Just finished "Determined". Not only is it hugely illuminating, but it is beautifully written, and so a pleasure to read. Highly recommended, an essential book.
@@NowheartI get it. It’s wild! I’m an 8 on the ACE’s. I have a bunch of mental differences. I’ve sought out all the cures. How this is affecting me is blowing my mind! Makes so much sense.
I would say the opposite is true. The brain mostly receives information and stimuli but Dr. Sapolsky is a reductive materialist so it's not surprising he puts primacy to the mind. I'm surprised he didn't say "An open brain is a ....😉
@@Frederer59 To each his own, it's all unknown. "The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world." Terence McKenna The three Dan Tians or Elixir Fields are areas of the body that correspond to what the ancient Taoists describe as the Three Cinnabar Fields. They were considered to be the palaces of the Gods in the body. The maintenance of freely circulating qi through these areas was said to insure that the Gods would maintain residence in the body and enable the person to have a long and healthful life. If the circulation of qi became obstructed, the Gods would depart ensuring disease and an early death. These areas can also be interpreted as focal points of different physical and psychological functions of the body. The upper Dan Tian, located in the center of the forehead, corresponds to the physical functioning of the brain and sensory organs and to the psychological processes of thinking and contemplation. The middle Dan Tian, located in the center of the chest between the breasts, corresponds to the physical functions of respiration and the circulation of qi and blood. Psychologically it functions as the emotional and interaction center of the body. The lower Dan Tian, located in the lower abdomen between the navel and the public bone, corresponds to the physical functions of digestion, elimination and reproduction. Psychologically it functions as our sense of stability and balance and as the connection of our sexuality. It’s commonly known as the center of gravity, Hara or Tanden (in Japanese), energy center of the body or the second brain. In internal martial arts it is one of the most important areas in the body. Some studies have found that our cells functions like a battery, able to store electric charge. Taoists believe the human body is basically one big battery, made from millions of small ones. Some researchers have explained that conductivity on the skin and other parts of the body varies greatly and they are able to prove a higher conductivity at acupuncture points. All these recent scientific results back up some of the ancient beliefs such as the Qi channels, which are like wires that carry electric current, Qi vessels, being like capacitors which regulate the current or finally the real lower Dan Tian, which functions like a large battery that stores a charge and is able to provide an electromotive force and distribute Qi throughout the body. The lower Dan Tian has a similar structure to the brain, with the capacity for memory. They are connected through the spinal cord and the central nervous system, where electric conductivity is highest and resistance is lowest. They function almost as one unit. The lower brain can store bioelectricity and the mind that generates an idea creates an electromotive force (Qi) and leads it to the body for action.
@@Frederer59However, when one considers that sapiens lives by delusion and denial, we learn that our brain box just makes things up out of nothing coming from the outside world. We experience this all around us all the time every day. Half of the USA 🇺🇸 believes everything Trump says because their brains make it all up. Conspiracy theories are rife. Schizophrenia, delusions, voices speaking to us insude our heads, the false belief that America is a democracy. The machismo of testosterone-fuelled males, dreams, waking dreams, false memories, alien abductions, phantom limbs that one feels when the limb is non-existent, paranoia, entities standing behind us that aren't there, the taste of death, seannces, astrology, fortune tellers, magic acts, slight of hand, voice dubbing, and an infinite list on and on forever. Just ask the Mother Ship. We creare our own reality. Sure, stimulus enters the brain also. Both exist and it becomes complicated and more beautiful!
On a practical level, I think all of this boils down to compassion and empathy. It is incumbent on us who know free will to be illusory to treat those in less fortunate positions with compassion and do what we can to help them overcome the conditions they were born into. We should also exercise humility when we experience our own success.
Except that those so called "unfortunate" are usually unfortunate because they cannot overcome the conditions (if they can, they would not be in that position in the first place). It's nice to think compassionately. It's silly to think anything more than that is remotely achievable/
How can it be incumbent on you to treat people in a certain away? If you have no free will you can't do that. It can't be incumbent because you cannot be expected to do anything. Nor can you treat people with empathy and compassion. Or are at least you cannot choose to. It seems to me that you still do believe in free will on some level. Otherwise why are you still telling us that we should act in a certain way.
I don't have a choice but to feel motivated to improve my life after listening to Sapolsky. For me the most liberating thing is when *other* people understand that it is not your fault. I have a sense of "finally someone who gets it" when listening to him and I realize that not the entire world is cruel and unforgiving after all. It gives me hope.
You likely receive messages like this often, and it’s possible you won’t see this one, but I wanted to share something with you. You’ve been a tremendous source of inspiration for me to delve into the intricacies of the human brain and behavior. Thanks to your influence, I earned my bachelor’s degree and am now diligently pursuing my PhD in clinical psychology.
I recently read Robert Saltzman's books. When he proposed there was no free will i threw the book down and thought 'This is absurd!" Then I thought about it awhile and this huge weight fell off me! I let go of ALL guilt and shame for my past actions and thoughts and I forgave ALL who I felt had wronged me! It is SO freeing!
That's basically what they've known in the East for several thousand years. Most (if not all) east spiritual practices based primarily on noticing this cause-and-effect determinism and patiently trying to extricate yourself from this web. Like a photon that does not feel time, you will free yourself from determinism (karma) when you experience enlightenment. One of the liberating practices is the "middle way" approach, where one does not sit in either extreme exclusively, but in both at the same time, experiencing the paradox. And so in this sense, we have no free will (just listen to Sapkowski) and we have free will at the same time (just quiet down for a moment, focus on the present and there is not the slightest doubt that "free will" exists as such). Thinking that there is absolutely no free will, or that there is only free will and sometimes something will guide us, is dualistic thinking, only feeding neurosis. Try being in the paradox that there is no free will and that free will is, both at the same time. A funny thing will happen then.
One year before i tried my first Mr. Sapolsky Video and couldnt understand a word. Had not processed my knowledge and experience. So Im glad again to understand one year later what he is talking about. I love this steps in life when it makes Click. This moments keep me alive after a long period of frustration and resistance. By the way i went trough a long time of processing trauma and rejecting in privat and business-life. It took me 5 years to come in a positive state of mind and i hope it takes a good time before i fall again in this period of processing, depression, rejecting, ignoration, anxiety and frustration. Because now I feel like im in a Period of earning the fruits for this time. Or as the jewish-german-hungarian theatre-author Georbe Tabori once said. Happyness is when the pain decrease.
Determinism became obvious to me when I was 14 too. Everything Sapolsky says is so obvious and redundent to me. An easy test to reveal the pervasive nature of determinism in anyone's life is for a week write down every instance of free will you experience. Then watch this video again and see if that behavior stands the test of free will - Was there nothing that influenced or came before it? This goes all the way down to the flavor of ice cream or the flowers I choose. I see what preceeded everything on a day to day basis. And I feel liberated by determinism and am able to improve my life based on the learnings of determinism. Don't put yourself down. Take advantage of your strengths. Look at yourself without self-deception. Life keeps getting better.
@@moofano1538 Are you asking someone to identify every single influence which shaped them to behave the way they do, and how each of those shaped them? Seems unreasonable. People are shaped to be exactly what they become, by the circumstances they never got to choose or even understand.
@davon3384 Beliefs inform actions. Beliefs are caused, not chosen. Try this: choose to believe in determinism. If you fail to do so, you now understand that your beliefs are not things which are chosen, so, there is no "free will" involved in the formation of your beliefs. Else, you could choose to believe your feet are in fact made of delicious pudding, on a whim. If you succeed, that would be "the truth" to you. If one day you decide to eat your feet with a fork, reality will assert itself, and you will go "ouch, f***, I was wrong". Beliefs are caused by the influences which act upon you, not a "free will" separate from causation. Understanding a problem, is the first step in developing a solution. Hence; this discussion occurs. Participants have been brought to question things by their lives. Free will makes no sense without an appeal to magic or faith. The subjective experience of having individual agency, is subject to objective influences which act on people without consent. Taking action, is a product of the beliefs one if (*is) brought to hold, and subjectively, we feel we have choices, rather than feeling that we are acting as a product of causation. My 2cents.
I would argue that Free will in the way it is traditionally thought of is probably false, but if you really look deep enough, to the fabric of logic and the material world you will find (and physics has been struggling with this for ages) that the world is indeterministic. that 1+1 doesn't always equal 2.
For me this is the most empowering insight because it reinforces my own experience in the futility of “fighting against myself”. But I know the power of growing and influencing myself. I think the main message is that we can’t control ourselves. But “ourselves” is like a child inside of us that we have to educate and nurture and try our best and then watch them unfold and try their best.
The assertion that nobody has free will is only ever used to excuse bad behavior or destroy the agency of others. One must ask the purpose of a person's assertion. Free will is an absurdity to begin with. To be embodied as an entity capable of having a will is to have no free will. You can't even have a free will unless you have a distinction between "me" and "not me". Once you have that base distinction, you can't have free will anymore because you can't be both "me" and "not me" if you have any real distinction between the 2. It's a snake eating its own tail. An academic distinction that has no practical purpose other than to run an influence scheme for some social advantage -- political, interpersonal, etc. That's its only purpose: manipulation of the easily influenced. Why else would you assert the absence of any free will but to cause others to be more easily pushed in the direction of the will of others?
I’m an 8 on the ACEs test. I have a bunch of mental differences. I’m 45 and have sought after all the “cures.” These teachings have given me the most amazing insights and freedom.
This idea is, indeed, so liberating. I felt some physical lightness when I accepted it, thought it through. I realize that it may be a “bummer” for a lot of humans out there, and they sure have their reasons. But for me personally this idea IS helpful, and uplifting. Despite I went through depression, it doesn’t make me sad, rather the opposite. Just calm, even a bit happier. Thank you, Prof. Sapolsky
Hey Dr. I heard this theory of yours 7 years ago and it changed my life totally. After watching your HUMAN BEHAVIORAL BIOLOGY course on RUclips, I always tried to explain it to others. I might be no one but I am totally with you on this one and respect you a lot for your knowledge and share in increasing world’s level of literacy.
"Dad, I earned an A on my spelling test!" Dr. Sapolsky: "whoa, slow down kiddo, lets unpack what really happened. Earned is a presumptive word..." Hahaha I love this man, and even though his viewpoints were hard for me to accept at first, they've helped me grow into a kinder and more thoughtful person!!
Notice he is telling you what to conclude. “You don’t earn anything” don’t feel pride etc…. His conclusion is his purpose & “no free will” is his excuse. If my kid is “lucky” then my kid is “better” by nature and I’m not obligated to help anyone. But he doesn’t conclude that. Why not?
@@bryanutility9609 deserve as it is meant when people use it cannot exist because we are machines dictated by nature. That's why a person cannot deserve anything, because nothing is their doing (everything that happens, including all technology we create and so on is made by the Universe itself through us).
We always make decisions through the prism of the way our perception has been developed, realizing this a year ago as a 15 year old was not the best moment of my life, but at least now i am able to acknowledge the absurdness of this life and know that my feelings and thoughts are not me but rather i am the one experiencing them. Thanks for this video, i really love listening to Robert Sapolsky.
Yeah, anyone claiming that depression is a problem with the individual (e.g. an "imbalance of neurochemicals") doesn't understand how biology works. It really is just more complicated mechanical function. If I don't take care of my bicycle's needs for grease, air in the tires, a tight chain, evenly tightened spokes, etc., it won't function well. Same with our animal bodies. If we don't get our biological needs met, we malfunction. And because we are indeed more complicated than a bicycle, we malfunction in far more complex ways, based on both the specific deficiency of needs, and on our specific genetic programming. Fight, flight, freeze, and flow are all default functions of different brain/body types in us animals so we see folks react with anger (to others or themselves), or avoidance, or deep introspection, or hyper-creativity when stressed.
love Prof. Sapolsky. his lectures on YT are so fascinating. so 22:41 - i was looking at all the photos and my immediate reactions surprised me. Ellen made me mad cause of her Covid reaction to being trapped in her huge house. the Vanity Fair photo i had a low opinion of. i don’t like basketball, but that photo was incredible - the grace, the athleticism. and just beauty of that photo got to me - didn’t matter that it was basketball. the guy in the lower left was just boring - go away. the only other one i remember is Martin Luther King - that picture made me feel calm, someone good is in control, and also very sad. it was the best picture there. made me feel good about my gut reactions. so interesting. 🌷🌱
I've been deeply engrossed in the work of Robert Sapolsky lately, who I find to be a compassionate genius in the field of behavioral biology. His insights into the subconscious forces that shape our actions are truly enlightening. Yet, there's a dimension that seems to be missing from these formative theories. Sapolsky lays a foundation for understanding the deterministic elements of our behavior-how our past, down to the biological level, influences our present actions. But I can't help but think about the role of personal effort in transcending this programming. This idea presents the next frontier in our journey towards human enlightenment. What if, despite the deterministic nature of cause and effect as it applies to the human psyche, we possess the capacity to consciously break away and redefine our path? The notion that everything is predetermined could render our attempts for self-improvement futile. However, I believe there's more to the story. Consider this: psychology, along with the intricate task of mapping the human mind, is not an exact science. In my view, it's composed of 88% philosophy, 10% educated conjecture, and a modest 2% of hard fact. This isn't to diminish the field but to acknowledge the vast uncharted territory that still lies before us-territory we must bravely explore if we are to unlock the full potential of the human spirit.
"can't help but think" or can't help feel? By all means speculate and hypothesize, but the mounting objective evidence supports there being no free will and believers in free will rely on intuition. (If you have free will, then how much do you have? How confident are you that what you think you do freely today will not be biologically explained tomorrow?)
8 месяцев назад
Exactly. He talks as though walking down a road forces you because of probabilities. But we can take steps and influence the probabilities ourselves. But then you can always argue the circle of... well that was influenced. Sure it was, but you can't perfectly predict it either.
8 месяцев назад
@@sjoerd1239Enough to influence the future by changing patterns. Also a bit caused by a lack of knowledge of the future.
"Consciously break away and redefine our path"? Using the consciousness determined by all the predeterminations and factors described in this video, how would that be wresting control back from the physical world's step by step instructional code it is autoproducing to generate itself? Where does the "us" that is "us" begin, end, or truly exist? I'm not even that knowledgeable of the theory in tis video but after watching it once I can tell that the data he presents precludes your wishful wording. That all said, we, as the One, have free will to exist, and the evidence that it exists is a closed loop of query-observation; ergo within that system of will-within-existence the mechanisms (physical reality and adjacent paradigms) are accomplishing the Unified and Original Intentions of the One. The One is eternal, but from Their point of view, They just got here...
The problem with this kind of argument is very clear: all the things that constitute the free will, like the "redefine our path", are merely a combination of the prior experience, events, circumstances, genetics, etc, etc. None of them are free to choose. At any given moment, you might think you have choices, but there is that one choice destined to be chosen with/without you knowing about it. It's perhaps will but definitely not "free" will.
Your book was totally challenging for me but I got through it and I was so glad you wrote it. You thoroughly made your case. As a layman, I really appreciated your explanations, and all of the references to theatre. You made me laugh out loud a bunch of times. Thank you for taking five years to write the book. Well worth the effort. Looking forward to watching the evolution of these ideas in social practice.
14 Yo! At 11 I just thought that everyone was crazy. By high school I thought everything was absurd. In my twenties I realized that my parents did all the heavy lifting. In my thirties I lost the rements of trust. In my fifties I lost the ability to care. In my sixties I lost my mind as the result of prescribed medications. At 72 I realized that I did not live in a perodic universe, that we live in a aperodic universe. We are not a static slice of biological reality, we are in motion. We have free will because there is no other choice but to have it. We have never been here before, and yet, here we are! What are the odds? As a biologist pretty high, but as a mystic I realize that every single moment contains the opportunity to zig, rather that zag. To make a choice! Making that choice involves time! We are pond scum that makes choices! A biological sensor array, a reality probe! Programed to make choices! YRMV! You can not reduce your way to the moment of choice, but we all, everyone of us, make it. There is nothing to be depressed about, everything is OK
Always loved the Jacques the Fatalist and his Master. Sapolsky proved what I always believed. Don’t be too proud for who you are and don’t judge others
Believing in no free will is way more depressing and not liberating at all for those who are not that privileged. Even if we just feel unlucky (and not depressed) for not being privileged at all, still being poor, not smart, etc. is painful. no matter what, we suffer the suffering stuff that happens to us. Only just thinking about the poor guys who lived and died in a bad way and couldn't do anything to not be like that (because they hadn't any choice) is completely depressing.
Because they most definitely aren’t aware. The people who are likely to find this video are more likely to agree and be open to it. A person committing crime and being in and out of prison is never going to see this video, and may never even understand his arguments if they were never given a proper education.
I am lucky to have come across this idea as a 17-18 years old reading Plotinus's Enneads, albeit expressed rather covertly in there. It has shaken my world view since then. I still remember sitting in the room, observing the thoughts popping up in the mind and backtracing them to their source, realizing how accidental free associations they all are to the extent knowable.
You are Lucky indeed !! Super Lucky in the fact that you were reading Plotinus's Enneads at such a young age.. . . .. I was reading Van Halen Lyrics and Marvel Comics.
Interestingly, this is liberating and reminds me of Biblical teachings of being humble, it’s G-d not I, we are powerless over the very things discussed here. Thank you for your work, I have a clearer understanding of others and myself. Not without internal resistance on some of what you said here. I can’t argue, that this data, information brings me peace and comfort. I sure hope we utilize this science to continue evolving forward.
Thank you Robert. I look forward to your book! You've helped me raise 3 wonderful daughters! Its been rough at times and grand at times! Loved "Behave" Again, thank you!! Its so good to see you!!!
Thank you, Prof. Sapolsky, for sharing with me a coriscating constellation of inputs that has significantly heightened my consciousness and provided me with a goodly measure of stimuli that have aided in expanding my capacity to deepen the depth of my compassion for both myself and for other human beings, for other animals. Blessings. Peace, Love, Granola. 🕊 ☮️
I've been talking about this in the realm of awareness for a while. When you change the circumstance by allowing yourself to meditate, you shift your brain state. I've done this with blood pressure too - your circumstances can include a meta level of awareness, a now state, which has all kinds of feedback all the way down.
I can't be more thankful to Mr Sapolsky for the invaluable knowledge he imparts. And thanks to Stanford, I watched his whole lectures on youtube two times over. But I still can't convince myself that everything is determined/Newtonian. I tend to imagine life and the universe determined only in the sense of its randomness, like a Mandelbrot set. It's as if Mathematics is a form of radiation coming from an upper layer of Platonic reality, and we are the molecular functions of its search space. Hence I think the nature of reality is more of a stochastic substance, that is: "having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically but may not be predicted precisely."
Professor Sapolsky, As I have said in the comments of a couple other videos., please keep talking about this. The world needs to know this, I need the world to know this. I have been of the same exact opinion for 40 years, myself, and waiting as long for a Neuroscientist to write this. It's been hard, neigh, near impossible, knowing this and trying to live by it, in this world. I have been professing this same message for as long, whenever the topic comes up. I get the impression that you are trying to get this message out also as you have done this video, which will affect the sales of your already, relatively inexpensive book. I might be assuming too much here though. I first came to this conclusion when I was taking biology classes and learning computers, so my mind was heightened ion these 2 areas. I realized that all the arguments in biology revolved around Nature v. Nurture, in its many variations, but all of them were only about these 2 forces being involved.. with any evidence. So, logically, if these are the only 2 forces then there is no door in for free will. Therefore, humans do not have free will. If you happen to see my comments at all, I will be responding to this video with my own thoughts, experiences, and perspectives which may be of interest to you as I Have believe in putting into practice what I have learned and have done so. Which is where the hard part comes in as it does not play well and most humans cannot handle that level of truth yet and it has forced me to back off a little.. and, like you, I am still a product of my programming. You talk about plasticity and how experience has a dramatic effect in changing your brain through this plasticity. That goes farther than just experience. For example, just pure thought can do the same thing. I used to smoke cigarettes. I wanted to stop. So, I picked out as many reasons for stopping as I could, the good (wanting to see my daughter grow up, for example), the bad (the dame it does to the body) etc etc., and I repeated those thoughts and tying them into what that will mean for my life and I repeated those thought over and over for about 24 hours and, after that, I quit smoking, in one day, and never had a single craving for a cigarette. And I can repeat this, at will. I will continue to comment to this video with more of my thoughts and experiences on this topic and, if you happen to read this, and are curious. I would love to talk about this more and am available. I think people can also use to hear more of the benefits of this knowledge to help temper the resistance to it.
I slugged my way through Behave and found it both interesting and illuminating. I was not convinced that there is no free will. It still seems to me that so called free will depends to some degree on consciousness and that it is necessary to define both in ways that humans, or at least educated humans, can agree upon. To me it is obvious that what anyone is today is dependent upon what has happened to them and how they have interacted with their environments in the past. But the environments we experience are somewhat random. I realize this doesn't disprove the absence of free will. Even if I accept that there is no free will, I don't think it won't alter most of my behavior - which is interesting. If I were young, I think cognitive neuroscience would be a fascinating field to explore - that or epigenetics or the world of microbes or...
Hard to comprehend that both free will and determined reality can exist at the same time unless you are a Buddhist or a Muslim or free from limited models of logic we've been trained in over and over. and giving examples of details that can never prove or disprove is pretty simplistic thinking but then we've seriously overrated Stanford and its like. Simple minds cannot concieve deep truths only superficial details, all he speaks is, of course, true and yet he too has the gift or curse of free will too! The majesty of existance that they both exist simultaneousely. Dissapointing for a so -called professor of higher education.
@@umbombCompatibilism is completely nonsensical. I believe people have this viewpoint which is contradictory because they emotionally want to believe that they have free will and our subjective feeling is that we do have free will. I am 100% sure that hard determinism is the reality. It is a completely obvious fact because all other viewpoints involve some kind of nonsensical magic. Feel free to argue against me. I think Sam Harris gets it completely but Daniel Dannet makes no sense in this regard.
"Simple minds cannot concieve deep truths only superficial details" When you supply a peer reviewed body of work delineating your own ideas, perhaps then you get the right to call his mind "simple" ... "so -called professor of higher education" Clearly triggered.
Actually, simple logic can indeed create a model of reality where everything is deterministic and there is free will, because free will is just a categorization of simple vs. complex systems. Like the difference between whole numbers and prime numbers. Primes are effectively unpredictable in when they occur next, while whole numbers are always just N+1. Free will could just be prime numbers when compared to whole numbers.
@@JB.zero.zero.1 Everyone with a brain has the "right" to say whatever they experience. No appeal to authority needed. You have the right to think whatever you think, given to you by the universe. Same with everyone else with a brain. Even if your brain is simpler than others' brains.
Okay, so I basically buy Sapolsky's thesis. However, I do not accept his conclusion that there is no place for reward and punishment. It's not because I believe that the recipient deserves reward or punishment, but rather that reward and punishment provides an important feedback loop. If I see that one behavior is rewarded and another behavior is punished, that contributes to the person I am and influences the behavior I choose. As a result, I'm more likely to choose the behavior that will be rewarded. In fact, at one point in his talk, Sapolsky makes the obervation that if someone is well behaved, they are rewarded. That makes the person more likely to be well behaved so they can receive the reward.
There is a role for an incentive and merit approach based on ability for a particular role for the common good. There is no place for reward and punishment. Our current practices are unsatisfactory. Your feedback loop is no excuse for treating people as if they deserved a reward or punishment because that would be undeserved reward and punishment.
And isn’t his point you had no control over whether you received that reward/punishment? If your focus is rather on whether you dole out the plus or minus then that again is dependent on how your wired. And it isn’t there is no place for these behaviors, it’s just not relevant to who is deserving of praise/demonizing. I think, could be wrong, but I think he frames it differently than you’re implying.
No Freewill and a case for punishment, rewards and responsibility. I'm not sure how common or what literature has to say about this but I believe I'm a compatablist of a different kind. One where I think no free will is still compatible with a degree of responsibility along with reward and punishment. My thoughts below. The concept of responsibility can be viewed through the lens of both genetic predispositions and environmental influences, embodying the intricate dance between nature and nurture. At its core, responsibility might be perceived not as a mere trait one is born with, but as a quality cultivated through the interplay of inherent neurological capabilities and the external stimuli provided by one's surroundings. In the realm of human behavior, the notion of freewill often treads on contentious ground, suggesting a degree of autonomy that may not fully account for the underlying mechanisms at work. It can be argued that our actions and decisions are significantly shaped by a combination of innate brain functions and the series of rewards and punishments meted out by our social environment. These elements of positive and negative reinforcement serve not just as tools for behavior modification but as pivotal forces in the development of what we refer to as responsibility. This perspective aligns with the view that our choices may be less about the exercise of freewill and more about the outcomes of a sophisticated process of conditioning. Throughout this process, individuals are subject to various forms of reinforcement that, while beyond their control, serve to mold their behavior in ways that foster individual autonomy and societal cohesion. This is particularly potent during the formative years, when the brain's plasticity renders it more amenable to such influences, though the capacity for change persists, albeit to a lesser extent, into adulthood. Understanding responsibility through this framework suggests that the concept does not hinge so much on free choice or agency but on the capacity of the brain to learn and adapt to its environment through reinforcement learning. In this light, the role of rewards and punishments transcends mere disciplinary tactics; they are essential components in the cultivation of responsible behavior, orchestrated not by conscious selection but by the very nature of human neurobiology and the structure of social interactions. Therefore, responsibility might best be conceptualized as the product of a complex and dynamic process, one that intricately weaves together the threads of biological predisposition and experiential learning. It is through this tapestry that individuals emerge as beings capable of navigating the moral and practical demands of their environments, not solely through the illusion of choice, but as the culmination of the countless influences that shape their existence. In essence, although the concept of freewill may be contentious, the practical application of responsibility, along with the mechanisms of rewards and punishments, retains its validity and utility. However, it's crucial to acknowledge the nuanced interplay between these concepts and the inherent limitations tied to individual cognitive capacities. This suggests a need for a more refined approach to understanding and deploying these concepts, recognizing that they are influenced by factors beyond one's absolute control. The essence of responsibility thus lies not in the assertion of pure autonomy, but in the recognition of the complex, interconnected forces that shape human behavior and decision-making.
@@nodelayfordays8083 Free will is the ability to do things, other than we do them, in the circumstances that we do them. We behave as if we have free will. If we are determined, then we do not have free will. That has repercussions on how we should behave. Redefining free will to suit how we behave is a cop out, misleading and deceptive.
Yeah but there is no deserve in a world of free will. It'll probably be centuries before we see a society that understands determinism and treats a negative behavior in a clinical way, same way we no longer burn witches, epileptic seizures were considered demonic positions, so on.
Great lecture! Thanks again for the insight. If we had true freewill, the “computer algorithms” that predict what you buy or don’t buy, how you vote or don’t vote, how you act or don’t act, etc…. Would be useless. You are an amalgamation of every thing that has come before. Big data and information theory in a round about way, shows that there is no free will. 😊
I don't agree with that. Just because a lot of behavior is predictable (by computer software), that doesn't in and of itself mean there is 0% free will
There are people lucky enough to have control over them selfs. What I mean by that, a good sense of their feelings, a good recognition and true (not warped in any way) sense of what is “good” or “bad” is, I can’t help but think, if we had “free will” would there ever be mistakes or evil. I always found it’s interesting that we truly think any individual chooses to be “evil” or “good” or even as simple as a “asshole” or “nice”. People just are, literally everyone I’ve ever met just is. Anyone I’ve seen change it just happens. I include my self in this notion. I’ve noticed any changes about my personality have just happened. There is the story my brain tells me about the change the what I did “wrong” and the what I did “right” and how hard or not hard I was trying. I can’t help but ask myself can I truly trust an organ that is designed by nature for survival, selfishness and self preservation. And what else is nature but brutal.
8 месяцев назад
And yet as an individual I don't buy everything or much of anything despite targeted ads. It shows population trends not individual.
8 месяцев назад
@@theofficialness578Interesting because I've lived my life with the choice of who I would be. And at 40 I've made it happen as I saw fit, to what I considered good. Perhaps it's a limitation that prevents you from understanding those making a choice or some other hidden variable of them not agreeing from ground up premises.
Of course I might be wrong, but this is not really what he is arguing about. At least not necessarily every single minor detail of one's decisions is predetermined.
As incredibly informative & insightful this was, I’m only part way through & got emotional thinking about peers & loved ones of mine, whose genetic & environmental confluence was put into incredible perspective for me. It saddens me that for some that I know, they had no chance (they passed away- their socialization was incredibly depressing). Sapolsky, thank you for sharing information that allows us to better understand the nuances of one another where we would otherwise cast judgement. I hope we as a society can co-opt this information in a way that safeguards & protects, as well as minimize harm to others navigating.
Hello all! Been reading some of the criticism here and I like the points some people are making. I've also been troubled by the notion of lack of free will, entitlement, etc (being one of the lucky ones). I still don't think there's free will in the sense in which we're all brought up to think about it, but there are certain subtleties that helped me frame it better (and hopefully explain it to others, including my kids when they're old enough to worry about such things). Our will doesn't follow "us", we follow our will. There is an us in the picture, we're not puppets. Will is free in the sense that it's not pre-determined, i.e. we cannot accurately predict it and that's because of environment, chance events, chaos, Brownian motion, whatever you wanna call it (nobody could tell you exactly what you'd be doing at 9:17 tomorrow morning, even if they had full data on all the atoms in your body). Lack of "free will" is a scary prospect and we've already seen examples in the comments here of how that can be paralyzing (is there any point in doing anything? I'm going to choose what I wouldn't normally, it's depressing, etc). So it makes sense that with the evolution of self-consciousness, we have also evolved a sense of free will. And it's very tough to think about the lack of it and of course it's depressing and paralyzing. What now? You don't have to think about it every day. But think about it next time you decide to judge someone harshly, or fight with your partner about how they "always" do this or that, or your child because they are being "naughty" or an adversary that's set to make your life miserable. This very comment is not a result of free will, but it is very much a result of circumstance (having a high sense of righteousness, being fortunate enough to have caring parents and a high enough education, accepting a job where I met a colleague who recommended Sapolsky, reading some of his books, and binging on youtube). However what this comment might do is, by someone's chance encounter with it, sway their path ever so slightly. And this is how it goes. What is the net effect? We are all gaining more knowledge, empathy, understanding. We are evolving (no surprise there). So I'm not too worried about it. I'm fortunate enough to be stuck with "me", a mostly homeostatic individual, and I'm loving the ride that my will is giving me!
It sounds like you think we have free will, but our free will is very limited. It is not clear. Our will doesn't follow us and we don't follow our will. It is an integral part of us. Our will is a state of the moment that has consequences. You would need much more than full data on your body. You'd need all the information about the environment that could affect you up until that time as well and the capacity to analyse it. However, that we cannot predict it does not mean that it is unpredictable, and unpredictability does not mean undetermined. I don't know how this will change the scary bit, but if there is no free will, then there never was.
People confuse determinism with fatalism. The universe is not set in stone, but it is still determined by infinite causal factors over which humans have no influence.
For there is no free will, but thinking makes it so. A similar idea as : “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” . (Hamlet) Amazing!
Not really. Just cos you think something is real, doesnt make it real. Thinking that you are a genius doesnt make you one. Thinking that you are Superman doesnt make you fly.
The slides were a pleasant addition. The pups were noticeably (and curiously) absent, and I was hanging on to hope we'd get to hear the clock go off, but things turned out fine despite neither of those things happening. 😆
I understand his point. However there are decisions I make in my daily life that involve FREE WILL as I have different possibilities to choose. Our experiences are everything!!!!
I recommend to relisten, but with an open mind this time. And maybe even a 3rd time. It's hard to gras concepts that are alien. Do you know anybody who decides to go into depression? Into lead or mercury poisoning? Even foods alter your mood which alter decisions. You are not in control of anything even if you have the illusion of control of many things
@@a.randomjack6661I think an easy misconception with his point is that since there is no free will our autonomy is basically already been determined in a glass ball it’s not that everything you will ever do is completely pre determined like in a fantasy movie but there is precedence in every choice,action or thought it’s not a line more of a cone of predeterminedness is what I got from a different video of his on the same topic so my choice on ice cream while still in the cone of precedence is STILL MINE not a completely predetermined outcome (just tell me what u think of my point instead of saying to rewatch lmao 😂)
Well thank you so much for the video. But I don’t think I’m one of the lucky ones just because I listened to the video. My life is shit , I’m broke, never had a gf, etc… But thank you for the lecture it made a lot of sense to me. 😊
Dr robert what do you think of the power of belief? If someone believes in free will won't their life be generally better than those who don't? Wouldn't they be more open to hard things? because they can get out of their comfort zone and better themelves? and aside from the power of belief if a depressed individual learns about the fact that there is no free will, sure thing it'll help with the guilt (that they couldn't have pulled themselves out of it and that if they've tried to kill themselves it's not their fault it's just a defeciency in some neurottansmitters and so on) but how does that make their life better? knowing the fact that they turned out that way as a result of all the antecedent causes, now wouldn't that put them at a disadvantage their whole life? I think it does them worse to know there is no free will, am i wrong? I mean which is an easier case for a therapist to treat? Someone with depression who believes in free will or someone with depression who knows it's bullshit?
Belief (in say a God, heaven, hell, whatever else) is a evolutionary adaptation, it's the ability for an organism to delude itself about reality which benefit it in survival and reproduction (even if the things it believe are completely false).
No god no truth what you say doesnt matter god obviously exist as a manifestation of the will to power and ultimately is more potent than the self destructive atheism of science.@@Danuxsy
I agree that determinism will “determine” your starting point and that likely has an outsized effect on life, but that pure chance/randomness is understated. At a cellular level, decisions need to be made with information that is incomplete or misrepresented (e.g. confounding undetectable forces) and these circumstances generate unique/indeterminite futures. Even as a thought experiment where you had a perfect computer that could quantify all possible inputs, there are events that are purely equivalent probabilitistically and each occurance stacking to create a potentially infinite number of futures. I suppose you could claim that the evolutionary past of an organism will still precondition a decision one way, but I think it’s probably brittle to claim that nowhere along the way there were/are arbitrary decisions (e.g. some such circumstance that creates indecision). Advancing this perspective, we often have to make decisions that appear similar in that the corresponding futures are unknown to us where these choices are purely guesses (because we are not perfect computers), but nonetheless “ours”. To this point, if Sapolsky interprets these junctions as part of Determinism then I can’t disagree, but I believe it dismisses the agency of a random choice; the past cannot infallibly provide us with sensible guidance to novel situations. I believe that this unknowing is at the core of free will. I’m not sure if this is what Sapolsky alluded to as chaos, but it seems dismissive nonetheless because life is chaotic.
Sapolsky, by taking a neuroscientific approach, is overcomplicating things massively. The argument is very simple and very obvious. Everything is cause and effect and nothing is outside of that. Free will is magical. Randomness does not exist. It is just unexplained cause and effect. Think about rolling dice. It is random from a human perspective because there are so many factors that impact the result that we cannot possibly control for lr understand. A superhuman with full knowledge of physics would get whatever dice roll he/she wanted every single time.
Big assumption there. Except for quantum physics, which has to be carefully shielded at the atom level for it to show up, there is nothing in the macro scale known to be random. Probability is merely a tool for analysis when there are unknown variables. There is absolutely no assumption there that the underline process is not deterministic.
Entropy and randomness are not the same thing. Just because we can't predict something doesn't mean it's not a physical phenomenon that could be predicted if one knew the exact state of all the involved matter. And even if this concept worked as you describe, "random" or entropic events culminating to change your behavior doesn't seem like free will. If all of your choices were determined by a roulette wheel or a pair of dice, you would not describe that as free will.
As we can never know all there is to know about a situation;- (ever overlooking the fact that observation affects the observed) determinism is a dull predictive tool. Complexity is freedom
Sapolsky's point isn't that everything is destined to be exactly the way we see it, I think I remember in one of his lectures he described random chance to be as influential as nature and nurture. The point is that these random events are by definition out of our control, so how can they give rise to free will?
Of course, whether we have “X” or not depends entirely upon our definition of “X”. But if free will means the ability to make choices based on our perception of circumstances in our environment, and we don’t have that ability, I don’t see how learning anything could ever influence whether we burn the witch or not. If we can’t change our behavior based on new or different information, we can’t stop burning the witch no matter what science proves about free will. It’s a self-defeating argument. Perhaps more troubling to me is that a scientist would include in his argument against the existence of something, the practical benefits of believing that way. It’s either that way or not, based only on evidence. The benefits or drawbacks will fall where they may. And for that matter, we don’t have to wait for the free will debate to be settled before we can decide whether to be kind or cruel to our fellow humans. All that is required is compassion right now. And we can access that capacity for compassion only, it seems to me, if we have free will. The only definition of free will that does not appear to me to be a useless tautology is… the human ability to choose behavior that is counter to what our biological instincts urge us to do. And all of the many other determining influences notwithstanding, we do apparently have at least some of that ability occasionally. It may only be three minutes, but it is a sacred three minutes. Peace ❤️
@@skadoodaks2275 Free will is the ability to do other than we do. It is the ability for someone to do something other than is otherwise explicable. If determinism is true, then there is no free will. We are biological robots that respond to the circumstances in which we exist.
Computer can perfectly change its behavior based on new information. That's called machine learning. Does not mean the CPU has free will. Humen are many magnitudes more complicated than a machine learning algorithm but at the very basic level, how a neuron fires up is completely deterministic, just like the transistors in a CPU.
The more I've listened to Sapolsky talk about Free Will, the more I've come to recognize that he really hasn't thought about things very deeply. So shallow is his understanding that I don't think he can even define a version of Free Will such that it could exist. It's too bad that Dan Dennett has passed as Dennett's understanding of what Free Will is, what it means, and how it came into existence, was head and shoulders above Sapolsky.
To me, Dennett's definition of free will is misleading and is not "free" in any meaningful way. "Show me a neuron (or brain) whose generation of a behaviour is independent of the sum of its biological past, and for the purposes of this book, you've demonstrated free will". That is Sapolsky's definition, which part of this do you disagree with?
In a world that is turning more and more selfish, we need this philosophy, we should all realise we have no control over our own life, but we are even more powerful then that, we are the environment of everybody else we meet, we should take up the responsibility of influencing people in the right direction through understanding and helping. Great video, thank you
Hello Stanford Alumni! I schooled at Stanford also. Regarding free will: In the global frame, entropy overall has a one way arrow and space will continue to expand and accelerate in expansion. This is predetermined and we cannot escape this destiny. In a local frame, we have free will, within the predeterminations already set by the universe expanding. (Some) matter has a property of awareness and thinking that is an action, albeit a small action. These actions can be amplified in a sort of biological circuit either intentionally or unintentionally, to become larger macro actions. These can propagate and amplify so large as to shape a planet surface, reach other orbital bodies, even build a craft to exit Sol and his heliosphere! But that spacecraft, as well as the seed thought, will inevitably eventually become redshifted into the lowest quanta of energy alone in the cosmos, perhaps as a photon sphere, an island onto itself. Perhaps.erging into a superfluid BEC-like state where we have no more measure (no differential). But it is the nature of nature that we will follow some course like this... 🙏😎
its not my thoughts or the inputs that lead to thoughts, but the non predictable number of steps i can recurse/observe my thoughts that gives rise to 'free will'.
What I love, as a human being, is that even if a person is born under extremely challenging circumstances, they can overcome them. They can change their genetic expression. The more extreme the conditions, the less likely mathematically, but the possibility exists. So far, I've seen people who have little positive influence do greatly different things than would have been predicted, and also the opposite. We can lean into our lemming qualities, or, lean into the one thing that qualifies us for free will potential. As a person with an ACE score of 10, I have opted for the idea that I have more influence than my ego would have me believe. This is the most challenging work I will ever be faced with, but the most profoundly rewarding. Having said this, I adore Robert and trying on his shoes. It helps me greatly to ask questions of my own behaviour and be more understanding of myself and others on a daily basis.
"even if a person is born under extremely challenging circumstances, they can overcome them". "can" means possible, not necessarily likely. Go back to school.
You are making a distinction between the the circumstances that life has dealt you and what you choose to do with them. But this distinction is not merited because "what you do with them" is as equally biologically-determined as the circumstance itself.
Physicist Sean Carroll is a proponent of Hugh Everett's Many Worlds interpretation that states that whenever someone makes a choice, the universe splits into multiple universes with each universe having a different choice selected. For example, I might choose Job A over Job B, but in another universe I chose Job B. If, as Robert Sapolsky would assert, all past events determine my choice for Job A (I could not have done otherwise), then it would not be possible that there is another universe where I select Job B. After all, both universes have the same past. Therefore, it follows that the opportunity to choose between Job A and Job B is stochastically determined, but how I happen to find myself in the universe where I select Job A is a free choice that is not strictly determined. In fact, I could have done otherwise (Job B universe) but chose not to (Job A universe).
If all this is true, why then don't we find ourselves inside of these alternate universes, split multiple personalities, but instead are still in the one we are in? I don't think it's our choices that create alternate universes, but the alternate universes are bubble unto themselves, with no obvious interactions between them. Roger Penrose posits that black holes might lead to them, if we could only survive a black hole.
The list of things we do not choose, however long, does not eliminate a single thing from the list of things we do choose, however short. I had a different teenage experience with the free will issue: After my father died, I spent time in the public library, browsing the philosophy section. I think I was reading something by Baruch Spinoza that introduced the issue of determinism as a threat to free will. I found this troublesome until I had this thought experiment (whether I read it in one of the books or just came up with it myself, I can’t recall). The idea that my choices were inevitable bothered me, so I considered how I might escape what seemed like an external control. It struck me that all I needed to do was to wait till I had a decision to make, between A and B, and if I felt myself leaning heavily toward A, I would simply choose B instead. So easy! But then it occurred to me that my desire to thwart inevitability had caused B to become the inevitable choice, so I would have to switch back to A again, but then … it was an infinite loop! No matter which I chose, inevitability would continue to switch to match my choice! Hmm. So, who was controlling the choice, me or inevitability? Well, the concern that was driving my thought process was my own. Inevitability was not some entity driving this process for its own reasons. And I imagined that if inevitability were such an entity, it would be sitting there in the library laughing at me, because it made me go through these gyrations without doing anything at all, except for me thinking about it. My choice may be a deterministic event, but it was an event where I was actually the one doing the choosing. And that is what free will is really about: is it me or is someone or something else making the decision. It was always really me. And since the solution was so simple, I no longer gave it any thought. Then much later, just a few years ago, I ran into some on-line discussions about it, and I wondered why it was still a problem for everyone else, since I had seen through the paradox more than fifty years ago.
What you mean by the word "me" is what makes your argument not accurate. You're talking about the "self" which is what owns your body and mind. But that simply doesn't exist, It's an illusion. What "you" are is just the complexity of mind and body and nothing more. When you feel you're making a choice, "you" are nowhere to be found. And that's where determinism is the only reality that makes any sense. You might want to read a book called "Free Will" by Sam Harris. He explains all of what I've just described in detail and it's a very straight to the point book.
The biological determinists out here and their complete blindness to the fact most of these claims have zero science-based evidence. Just a bunch of formally logical conclusions tied together with no real substance behind it.
i think that's exactly wrong. Because the self doesn't exist, free will does exist at the level of you, at the level of the self. If the self were real it would be constrained totally by determinism,as your organs and body are, and there would be no free will, . Free will is illusory, out there in nature, it like the self, is nowhere to be found. Where it's found is with you, it's the operating mode appropriate to the self. @@boringhfitness5304
@@boringhfitness5304 It's horrifying for people to accept that concept. The first person view is so real for everyone, that a lot of people cannot comprehend that it might just be an illusion. It sort of becomes an existential crisis.
As a fan of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work on language (as in The Blue and Brown Books and Philosophical Investigations), I want to point out that philosophical discussions of "free will" usually employ that phrase in ways that have little in common with its use in everyday, non-philosophical vernacular speech. In other words, philosophers extend the meaning of everyday terms into new territories. But doing so raises the possibility of parties to the discussion not knowing what other conversants understand when using those same words. How then to conduct a conversation without well-defined concepts?
Is it me or there is a huge discrepancy between saying something has a "high probability of" and "determined". While I love this entire topic and how our genes and environment may affect our behaviour, there's a not small gap between "likelihood" and "certainty".
the point is not wether a factor will certainly dictate an outcome that you KNOW, but the very deterministic nature of the phenomenon regardless of our knowledge of it, " probability" is just an epistemological limit of the observer, the cause-effect phenomena underlying inexistence of free will is there wheter we have a precise characterization of it or not
I find the terminology "Mechanistic" to be more accurate than "Deterministic". The world is not deterministic, it is mechanistic. Meaning a flower will not grow without water, soil, sun rays etc.
Never really considered the definition like that I guess that's probably where the environmental factors come into play though like genetics determine certain proclivities but environmental factors can possibly enhance or create new more important/defining personality traits So a flower has defined values for existence but its not deterministic because it's a process? I dunno it kinda seems like it's the same thing.
Sapolsky agrees with you here. These individual cases are probabilistic and do not disprove free will when viewed in isolation. But if you consider all probabilistic events as a collective, they are what constitute you.
I’ve thought a lot about this, and ppl argue that you can weigh options and choose an option in terms of an action thus free will. However, you can think about it all you want and choose what to do, whatever choice you make is a result of your thought process and you were always going to pick what you did regardless of the fact that you weighed the options.
As one of the "lucky ones" Ive been completely messed up ever since I discovered his new lectures on free will. My worldview is challenged at every step. Not sure how everyone around me thinks but everything iny life has been measured based on competition and willpower (to this point) ...I am still a motivated individual but I actually feel MORE lucky that I just learned about the abscence of free will at 45 and not as a kid who had to work their ass off for every tiny bit of success
The earlier you know there is no free will the better as an older brain has already been shaped to believe a falsehood. Changing one's beliefs can be a shock even if you know longer believe in what you believed..its a process it takes time to adjust. Have lots of compassion for yourself.
I think learning it at an early age may be beneficial to some extent. You learn that it's not just "your will". You will learn about how your environment truly affects you and your behavior and not just rest everything on your "will". For example, if you want to leave alcohol or drugs or other bad habits, you better start cutting contact with bad friends and not just rely on your "will" to ignore those bad habits.
If you understand the intricate, true definition of freewill, this is a very easy understanding and is this only thesis that makes sense. We are all conditioned from the events we witness. And starting at fetal life, we absorb so, so much more because we have the art of staying present at all times allowing him/her to form from the information he/she has interpreted. If it wass negative, that will eventually be her fundamental base and usually the house gets constructed on a broken foundation which can be repaired along the way or not.
I am a bit surprised that Sapolsky finds himself on the “lunatic” fringe. Sapolsky doesn’t bring a new idea. He brings a mountain of new objective evidence. Proponents of free will bring intuition without objective evidence. Chaos theory is misnamed. The system evolves according to the starting conditions and any outside influences it encounters along the way. The systems are not reducible to parts alone, as Sapolsky conforms to classical reductionism. However, they are reducible to a repetitive process making use of one or more type of identical parts. Quantum events are, at least, statistically determined. There is no good reason to believe quantum events are truly random, like any other so-called random events.
I am still on the fence about free will, as all this Sapolsky stuff seems like a category error or an error of scale. As soon as it's I or we that has free will, it seems plausible that it is real relative to us. Selves, rather than our physical dimensions and biological processes, aren't real - just a story these real and determined elements and agents give rise to. If selves were real, they would, via determines, not have free will. Brains don't have free will. But does the story the brain spins have free will? It seems so, and maybe this is what "only a simulation can be conscious" means.
Quantum effects can only be observed at atom level and when carefully shielded. Even at that level, without enough shielding, quantum effect seemingly vanishes. There is no evidence at all that anything at macro level is random. Matter of fact, every neuron fires up in a completely deterministic way. A brain is very complicated but if every single module is deterministic, the whole thing must be deterministic.
I completely agree with his conclusion and how he reached it, but this is still quite a radical idea. No matter how true an idea may seem, it could still end up being wrong. It's great that he acknowledges this as a minority view even among neuroscientists so as to not give people the wrong idea.
I like your ideas about how life works thu scientific observations. It’s got me looking at life from a different angle and makes me feel as if I have free will while keeping in mind that I might not.
Dear Dr. Sapolsky, I have enjoyed many of your earlier works, but especially your recent work, “Determined”. I’m curious if you are aware of the long philosophic tradition reaching back through the Enlightenment, Spinoza, and eventually to Lucretius and Epicurus that provides an historical connection with your own research and scientific point of view. Could you comment on this connection please. Thank you.
I think so. I believe he’s right in that there is no free will; however, at some point in cultural and philosophical evolution, the free will idea came about so it’s real in that way.
"Nothing you can do that can't be done. Nothing you can sing that can't be sung... Nothing you can make that can't be made. No one you can save that can't be saved... Nothing you can know that can't be known. Nothing you can see that isn't shown...."
It is so calming to hear you say yourself - that about being on the fringe. Maybe it could be time for you to rethink your amazing stroke of wisdom about free will, from when you were 14???
I think we have a language problem with the phrase "free will"- that different people really just don't hear the same thing when you say it. Like, I think all people can agree that *violence is real*, that it matters, that it is diffetent from not violence. And violence means someone's choice being invaded by someone else's. So in the name of preventing violence, we call all agree that some nebulous thing called "choice" is located somewhere. And we can all probably agree that, regardless of genetics and epigenetics and culture and childhood conditioning and physiological conditions like depression- choice, the inviolable idea of where a person begins, exists in the body. The reason not to hit someone is that they don't want you to. So what the heck is "wanting"? Whatever it is, we tacitly accept that it matters. On a pragmatic and theoretical level, we abide to the treatment of distinguishing a beginning and end of personhood; and that boundary is drawn by the location of choice. I think all of us believe in something dialectical. That there two are categories of phenomena we call Choice and Circumstance, and that they both constantly affect the other. I think we're really finding that the border between them changes relative to where we stand. But naming that border only matters if it helps us! If the term trips you up and confuses you or leads you into despair, then its something to discard. It's a device of language- and language is an invention made for human well being. There's no falsehood in letting go of language when it doesn't serve well being.
There is a language problem. We behave and use language as if we have free will. It is difficult to look at free will objectively because we are the subject. If determinism is correct, then there is no free will. If we do not have free will, then we do not have choice in the way we generally treat our choices. We select (determine) from options. The selection is not optional, in the way optional is generally treated when free will is assumed. To be convinced of not having free will requires overcoming the intuition of having free will, which is subjective. If we can be objective, say by imagining we are looking from a third person point of view, then it is not so hard, except that it is hard to maintain that point of view.
OK! You've been working hard here popping up in my algos daily. It worked! I bought Determined. Good luck with the road trip. How about coming to Seattle?
I wrote this elsewhere (with edits): To the compatibilists/determinists: It's a probabilistic universe if it's infinite. (It's not just classical mechanics.) You are trying to apply determinism/finiteness to a probabilistic/infinite universe. The problem with causality is that infinity (and quantum instantaneousness) breaks it, fundamentally, because you cannot go far back enough to determine all the initial conditions (that lead to you/your behavior) because there are none with infinity! Infinity breaks determinism. To add: The Uncertainty Principle suggests that you cannot say for certain that we have no free will. To add for this video's context: Sure, you have no control in some senses, like classical mechanics (upbringing, gravity, etc.), but not necessarily from a fundamental/quantum sense. The universe goes beyond classical mechanics. Think also of 'spooky action at a distance.' This doesn't appear causal, but, rather, instantaneous. If the universe created you, then so did infinity if the universe is infinite.
While I'm here, around 25 minutes into the video, Robert suggests we should demonstrate where we find free will amid all of the determining influences of our genetics and our biology. Well, there are two arguments against free will, one that insists free will must be free of causal determinism, and the other that insists free will must be free of ourselves. Both of these imaginary freedoms are impossible, of course. If we were free of cause and effect we could no longer cause any effect, and would have no freedom to do anything at all. And if we were free from ourselves, free from our genetics, our biology, our prior life experiences, etc., then we would be someone else. Another impossible freedom. So, to find a meaningful and relevant notion of free will, we have to stop insisting on these irrational requirements. So, what is the rational definition of free will? Free will is an EVENT. It is specifically the event in which a person decides for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion, insanity, and other similar undue influences. As an event, it fits very nicely into our ordinary deterministic chain of events. As an event, it is no longer a subjective "feeling" or an "illusion". Want to see it? Let's go out to a restaurant. At the restaurant we see people walk in, sit down, browse the menu listing all of the items that they CAN order, and deciding for themselves what they WILL order for dinner. The waiter takes their order and returns later with their meal, and a bill. The bill holds each customer responsible for their deliberate act, which was ordering the dinner. We note that no one was holding a gun to their head, so their choosing was free of coercion. We note that no one ordered dinosaur or any other crazy thing, so their choosing was free of insanity. This then was an event of free will. You saw it. I saw it. The waiter saw it. These events happen every day, at home as we decide what we will wear to work. At work as we decide what we need to do. And in life in general as we make the many decisions we make each day. So, Robert, that's free will. It is not free from cause and effect (determinism). It is not free from ourselves. It is only free from meaningful and relevant constraints that can reasonably be said to impair or prevent us from making the choice for ourselves. Nothing more. Nothing less.
There is no rational definition of "Free Will" and the concept of it is supernatural to begin with. Trying to rationalize free will by using examples of individuals exercising basic autonomy just redefines the concept of free will into something it's not. Going to the restaurant, choosing your clothes, everyday events in general are all influenced by patterns/behaviors/emotions/etc and those choices made are more examples of their influencing factors than an exercise of free will.
That everything is a caused effect, is determinism. Determinism means there is no free will. A lack of free will does not mean there is no cause and effect. Free will is not an event. Doing something is an event. A lack of free will means that we cannot do things, including produce thoughts, other than we do them, in the circumstances that we do them. Rewriting, free will is the ability to do things, including produce thoughts, other than we do them, in the circumstances that we do them (a rational definition). That we behave as if we have free will does not mean we have free will. If there is no free will then we should change the way we behave, such as rewarding and punishing people, which won't be easy.
@@sjoerd1239 " A lack of free will means that we cannot do things, including produce thoughts, other than we do them, in the circumstances that we do them" that would mean free will = doing things, including producing thoughts, other than we do, in the circumstances that we do them. That seems like way too wide a definition, most people see free will as picking door A or B, not designing the doors. As the guy above says, if free will means you can just do anything, then there would be no coherent effect of doing, doing would be abolished.
Rob - equivocation arises because I think most folks aren't talking about *unbounded* free will, as your book does... what they're talking about is whether, for example, the PFC "wins" in a particular instance in preventing the amygdala cluster from doing something aggressive and stupid. If it had failed in its struggle to regulate the limbic system in that instance, then an argument could be made that that person needs to improve their PFC/limbic connections (and possibly regret/apologize for not having done this already). As you point out, these brain connections are *not* static, just biased, in some cases overwhelmingly, from "everything that came before." Of course, as you also point out, there are many folks who don't have a ghost's chance of regulating their amygdala, and so are 3-sigma (or more) outliers. So I wonder if it's worthwhile to talk, instead, about *outliers* in the name of being humane to those outliers as well as fair to most folks who are likely within 1- or 2-sigmas of some norm? (for example) Considering only proximal/distal free will doesn't capture, for instance, the effects of SES or TBI (the latter being quite common).
Commenters thought they had the choice not to say something but their emotions got the best of them. They needed to feel safe so they decided to reject the idea that they aren’t in control.
Typical illusion of control. If your decision making process is a combination of genetics, experience and circumstances, there is nothing you "control". You just react based on fixed conditions.
I think I have CPTSD and for months I had no motivation to do anything productive but what puzzles me is, how can I keep playing this one particular game over and over again - what is my motivation to replay this damn game and can I copy that mechanism to motivate me to do useful thing? I got my answer in this lecture: the sense of righteousness when punishing the 'bad guys' - the endorphins... Thank you. Now to figure out whattaheck am I to do with that information...
Entertaining and informative-he’s probably a popular professor if he’s still around. HOWEVER-completely ridiculous to state that choice has no effect on who someone becomes. E.g., someone who becomes a mass murderer had no choice, but was destined to become that person? Really? There is predisposition, but there is ALWAYS an element of choice in the equation.
I had an extremely strong knowledge/intuition about determinism and lack of free will, was deeply ingraned to my mind ever since I can remember myself. Even as a 4 year old I used to say nothing could have been done differently
I'm in that club as well although perhaps I drew that conclusion from a different source. Mark Twain said " When I was 14, my father was the dumbest man alive. When I turned 21, I was amazed at how much he had learned in seven years." But the simple observations we made at 14 lasted and expanded despite growing up in a society that overwhelmingly promoted free will as a given. I'm more surprised that my 14 year old self did not change from that notion as I did from many others along the way.
@@sjoerd1239 I do. I don't believe in "absolutely" free will, but I do believe we have tremendous capacity to steer our experience. If you practice mindfulness long enough to see that you can have a thought and not react to it, you can see the gap between your behavior and your control. Sure, you can't do something that doesn't occur to you, so maybe the universe is steering you, but you can choose between all of the thoughts you have. You control how to behave, moment to moment. Be driven by the din, or be still and choose.
@@shlomoabrin5045 There are a lot of characterizations about free will that obviously don't hold up under scrutiny. At the same, time, determinism is the same. The key is, you can talk yourself into anything. My behaviors are overwhelmingly dominated by my conditioning. Overwhelmingly. And yet...there is a sliver of wiggle room available to me. The slower I move, the wider it looks. A friend once told me, of pool, "The faster you shoot, the smaller the pocket." I think the same is true of us.
Show me the boy (of course) of seven; I will show you the man. No matter how much the EMOTIONAL human mind wants to BELIEVE it has "free will" the more those who know the truth have to live our lives parallel to the purposefully ignorant. What a breath of fresh air to hear this discussion and know its "truth." Sigh...and the Beat Goes On.
Just finished "Determined". Not only is it hugely illuminating, but it is beautifully written, and so a pleasure to read. Highly recommended, an essential book.
I think it's fair for me to say that "Determined" saved me from taking my life.
@@Nowheart That's amazing!
@@NowheartI get it. It’s wild! I’m an 8 on the ACE’s. I have a bunch of mental differences. I’ve sought out all the cures. How this is affecting me is blowing my mind! Makes so much sense.
@@NowheartMay I ask you what exactly from his book allowed you to not take your life?
@@florentin4061
Likely dumping the burden of guilt and shame that tends to underpin a variety of mental health conditions.
"An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart." ~ Robert M. Sapolsky
I would say the opposite is true. The brain mostly receives information and stimuli but Dr. Sapolsky is a reductive materialist so it's not surprising he puts primacy to the mind. I'm surprised he didn't say "An open brain is a ....😉
@@Frederer59 To each his own, it's all unknown.
"The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world."
Terence McKenna
The three Dan Tians or Elixir Fields are areas of the body that correspond to what the ancient Taoists describe as the Three Cinnabar Fields. They were considered to be the palaces of the Gods in the body. The maintenance of freely circulating qi through these areas was said to insure that the Gods would maintain residence in the body and enable the person to have a long and healthful life. If the circulation of qi became obstructed, the Gods would depart ensuring disease and an early death.
These areas can also be interpreted as focal points of different physical and psychological functions of the body. The upper Dan Tian, located in the center of the forehead, corresponds to the physical functioning of the brain and sensory organs and to the psychological processes of thinking and contemplation.
The middle Dan Tian, located in the center of the chest between the breasts, corresponds to the physical functions of respiration and the circulation of qi and blood. Psychologically it functions as the emotional and interaction center of the body.
The lower Dan Tian, located in the lower abdomen between the navel and the public bone, corresponds to the physical functions of digestion, elimination and reproduction. Psychologically it functions as our sense of stability and balance and as the connection of our sexuality.
It’s commonly known as the center of gravity, Hara or Tanden (in Japanese), energy center of the body or the second brain. In internal martial arts it is one of the most important areas in the body.
Some studies have found that our cells functions like a battery, able to store electric charge. Taoists believe the human body is basically one big battery, made from millions of small ones. Some researchers have explained that conductivity on the skin and other parts of the body varies greatly and they are able to prove a higher conductivity at acupuncture points.
All these recent scientific results back up some of the ancient beliefs such as the Qi channels, which are like wires that carry electric current, Qi vessels, being like capacitors which regulate the current or finally the real lower Dan Tian, which functions like a large battery that stores a charge and is able to provide an electromotive force and distribute Qi throughout the body.
The lower Dan Tian has a similar structure to the brain, with the capacity for memory. They are connected through the spinal cord and the central nervous system, where electric conductivity is highest and resistance is lowest. They function almost as one unit. The lower brain can store bioelectricity and the mind that generates an idea creates an electromotive force (Qi) and leads it to the body for action.
@@Frederer59 Where is the mind located? It IS part of the brain?
@@Frederer59However, when one considers that sapiens lives by delusion and denial, we learn that our brain box just makes things up out of nothing coming from the outside world. We experience this all around us all the time every day. Half of the USA 🇺🇸 believes everything Trump says because their brains make it all up. Conspiracy theories are rife. Schizophrenia, delusions, voices speaking to us insude our heads, the false belief that America is a democracy. The machismo of testosterone-fuelled males, dreams, waking dreams, false memories, alien abductions, phantom limbs that one feels when the limb is non-existent, paranoia, entities standing behind us that aren't there, the taste of death, seannces, astrology, fortune tellers, magic acts, slight of hand, voice dubbing, and an infinite list on and on forever. Just ask the Mother Ship. We creare our own reality. Sure, stimulus enters the brain also. Both exist and it becomes complicated and more beautiful!
@@silvercloud1641the *soul"
On a practical level, I think all of this boils down to compassion and empathy. It is incumbent on us who know free will to be illusory to treat those in less fortunate positions with compassion and do what we can to help them overcome the conditions they were born into. We should also exercise humility when we experience our own success.
Indeed!
Except that those so called "unfortunate" are usually unfortunate because they cannot overcome the conditions (if they can, they would not be in that position in the first place). It's nice to think compassionately. It's silly to think anything more than that is remotely achievable/
"Compassion and empathy" are 2 things that are slowly disappearing!!
humans are to egotistical to do any of that lol
How can it be incumbent on you to treat people in a certain away? If you have no free will you can't do that. It can't be incumbent because you cannot be expected to do anything. Nor can you treat people with empathy and compassion. Or are at least you cannot choose to. It seems to me that you still do believe in free will on some level. Otherwise why are you still telling us that we should act in a certain way.
Agree with him or not, reading/listening to Sapolsky brings out the best in peoples' minds. I can't think of a better compliment.
I don't have a choice but to feel motivated to improve my life after listening to Sapolsky. For me the most liberating thing is when *other* people understand that it is not your fault. I have a sense of "finally someone who gets it" when listening to him and I realize that not the entire world is cruel and unforgiving after all. It gives me hope.
You likely receive messages like this often, and it’s possible you won’t see this one, but I wanted to share something with you. You’ve been a tremendous source of inspiration for me to delve into the intricacies of the human brain and behavior. Thanks to your influence, I earned my bachelor’s degree and am now diligently pursuing my PhD in clinical psychology.
Beautifully done!!
You talking to me?
I recently read Robert Saltzman's books. When he proposed there was no free will i threw the book down and thought 'This is absurd!" Then I thought about it awhile and this huge weight fell off me! I let go of ALL guilt and shame for my past actions and thoughts and I forgave ALL who I felt had wronged me! It is SO freeing!
The Quran says this same thing and I am finding the kufirun only the one understanding and accepting.
The Quran also says to kill infidels. @@Charity4Chokora
I disagree with a few of his thoughts but I love it.
I would love to hear Robert debate this issue. Love it
Saltzman , Robert Saltzman ?
That's basically what they've known in the East for several thousand years. Most (if not all) east spiritual practices based primarily on noticing this cause-and-effect determinism and patiently trying to extricate yourself from this web. Like a photon that does not feel time, you will free yourself from determinism (karma) when you experience enlightenment.
One of the liberating practices is the "middle way" approach, where one does not sit in either extreme exclusively, but in both at the same time, experiencing the paradox. And so in this sense, we have no free will (just listen to Sapkowski) and we have free will at the same time (just quiet down for a moment, focus on the present and there is not the slightest doubt that "free will" exists as such). Thinking that there is absolutely no free will, or that there is only free will and sometimes something will guide us, is dualistic thinking, only feeding neurosis. Try being in the paradox that there is no free will and that free will is, both at the same time. A funny thing will happen then.
Every word Sapolsky says is spoken with intent and therefore matters tremendously. What a gift! Thank you.
One year before i tried my first Mr. Sapolsky Video and couldnt understand a word. Had not processed my knowledge and experience. So Im glad again to understand one year later what he is talking about. I love this steps in life when it makes Click. This moments keep me alive after a long period of frustration and resistance. By the way i went trough a long time of processing trauma and rejecting in privat and business-life. It took me 5 years to come in a positive state of mind and i hope it takes a good time before i fall again in this period of processing, depression, rejecting, ignoration, anxiety and frustration. Because now I feel like im in a Period of earning the fruits for this time. Or as the jewish-german-hungarian theatre-author Georbe Tabori once said. Happyness is when the pain decrease.
Determinism became obvious to me when I was 14 too. Everything Sapolsky says is so obvious and redundent to me. An easy test to reveal the pervasive nature of determinism in anyone's life is for a week write down every instance of free will you experience. Then watch this video again and see if that behavior stands the test of free will - Was there nothing that influenced or came before it? This goes all the way down to the flavor of ice cream or the flowers I choose. I see what preceeded everything on a day to day basis. And I feel liberated by determinism and am able to improve my life based on the learnings of determinism. Don't put yourself down. Take advantage of your strengths. Look at yourself without self-deception. Life keeps getting better.
What point are you trying to make?
@@moofano1538 Are you asking someone to identify every single influence which shaped them to behave the way they do, and how each of those shaped them? Seems unreasonable. People are shaped to be exactly what they become, by the circumstances they never got to choose or even understand.
@davon3384 Beliefs inform actions. Beliefs are caused, not chosen. Try this: choose to believe in determinism. If you fail to do so, you now understand that your beliefs are not things which are chosen, so, there is no "free will" involved in the formation of your beliefs. Else, you could choose to believe your feet are in fact made of delicious pudding, on a whim. If you succeed, that would be "the truth" to you.
If one day you decide to eat your feet with a fork, reality will assert itself, and you will go "ouch, f***, I was wrong".
Beliefs are caused by the influences which act upon you, not a "free will" separate from causation. Understanding a problem, is the first step in developing a solution. Hence; this discussion occurs. Participants have been brought to question things by their lives. Free will makes no sense without an appeal to magic or faith. The subjective experience of having individual agency, is subject to objective influences which act on people without consent.
Taking action, is a product of the beliefs one if (*is) brought to hold, and subjectively, we feel we have choices, rather than feeling that we are acting as a product of causation.
My 2cents.
I would argue that Free will in the way it is traditionally thought of is probably false, but if you really look deep enough, to the fabric of logic and the material world you will find (and physics has been struggling with this for ages) that the world is indeterministic. that 1+1 doesn't always equal 2.
Yeah, 14 - the pinnacle of rational human thought, LOL.
This information has caused my Procrastination to increase.
🤣 this sensation makes me uncomfortable also, I'm hoping it's temporary. (I'm a bit more than halfway through Determined and it is a bear.)
For me this is the most empowering insight because it reinforces my own experience in the futility of “fighting against myself”. But I know the power of growing and influencing myself.
I think the main message is that we can’t control ourselves. But “ourselves” is like a child inside of us that we have to educate and nurture and try our best and then watch them unfold and try their best.
The assertion that nobody has free will is only ever used to excuse bad behavior or destroy the agency of others.
One must ask the purpose of a person's assertion.
Free will is an absurdity to begin with. To be embodied as an entity capable of having a will is to have no free will. You can't even have a free will unless you have a distinction between "me" and "not me". Once you have that base distinction, you can't have free will anymore because you can't be both "me" and "not me" if you have any real distinction between the 2.
It's a snake eating its own tail. An academic distinction that has no practical purpose other than to run an influence scheme for some social advantage -- political, interpersonal, etc. That's its only purpose: manipulation of the easily influenced.
Why else would you assert the absence of any free will but to cause others to be more easily pushed in the direction of the will of others?
@@Vrishnaakhbeautifully put.
😂
I’m an 8 on the ACEs test. I have a bunch of mental differences. I’m 45 and have sought after all the “cures.” These teachings have given me the most amazing insights and freedom.
This idea is, indeed, so liberating.
I felt some physical lightness when I accepted it, thought it through. I realize that it may be a “bummer” for a lot of humans out there, and they sure have their reasons. But for me personally this idea IS helpful, and uplifting. Despite I went through depression, it doesn’t make me sad, rather the opposite. Just calm, even a bit happier.
Thank you, Prof. Sapolsky
Hey Dr.
I heard this theory of yours
7 years ago and it changed my life totally.
After watching your HUMAN BEHAVIORAL BIOLOGY course on RUclips, I always tried to explain it to others.
I might be no one but I am totally with you on this one and respect you a lot for your knowledge and share in increasing world’s level of literacy.
"Dad, I earned an A on my spelling test!" Dr. Sapolsky: "whoa, slow down kiddo, lets unpack what really happened. Earned is a presumptive word..." Hahaha I love this man, and even though his viewpoints were hard for me to accept at first, they've helped me grow into a kinder and more thoughtful person!!
Notice he is telling you what to conclude. “You don’t earn anything” don’t feel pride etc…. His conclusion is his purpose & “no free will” is his excuse. If my kid is “lucky” then my kid is “better” by nature and I’m not obligated to help anyone. But he doesn’t conclude that. Why not?
@@bryanutility9609 deserve as it is meant when people use it cannot exist because we are machines dictated by nature. That's why a person cannot deserve anything, because nothing is their doing (everything that happens, including all technology we create and so on is made by the Universe itself through us).
Sapolsky's viewpoints didn't help you towards anything -- you had no choice but to grow into a kinder and more thoughtful person :P
This is Buddhist enlightenment.
How lucky the students of Stanford are! I'd be thrilled to have learned from him at Uni. The book is brilliant.
His lectures had been recorded and are posted on YT for everyone to learn.
We always make decisions through the prism of the way our perception has been developed, realizing this a year ago as a 15 year old was not the best moment of my life, but at least now i am able to acknowledge the absurdness of this life and know that my feelings and thoughts are not me but rather i am the one experiencing them. Thanks for this video, i really love listening to Robert Sapolsky.
49:20 - Living through this right now! - "Major Depression" = Inability to BS myself into thinking that "Life is Wonderful"
Git gud.
Yeah, anyone claiming that depression is a problem with the individual (e.g. an "imbalance of neurochemicals") doesn't understand how biology works. It really is just more complicated mechanical function. If I don't take care of my bicycle's needs for grease, air in the tires, a tight chain, evenly tightened spokes, etc., it won't function well. Same with our animal bodies. If we don't get our biological needs met, we malfunction. And because we are indeed more complicated than a bicycle, we malfunction in far more complex ways, based on both the specific deficiency of needs, and on our specific genetic programming. Fight, flight, freeze, and flow are all default functions of different brain/body types in us animals so we see folks react with anger (to others or themselves), or avoidance, or deep introspection, or hyper-creativity when stressed.
love Prof. Sapolsky. his lectures on YT are so fascinating.
so 22:41 - i was looking at all the photos and my immediate reactions surprised me. Ellen made me mad cause of her Covid reaction to being trapped in her huge house. the Vanity Fair photo i had a low opinion of. i don’t like basketball, but that photo was incredible - the grace, the athleticism. and just beauty of that photo got to me - didn’t matter that it was basketball. the guy in the lower left was just boring - go away. the only other one i remember is Martin Luther King - that picture made me feel calm, someone good is in control, and also very sad. it was the best picture there. made me feel good about my gut reactions. so interesting. 🌷🌱
I've been deeply engrossed in the work of Robert Sapolsky lately, who I find to be a compassionate genius in the field of behavioral biology. His insights into the subconscious forces that shape our actions are truly enlightening. Yet, there's a dimension that seems to be missing from these formative theories.
Sapolsky lays a foundation for understanding the deterministic elements of our behavior-how our past, down to the biological level, influences our present actions. But I can't help but think about the role of personal effort in transcending this programming. This idea presents the next frontier in our journey towards human enlightenment.
What if, despite the deterministic nature of cause and effect as it applies to the human psyche, we possess the capacity to consciously break away and redefine our path? The notion that everything is predetermined could render our attempts for self-improvement futile. However, I believe there's more to the story.
Consider this: psychology, along with the intricate task of mapping the human mind, is not an exact science. In my view, it's composed of 88% philosophy, 10% educated conjecture, and a modest 2% of hard fact. This isn't to diminish the field but to acknowledge the vast uncharted territory that still lies before us-territory we must bravely explore if we are to unlock the full potential of the human spirit.
"can't help but think" or can't help feel? By all means speculate and hypothesize, but the mounting objective evidence supports there being no free will and believers in free will rely on intuition.
(If you have free will, then how much do you have? How confident are you that what you think you do freely today will not be biologically explained tomorrow?)
Exactly. He talks as though walking down a road forces you because of probabilities. But we can take steps and influence the probabilities ourselves. But then you can always argue the circle of... well that was influenced. Sure it was, but you can't perfectly predict it either.
@@sjoerd1239Enough to influence the future by changing patterns. Also a bit caused by a lack of knowledge of the future.
"Consciously break away and redefine our path"? Using the consciousness determined by all the predeterminations and factors described in this video, how would that be wresting control back from the physical world's step by step instructional code it is autoproducing to generate itself? Where does the "us" that is "us" begin, end, or truly exist? I'm not even that knowledgeable of the theory in tis video but after watching it once I can tell that the data he presents precludes your wishful wording. That all said, we, as the One, have free will to exist, and the evidence that it exists is a closed loop of query-observation; ergo within that system of will-within-existence the mechanisms (physical reality and adjacent paradigms) are accomplishing the Unified and Original Intentions of the One. The One is eternal, but from Their point of view, They just got here...
The problem with this kind of argument is very clear: all the things that constitute the free will, like the "redefine our path", are merely a combination of the prior experience, events, circumstances, genetics, etc, etc. None of them are free to choose. At any given moment, you might think you have choices, but there is that one choice destined to be chosen with/without you knowing about it. It's perhaps will but definitely not "free" will.
Your book was totally challenging for me but I got through it and I was so glad you wrote it. You thoroughly made your case. As a layman, I really appreciated your explanations, and all of the references to theatre. You made me laugh out loud a bunch of times. Thank you for taking five years to write the book. Well worth the effort. Looking forward to watching the evolution of these ideas in social practice.
14 Yo! At 11 I just thought that everyone was crazy. By high school I thought everything was absurd. In my twenties I realized that my parents did all the heavy lifting. In my thirties I lost the rements of trust. In my fifties I lost the ability to care. In my sixties I lost my mind as the result of prescribed medications. At 72 I realized that I did not live in a perodic universe, that we live in a aperodic universe. We are not a static slice of biological reality, we are in motion. We have free will because there is no other choice but to have it. We have never been here before, and yet, here we are! What are the odds? As a biologist pretty high, but as a mystic I realize that every single moment contains the opportunity to zig, rather that zag. To make a choice! Making that choice involves time! We are pond scum that makes choices! A biological sensor array, a reality probe! Programed to make choices! YRMV! You can not reduce your way to the moment of choice, but we all, everyone of us, make it. There is nothing to be depressed about, everything is OK
Always loved the Jacques the Fatalist and his Master. Sapolsky proved what I always believed. Don’t be too proud for who you are and don’t judge others
you can't help it of you do, you don't have free will
One of my fav books. Read it, listened to it. I also like the way it takes us back when.
I'm seriously considering super-determinism.
You and your wisdom has mentored me through many years. Thank you so much.
Believing in no free will is way more depressing and not liberating at all for those who are not that privileged.
Even if we just feel unlucky (and not depressed) for not being privileged at all, still being poor, not smart, etc. is painful. no matter what, we suffer the suffering stuff that happens to us.
Only just thinking about the poor guys who lived and died in a bad way and couldn't do anything to not be like that (because they hadn't any choice) is completely depressing.
spoken like someone who doesnt like to have to look at those unfortunates rather than one of them
My thinking ever since I can remember is and always will be is to "accept people for who they are"
Why when clearly people can be programmed and changed? I mean that's the basis of the start of the argument is that you can be programmed.
Because they most definitely aren’t aware. The people who are likely to find this video are more likely to agree and be open to it. A person committing crime and being in and out of prison is never going to see this video, and may never even understand his arguments if they were never given a proper education.
I am lucky to have come across this idea as a 17-18 years old reading Plotinus's Enneads, albeit expressed rather covertly in there. It has shaken my world view since then. I still remember sitting in the room, observing the thoughts popping up in the mind and backtracing them to their source, realizing how accidental free associations they all are to the extent knowable.
You are Lucky indeed !! Super Lucky in the fact that you were reading Plotinus's Enneads at such a young age.. . . .. I was reading Van Halen Lyrics and Marvel Comics.
@@ZiplineShazam You should read plato, listen to music, and read comic books. Why limit yourself? Each of these will help you grow
Interestingly, this is liberating and reminds me of Biblical teachings of being humble, it’s G-d not I, we are powerless over the very things discussed here. Thank you for your work, I have a clearer understanding of others and myself. Not without internal resistance on some of what you said here. I can’t argue, that this data, information brings me peace and comfort. I sure hope we utilize this science to continue evolving forward.
Thank you Robert. I look forward to your book! You've helped me raise 3 wonderful daughters! Its been rough at times and grand at times! Loved "Behave"
Again, thank you!!
Its so good to see you!!!
Thank you, Prof. Sapolsky, for sharing with me a coriscating constellation of inputs that has significantly heightened my consciousness and provided me with a goodly measure of stimuli that have aided in expanding my capacity to deepen the depth of my compassion for both myself and for other human beings, for other animals.
Blessings. Peace, Love, Granola. 🕊 ☮️
I've been talking about this in the realm of awareness for a while. When you change the circumstance by allowing yourself to meditate, you shift your brain state. I've done this with blood pressure too - your circumstances can include a meta level of awareness, a now state, which has all kinds of feedback all the way down.
What we call free Will is really just the process of not knowing what the heck is gonna happen next
I can't be more thankful to Mr Sapolsky for the invaluable knowledge he imparts. And thanks to Stanford, I watched his whole lectures on youtube two times over. But I still can't convince myself that everything is determined/Newtonian. I tend to imagine life and the universe determined only in the sense of its randomness, like a Mandelbrot set. It's as if Mathematics is a form of radiation coming from an upper layer of Platonic reality, and we are the molecular functions of its search space. Hence I think the nature of reality is more of a stochastic substance, that is: "having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically but may not be predicted precisely."
Professor Sapolsky,
As I have said in the comments of a couple other videos., please keep talking about this. The world needs to know this, I need the world to know this. I have been of the same exact opinion for 40 years, myself, and waiting as long for a Neuroscientist to write this. It's been hard, neigh, near impossible, knowing this and trying to live by it, in this world. I have been professing this same message for as long, whenever the topic comes up. I get the impression that you are trying to get this message out also as you have done this video, which will affect the sales of your already, relatively inexpensive book. I might be assuming too much here though.
I first came to this conclusion when I was taking biology classes and learning computers, so my mind was heightened ion these 2 areas. I realized that all the arguments in biology revolved around Nature v. Nurture, in its many variations, but all of them were only about these 2 forces being involved.. with any evidence. So, logically, if these are the only 2 forces then there is no door in for free will. Therefore, humans do not have free will.
If you happen to see my comments at all, I will be responding to this video with my own thoughts, experiences, and perspectives which may be of interest to you as I Have believe in putting into practice what I have learned and have done so. Which is where the hard part comes in as it does not play well and most humans cannot handle that level of truth yet and it has forced me to back off a little.. and, like you, I am still a product of my programming.
You talk about plasticity and how experience has a dramatic effect in changing your brain through this plasticity. That goes farther than just experience. For example, just pure thought can do the same thing. I used to smoke cigarettes. I wanted to stop. So, I picked out as many reasons for stopping as I could, the good (wanting to see my daughter grow up, for example), the bad (the dame it does to the body) etc etc., and I repeated those thoughts and tying them into what that will mean for my life and I repeated those thought over and over for about 24 hours and, after that, I quit smoking, in one day, and never had a single craving for a cigarette. And I can repeat this, at will.
I will continue to comment to this video with more of my thoughts and experiences on this topic and, if you happen to read this, and are curious. I would love to talk about this more and am available. I think people can also use to hear more of the benefits of this knowledge to help temper the resistance to it.
I slugged my way through Behave and found it both interesting and illuminating. I was not convinced that there is no free will. It still seems to me that so called free will depends to some degree on consciousness and that it is necessary to define both in ways that humans, or at least educated humans, can agree upon. To me it is obvious that what anyone is today is dependent upon what has happened to them and how they have interacted with their environments in the past. But the environments we experience are somewhat random. I realize this doesn't disprove the absence of free will. Even if I accept that there is no free will, I don't think it won't alter most of my behavior - which is interesting. If I were young, I think cognitive neuroscience would be a fascinating field to explore - that or epigenetics or the world of microbes or...
Hard to comprehend that both free will and determined reality can exist at the same time unless you are a Buddhist or a Muslim or free from limited models of logic we've been trained in over and over. and giving examples of details that can never prove or disprove is pretty simplistic thinking but then we've seriously overrated Stanford and its like.
Simple minds cannot concieve deep truths only superficial details, all he speaks is, of course, true and yet he too has the gift or curse of free will too! The majesty of existance that they both exist simultaneousely. Dissapointing for a so -called professor of higher education.
Dennett makes much better arguments for compatibilism if you're interested.
@@umbombCompatibilism is completely nonsensical. I believe people have this viewpoint which is contradictory because they emotionally want to believe that they have free will and our subjective feeling is that we do have free will.
I am 100% sure that hard determinism is the reality. It is a completely obvious fact because all other viewpoints involve some kind of nonsensical magic.
Feel free to argue against me. I think Sam Harris gets it completely but Daniel Dannet makes no sense in this regard.
"Simple minds cannot concieve deep truths only superficial details"
When you supply a peer reviewed body of work delineating your own ideas, perhaps then you get the right to call his mind "simple" ...
"so -called professor of higher education"
Clearly triggered.
Actually, simple logic can indeed create a model of reality where everything is deterministic and there is free will, because free will is just a categorization of simple vs. complex systems. Like the difference between whole numbers and prime numbers. Primes are effectively unpredictable in when they occur next, while whole numbers are always just N+1. Free will could just be prime numbers when compared to whole numbers.
@@JB.zero.zero.1 Everyone with a brain has the "right" to say whatever they experience. No appeal to authority needed. You have the right to think whatever you think, given to you by the universe. Same with everyone else with a brain. Even if your brain is simpler than others' brains.
Okay, so I basically buy Sapolsky's thesis. However, I do not accept his conclusion that there is no place for reward and punishment. It's not because I believe that the recipient deserves reward or punishment, but rather that reward and punishment provides an important feedback loop. If I see that one behavior is rewarded and another behavior is punished, that contributes to the person I am and influences the behavior I choose. As a result, I'm more likely to choose the behavior that will be rewarded. In fact, at one point in his talk, Sapolsky makes the obervation that if someone is well behaved, they are rewarded. That makes the person more likely to be well behaved so they can receive the reward.
There is a role for an incentive and merit approach based on ability for a particular role for the common good. There is no place for reward and punishment. Our current practices are unsatisfactory. Your feedback loop is no excuse for treating people as if they deserved a reward or punishment because that would be undeserved reward and punishment.
And isn’t his point you had no control over whether you received that reward/punishment? If your focus is rather on whether you dole out the plus or minus then that again is dependent on how your wired. And it isn’t there is no place for these behaviors, it’s just not relevant to who is deserving of praise/demonizing. I think, could be wrong, but I think he frames it differently than you’re implying.
No Freewill and a case for punishment, rewards and responsibility.
I'm not sure how common or what literature has to say about this but I believe I'm a compatablist of a different kind. One where I think no free will is still compatible with a degree of responsibility along with reward and punishment. My thoughts below.
The concept of responsibility can be viewed through the lens of both genetic predispositions and environmental influences, embodying the intricate dance between nature and nurture. At its core, responsibility might be perceived not as a mere trait one is born with, but as a quality cultivated through the interplay of inherent neurological capabilities and the external stimuli provided by one's surroundings.
In the realm of human behavior, the notion of freewill often treads on contentious ground, suggesting a degree of autonomy that may not fully account for the underlying mechanisms at work. It can be argued that our actions and decisions are significantly shaped by a combination of innate brain functions and the series of rewards and punishments meted out by our social environment. These elements of positive and negative reinforcement serve not just as tools for behavior modification but as pivotal forces in the development of what we refer to as responsibility.
This perspective aligns with the view that our choices may be less about the exercise of freewill and more about the outcomes of a sophisticated process of conditioning. Throughout this process, individuals are subject to various forms of reinforcement that, while beyond their control, serve to mold their behavior in ways that foster individual autonomy and societal cohesion. This is particularly potent during the formative years, when the brain's plasticity renders it more amenable to such influences, though the capacity for change persists, albeit to a lesser extent, into adulthood.
Understanding responsibility through this framework suggests that the concept does not hinge so much on free choice or agency but on the capacity of the brain to learn and adapt to its environment through reinforcement learning. In this light, the role of rewards and punishments transcends mere disciplinary tactics; they are essential components in the cultivation of responsible behavior, orchestrated not by conscious selection but by the very nature of human neurobiology and the structure of social interactions.
Therefore, responsibility might best be conceptualized as the product of a complex and dynamic process, one that intricately weaves together the threads of biological predisposition and experiential learning. It is through this tapestry that individuals emerge as beings capable of navigating the moral and practical demands of their environments, not solely through the illusion of choice, but as the culmination of the countless influences that shape their existence.
In essence, although the concept of freewill may be contentious, the practical application of responsibility, along with the mechanisms of rewards and punishments, retains its validity and utility. However, it's crucial to acknowledge the nuanced interplay between these concepts and the inherent limitations tied to individual cognitive capacities. This suggests a need for a more refined approach to understanding and deploying these concepts, recognizing that they are influenced by factors beyond one's absolute control. The essence of responsibility thus lies not in the assertion of pure autonomy, but in the recognition of the complex, interconnected forces that shape human behavior and decision-making.
@@nodelayfordays8083 Free will is the ability to do things, other than we do them, in the circumstances that we do them.
We behave as if we have free will. If we are determined, then we do not have free will. That has repercussions on how we should behave. Redefining free will to suit how we behave is a cop out, misleading and deceptive.
Yeah but there is no deserve in a world of free will. It'll probably be centuries before we see a society that understands determinism and treats a negative behavior in a clinical way, same way we no longer burn witches, epileptic seizures were considered demonic positions, so on.
Great lecture! Thanks again for the insight. If we had true freewill, the “computer algorithms” that predict what you buy or don’t buy, how you vote or don’t vote, how you act or don’t act, etc…. Would be useless. You are an amalgamation of every thing that has come before. Big data and information theory in a round about way, shows that there is no free will. 😊
Not really
I don't agree with that. Just because a lot of behavior is predictable (by computer software), that doesn't in and of itself mean there is 0% free will
There are people lucky enough to have control over them selfs. What I mean by that, a good sense of their feelings, a good recognition and true (not warped in any way) sense of what is “good” or “bad” is, I can’t help but think, if we had “free will” would there ever be mistakes or evil. I always found it’s interesting that we truly think any individual chooses to be “evil” or “good” or even as simple as a “asshole” or “nice”. People just are, literally everyone I’ve ever met just is. Anyone I’ve seen change it just happens. I include my self in this notion. I’ve noticed any changes about my personality have just happened. There is the story my brain tells me about the change the what I did “wrong” and the what I did “right” and how hard or not hard I was trying. I can’t help but ask myself can I truly trust an organ that is designed by nature for survival, selfishness and self preservation. And what else is nature but brutal.
And yet as an individual I don't buy everything or much of anything despite targeted ads. It shows population trends not individual.
@@theofficialness578Interesting because I've lived my life with the choice of who I would be. And at 40 I've made it happen as I saw fit, to what I considered good. Perhaps it's a limitation that prevents you from understanding those making a choice or some other hidden variable of them not agreeing from ground up premises.
I enjoyed your book tremendously Mr. Sapolsky. The shift in understanding our nature could make for a more just and corrective society. Thank you.
I had no choice except to make this post.
Yes
My past led me to that comment and that comment leads me to the rest of my life
I also had no choice but to agree with you. We all like to amuse others. It strengthens our bonds. I think it’s inside of us.
I disagree. How can I possibly do otherwise?
Of course I might be wrong, but this is not really what he is arguing about. At least not necessarily every single minor detail of one's decisions is predetermined.
As incredibly informative & insightful this was, I’m only part way through & got emotional thinking about peers & loved ones of mine, whose genetic & environmental confluence was put into incredible perspective for me. It saddens me that for some that I know, they had no chance (they passed away- their socialization was incredibly depressing).
Sapolsky, thank you for sharing information that allows us to better understand the nuances of one another where we would otherwise cast judgement. I hope we as a society can co-opt this information in a way that safeguards & protects, as well as minimize harm to others navigating.
Hello all! Been reading some of the criticism here and I like the points some people are making. I've also been troubled by the notion of lack of free will, entitlement, etc (being one of the lucky ones). I still don't think there's free will in the sense in which we're all brought up to think about it, but there are certain subtleties that helped me frame it better (and hopefully explain it to others, including my kids when they're old enough to worry about such things). Our will doesn't follow "us", we follow our will. There is an us in the picture, we're not puppets. Will is free in the sense that it's not pre-determined, i.e. we cannot accurately predict it and that's because of environment, chance events, chaos, Brownian motion, whatever you wanna call it (nobody could tell you exactly what you'd be doing at 9:17 tomorrow morning, even if they had full data on all the atoms in your body). Lack of "free will" is a scary prospect and we've already seen examples in the comments here of how that can be paralyzing (is there any point in doing anything? I'm going to choose what I wouldn't normally, it's depressing, etc). So it makes sense that with the evolution of self-consciousness, we have also evolved a sense of free will. And it's very tough to think about the lack of it and of course it's depressing and paralyzing. What now? You don't have to think about it every day. But think about it next time you decide to judge someone harshly, or fight with your partner about how they "always" do this or that, or your child because they are being "naughty" or an adversary that's set to make your life miserable. This very comment is not a result of free will, but it is very much a result of circumstance (having a high sense of righteousness, being fortunate enough to have caring parents and a high enough education, accepting a job where I met a colleague who recommended Sapolsky, reading some of his books, and binging on youtube). However what this comment might do is, by someone's chance encounter with it, sway their path ever so slightly. And this is how it goes. What is the net effect? We are all gaining more knowledge, empathy, understanding. We are evolving (no surprise there). So I'm not too worried about it. I'm fortunate enough to be stuck with "me", a mostly homeostatic individual, and I'm loving the ride that my will is giving me!
It sounds like you think we have free will, but our free will is very limited. It is not clear.
Our will doesn't follow us and we don't follow our will. It is an integral part of us. Our will is a state of the moment that has consequences.
You would need much more than full data on your body. You'd need all the information about the environment that could affect you up until that time as well and the capacity to analyse it. However, that we cannot predict it does not mean that it is unpredictable, and unpredictability does not mean undetermined.
I don't know how this will change the scary bit, but if there is no free will, then there never was.
People confuse determinism with fatalism. The universe is not set in stone, but it is still determined by infinite causal factors over which humans have no influence.
For there is no free will, but thinking makes it so.
A similar idea as : “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” . (Hamlet)
Amazing!
Not really. Just cos you think something is real, doesnt make it real. Thinking that you are a genius doesnt make you one. Thinking that you are Superman doesnt make you fly.
The slides were a pleasant addition. The pups were noticeably (and curiously) absent, and I was hanging on to hope we'd get to hear the clock go off, but things turned out fine despite neither of those things happening. 😆
Ha ha ha great observation!!!
I understand his point.
However there are decisions I make in my daily life that involve FREE WILL as I have different possibilities to choose.
Our experiences are everything!!!!
I recommend to relisten, but with an open mind this time.
And maybe even a 3rd time. It's hard to gras concepts that are alien. Do you know anybody who decides to go into depression? Into lead or mercury poisoning? Even foods alter your mood which alter decisions.
You are not in control of anything even if you have the illusion of control of many things
@@a.randomjack6661I think an easy misconception with his point is that since there is no free will our autonomy is basically already been determined in a glass ball it’s not that everything you will ever do is completely pre determined like in a fantasy movie but there is precedence in every choice,action or thought it’s not a line more of a cone of predeterminedness is what I got from a different video of his on the same topic so my choice on ice cream while still in the cone of precedence is STILL MINE not a completely predetermined outcome (just tell me what u think of my point instead of saying to rewatch lmao 😂)
@@a.randomjack6661I GET TO CHOOSE MY FUCKING ICE CREAM!!!!!!!
Well thank you so much for the video.
But I don’t think I’m one of the lucky ones just because I listened to the video. My life is shit , I’m broke, never had a gf, etc…
But thank you for the lecture it made a lot of sense to me. 😊
Dr robert what do you think of the power of belief? If someone believes in free will won't their life be generally better than those who don't? Wouldn't they be more open to hard things? because they can get out of their comfort zone and better themelves? and aside from the power of belief if a depressed individual learns about the fact that there is no free will, sure thing it'll help with the guilt (that they couldn't have pulled themselves out of it and that if they've tried to kill themselves it's not their fault it's just a defeciency in some neurottansmitters and so on) but how does that make their life better? knowing the fact that they turned out that way as a result of all the antecedent causes, now wouldn't that put them at a disadvantage their whole life? I think it does them worse to know there is no free will, am i wrong? I mean which is an easier case for a therapist to treat? Someone with depression who believes in free will or someone with depression who knows it's bullshit?
Belief (in say a God, heaven, hell, whatever else) is a evolutionary adaptation, it's the ability for an organism to delude itself about reality which benefit it in survival and reproduction (even if the things it believe are completely false).
No god no truth what you say doesnt matter god obviously exist as a manifestation of the will to power and ultimately is more potent than the self destructive atheism of science.@@Danuxsy
I agree that determinism will “determine” your starting point and that likely has an outsized effect on life, but that pure chance/randomness is understated. At a cellular level, decisions need to be made with information that is incomplete or misrepresented (e.g. confounding undetectable forces) and these circumstances generate unique/indeterminite futures. Even as a thought experiment where you had a perfect computer that could quantify all possible inputs, there are events that are purely equivalent probabilitistically and each occurance stacking to create a potentially infinite number of futures. I suppose you could claim that the evolutionary past of an organism will still precondition a decision one way, but I think it’s probably brittle to claim that nowhere along the way there were/are arbitrary decisions (e.g. some such circumstance that creates indecision). Advancing this perspective, we often have to make decisions that appear similar in that the corresponding futures are unknown to us where these choices are purely guesses (because we are not perfect computers), but nonetheless “ours”. To this point, if Sapolsky interprets these junctions as part of Determinism then I can’t disagree, but I believe it dismisses the agency of a random choice; the past cannot infallibly provide us with sensible guidance to novel situations. I believe that this unknowing is at the core of free will. I’m not sure if this is what Sapolsky alluded to as chaos, but it seems dismissive nonetheless because life is chaotic.
Sapolsky, by taking a neuroscientific approach, is overcomplicating things massively.
The argument is very simple and very obvious. Everything is cause and effect and nothing is outside of that. Free will is magical.
Randomness does not exist. It is just unexplained cause and effect. Think about rolling dice. It is random from a human perspective because there are so many factors that impact the result that we cannot possibly control for lr understand. A superhuman with full knowledge of physics would get whatever dice roll he/she wanted every single time.
Big assumption there. Except for quantum physics, which has to be carefully shielded at the atom level for it to show up, there is nothing in the macro scale known to be random. Probability is merely a tool for analysis when there are unknown variables. There is absolutely no assumption there that the underline process is not deterministic.
Entropy and randomness are not the same thing. Just because we can't predict something doesn't mean it's not a physical phenomenon that could be predicted if one knew the exact state of all the involved matter. And even if this concept worked as you describe, "random" or entropic events culminating to change your behavior doesn't seem like free will. If all of your choices were determined by a roulette wheel or a pair of dice, you would not describe that as free will.
As we can never know all there is to know about a situation;- (ever overlooking the fact that observation affects the observed) determinism is a dull predictive tool.
Complexity is freedom
Sapolsky's point isn't that everything is destined to be exactly the way we see it, I think I remember in one of his lectures he described random chance to be as influential as nature and nurture. The point is that these random events are by definition out of our control, so how can they give rise to free will?
He is extremely honest with his understanding. Splendid
Of course, whether we have “X” or not depends entirely upon our definition of “X”.
But if free will means the ability to make choices based on our perception of circumstances in our environment, and we don’t have that ability, I don’t see how learning anything could ever influence whether we burn the witch or not. If we can’t change our behavior based on new or different information, we can’t stop burning the witch no matter what science proves about free will. It’s a self-defeating argument.
Perhaps more troubling to me is that a scientist would include in his argument against the existence of something, the practical benefits of believing that way. It’s either that way or not, based only on evidence. The benefits or drawbacks will fall where they may.
And for that matter, we don’t have to wait for the free will debate to be settled before we can decide whether to be kind or cruel to our fellow humans. All that is required is compassion right now. And we can access that capacity for compassion only, it seems to me, if we have free will.
The only definition of free will that does not appear to me to be a useless tautology is… the human ability to choose behavior that is counter to what our biological instincts urge us to do. And all of the many other determining influences notwithstanding, we do apparently have at least some of that ability occasionally. It may only be three minutes, but it is a sacred three minutes.
Peace ❤️
Changing our behaviour based on new information does not require free will.
How so? Is the change automatic, then? You may find David Hume’s work useful, then, as your understanding of causation lacks complexity.
@@sjoerd1239
Good to know! So what then IS free will?
@@skadoodaks2275 Free will is the ability to do other than we do. It is the ability for someone to do something other than is otherwise explicable. If determinism is true, then there is no free will. We are biological robots that respond to the circumstances in which we exist.
Computer can perfectly change its behavior based on new information. That's called machine learning. Does not mean the CPU has free will. Humen are many magnitudes more complicated than a machine learning algorithm but at the very basic level, how a neuron fires up is completely deterministic, just like the transistors in a CPU.
The more I've listened to Sapolsky talk about Free Will, the more I've come to recognize that he really hasn't thought about things very deeply. So shallow is his understanding that I don't think he can even define a version of Free Will such that it could exist.
It's too bad that Dan Dennett has passed as Dennett's understanding of what Free Will is, what it means, and how it came into existence, was head and shoulders above Sapolsky.
Can you explain
To me, Dennett's definition of free will is misleading and is not "free" in any meaningful way.
"Show me a neuron (or brain) whose generation of a behaviour is independent of the sum of its biological past, and for the purposes of this book, you've demonstrated free will". That is Sapolsky's definition, which part of this do you disagree with?
It has always been so, but knowing it makes everything different. 😊❤️😊
In a world that is turning more and more selfish, we need this philosophy, we should all realise we have no control over our own life, but we are even more powerful then that, we are the environment of everybody else we meet, we should take up the responsibility of influencing people in the right direction through understanding and helping. Great video, thank you
More powerful than* that.
💙
I love your work Dr Sapolsky
Does anyone know the source of the graph at 9:02 of the MoA-a gene effect on aggression in combination with childhood maltreatment.
Hello Stanford Alumni! I schooled at Stanford also. Regarding free will: In the global frame, entropy overall has a one way arrow and space will continue to expand and accelerate in expansion. This is predetermined and we cannot escape this destiny. In a local frame, we have free will, within the predeterminations already set by the universe expanding. (Some) matter has a property of awareness and thinking that is an action, albeit a small action. These actions can be amplified in a sort of biological circuit either intentionally or unintentionally, to become larger macro actions. These can propagate and amplify so large as to shape a planet surface, reach other orbital bodies, even build a craft to exit Sol and his heliosphere! But that spacecraft, as well as the seed thought, will inevitably eventually become redshifted into the lowest quanta of energy alone in the cosmos, perhaps as a photon sphere, an island onto itself. Perhaps.erging into a superfluid BEC-like state where we have no more measure (no differential). But it is the nature of nature that we will follow some course like this... 🙏😎
its not my thoughts or the inputs that lead to thoughts, but the non predictable number of steps i can recurse/observe my thoughts that gives rise to 'free will'.
What I love, as a human being, is that even if a person is born under extremely challenging circumstances, they can overcome them. They can change their genetic expression. The more extreme the conditions, the less likely mathematically, but the possibility exists.
So far, I've seen people who have little positive influence do greatly different things than would have been predicted, and also the opposite.
We can lean into our lemming qualities, or, lean into the one thing that qualifies us for free will potential.
As a person with an ACE score of 10, I have opted for the idea that I have more influence than my ego would have me believe.
This is the most challenging work I will ever be faced with, but the most profoundly rewarding.
Having said this, I adore Robert and trying on his shoes. It helps me greatly to ask questions of my own behaviour and be more understanding of myself and others on a daily basis.
The whole point is free will does not exist so how will someone overcome difficulties on own when own does not exist.
"even if a person is born under extremely challenging circumstances, they can overcome them". "can" means possible, not necessarily likely. Go back to school.
You are making a distinction between the the circumstances that life has dealt you and what you choose to do with them. But this distinction is not merited because "what you do with them" is as equally biologically-determined as the circumstance itself.
Physicist Sean Carroll is a proponent of Hugh Everett's Many Worlds interpretation that states that whenever someone makes a choice, the universe splits into multiple universes with each universe having a different choice selected. For example, I might choose Job A over Job B, but in another universe I chose Job B. If, as Robert Sapolsky would assert, all past events determine my choice for Job A (I could not have done otherwise), then it would not be possible that there is another universe where I select Job B. After all, both universes have the same past. Therefore, it follows that the opportunity to choose between Job A and Job B is stochastically determined, but how I happen to find myself in the universe where I select Job A is a free choice that is not strictly determined. In fact, I could have done otherwise (Job B universe) but chose not to (Job A universe).
If all this is true, why then don't we find ourselves inside of these alternate universes, split multiple personalities, but instead are still in the one we are in? I don't think it's our choices that create alternate universes, but the alternate universes are bubble unto themselves, with no obvious interactions between them. Roger Penrose posits that black holes might lead to them, if we could only survive a black hole.
The list of things we do not choose, however long, does not eliminate a single thing from the list of things we do choose, however short.
I had a different teenage experience with the free will issue:
After my father died, I spent time in the public library, browsing the philosophy section. I think I was reading something by Baruch Spinoza that introduced the issue of determinism as a threat to free will. I found this troublesome until I had this thought experiment (whether I read it in one of the books or just came up with it myself, I can’t recall).
The idea that my choices were inevitable bothered me, so I considered how I might escape what seemed like an external control. It struck me that all I needed to do was to wait till I had a decision to make, between A and B, and if I felt myself leaning heavily toward A, I would simply choose B instead. So easy! But then it occurred to me that my desire to thwart inevitability had caused B to become the inevitable choice, so I would have to switch back to A again, but then … it was an infinite loop!
No matter which I chose, inevitability would continue to switch to match my choice! Hmm. So, who was controlling the choice, me or inevitability?
Well, the concern that was driving my thought process was my own. Inevitability was not some entity driving this process for its own reasons. And I imagined that if inevitability were such an entity, it would be sitting there in the library laughing at me, because it made me go through these gyrations without doing anything at all, except for me thinking about it.
My choice may be a deterministic event, but it was an event where I was actually the one doing the choosing. And that is what free will is really about: is it me or is someone or something else making the decision. It was always really me.
And since the solution was so simple, I no longer gave it any thought. Then much later, just a few years ago, I ran into some on-line discussions about it, and I wondered why it was still a problem for everyone else, since I had seen through the paradox more than fifty years ago.
What you mean by the word "me" is what makes your argument not accurate. You're talking about the "self" which is what owns your body and mind. But that simply doesn't exist, It's an illusion. What "you" are is just the complexity of mind and body and nothing more. When you feel you're making a choice, "you" are nowhere to be found. And that's where determinism is the only reality that makes any sense. You might want to read a book called "Free Will" by Sam Harris. He explains all of what I've just described in detail and it's a very straight to the point book.
The biological determinists out here and their complete blindness to the fact most of these claims have zero science-based evidence. Just a bunch of formally logical conclusions tied together with no real substance behind it.
i think that's exactly wrong. Because the self doesn't exist, free will does exist at the level of you, at the level of the self. If the self were real it would be constrained totally by determinism,as your organs and body are, and there would be no free will, . Free will is illusory, out there in nature, it like the self, is nowhere to be found. Where it's found is with you, it's the operating mode appropriate to the self. @@boringhfitness5304
@@boringhfitness5304 It's horrifying for people to accept that concept. The first person view is so real for everyone, that a lot of people cannot comprehend that it might just be an illusion. It sort of becomes an existential crisis.
As a fan of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work on language (as in The Blue and Brown Books and Philosophical Investigations), I want to point out that philosophical discussions of "free will" usually employ that phrase in ways that have little in common with its use in everyday, non-philosophical vernacular speech. In other words, philosophers extend the meaning of everyday terms into new territories. But doing so raises the possibility of parties to the discussion not knowing what other conversants understand when using those same words. How then to conduct a conversation without well-defined concepts?
Is it me or there is a huge discrepancy between saying something has a "high probability of" and "determined". While I love this entire topic and how our genes and environment may affect our behaviour, there's a not small gap between "likelihood" and "certainty".
the point is not wether a factor will certainly dictate an outcome that you KNOW, but the very deterministic nature of the phenomenon regardless of our knowledge of it, " probability" is just an epistemological limit of the observer, the cause-effect phenomena underlying inexistence of free will is there wheter we have a precise characterization of it or not
@@vecchiohotmail3572that was a great way of putting it.
I find the terminology "Mechanistic" to be more accurate than "Deterministic".
The world is not deterministic, it is mechanistic. Meaning a flower will not grow without water, soil, sun rays etc.
Never really considered the definition like that I guess that's probably where the environmental factors come into play though like genetics determine certain proclivities but environmental factors can possibly enhance or create new more important/defining personality traits
So a flower has defined values for existence but its not deterministic because it's a process? I dunno it kinda seems like it's the same thing.
Sapolsky agrees with you here. These individual cases are probabilistic and do not disprove free will when viewed in isolation. But if you consider all probabilistic events as a collective, they are what constitute you.
I’ve thought a lot about this, and ppl argue that you can weigh options and choose an option in terms of an action thus free will. However, you can think about it all you want and choose what to do, whatever choice you make is a result of your thought process and you were always going to pick what you did regardless of the fact that you weighed the options.
"Behave" was more than enough information to understand that Free Will is a lie. But, I am interested in reading the new one.
Extremely interesting and beneficial to learn to use Forgiveness everyday.
As one of the "lucky ones" Ive been completely messed up ever since I discovered his new lectures on free will. My worldview is challenged at every step. Not sure how everyone around me thinks but everything iny life has been measured based on competition and willpower (to this point) ...I am still a motivated individual but I actually feel MORE lucky that I just learned about the abscence of free will at 45 and not as a kid who had to work their ass off for every tiny bit of success
The earlier you know there is no free will the better as an older brain has already been shaped to believe a falsehood. Changing one's beliefs can be a shock even if you know longer believe in what you believed..its a process it takes time to adjust. Have lots of compassion for yourself.
I think learning it at an early age may be beneficial to some extent. You learn that it's not just "your will". You will learn about how your environment truly affects you and your behavior and not just rest everything on your "will".
For example, if you want to leave alcohol or drugs or other bad habits, you better start cutting contact with bad friends and not just rely on your "will" to ignore those bad habits.
If you understand the intricate, true definition of freewill, this is a very easy understanding and is this only thesis that makes sense. We are all conditioned from the events we witness. And starting at fetal life, we absorb so, so much more because we have the art of staying present at all times allowing him/her to form from the information he/she has interpreted. If it wass negative, that will eventually be her fundamental base and usually the house gets constructed on a broken foundation which can be repaired along the way or not.
I am a bit surprised that Sapolsky finds himself on the “lunatic” fringe.
Sapolsky doesn’t bring a new idea. He brings a mountain of new objective evidence. Proponents of free will bring intuition without objective evidence.
Chaos theory is misnamed. The system evolves according to the starting conditions and any outside influences it encounters along the way. The systems are not reducible to parts alone, as Sapolsky conforms to classical reductionism. However, they are reducible to a repetitive process making use of one or more type of identical parts.
Quantum events are, at least, statistically determined. There is no good reason to believe quantum events are truly random, like any other so-called random events.
I am still on the fence about free will, as all this Sapolsky stuff seems like a category error or an error of scale. As soon as it's I or we that has free will, it seems plausible that it is real relative to us. Selves, rather than our physical dimensions and biological processes, aren't real - just a story these real and determined elements and agents give rise to. If selves were real, they would, via determines, not have free will. Brains don't have free will. But does the story the brain spins have free will? It seems so, and maybe this is what "only a simulation can be conscious" means.
Quantum effects can only be observed at atom level and when carefully shielded. Even at that level, without enough shielding, quantum effect seemingly vanishes. There is no evidence at all that anything at macro level is random. Matter of fact, every neuron fires up in a completely deterministic way. A brain is very complicated but if every single module is deterministic, the whole thing must be deterministic.
I completely agree with his conclusion and how he reached it, but this is still quite a radical idea. No matter how true an idea may seem, it could still end up being wrong. It's great that he acknowledges this as a minority view even among neuroscientists so as to not give people the wrong idea.
새폴스키의 농담은 제게 잘 통하는 것 같아요. 한국에 최근에 번역된 "행동"은 800쪽이 넘지만 지루하지 않았습니다.
I like your ideas about how life works thu scientific observations. It’s got me looking at life from a different angle and makes me feel as if I have free will while keeping in mind that I might not.
Thank you Bobby. You are a great help to the human race
Dear Dr. Sapolsky, I have enjoyed many of your earlier works, but especially your recent work, “Determined”. I’m curious if you are aware of the long philosophic tradition reaching back through the Enlightenment, Spinoza, and eventually to Lucretius and Epicurus that provides an historical connection with your own research and scientific point of view. Could you comment on this connection please. Thank you.
Amazing. You’re are brilliant, thank you for the video.
Free will or no free will, that is the question. Can the answer be both? Love it
It really only makes sense if its one or the other.
I think so. I believe he’s right in that there is no free will; however, at some point in cultural and philosophical evolution, the free will idea came about so it’s real in that way.
Blast from the past. Best lecturer ever
"Nothing you can do that can't be done. Nothing you can sing that can't be sung... Nothing you can make that can't be made. No one you can save that can't be saved... Nothing you can know that can't be known. Nothing you can see that isn't shown...."
I respect him and find his thinking worth regarding but I think there are refutations at each point in the parts of the argument I listened to.
"We don't change by our choices we change by our circumstances"
now I'm starting to believe more in
(no free will)
Yes, I am the lucky one who has the privilege to listen to you RobertBhai.😊
It is so calming to hear you say yourself - that about being on the fringe.
Maybe it could be time for you to rethink your amazing stroke of wisdom
about free will, from when you were 14???
I think we have a language problem with the phrase "free will"- that different people really just don't hear the same thing when you say it.
Like, I think all people can agree that *violence is real*, that it matters, that it is diffetent from not violence.
And violence means someone's choice being invaded by someone else's.
So in the name of preventing violence, we call all agree that some nebulous thing called "choice" is located somewhere. And we can all probably agree that, regardless of genetics and epigenetics and culture and childhood conditioning and physiological conditions like depression- choice, the inviolable idea of where a person begins, exists in the body. The reason not to hit someone is that they don't want you to. So what the heck is "wanting"? Whatever it is, we tacitly accept that it matters.
On a pragmatic and theoretical level, we abide to the treatment of distinguishing a beginning and end of personhood; and that boundary is drawn by the location of choice.
I think all of us believe in something dialectical. That there two are categories of phenomena we call Choice and Circumstance, and that they both constantly affect the other. I think we're really finding that the border between them changes relative to where we stand.
But naming that border only matters if it helps us! If the term trips you up and confuses you or leads you into despair, then its something to discard. It's a device of language- and language is an invention made for human well being. There's no falsehood in letting go of language when it doesn't serve well being.
There is a language problem. We behave and use language as if we have free will. It is difficult to look at free will objectively because we are the subject.
If determinism is correct, then there is no free will. If we do not have free will, then we do not have choice in the way we generally treat our choices. We select (determine) from options. The selection is not optional, in the way optional is generally treated when free will is assumed. To be convinced of not having free will requires overcoming the intuition of having free will, which is subjective.
If we can be objective, say by imagining we are looking from a third person point of view, then it is not so hard, except that it is hard to maintain that point of view.
you say a lot of stuff that says nothing.
Mr. Sapolsky would make a wonderful Moses delivering the 10 Commandments!!
OK! You've been working hard here popping up in my algos daily. It worked! I bought Determined. Good luck with the road trip. How about coming to Seattle?
Thank you for creating that. I watch Jacque Fresco lectures from the age of 14. Like this professor and his stuff as well..
What do you define as will and free will?
I wrote this elsewhere (with edits):
To the compatibilists/determinists: It's a probabilistic universe if it's infinite. (It's not just classical mechanics.)
You are trying to apply determinism/finiteness to a probabilistic/infinite universe.
The problem with causality is that infinity (and quantum instantaneousness) breaks it, fundamentally, because you cannot go far back enough to determine all the initial conditions (that lead to you/your behavior) because there are none with infinity!
Infinity breaks determinism.
To add: The Uncertainty Principle suggests that you cannot say for certain that we have no free will.
To add for this video's context: Sure, you have no control in some senses, like classical mechanics (upbringing, gravity, etc.), but not necessarily from a fundamental/quantum sense. The universe goes beyond classical mechanics. Think also of 'spooky action at a distance.' This doesn't appear causal, but, rather, instantaneous.
If the universe created you, then so did infinity if the universe is infinite.
While I'm here, around 25 minutes into the video, Robert suggests we should demonstrate where we find free will amid all of the determining influences of our genetics and our biology. Well, there are two arguments against free will, one that insists free will must be free of causal determinism, and the other that insists free will must be free of ourselves. Both of these imaginary freedoms are impossible, of course. If we were free of cause and effect we could no longer cause any effect, and would have no freedom to do anything at all. And if we were free from ourselves, free from our genetics, our biology, our prior life experiences, etc., then we would be someone else. Another impossible freedom. So, to find a meaningful and relevant notion of free will, we have to stop insisting on these irrational requirements. So, what is the rational definition of free will?
Free will is an EVENT. It is specifically the event in which a person decides for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion, insanity, and other similar undue influences. As an event, it fits very nicely into our ordinary deterministic chain of events. As an event, it is no longer a subjective "feeling" or an "illusion". Want to see it? Let's go out to a restaurant.
At the restaurant we see people walk in, sit down, browse the menu listing all of the items that they CAN order, and deciding for themselves what they WILL order for dinner. The waiter takes their order and returns later with their meal, and a bill. The bill holds each customer responsible for their deliberate act, which was ordering the dinner. We note that no one was holding a gun to their head, so their choosing was free of coercion. We note that no one ordered dinosaur or any other crazy thing, so their choosing was free of insanity. This then was an event of free will. You saw it. I saw it. The waiter saw it.
These events happen every day, at home as we decide what we will wear to work. At work as we decide what we need to do. And in life in general as we make the many decisions we make each day.
So, Robert, that's free will. It is not free from cause and effect (determinism). It is not free from ourselves. It is only free from meaningful and relevant constraints that can reasonably be said to impair or prevent us from making the choice for ourselves. Nothing more. Nothing less.
There is no rational definition of "Free Will" and the concept of it is supernatural to begin with. Trying to rationalize free will by using examples of individuals exercising basic autonomy just redefines the concept of free will into something it's not.
Going to the restaurant, choosing your clothes, everyday events in general are all influenced by patterns/behaviors/emotions/etc and those choices made are more examples of their influencing factors than an exercise of free will.
That everything is a caused effect, is determinism. Determinism means there is no free will. A lack of free will does not mean there is no cause and effect.
Free will is not an event. Doing something is an event. A lack of free will means that we cannot do things, including produce thoughts, other than we do them, in the circumstances that we do them. Rewriting, free will is the ability to do things, including produce thoughts, other than we do them, in the circumstances that we do them (a rational definition).
That we behave as if we have free will does not mean we have free will. If there is no free will then we should change the way we behave, such as rewarding and punishing people, which won't be easy.
Even the "event," the decision within the brain, happens moments before you're aware of it. This has been firmly established.
@@sjoerd1239 " A lack of free will means that we cannot do things, including produce thoughts, other than we do them, in the circumstances that we do them" that would mean free will = doing things, including producing thoughts, other than we do, in the circumstances that we do them. That seems like way too wide a definition, most people see free will as picking door A or B, not designing the doors. As the guy above says, if free will means you can just do anything, then there would be no coherent effect of doing, doing would be abolished.
Rob - equivocation arises because I think most folks aren't talking about *unbounded* free will, as your book does... what they're talking about is whether, for example, the PFC "wins" in a particular instance in preventing the amygdala cluster from doing something aggressive and stupid. If it had failed in its struggle to regulate the limbic system in that instance, then an argument could be made that that person needs to improve their PFC/limbic connections (and possibly regret/apologize for not having done this already). As you point out, these brain connections are *not* static, just biased, in some cases overwhelmingly, from "everything that came before."
Of course, as you also point out, there are many folks who don't have a ghost's chance of regulating their amygdala, and so are 3-sigma (or more) outliers. So I wonder if it's worthwhile to talk, instead, about *outliers* in the name of being humane to those outliers as well as fair to most folks who are likely within 1- or 2-sigmas of some norm? (for example) Considering only proximal/distal free will doesn't capture, for instance, the effects of SES or TBI (the latter being quite common).
Commenters thought they had the choice not to say something but their emotions got the best of them. They needed to feel safe so they decided to reject the idea that they aren’t in control.
And your biology led you to leave this condescending comment, which you can’t resist once on RUclips, all fault of evolution. Lol
Most accurate book I have ever read in my life
If there is no free will, the book you're selling doesn't matter
Excellent Point. . .
Thanks a lot for such a rich video and all the information we got from Professor Sapolsky
You are confusing your circumstances, which you do not have control over, to the choice of how you respond to them, which you do have control over.
No, neither is under your control. I am 100% sure of this (and I am not a very decisive person). Give me an example and I will disprove it.
Typical illusion of control. If your decision making process is a combination of genetics, experience and circumstances, there is nothing you "control". You just react based on fixed conditions.
I think I have CPTSD and for months I had no motivation to do anything productive but what puzzles me is, how can I keep playing this one particular game over and over again - what is my motivation to replay this damn game and can I copy that mechanism to motivate me to do useful thing?
I got my answer in this lecture: the sense of righteousness when punishing the 'bad guys' - the endorphins... Thank you. Now to figure out whattaheck am I to do with that information...
Entertaining and informative-he’s probably a popular professor if he’s still around. HOWEVER-completely ridiculous to state that choice has no effect on who someone becomes. E.g., someone who becomes a mass murderer had no choice, but was destined to become that person? Really? There is predisposition, but there is ALWAYS an element of choice in the equation.
Keep clutching that straw.
I had an extremely strong knowledge/intuition about determinism and lack of free will, was deeply ingraned to my mind ever since I can remember myself. Even as a 4 year old I used to say nothing could have been done differently
Damn. At the age of 4? Perhaps you are gifted with an above average cognition.
You have a free choice and will to believe you don't have free will
You have.
That’s a great point.
Depending on your glucose levels 😅
Its called "the big picture". My future was set at the big bang. I know that at 70. I knew that at 7. Nice to see the world catching up.
Imagine thinking you know how the works works at 14 and never changing your mind. A lifelong exercise in confirmation bias!
Do you believe you have free will? Have you ever believed otherwise? Do you have any objective evidence to support that belief?
I'm in that club as well although perhaps I drew that conclusion from a different source.
Mark Twain said " When I was 14, my father was the dumbest man alive. When I turned 21, I was amazed at how much he had learned in seven years."
But the simple observations we made at 14 lasted and expanded despite growing up in a society that overwhelmingly promoted free will as a given. I'm more surprised that my 14 year old self did not change from that notion as I did from many others along the way.
@@sjoerd1239 I do. I don't believe in "absolutely" free will, but I do believe we have tremendous capacity to steer our experience. If you practice mindfulness long enough to see that you can have a thought and not react to it, you can see the gap between your behavior and your control. Sure, you can't do something that doesn't occur to you, so maybe the universe is steering you, but you can choose between all of the thoughts you have. You control how to behave, moment to moment. Be driven by the din, or be still and choose.
@@shlomoabrin5045 There are a lot of characterizations about free will that obviously don't hold up under scrutiny. At the same, time, determinism is the same. The key is, you can talk yourself into anything. My behaviors are overwhelmingly dominated by my conditioning. Overwhelmingly. And yet...there is a sliver of wiggle room available to me. The slower I move, the wider it looks.
A friend once told me, of pool, "The faster you shoot, the smaller the pocket." I think the same is true of us.
Show me the boy (of course) of seven; I will show you the man. No matter how much the EMOTIONAL human mind wants to BELIEVE it has "free will" the more those who know the truth have to live our lives parallel to the purposefully ignorant. What a breath of fresh air to hear this discussion and know its "truth." Sigh...and the Beat Goes On.