviously good and bad for us.
It didnt hold true for most of human history but only recently does it hold true. Just in the 1960 scientist were inflicting std on third world country citizens for human experiments. Not long ago, the ussr was killing millions. And before that slavery was common place. love and compassion has not made sense to humans for most of our history and is not objective truth
Yes! When I tell people we have no free will, they will ask, “Well, why then don’t you just lie in bed all day?” Simply put, getting out of bed makes sense. Just like love and compassion make sense. Just because my will isn’t mine (isn’t free) doesn’t suddenly change the fact that I still desire all the same things that I did before (like being successful and having great relationships). We aren’t free to will anything, but we also aren’t free not to desire things or to be any less intelligent than we actually are. If some people sometimes are not free not to commit crimes, many, many other people are not free not to be good. Sam Harris, for example, is not free not to be a brilliant speaker.
Life is all about karmic retribution.
I have no idea why I like this speaker
clarity of thoughts, brevity of language, some humor and oh yes, the soothing voice!
“The greatest discovery of any generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their minds.”
― Albert Schweitzer.
Hey guys before you start a argument about "free will" please define what you mean by it. It is a very confusing and ambiguous concept that needs more clarity.
I think the simplest definition is the freedom to do want you want or will
@@SaetherOfficialThen bacteria or even viruses have free will. They want something on their level of existense (consume shugar for example) and have freedom to do it. Even rocks and stones trends to a physical and chemical balance. Do they have free will too?
@@CirclesOfMotion demonstrate that bacteria have that freedom. That they are not bound to do what their instincts tell them.. To be fair.. I don't believe in free will, so..
Free will as sam states is that you made a decision, now is it possible to have made some other decision in that same situation(same world, atom for atom) .
"We don't choose to choose what we choose." This goes on my wall soon.
and yet, we do...
I chose, to choose to write that.
@@nebulous6660 yeah but you didn’t choose to choose to choose to write that, did you?
Actually yes, I chose to click the video, then chose to listen to it, then chose to read your comment, then chose to think about it, then chose to respond to it, then chose my words carefully, then chose to write every letter of my response, then chose to proof read it, then chose to think about it some more, then chose to post my reply. Now I've chosen to repeat the process. That's a shitload of choices. ALL ME BABY!
@@nebulous6660 That's not you. You were compelled to do it based on how you felt. Just like I was compelled to write this comment in order to prove you wrong.
@@crepooscul you just said I did it lol
The stories that people create to justify their decision is called post-operative rationalization. Rationalization is a defence mechanism that we use to justify our actions, but it happens after we make the decision. (making it post-op) The unknown reason why we choose one option over the other shows our lack of free will.
For Buddhists, this isn't a hard one to accept for there is no "you" in the first place. We're the universe taking a peek at Itself through many lives experiences. Enjoy the ride folks!
So why do Buddhist and Taoists cultivate separately from one another, or cultivate individually in the first place, if there is no such thing as you and I?
@@AkosM Just saw this. There is a "you" and "I," just not in an ultimate sense. They're created realities formed in perception. In other words, separation (and categorizing into independent things) is a product of the mind, not reality in its basic form which is nondual and interdependent. "You" and "I" have the same substantiality as the lap or a wave. You can sit on a lap or surf on a wave, so they have a reality-just not an absolute or independent one. When the person stands the lap is gone just as after the wave crests it's gone too. So, they're not "things". They're forms the body or ocean takes at different moments in time. Same with "you" and "I". When thought is absent the "you" and "I" disappears.
Dammit! I was waiting an hour for him to talk about an orca being freed from captivity by a teenage boy.
lmfao
brilliant
Nice.
Jw Goedhart lol
Sorry, it turns out that was also an illusion.
anyone who works in the advertising business knows there is no such thing as free will.
except their own, right?
@Keylanos Lokj Not my conversation really, but for starters, why don't you read everything you've written in this thread so far? Can you see how it reeks of "holier than thou" loftiness?
What exactly makes you think anyone should for even an instant grant you the authority to assume such a tone with them? You are addressing people who by your own estimation are essentially worshiping their own intellect. Yet your prose is a near meaningless word salad of religiously seasoned gibberish. What do you think you're accomplishing with this tactic?
I used to have a hobby of metaphorically stomping out people like you; because I grew up with people that would turn away from you, embarrassed that you call yourself Christian, as they do, yet make a complete mockery of their quiet faith (still fake, but at least they try) with your self aggrandizing wordiness designed to call attention to yourself and place yourself in a position of unearned glory.
So, let's get down to it; shall we? What's your bedrock? Where does all this "truth" come from? The bible? It's innerant? Come now; don't keep us in suspense. We all want to know what THE great Christian with all his many many words of wisdom has to say. Keep it simple though. I'll just skim through the word salad to find the response, if any, that you make to my query.
"We are not authoring them, that would require that we think of them before we think them... If you cannot control your next thought, where is your freedom of thought." Love it, that was so profound. We don't agree on much but on this point we do.
I was predetermined to love Sam Harris and I would choose to love him if I had free will as well.
Life is all about karmic retribution.
Could you love me too?
Silly. We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
You have free will, we all do. Who else could make such a mess out of our own home, mankind, always choosing the wrong path because of greed.
Harris 100 religion 0
As a capitalist, I plan to begin charging for my will. No more freebies. ;)
If you make a good price, the determinists won't have a choice!
No capitalism , no communism , no theism no atheism etcetera , no separatism . Separatism is wrong it breeds violence . Favouritism leads to conflicts . RUclips Jiddu Krishnamurti talks at the united nations . Theism and atheism and christianity and islam and gnostic and agnostic are not the truth . The truth is the unity in impartiality principle . Yes unselfishness . Yes mindfulness training . Meditation . Copy that . Magnificent obsession . Maturity .
@@s4ckm4n p
Xd
From what I have learned in therapy, we really do not have that much free will. It is referred to as the unconscious, subconscious or conscious and it is even much deeper than that. My parents were alcoholics. When I started to date I inevitably chose every alcoholic or drug addict around and didn't find until later. This included Narcissists like my mother and sister. Once I stopped with the alcoholics I was attracting Narcissist. That was never in my mind, of course, when I met them.
correct, it's subconscious programming. Sam is far advanced in how the brain works
They bore you though
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
I thought of Milwaukee, even though I've never been there or anywhere close. I don't even know a single fact about Milwaukee. It just entered my mind without any choice of my own.
I could never see any way to argue for a free will, but I'm still destined to believe I have one. I have no choice in the matter.
That's a very fair response.
" We don't choose to choose what we choose". I think that is a great truth. In our relatively short lives, so much depends upon the influences that shape us. Another great truth: some people choose more than others.It seems to me that these truths ,when unrealized, cause a great deal of pain and suffering, especially later in life.
There can be infinte regression on that one. "We don't choose to choose to choose to choose what we choose." So it becomes obvious it is meaningless, which it was in the first place.
@Firebird Infinite Regression is a hallmark of a logical inconsistency. Meaning by introducing it in this instance, Harris is critiquing free will, like he would with the idea of a creator god - after all, who created that creator god?
So no, it is not meaningless. In fact, it does exactly what it is meant to, and what you yourself understood; it unveils that free will is an illogical concept.
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
I listen to this video to fall asleep every night. It's soothing to hear a rational argument laid out in civil manner in a world/ life that makes no sense what so ever most of the time.
hat is an idiotic statement. I have two choices. As a law student, i could study for an exam in a couple days or i could go drinking. The best choice would be studying, yet i chose to go drinking. Free will. Same people eat out of stress yet the better option would be exercising. Why not exercise? The most glaring issue is as a volunteer firefighter why would i chose to go into a burning house, even though it puts my life in danger? I am risking my life for someone i will never know for no gain
@@bornfree8073 The point is that our thoughts and actions are informed by everything that has happened to us from conception until now. You are not the curator of any of the things that you are a product of therefore you don't have the freedom to be any way other than the way you are.
We make choices, and we clearly have an individual identity which establishes agency, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that we have free will, only that we have a will.
Yep.
Nope.Choices are made by genetics and epii genetics that you did not choose.You have no will just the appearance you have,
Kind of but let's be honest, what shows up around you is what you only know. Outside of that, there is no free will, also people are born with certain genetics. People honestly don't choose what they think. I mean effort is real but the origin was never free will rather random thoughts.
What kind of will maybe not your own will if we don't choose how we act and that's a process of random choices that doesn't make you the person that choose for those actions i mean i accept the fact that we have to behave the right way but you can't know for sure that we always have the same control over what we do and i don't mean that for crimes
God gave us free will, life is about discernment. To expand our consciousness and spiritual wisdom, we all need a great teacher.....................falun dafa
Every time I see Ben Stiller I start getting really heady and I get the feeling it's because Sam Harris stole my Free Will.
It's not Sam's looks that remind you of Stiller, it is his voice...
Can someone please engage with me briefly? I am having difficulties with some of Sam's propositions. I can accept that I am ultimately not the doer of my actions or thinker of my thoughts in any real sense and that my actions are determined by my neurophysiology. However, I can't seem to understand how this belief in the absence of free will does not lead to fatalism. It seems Sam is just being a product of his thoughts to even suggest that falling into fatalism shouldn't or wouldn't be the outcome. With this belief, I look back on my past failures and joke of a life as not being dictated by MY decisions. I was just a puppet being led along by my bad genetics and a naturally occurring depressive disposition that lead me to accomplish nothing in my life. Now seeing that I don't truly have the free will to suddenly jerk my brain into submission and change my course of life, I remain subject to my genetics and just accept I've been given the short end of the stick and I don't have to take any responsibility for the fact that I'm likely to fail at most things I do without any sense of having been involved in the failure subjectively. Can someone help me understand why my thinking is flawed here?
Or to add on to that, why or really HOW can I possibly try to be something other than what I am not if I am just a brain puppet.
A good place to start is Nisargadatta Maharaj. Thoughts happen.. we are not our thoughts, we are not our physical bodies as the world is not physical. When one realizes this it does not change the person.. it's described by some as a slight inner shift. Ralph goes on as himself.. in fact he becomes more individualistic the less he identifies with his body and thoughts. Life is happening, nothing has ever happened (Paul Hedderman)
Nakky Dave I always get lost in the reductionism of Eastern thought. Remarks like "the world is not physical" or "nothing has ever happened" seem so semantic, contradictory, and meaningless to me.
Ralph, I hate to be making a mistake here, so correct me if I'm wrong. Wikipedia gives three definitions for fatalism:
1)The view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do. Included in this is that man has no power to influence the future, or indeed, his own actions.
2)An attitude of resignation in the face of some future event or events which are thought to be inevitable.
3)That acceptance is appropriate, rather than resistance against inevitability.
It seems to me that fatalists believe that there is nothing we can do because the equation of the universe is written and we are helpless before it as we watch the movie of our lives play out.
Determinists seem to believe the same exact thing except they make an important distinction that we are a part of that equation that governs the universe and just because our actions cannot be anything other than what they will be, we are still important actors in this movie where the script is set in stone. Odd, it seems like determinists lock more pieces into place. It seems implicit to me that in the fatalist view you have to stand outside of this all powerful "fate" in order to be the "victim" of it. To be helpless before a fate first implies that you are not an instrument of that fate correct? How can one be "helpless" before themselves?
+Dark Garison I dont understand your last two questions truthfully. The point I'm making is that Sam States that selves do not exist. We are just purely consciousness, watching our bodies in motion acting upon impulses and conditioning. This is hard enough to grasp because I certainly feel like I am orchestrating my actions. Nonetheless, once we accept the belief that we are not controlling our actions in any real sense, what incentive do I have to really go achieve anything? I can't take responsibility for those accomplishments or my failures. I'm just witnessing them through conscious experience. Where does effort or determination even come from then? And how or why would determination to achieve things appear and disappear at a whim depending on what I am doing? I find Harris's argument valid, however, I can't map it onto reality.
note to self:
don't read any more comments - ever.
I commiserate with you completely, but I suspect you will, though. As stupid or mean-spirited as many of them may be, there usually are one or 2, at least, that may be worth reading.
Comment of the year.
Relatable
Lol! Right on!
@@kreiziekeiks6374 still
1 hour of PURE GOLD
To expand our consciousness and spiritual wisdom, we all need a great teacher.....................falun dafa
Sam wants to argue that because we have no choice in our past we lack choice over our future. Saying we didn't pick our brains is similar to saying we don't pick the hand we are dealt. But how we play our hand is how we express our free will. If we say, 'This is a bad hand! Others are bound to have a better hand than me so there's no way I can win', then the consequences really are inevitable - what's the point in even trying? Free will is something that we have if we choose to. Telling people they don't have that choice is destructive to them - if they believe it.
stephen hogg Playing the hand you are dealt is just making choices predicated on thoughts and wants that were not brought into existence entirely by you, so no that is not free will.
@@michaelnickles1986 No doubt from some point of view, we are no more free than rocks. The standard argument against ‘freewill’ is ultimately irrefutable, because it can appeal to an infinite regress of causes. But how is this perspective useful? Does this perspective really have any epistemic authority over other perspectives - those that allow for degrees of freedom? What does it help us to explain, to understand better?
@@michaelnickles1986 Do you even know what you are referring to when you use the term 'free will'?
This is essentially a Harry Frankfurt compatibilist argument about behavior happening only because you couldn't have done otherwise. And this is quite important because it posits a real empathy and human understanding of why human beings are doing the behavior they're doing. Sam, I think, knows this argument, and is elucidating it. We're talking about a project of humanity, helping others causally. In order to help and heal others, we've to adopt a more pragmatic worldview about how we've evolved. It's not egotistical, and it's not religious. It's based on what we've evolved with. It has nothing to do with biblical reason. It has everything to do with how we evaluate our habits and supervene on them. But hear me out, even if we don't have free will in the way we think we do, we are responsible for it!
People have lost their moral compass. We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
"Just try staying in bed all day waiting for something to happen" Challenge accepted.
The brain is like the cockpit of an airplane and the soul is the pilot...To expand our consciousness and spiritual wisdom, we all need a great teacher.....................falun dafa
Adopting this idea that free will doesn’t exist is an idea that can radically change a persons life. If you truly come to believe it your whole outlook changes. It takes a while to convince yourself it’s true, and then a lot longer to fully build that perspective into your life and judgements. Pretty cool.
I don’t think you can argue for both objective morality and hard determinism
boson96 I agree that morality is subjective. I’m also more compatibilist than hard determinist. With that being said, I would think that HD would either require subjective morality or no morality
Just because it’s subjective doesn’t make it invalid.
... ... circumstance and nature of choice as question of phenomenology ... all descriptions and interpretations of specific choices comprise 'objectivity' ... 'subjectivity' not being good descriptor of choice instances
... ... ultimately hard determinism governs better if not at the least those benign conscious choices, in upholding equitability-sustainability deliverables ... on both UTILITY (worthwhile benefit) and DEONTOLOGY (impersonal duty) rationales ... empiric-parametric determinants of wellbeing are objectively straightforward to benchmark
How can you refute this. Thank you. This is just beautiful. I watch this almost every year.
You need to read some books son if you find his speech logical XD
@@primeminister1040 Care to say which book Mr PM or do you want to just be inconclusive? oh and don't call me or anyone other than your own son your son. I ain't your son. Funny chap. Go pray or read your bible. You'll get a lot of logic that way. Aight. I'm off to sacrifice a lamb!
Physics (Quantum Mechanics) PROVED PROVED PROVED over 50 years ago that the universe at the quantum level is 0% deterministic. NO PART OF THE UNIVERSE IS PREDETERMINED. Until my fellow atheists get their stupid heads out of the sand and quit pretending Physics and Quantum Mechanics don't exist, we'll never get intelligent Physicists to join atheist societies. You guys don't get it. Harris sounds EXACLY like Deepak Chopra here. It's super, super, super embarrassing for atheists to be so pro-science everywhere except when it comes to the proven parts of Quantum Mechanics. Here's a link that, if you remove the blanks I put in it so it wouldn't get my post removed, talks about this from the world's most intelligent person who is a Physicist. You want him to become part of the atheist society, then denounce Deepak Chopra like statements regarding free will from people like Sam Harris.
https: //www. youtube. com/ watch?v=Jint5kjoy6I
ruclips.net/video/TOwNeuiX0bE/видео.html
True, I’ve had discussions trying to convince people of determinism, and I wonder how people can refute it. It just goes against the illusion that we have of choosing actions that people cannot accept it, but logically determinism makes perfect sense.
Rockhard, you're not getting it, I don't think. He's a neuroscientist and studies how the nervous system works. His observations make you look at how you really "make" decisions, and he appears startlingly correct. It's troubling but not stupid!
WRONG, the neurological studys hes disscussing prove NOTHING,ZERO,
rockhard Wow, solid argument! It's so good, it just stands there by itself. You don't even need to support it with anything! Amazing!
Consciousness is an illusion of an egocentric world view. How can someone who has the Budda as his profile pic be so ignorant to this basic notion. If you still believe there is a little you inside your head controlling your actions or that you have any sense on control in a world that is groundless and impossible to understand than you don't understand Buddhism at all.
P.S. Mind does not equal Consciousness
When it comes to this depth of analysis of our complex lives, any final conclusion is an act of the free will. I choose to believe that Sam is right
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
I agree that one's will or desire to act arises not in consciousness, but rather in underlying complex subconscious mechanisms that lead up to the conscious experience of motive and to the consequent action. But even if the agency is subconscious, the pathway to action arises in that individual person, who should (in my view, and for societal expediency) remain responsible for the act.
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
There is no moral responsibility but there is social responsibility. A dangerous person must be dealt with for the same reason that you cannot ignore a rabid dog.
Unfortunately, there may be people who know their potential to be of harm to society is to a far lesser degree than society presumes. How does one prove they are no harm to society following an act of harm?
I am not a psychologist so I may be wrong, but presently, I see no way for a person to prove that they are not dangerous, especially if they have a history of violence. Probability is the best we can do given our current scientific knowledge.
But we do not torture the dog to punish it for being rabid.
We should do the same with people.
Cleo Fierro Sorry, but 'i say so' is not a good argument.
Especially given the large and increasing body of evidence against it.
I realise that the abrahamic faiths need to believe in free will, to get their god off the hook for setting us up to fail in the imaginary garden of eden, but wanting it, does not make it so.
What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.
And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.
-Eugene Gendlin
Cleo Fierro I did add original content. You appear not to have responded to any of it. I recommend re reading my comment.
If what Gendlin said was wrong, please show Where they are wrong, and why.
Because i content that what Gendlin said was accurate.
Whatever your thoughts about the world are, whether you have an accurate view of reality or not, there is a reality, and you are living in it.
Step off a cliff, and you will fall, regardless of what you believe about gravity.
It’s so interesting. Mind blowing in fact. I have no idea what I’m going to do, from one minute to the next, and I have no say in it either. I just hope that I don’t ramble on with my phone keyboard about how I am unable to dictate anything in my life. I’m hoping I don’t do that.
We all change our minds when deciding if some unexpected event happens. We do that while driving. So his arguments that our history fixes our choice falls apart.
😂
this all occurred to me when it occurred to me that it isn't my choice whether i believe in god or not. how could someone choose what they believe?
You ppl are joking right ?
If not
You all need medical help ASAP
no? what should i believe?
am i going to get sick? please tell me
IF the self is an illusion, then the question of whether Free Will exists or not is irrelevant, simply because, at bottom, we don't care.
David Email There is no difference in essence to being a great cook and cooking great food. Your explanation for this is also flawed.
he meant to say, that being a great cook is a form of creating an identity out of your ability, this is to say, if let's say he has an accident and he injurs a part of the brain needed for great cooking, will he still be called a great cook? because he has won various awards in cooking...is his identity which was a mental construct still relevant?
Rishabh Goswami Is that what he ment to say? Then why didn't he say that?
People seem to not see The use of this knowledge. As knowledge is for use, this is usefull in the context of perspective, it gives you no choice (pun intended) than to be less judgemental towards others since it is just cause and effect down to a extreme complexity. Which of course in many cases can be altered aswell, this information is more helpfull than not.
David Email I have no quarrel with what you’ve stated, albeit semantically speaking you will always be a student to life or the experience of being ”you”.
I wish I had a teacher like Sam in this uni years 😢
I realized that free will does not exist through Advaita Vedanta and contemplating who I am and when I scanned inwardly to try and find "myself". I found I don't exist as a "person" and that what I think of myself as a person is only a thought. The experience of my "true" self is one of pure consciousness which I call "God" and the only will being lived and expressed is consciousness or "God's" will. This, when my person is surrendered to it, gives me peace and trust in my life to unfold on it's own. I have found the lack of free will is replaced by trust and definitely results in an expanded sense of understanding and compassion for others. Forgive them for they know not what they do gives a whole new meaning.
so immediately after this video i went to my kindle to buy his book free will. Took my credit card and stuff and then stopped for a second thinking do "i" want this book or do i want this book
In the end you bought the book, told your self that you did indeed want it, as you think it is interesting, and intellectual, and you're actually getting into this achedemic stuff. Probably read two thirds and haven't been back to finish it.... nothing wrong with that, but how close am I?
@@billdavis9286 ahahahha. In most cases you would be right. But this book I finished. Actually did a presentation in a pscychology of mine
@@thebarbellpath1040 nice! Good on ya!
This is something that resonates with me and the idea of being beholden to a God at this point in my life. Through any number of past events, the person I am now resists authority figures in general, some of this trait which also may be through specific gene polymorphisms or from genes I inherited, how I was raised, the things I witnessed, how I was treated, how I was perceived by the world, etc. So for any God to condemn me for this, because one, his agents have failed miserably and two, clearly I'm not created in a typical fashion, angers me. I am on the autism spectrum with a dash of ADHD that has made navigating various aspects of life extremely difficult or painful. Between the biology and external environments, I cannot change any of that nor act any different than I do because of it.
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the point or direction that Sam Harris is laying, the free will that we don't have is predetermined up until the last moment. This does not mean you were predetermined to love Sam Harris since your conception, more like you're able to love Sam because of the path you fell down. He makes it a point that we're like open computers, you can continuously keep influencing your mind based on the stimuli in front of your brain. This is the difference between religious superstition and fundamental reality.
Yes, and I've always wondered if we have free will to put our attention where we want? In other words, we can helplessly watch the mental algorithm unfold but is the witness to experience (whatever that is) able to freely decide to focus on one aspect or another of the contents of consciousness or is that decision part of the programming too? I recall an old Buddhist sage saying "You are free to put your awareness where you like."
@@counterculture10 there's no freedom to choose, but there's some freedom to be aware. Practicing meditation helped me become aware of thoughts i find myself in, but never as they begin, and the second you become aware, it's almost like the thought takes notice and disappears back into the shadows of the mind.
This is a very compelling and useful talk. The only concerning part for me is the brief discussion in eradicating evil toward the end.
When asked the question, the only answer that does not cause individual and social capatstroohe is “No. Not a good idea. We need exposure to evil and ‘bad stuff’ to pursue the virtuous and ‘good’. “
Then the conversation on judgement….blah.
okay so i didnt even know that other people thought this freewill illusion thing, but im glad they do. another thing ive been pondering that i want to know if others believe is that this makes it possible to tell the future. in fact the only reason we cant tell the future is because we dont know all the variables. and if we did know all the variables, just for a moment, we could know the future forever, for everything is just a reaction of another. but then if we can tell the future, can we then avoid it? even if you knowing the future was a variable considered when telling the future..
Tyson, what you've said would be true if it weren't for the uncertainty principle. If the world worked on Newtonian principles and you took them to their ultimate conclusion, as you say, if you know all the variables (the speed, position and behaviour of every particle in the universe) absolutely accurately, you can predict their future position and speed to the end of time. Of course we cannot, and will never be able to do this in any practical way, but the mere fact that it is THEORETICALLY possible, means that absolute predictability is theoretically possible, which precludes freewill. If the actions of all particles - and therefore our actions - are predictable, then by definition, they have been determined before we carry them out, and we are merely slaves to those accurate predictions.
It's only because the uncertainty principle says we cannot define both the position and speed of a particle at the same time that we cannot predict anything with certainty. Which would allow (but not make certain) freewill.
yeah i have a hard time understanding why the uncertainty principle is a true, or even most of quantum mechanics.it all seems so illogical. youre point is very noted, thank you! if anyone has any other perspectives feel free to reply!
tyson wojtowicz
The uncertainty principle only tells us why it is impossible to predict the future from a practical perspective, but the inability to know every variable does not mean there are variables missing from our reality. If we measure the position of a particle, then it stills has momentum even if the value will always remain unknown to the observer. Quantum mechanics tells us nothing about free will.
My mother Was a fortune teller?
She said I was going to die before I was 12. I was a real disappointmento her I'm 73.
I've always felt that free will is an illusion. My understanding of physics and science in general just seemed to make the concept nonsensical... As if we can somehow detach ourselves from the strict rules of reality to make "metaphysical decisions".... That seems not only absurd to me but reeks of Cartesian Dualism...
what is wrong with you? how can you like this? true or not, this is possibly the most discouraging thing anyone can ever say. how can you take comfort in the notion that you and everyone else is being controlled?
*****
There is a fundamental thing here which you must understand.
Science tells us that reality is the way it is, regardless of how badly we wish it were otherwise.
We can either accept that fact and live on, or we can cling desperately to our illusions out of fear and an emotional need to be important in a universe that doesn't care.
I don't find it discouraging at all. I find it liberating.
all you basically said to me was "get used to it". you didn't at all explain WHY you like it. that is what I was asked.
***** I just told you. Because I would rather believe things to be as they actually are then to believe an illusion.
All the problems that we hold up as being so big are shown to be trivial and inconsequential when you consider the universe as a whole. We are here and gone in the blink of a cosmic eye. I have had to take solice in that fact
Btw. I never said that I _wanted_ free will to be false, in fact, look at every statement I've made here, including the post itself. What I said is that I've always had a _feeling_ that free will is an illusion, based on everything I know about science. Now I'm simply telling you why I have come to terms with that fact.
that middle paragraph, what makes you say such cynical off-subject things? just because something is small that does not mean it isn't important, the movie men in black talks about that. I mean, what makes the rest of the universe so much better? sure it's big, but it's just a bunch of rocks and fire floating around in nothing and doing nothing in all that time. earth actually has real things happening and it is the only planet that we know of that does. you should not have let that bother you.
also, if you and me don't have free will, what would it look like if we did? and how would things be different in terms of making decisions?
This is gold. It's priceless.
The gold have a price; so its gold or priceless ?? Chose one .. ʷᵃⁱᵗ
It was predetermined that I watch this video and leave this comment.
this isn't hard to underastand. so why are so many people not able to handle it?
***** your totally off the ball here. Criminals are still held accountable for their actions even if they have no free will. If a person commits a violent crime then that person is dangerous and needs to be dealt with, not just pardoned because they don't have free will.
The idea of responsibility is a hard concept to get in your head when taking away free will. Responsibility doesn't go away, and if someone fucks up because they are an asshole then they need to be dealt with accordingly.
Lack of free will doesn't negate bad people. You still get the psychos and thugs, nothings changed... but fully aware of this there is no hate, only fear.
Glenifir The Great Here's a way to think about crime and punishment without free will. They both don't matter. The criminal couldn't do anything to stop himself from committing the crime because all is predetermined, and the society that punished said criminal couldn't do anything else because all is predetermined.
Everything is meaningless, life has no direction or purpose, we're all just clumps of matter suspended in a void crashing into each other, and every single notion about the human experience is a delusion. So there you go.
There is an upside to all this though. Sam Harris is so ridiculously and completely wrong, on just about every claim that he makes in this video.
Sean Gibbons umm... life definetly has direction, even if it'as just evolution.
Glenifir The Great So you believe in free will too
Sean Gibbons um. no. you obviously don't understand evolution.
I could never reconcile that if we had free will, how could things be predestined??? Glad others saw this glitch in religions also!👍
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
@@jeffforsythe9514 😂😂😂
@@jeffforsythe9514 Stop trolling!🙄
Coming to this conversation for the first time has been very interesting as its made me think about how this concept gels with our morality. It's nice and refreshing that from a deterministic view, objective good morality seems to be the natural form of our brain if you believe that our free will isn't the guiding force of our own laws. This means that science is not only giving us the truth to our existence but the mere purpose of it as well.
What do you. Ean by giving us purpose as well? Do you that in having "no free will" then the average brain leans toward the purpose of "being good" and "becoming more advanced beings" ?
To return home to Heaven one needs truthfulness-compassion-tolerance and to suffer.........................falundafa
The truth is being good is its own reward. That was the basic message of both Jesus, Buddha and The Lord..............................falundafa
We are here to seek the Divine and to become spiritually enlightened. Falun Dafa shows the Way.
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
I believe there are some fundamental issues with Sam's philosophy on this topic.(what I have understood from this vid,only a humble opinion of mine.)
1st: He believes that freedom to make choices isn't free will because they are only consequences of your previous environment and experiences but that is not completely correct when i see this as our choices shape our future actions and environment and experience in some degree not completely but to some extent.
2nd: He demonstrated that we cannot control what to think next. yes, in an instances i cannot control what to think next but in a long period of you can control yout thoughts too by making of now all these books about converting your negative thoughts into positive aren't all useless (you can read them and practice it by your own self that they aren't useless)😅
i think its all about definition, the freedom to make choices now is what can be defined as "free will" to some extent
My mind is blown! Excellent presentation
Life is all about karmic retribution.
What debate was Sam talking about at the beginning? Can I find the debate on RUclips?
RicoSeattle I'm just answering because I wanna know too
ruclips.net/video/G6jhG5Lxb-k/видео.html
Best case for lack of free will I’ve ever heard. And I’m only a third of the way through. - Well done bro’, superb reasoning.
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
To give into the natural man, is to be a robot controlled by emotions.
But to do the right thing when tempted to do wrong, is free will.
God created everyone with the ability to choose the right thing, regardless of the situation.
@@hunter_w
I used to think our actions were emotional responses only to our lot.
However, by becoming born again, God gives us a new heart and we know our sins are made clean and we can learn to discern the right path from the wrong one.
Satan waits at the door and deceives those who do not harken to the voice of the Lord. But all who listen to the word of God and find Jesus and believe in Him, shall have everlasting life.
Sam is such a great thinker and speaker..
Life is all about karmic retribution.
17:20.. If I can predict what you are going to do, a few seconds in advance, does that really mean that you don't have free will? This inference defies logic.
Can totally hear Michael Shermer’s distinct laugh all throughout the funny bits of this talk! Lol. Love it!
I pretty much agree but isn't consciousness something we experience the world with, rather than what we are?
Like when he was talking about thought controlling what we think..we think with our brains and project that into consciousness where we experience it, just because we experience our thoughts later than when we think them doesn't mean it's not us thinking them. Like maybe we live (experience life) a second in the past and maybe our train of thought arrives in our consciousness a bit later to get a more arranged thought or something like that.
People with mental illnesses, neurological disorders, and others become consciously and subjectively aware of exactly what Sam is describing. The obsessive and negative thought patterns that appear to arise from nowhere, do just that, and constantly.
The brain is like the cockpit of an airplane and the soul is the pilot...To expand our consciousness and spiritual wisdom, we all need a great teacher.....................falun dafa
@jeff forsythe No such thing as a soul, not an ounce of proof for it.
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
lmfao i swear to god i was thinking Cairo! AMAZING video!!!
The implications of this, if the scientific community does embrace it fully, are indeed very powerful with the potential impact for a lot of things: psychology, philosophy, education, interpersonal relationships, and particularly the justice system... I don't like how much I agree with what he's said, because I can imagine a sort of dystopian future, where any violent criminal could plead "not guilty by lack of free will" or something along those lines, AND actually be a free man regardless of how vile his crimes were. I have the same limitation most common people have: we can identify a problem, maybe it's causes and effects, but we can't figure out a solution...
So, I propose to anyone reading this, particularly those who have exceptional critical-thinking skills like Sam Harris: how can we circumvent the potential problems with accepting free will as an illusion? I may have some solution in the future if I think about it for long enough, but at this time, I've got nothing.
TLDR; I agree that free will is more of an illusion than what society generally accepts, but I have no idea how to prevent or stop the negative impacts it could have on society, particularly the justice system.
@smeeself That is an excellent point you make, I actually feel a bit reassured after reading that, so thank you very much!
If I'm being honest with myself though, I still feel an emotional reaction that makes me not compassionate toward violent criminals at all, even while accepting that every thought and action is essentially predetermined... It's funny, something akin to cognitive dissonance. I understand that 'X-person' only did 'X-crime' as if pre-programmed to do so, but... I can't help but hate those people who hurt innocent people and animals. I suppose empathy and compassion are sort of like mental muscles that can be exercised? Then again, they might just be things that are hard-wired for each individual, however strong or weak they are in that area...
I apologize for going off on a tangent, but thank you once again for your insight!
@smeeself HA! I love your analogy at the end there. Very well-said my friend! I wish you all the best as well. 🤝😃
What a breath of fresh air to read some comments with exchanging thoughts with respect! I wish comments were more like this
I have arterial sclerosis and blood doesn't circulate very well in my legs. I still have to walk everywhere I go. I pace myself. I walk until my legs hurt too much to tolerate and become stiff. I choose to stop. If I try to keep going (I have) then there comes a point when my legs simply won't move. I stop. I don't choose to, I have to.
I love how it takes him an hour to drink half of that tiny bottle of water...
His choice. :-p
So, that's what you got out of this lecture?
@@The22on lmfao
That’s what you took away from this?
It's made out of icebergs.
Dead baby seals.
The hands of 3rd world children.
'consciousness is the fact that something is happening'
This was amazing! I learned so much and this information has fundamentally changed my world view.
What did you learn?
You remain aware and eventually you become quite capable of choosing what thoughts to ignore and which ones to take to heart, free will. We all have Divine souls and flesh bodies. Our souls are immortal and reincarnate. Life is so much more complex than our parents just having sex, believe me, God Blessed me and His wonderful new practice Falun Dafa explains creation, trust me please and take a look.
I hope the people who think the lack of free will means they can do anything illegal and expect no punishment because they had no choice in doing what they did will realise that the police, judges and juries had no choice in prosecuting them and sending them to prison.
People are sent to prison to protect society from the bad choices they make, not to reform them.
free will really makes no sense but almost everyone thinks that we have it and live like we do lol. i wonder what society would be like if we all no longer believed in 'free will'
tru dat
lolthatsnotswag Freewill being an illusion could have darling consequences. People would be freed from the bondage of responsibility, and guilt. However, the removal of that illusion in a society that is willfully [be it free or not] destructive would be devastating to Human, including all else not involved in politics, religion and institutions [PRI]. If the lack of will should lead that society to be cohesive [by random arrangement, like the body and earth, for instance] then the idea is beautiful, and you would not really need to go on about the idea in that scenario, as it is [would be] already happening. The PRI abuse the natural matrix of freewill, restricting it and redefining it at whim. And were the idea that freewill is an illusion to take hold of mentality, but not reality, especially not of PRI, then the ramification would be devastating, for PRI can carry on ''unwillfully'' doing not nice things. In short the ''freewill'' prescribed by PRI are not members of what ever lack of free will there naturally is, they are but bodies that makes whatever lack of freewill, as Harris puts it, even less freer, by prescribing additional bad-drugs. In total, there is freewill, and there is not freewill. As far as we can see, move, evidence and live-by, there is Freewill. There is no Freewill because we are programmed to be good. If we are not good, there is Freewill. And where there is Freewill and we are not good, it is part of the freeness in that our free-will to make things corrected.
i don't think i understand :L
hahaha
When he says "you didn't pick your parents" I can't help to think that we actually did, in a weird way. The main objective of all living creatures is to pass their genes into the next generation and our bodies (somatic cells) have evolved to choose the best available sexual partner in order to help our genes (carried by our germ cells) survive. So in a sense our parents germ cells did choose each other, and those germ cells still live in ourselves (just with slightly different alleles). Does that makes sense? It's kind of difficult to explain in a youtube comment.
lol I get it and it's hilarious (not in a mocking way, it's just funny to think about it 😂)
I didn't ask to be Born' maybe I did I don't remember?
@@herminepursch2470 exactly. I didn't even remember writing this comment 2 years ago 😂 Maybe we asked to be born
Thank you sharing. When he is sweet and kind it is almost like an spiritual experience. For that I admire him.
Can’t blame you, you did not CHOOSE to admire him
Life is all about karmic retribution.
The real question would be: if we can't think about a thought before we think it, would it ever be possible that some other life form can instead think autonomously of every thought generated in their brain? Cause if that's not possible, we can say that we have "free will", in the sense that we are the most free species in the universe. Otherwise, we are just as free as other animals, with only the illusion of freedom.
In which sense would we then be the "most free" species in the universe? I would grant that we would be the - currently known - most conscious and most intelligent being in the sense that we have not yet encountered a being more conscious or more intelligent than us. But this does in no way have any Weingut with regards to freedom, at least not in my understanding of what freedom is.
At 28:00 he says "Where is the freedom in doing what one wants, when one's wants are the product of prior causes which one can not inspect and therefore could not choose and one had absolutely no hand in creating?"
I have to insist that he show how one's conscious thoughts have no influence on the subconscious. Saying that because we don't appear to have control over every aspect of our brains means there's no one in control is just biased opinion and without corroborating evidence. My subconscious receives data from my senses (else how could I dream of having dinner with my wife?). It also receives data from the conscious portion of my brain ( how could it not?). So Harris's premise (that we have absolutely no hand in creating the conditions that go into making a decision) are as false as can be.
You're continuing a futile regress: you inherit your mind from your environment, which is determined; subsequent feedback loops are likewise determined, in turn. Your thoughts, which you don't control, influence further thoughts (which you also don't control).
Alex Spevak I think what is futile is being desperate to explain out of existence - the most wondrous part of being human.
ExtantFrodo2 What is the use of pretense, no matter how wondrous?
Agreed
Since I have been about 8 years old, I have seen ALL of these ideas as nothing but obvious. What really freaks me out is that the vast majority of humans do not, and never would unless someone told them. THAT is f'n terrifying!
I've been thinking about this for 6 years. I was just a teenager when this idea literally popped up into my mind. I thought wait a sec, we're the result of only our genes and external inputs so how can I be held responsible for my actions. I thought I'd solved the problem once and for all. But then a worrying realization occurred to me: if all that goes on in our minds is either due to cause and effect or chance, then this thought of mine of considering everything that goes on in my mind the result of either external causes or chance is itself due to either external causes or chance, hence invalid. Because I could just as well "happen" to have a different idea, and there'd be no way of differentiating between the two.
I had the exact same thing happen.
Except the fact that it's part of determinism or random chance doesn't make the realization itself invalid, because the decisions you make and what policies support changes on whether or not you think someone is the ultimate arbiter of their fate. The way to differentiate between the two is following the rules of logic. If you had a different idea, you'd just be wrong.
And you're held responsible for your actions not because you ultimately chose who you are, but because who you are might be dangerous to yourself and others. That's why I also tend 100% towards rehabilitative justice, not one that is based on punishment and vengeance. Because that idea doesn't work without free will.
@@Luftgitarrenprofi I totally agree about the second part of your statement. I don't see, however how logic itself can be "saved" in a world without free will. I mean to me, accepting that free will doesn't exist implies a very radical form of epistemological nihilism from which logic is not exempt. Of course, to get to this conclusion, as soon as I say "implies" I'm implicitly assuming logic can be trusted. So basically it's a sort of paradox, I have no idea how to solve this. Maybe it's impossible to solve. Because in order for you to even discuss this idea, you have to postulate that the idea is false.
It's crazy! You have something like:
1. if A is false, then A it's true;
2. If A is true, then the last statement has no bearing on truth.
Where A is the statement "free will doesn't exist"
I can't even word this properly.
Buy i hope to learn more about this in the future, maybe I can get to a philosophically satisfying answer...
@@SteveRayDarrell logic can exist without free will. We can agree a computer doesn't have free will. Yet it can solve logic problems.
@@jorgebernal8669 Yes but the logic that a computer works with still came from us humans... So if our logic was faulty to start with, then a computer is just performing a bunch of meaningless operations.
Quantum determinism adds strength to Sam's idea a an ever flowing stream of consciousness and sense of self determination and free will. The universe began from quantum events and too are now set in motion.
The brain is like the cockpit of an airplane and the soul is the pilot.
We all have free will and God respects that gift and that is why He has permitted us to allow this planet to become demonic but no more, the Apocalypse is upon us................falundafa