Final Thoughts on Free Will (Episode
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris presents his full argument on the illusoriness of free will - and explores its ethical and psychological implications.
Released: March 12, 2021
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"If you thought of all of those films then we really are in a simulation and it's all about you apparently" - freaking god-tier meta game Sam. Well played.
He had no choice.
I laughed out loud when he said that, hilarious!
@@laurelangelle3451 me too ha!
@@ArchLordXarnor Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free )
Best book in the world - upanishads ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)
We feel an enhanced sense of ‘free will’ when things are going our way.
thats bc we r in harmony with nature going with the flow going against the flow of traffic is only smart if ure riding a bike
Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free )
Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)
“There is no free will but choices matter” - good enough for me
This argument is already the best proof that Sam is wrong on free will.
He is like so many that argue against free will, who can’t even think their own argument through
@@MichaelAntonFischer I guess I don’t understand the difference between free will and free choice from a pragmatic or practical perspective.
@@livingroomc well, there probably isn’t a big one, the point is just that Sam, like so many „no free will“ proponents can’t conceptionalise the full extend of that position, so they come up with wacky statements like this, to gloss over the fact that their position flies in the face of all the evidence.
I mean sure, we are not entirely free to decide, but free will isn’t a complete illusion either.
"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become" - Carl Jung
@@MichaelAntonFischer what's the evidence then??
"You didn't pick your friends, you didn't pick your nose, you didn't pick your friend's nose." - Sam Harris
Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free )
Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)
I've honestly started becoming a lot more relaxed in general when I started accepting that free will doesn't exist. For me it feels a lot more calming and liberating to just let go of the reins. Whatever happens, happens. Que sera, sera. If something happens, it was destined to happen by its nature of existing. It couldn't have turned out any other way. The good things, and the bad.
The only thing I can point out in your comment is "it was destined to happen" which isn't a helpful way of thinking about it, that's fatalism. With what Sam presents is the ability to improve as a computer that is an instinct machine. The difference between determinism and fatalism is the confusion. Free will is an illusion but that doesn't mean choices don't matter.
@@pedestrian_0 That's a very important differentiation. I'm still somewhat stuck on the difference between fatalism and determinism but I am slowly drifting towards grasping it (I suppose). If a computer can learn, then so should I. I think that the single most basic and perhaps most important capacity we can acquire, is the capacity to direct attention or, perhaps more broadly, to be attentive to what is going on. I mean, it's really hard to grasp the concept of the lack of free will/determinism in combination with the statement that choices matter. Whose choices??? And also, even more important question: how do you combine moral philosophy with determinism, namely for whom and why do choices matter?
@@AnnaPrzebudzona Rather than whose choices, the question is what caused your choices ? you or your imagination of great results that forces you to make those choices? for example, pick a film. The film you chose is not free will, but will have impact on the next film you choose if you keep choosing, just like you've 'chosen' to watch those films before, somehow they got in your brain other than other films.
@@pedestrian_0 Sam disagrees with fatalism, but that's just his own bugbear. He can disagree with it all he wants because it's a 'bad word' but any condition in the universe is a necessary result of prior causes. It was always going to end up that way. I don't believe that fatalism necessarily has to make any stance about choices mattering or not. It follows the same line of thinking that choices matter but you don't make the choices. Fatalism and determinism are the same, people just use the word determinism because it's more marketable.
@@pedestrian_0 Very accurate!
Honestly, I dont think this answer can ever be satisfactorily answered until we know more about how the brain works, and how the subconscious mind or even the unconscious mind works and interacts with each of those levels.
Great point.
Yes, but we already know enough to condo that Sam is wrong
Lex Fridman asked Sam in his recent clip talking about free will whether its possible that we just don't know some essential feature of consciousness or the mind that would illuminate the answer to the question of free will. Sam basically said its not possible because he couldn't even conceive what it might be.
I wonder if humans before Newton could even conceive the notion of gravity?
Or if physicists before einstein could even conceive the notion of space-time dilatation...
I think Sam has built up this idea so much in his mind and that's the reason he cannot accept he could be wrong
I think the answer is completely knowable. Belief in free will only starts with a mistake over what oprions are. I can drink tea or coffee with my breakfast. But that doesn't mean I can choose tea in the actual circumstances that I choose coffee.
That's just an error.
Sam Harris is a neurologist. He is making these assumptions with all of the information he has gathered not excluding his expertise on the brain.
If I seem to consciously not understand something in the moment, the brain grabs the information and keeps it in the subconscious. For example, when I find myself humming a song I know, the experience of remembering the song becomes extremely vivid, the tempo, every instrument being played in the mind. It was not under my control to remember each individual instrument, it just simply happened. The more comfortable I am with this notion, the less surprised I am about thoughts arising that appear intrusive; I've learned more to disassociate with the self, and associate more with the general experience.
Sam,
You have helped me so much with my mental health and I’d like to offer you my most genuine thanks.
I’ve followed you since ‘06/‘07 ish…but only now in 2022 has my life calmed down enough to do a deep dive into this subject.
Your logic and CBT brain hacks have really helped me expand my mind to another level.
My sadness is a little better…I’m learning to better handle anxiety and have slowly started to forgive myself and everyone else for everything. (i’m sure cannabis and psychedelics also play a role)
It’s ironic that an atheist has led another atheist to feel the “peace” of heart that I always hear Christians talk about. 😂
He is your God now! Good thinking. IF IT WAS YOU THINKING?
Around 34: "There is no free will but choices matter, and it isn't a paradox. Your desires, intentions and decisions arise out of the present state of the universe which includes your brain and your soul... along with all their influences. Your mental state is a part of a central framework. Your choices matter, whether or not they are the product of your mind or a soul... because they are the proximate cause of your action."
We are a subset of the environment we are subject to, therefore our behaviour, decisions and actions which are birthed are influenced/ socialised by these environmental conditions. Nothing is really, truly random.
You can do what you will. But you can not will what you will.
I’ve been listening to Sams podcast for a while now and I’m subscribed to his website and for some reason this one is one of my favorite.
“Oh course we have free will, because we have no choice but to have it.” Christopher Hitchens
Where and when did he say that? I'd love to see the entire discussion
@@williaminnes1563 I don’t know when, but I think he said that in a debate with David Wolpe. There is a video called “Hitchslap” where you might find it there too.
His humor was never-ending 😅
@@williaminnes1563 ruclips.net/video/IG_TGNJfg0s/видео.html
Found that bit
@@shiskeyoffles ruclips.net/video/WPoyM9SmHmw/видео.html
This was terrifying for me for a year until I realized that yeah, things appear and I don't produce them, I'm not scared so much and it doesn't really change much or matter. I always knew in a back of my head that when I'm doing active thinking I don't generate what's coming, but I'm waiting for things to come, like using my mind as a tool, but that requires me to interpret myself as an agent to which I'm not sure if I want to keep labeling myself as one
If the mind always defaults to its best interpreted logical choice for every single circumstance it's encountered, then every single one of us would constantly be in a state of the best version of ourselves. In other words, whenever we make a wrong choice against our better judgement, then the better and more logical choice was not made.
The argument reminded me of the Schopenhauer quote: "A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills."
It would make more sense had he said that man cannot will _what_ he wills.
@@aesirvanir8671 It looks like in his native German Schopenhauer uses "was" (English "what"). It appears to be from On the Freedom of Will but I haven't looked it up in that work myself. "Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Maybe it was translated as "as" because of the commonly used English phrase "doing as one wills/pleases," which essentially means to do what one wills.) But I agree that "will as one wills" is more ambiguous than "will what one wills." The former could mean "will in the manner one wills," or "will at the same time one wills," whereas the latter is more specific to what I think is the intended meaning.
@@mattheenan1536 borrringggg. why don't you eat a hot dog instead of all this philosophy
I have always liked Christopher Hitchens view on this: "Yes I have free will; I have no choice but to have it."
That's really stolen from sartre: 'condemned to be free'
@c h a r l e s Because he didn't reference Sartre, he simply appropriated his phrase without citation.
@@UBEREXCELLENCE It's possible that he came up with that line independently of reading Sartre. However, I think that at the very least, he was inspired by Sartre's words. It's extremely unlikely that someone as well-read as Hitchens (especially in philosophy) would not have come across such a famous line of Sartre's. However, I admit I was being too strong when I used the word 'stolen'.
ohhhh jezus, here goes my sanity
Quite a slippery slope isn't it
It’s funny that Jesus is basically J Zeus.
I think there’s a danger of listening to half the argument and not being walked through all the Implications can be very destabilizing . After I listened to the full episode through the subscriber feed my mind is completely blown . My head hurts and this actually makes sense . I had no choice but to lose my belief of free will .
@@vladislavkozlov4978 I'm a subscriber , i made the mistake of closing the page half way through........the media player is forcing me to start all over again😢
@@Alex-Zone i love how sam is obsessed on making this point.....i don't think the world is ready for this, this idea demands the loss of soo much vanity.
the masses won't assimilate this
I love it when Sam is on his field of expertise. The solo episodes are very valuable content. He has an idea, that's well thought trough and presents it carefully.
If you are confused:-
One may agree that free will is a illusion, and within the framework of this illusion i have to take a decision, i is representative of a bias\conditioning only....therefore there is no "i" who takes the decision but only conditionings that determine ones course of action..
~J.Krishnmurti..
This is the one for the ages!
Sam Harris at his finest. He gives me hope for humanity.
""Your very effort to convince them they don't have free will is proof that you think they have it.""
Proof ‘that they’ think they have it.
Took me some time to understand this concept but it’s the truest thing he’s ever said
The potential for morality and effectiveness here is very hopeful.
Of course, if you start with a faulty definition, your entire analysis will be likewise faulty.
Of course free will does not have to do with your choices of ice cream flavors but with the innermost dispositions of the soul, like the decisions to love of hate, which do not necessarily translate into actual action neither do they depend on the available choices to make them manifest. That's why man will always be free, because you cannot force somebody to love something they want to hate, neither hate something they want to love. You may force them "to say" they love or hate, but you can never change the internal disposition of their souls.
What you never discuss about is that our brain and its circuits of decision making are trained according to the ultimate goals that *we set*. That's where we decide, that's where we demonstrate our free will. You were talking about the future looking value that is in every decision we make. I agree that our brain understands the future looking value of our actions and decides according to these values. But we define the set of rules based on which these values are learned and computed by our brain.
No.
It's your subconscious mind that sets the goals. Again, you can't control when will you feel an impulse or motivation to do something, or how strong it will be.
Sam have you read " how emotions are made "?, by Lisa Feldman Barrett , she touches the topic of free will in a very scientific way that is worth having , thank you, amazing as always. By the way i agree with you on this specific topic 100%.
What an interesting reference! Thank you for this
If there’s no free will, what is ‘wilful’ ignorance?
This concept, too, may be illusory. In a causal universe, the answer suggests itself if the question is worded thus: What _causes_ reluctance to know something? What _causes_ selective reasoning?
Lack of exposure to facts and reason is motivated (rather than wilfully decided) by self-interest, desires, fears. Enforced exposure should therefore lead to persuasion, to an epiphany - unless a person is beyond help, due to relentless one-sided conditioning, indoctrination, cognitive dissonance, etc. For many, 2 + 2 will never equal 4. They have been turned into malfunctioning machines.
What is it, 2013? I guarantee these will not be his last thoughts on free will
I hope not
I went blank and couldn’t think of any movies. But I’m not blaming myself for that.
The choice is made when the deed is done.
We cannot objectively claim that a decision has been made until the deed is actually done. Until then, we are simply witnessing words, feelings, and intentions within the space of subjective experience.
and then we witness the worldly actions through the lense of subjective experience.
@@busTedOaS Correct. And when multiple people can (or could potentially) verify that the deed occurred, because it happened in the physical world, we begin to call it objectivity.
Cogent and convincing. I thought of Risky Business. The only movie I remember walking out on.
I loved that film. As a good repressed catholic boy, it snapped me out of my lame status quo.
Free will is a myth. We need to change our entire legal system which is based on the existence of free will. A criminal is as much a victim of circumstances as the victim of his action.
Sam is right. There is no reason to look outside any box for anything.
Not believing in free will ironically is "psychologically freeing". The further away your are from free will the closer you are to it.
Your description of experience presupposes determinism. "Choices don't matter because causes matter."
"We do not choose to choose what we choose" -- Sam Harris
I'm not a omniscient god with knowledge of all space and time so therefore I'm a robot.
@@seanbrogden7944 I don't think even an omniscient god would have free will either, the concept just makes no sense under any framework
@@spooky_action oh jesus that is fuckin dark, like I just now understand it and its just so.... ugly call me weak or idk dumb but it's like super saiyan fedora atheist shit man. nothing has a will. It feels nihilistic. He said it's not fatalistic but I dont see how? To an outside observer it would be fate or is the random part change things. Like if u rewound different things would happen sometimes right. Still a fun episode.im gonna listen to the whole thing today
@@seanbrogden7944 Lmao yeah. The more complex an entity is, the more disconnected from its unconscious, the less free it is. So an omnipotent god has the least amount of conscious freedom, lol.
Yessss, solo episodes are my jaaaaaam!
You have the expectation for one to recall all information at a moments notice. There are limitations to capacity. Doesn't mean there isn't free will.
I don't think I've heard the argument against free will and choice explained so concisely as here.
Sam, if your reading this its because I'm not a subscriber, and in about a day I will be, i just want to thank u for giving me a subscription, there was no box to write why but I feel like I should. I'm a poor guy i live at home and work as a cashier but have very little disposable income like maybe 10 or so dollars extra every week not always though. Every time it comes up in convo about podcasts I advertise making sense. Thanks again sam.
I could listen to that for hours
how ever i controlled my thoughts to not think of a certain person outta sight outta mind
We are not the authors of our lives. We’d have to exist before we exist to author our lives. We ARE the editors of out lives.
The films that came to mind for me were:
1. Der Ewige Jude
2. Jud Suss
3. The Greatest Story Never Told
4. Europa: The Last Battle
Please don't have a go at me. I really couldn't have thought otherwise.
This is a semantic proposition surely. Our thoughts arise in response to our environment (including our bodies), and we act, or not, upon them. There is where free will is. Choice is not a demonstration of free will our actions are.
Interesting and worthwhile podcast. Sam's argument against freewill seems to rely on two sets of action: deterministic and random. Sam's arguments are a noble and logical effort, but there may likely be a third set of action that although seemingly obscure could often make significant perturbations in the mix, thereby changing the result. I will give further thought to this and if my position seems correct, I may write a short comment on the topic. Said comment would be posted as a short paper in an open access journal or site.
This is where Sam is at his best. I'm interested now in what are the consequences of this. I think this relates to magic and persuasion and Facebook and free speech.
This is actually only about half of the episode , the subscriber feed which can be obtained for free if you can’t afford it gives the full walkthrough of the moral and practical implications of no free will . I’ve never been so mind blown before .
I know a guy down at the train station who's all in on rocks and I don't think it's a matter of free will
*Me* :Hi Sam, I ate your lunch out the fridge again today. Sorry but I didn't have a choice.
Also unpersuaded by “you don’t know how your choices work = no free will.” I don’t know exactly how a car works, yet I still freely drive it wherever I want.
He never said 'you never know how your choices work'.
He said 'you can't choose your choices'. That's pretty obvious if you look closely.
@@pran10000 Mind blowing how people can believe that.
Free will does not need to be proven. It is always a presupposition in understanding ourselves.
Train of thoughts is a conscious part of the mind.
Min 22:14... The experiment of think of any movie demonstrates that what comes to your mind is not your choice, and then the actual choice is very constrained. Darren Brown takes this to the extreme and asks someone to think of a song, but being Darren Brown the choice is not constrained to a few songs but ONE. Link below.
ruclips.net/video/yHNq4SQxyv0/видео.html
He's got it in reverse. You are more constrained in small short-term situations like being told to pick a film, than in large long-term considerations like choosing a career.
I share Sam’s belief about free will, however I’m still confused by this: How can we justify punishment for people who do wrong? How do we hold someone accountable for things when they aren’t the conscious driver of their life? Wouldn’t an absence of free will mean that they are simply a product of their environment+genes, and that even the most evil murderer should be immediately forgiven? I can’t get past this point in my head.
creativity and flow would not exist if there was no freewill, improvisation would be impossible.
My cat is pretty creative, does he have free will?
Free will is the ability to choose your desire. The problem with this beyond determinism vs randomness (which is valid btw due to law of excluded middle) is that you cannot ever possibly do anything voluntarily either mentally or physically without your desire to do those things. In other words you are incapable of ever choosing or controlling anything without the permission of your desire. You can never step out independently of your own desires.
Thanks Sam!
I don’t think Sam Harris is thinking about Free Will correctly. If I go into a store the things available in that store have not been chosen by me. Nor is the price for anything in the store chosen by me. But my decision to buy or not buy a particular product imperceptibly effects the price. Millions of people making the same decisions create the price. Those decisions create the choices we find in the store. The fact that we are not aware of all the decisions and forces that created the price and products is too stringent a condition for defining free will.
All the mentions of "choices" and how they matter are all that is needed for the compatabilist to retort to this podcast.
Doesn't make sense to spend 34 minutes denying free will and then say you can still "choose."
@@aaron2709 Agreed; it strikes me that you could substitute every mention of "free will" with "choice" in this podcast, and similarly banish 'choice' as a coherent concept.
My problem with Sam’s thinking is he stops his argument at biology and consciousness.. why not go all the way to physics and quantum physics? If you believe in this type of “full-on” determinism, then none of the conversations about ethics or self-development or meditation or decisions and choice makes any sense at all.. you can’t really have a conversation about any of this because none of them make sense beyond our “experience of free will”... This is what Bret told him in their discussion, and I find it funny how Sam wants to point out how unaware we are of how subtle the lack of free will is but then chooses to be very “centrist” on determinism 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 what the fuck, Sam?
Spinoza, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are smiling. However, from the trenches of continental philosophy, stands this titan of XXI philosophy.
I don't get it. On one hand you are saying that "choices matter" while making the claim that what we "want" just appears out of nowhere. I get that. What we want (or the films we think of) come out of nowhere. But at the end of the day, I STILL CHOOSE the film. I may not control the thoughts that came in my mind, but I still chose to follow one thought and not the other. For me THAT is free exercise of my will (my self) even though my "self" is a sum-total of the universe that came before me.
A criminal is sent to jail because he chose to do the crime, not because the thought of the crime came randomly to his head. So if we DO make the choice (as Sam clearly states - choices do matter) then how do you claim pure determinism or randomness?? Someone care to explain?
Yes I’ll explain. The bit where you say “I still choose to follow one thought and not the other” is incorrect. Just keep thinking about it and you’ll get it eventually. Or maybe not - most people never really understand. If you keep working on reducing your ego then it is more likely that you will one day understand that there is no free will 👍
The notion that you're choosing out of what appears in consciousness, is just another thought in consciousness, think of it like this. The restaurant waiter gives you the menu, and then hands you the letter that determines what you choose. On a fundamental level, you didn't choose anything.
Even when you don't "fundamentally" choose the things you choose, actions you take still matters. We put criminals in prisons so that we can elicit a change in them, no matter where the thoughts of killing someone come from (just appear in consciousness out of nowhere or you fundamentally choosing it, doesn't matter)
By far my favorite topic !!!!
Free will walks into a bar, and the bartender says, "What'll you have?" Free will replies, "Surprise me!"
If there was no free will so what’s the difference between me and a psychopathic killer? We both are robots!
Sam: "Choices matter". This implies that choices exist. But if people have no free will then choice does not exist. Either people have the free will necessary to choose between alternative courses of action. Or they lack the free will to decide, in which case there is no "choice" being made.
Free will is the ability to choose your desire. The problem with this beyond determinism vs randomness (which is valid btw due to law of excluded middle) is that you cannot ever possibly do anything voluntarily either mentally or physically without your desire to do those things. In other words you are incapable of ever choosing or controlling anything without the permission of your desire. You can never step out independently of your own desires.
Sam is using the word "choice" colloquially. He isn't literally saying we choose. He is simply saying that we have an influence on the world around us just like how a cog has influence around it. It doesn't choose, but it's actions do matter.
Alright now let’s talk about the simulation metaphor
Every time I hear Sam speak about free will, or the non-existence of it, I follow his theory and agree. But not too long afterwards I sort of forget about it and fall back into my usual way of thinking - that everyone has choices and should know better, including me.
Sam, is it possible to ever get buy-in on this from the masses, and one that lasts? It would certainly be awesome and a gigantic step forward for humans. Complete opposite of the worthless, guilt-based religious method of "your useless and pathetic...pray for forgiveness".
39:15 They’re minerals, Marie!
I was looking for this comment! It seems we both had no choice but to think of Hank after hearing Sams example...
He goofs up when he says that if randomness occurs, and you randomly pick a movie, then you would continuously be picking the same movie every time you rewound the clock and replayed it.
If you kept picking the same movie, then he would be claiming randomness doesnt exist either.
If randomness exists, you would be continuously picking different movies every time the clock was rewound and replayed.
If you rewound time would not the exact same random choice be made? I think randomness and fatalism can be combined. If in the quantum world if we were able go back in time and press play my intuition would be that exactly the same random choices would occur? I'm probably being laughed at for being stupid!
There is no way for anyone, including himself, to know if these are his final thoughts on free will.
my answer to the film question is that Im thinking of a film that hasn't been made yet
GLINK! Love your videos :)
Makes no difference, you still didn’t choose to think that.
A film that does not yet exist isn't a film, it is an abstract idea. You did not pick a film at all. Nonetheless, your 'choice' to think about that non-existent film was not your choice at all.
Deterministic court. Lawyer: ...''Ultimately, my client did not commit the crime; he just witnessed it''. Judge: ''No worries then, because ultimately he is not getting the punishment either; he will be just witnessing it''.
Exactly
Omggg 😂😭
A very logical answer but according to Hinduism it is real
@@rajendrarajasingam6310 I also believe it is real; because everything that exists is reality... reasoning, imagination, love or illusion exist in reality there's no other place to be.
Boom 💥
Final Thoughts? :( That´s sad. I love when you talk about free will. I hope you will some day do another video video on this topic :)
Hi Simon :)
That will be determined by your subscription ;)
There's nothing more to say about it, so there isn't any point asking Sam to basically repeat his position hundreds of additional times. But hopefully if some new evidence comes up, or maybe if there's some new philosophical argument, he'll come back to it
Become an atheist and be forever confused.
@@usmanshah344 Atheism is definitely confused.
I forgive myself for every stupid thing I've ever done. Thanks, Sam!
And I have forgiven you
@@blankname5177 Isn't forgiveness the one necessary step that absolutely has to be taken to stop hating anyone?
You could say that you forgive but don't forget, but if you don't forgive and don't forget, then isn't that the very definition of hatred?
And that's the value in letting go of free will. It's especially valuable for someone who has to deal with a lot of shame. Still the illusion will continue to creep back in. I like to listen to Sam's arguments sometimes just to remind myself. :)
It is senseless to forgive something that could not have been otherwise. Ironic this podcast is called 'Making Sense.'
Now, recall credit for all the positive choices you've made too.
My favourite thing about the lack of fee will argument is that it makes it completely senseless to hate anyone. If someone is destructive, get away from them, the same you’d get out of a tornados path, but you don’t hate the tornado. Beautiful. This has helped inoculate me from becoming resentful. Love it. Also, how the lack of free will and the lack of the self goes together is beautiful. It’s a process. We are more or a verb than a noun, as Alan Watts says ;)
Of course, if the "self" does not exist in the ultimate sense, and "I" is contiguous with the entirety of the universe (the latter being admittedly, a murky claim), then the exact opposite of the absence of free will is true: EVERYTHING, everywhere, is being done by "I" (correctly understood), and "I" am "willing" everything- after all, every neutrino in every far reach of the universe is part of me; which is really the same thing as if NOTHING were being done by me. I think for this reason, Alan Watts himself often considered the formal philosophical debates on topics such as free will from the POV of Wittgenstein, as being mostly bad language games, and akin to looking disjointedly at two halves of a single cat through a hole in a fence, and concluding that the halves are really two different entities.
So you are "free" to hate or not hate, get away or not get away?
I guess no one is "free" to be stupid or not.
@Mike Kane To have no free will implies zero control over _anything_ and _everything_ including whether to be a nihilist or not.
I think some people actually do hate tornados.
If hatred doesn't make sense, then love doesn't either. Positively interpreted experience being preferable doesn't make it more reasonable than hatred, unless ethics is the bedrock of all of human reason.
_"Free will is stored in the balls."_
--Ben Stiller- -Sam Harris
Lmao 🤣
@@ChrisKogos Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free )
Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)
I've thought about this issue A LOT in recent years and it has brought me huge amount of anxiety, even to the point of having thoughts of suicide (at the worst point even being suicidal) daily... But now it feels like I've finally come to some sort of acceptance of it (after having swung back and forth like crazy between different 'viewpoints' or just plain denial) and that I am starting to learn how to live with it. If anyone reading this has felt the same or at least a bit like this, know that you are not alone and that it is possible to 'get through' it/learn how to cope with it!
@@KrypticSpiderMan I choose to believe Santa exists, I'm with you dude.
I understand where you're coming from, although it manifested as nihilism instead of suicide for me. I was an agnostic for the sake of integrity, with an atheist position if I was forced to bet on a conclusive state, before I understood my lack of authorship anyway. Now, I think of it as a productive tool. I've made positive changes I likely would have never made before I was equipped with this information. There are many of these changes in perception we've inherited from those who came before us. What makes this change in perception unique is that it's occurring in our own timeline and isn't common knowledge. I like to imagine what it was like for those who lived when Earth was the center of everything, and even the other side of the body of water you were standing was a mystery. There's a lot of comfort in that limited perspective when you think about it. The narrative of your existence was whatever you wanted it to be. I don't subscribe to the ignorance being bliss way of seeing things, so I'm thankful Ive become aware that free will isn't a thing. Gratitude is another useful tool. How lucky am I to exist during a time of a nearly endless supply of knowledge? How incredible to understand my surroundings at such a resolution. To even exist as one of these high intellect beings in relation to the many other living things is incredible, and I couldn't be more thankful. You could say I've succumbed to convenient thinking like those who came before me, but that's what I admired about their ignorant place in history. You can construct a world of gratitude, too, and I would argue it's better than the illusion.
Suicide never occured to me after listening to this, but Im glad you found some peace in the end.
@@tommyhennessy Yeah it's not clear to me either why it should. I have existential compulsive disorder though
@Ken Hiett Very well said, Ken
Who has been treating people with more compassion after digesting this? I certainly have.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but these acts of compassion, are they not also determined?
@@ramodemmahom8905 Yes, they are! he is the perfect example of educated but not intelligent. He probably plans to regurgitate Sam Harris' ideas among his peers without giving things a second thought. I bet that if you ask him why he feels obligated to act more compassionate, he wouldn't be able to provide a good rationale.
Why do you feel obligated to act more compassionate?
Yes it is @@ramodemmahom8905
@@warriorinside1989 it like everything will be a monolithically long list of predetermined prior causes that make him how he is, how receptive he is to massive amounts of existing as well as new evidence or ideas or not and how willing he is to carry this into his lived experience in terms of how he acts in the causal chain of the universe here on earth in every moment. So effectively how effected and receptive a person is to the truth and evidence for determinism is itself determined by prior causes.
Why aren’t you more in to rocks!😂
They are not nearly as exiting as the mind
I was really hoping for a "THEY'RE MINERALS, MARIE!!" comment from Sam. hahaha
Avid rock collector here, and I can’t tell you why lol
@@jrbranum “I’m not getting ass raped by some delivery guy”
Rocks rock! Everyone should be more into rocks
I absolutely love the free will talks
Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free )
Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)
I highly doubt these will be his ‘final’ thoughts on free will
lol
Does he really have a choice?
@@PittelliLike he has a choice. He just has no choice what it’s going to be.
Listen second half..
@@WingedmagicianNo, he has neither :)
This was freeing. I listened to hours of your content on this before I finally started to understand. There is so much power in this. I’m a huge fan. Truly grateful.
Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free )
Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)
This idea is so annoying, because it breaks the myth most people build about themselves, that they are self-made, and that they are hot shit basically. I know it certainly hurts my ego, which probably doesn't need to exist in the first place
It's interesting how we're able to point to several different things in our everyday lives in which we had no choice - our sexual orientation, our favorite foods, our favorite bands, etc. - yet we struggle to take that understanding a few steps further and apply it to everything that makes us us.
the proust effect
Well put!
It--although I think it shouldn't, if I was fully rational--often surprises and buffles me to see people talking about themselves or others seemingly with full conviction that they are the self determining agent, a prime mover of sort, while simultaneously talking about their mechanical nature (though, perhaps without much awareness of that), like how to exploit the their own, or other person's (inescapable) biological tendencies to achieve their (also inescapable) desired conditions. Those cannot be true at the same time, and that seems as simple as 1+1=0, yet we can believe both are possible and true at the same time.
@@KenTails This baffles me sometimes aswell, however then I slip back into the reality where I act upon my instincts, blame other people for their transgressions, and consider myself the prime mover of my own reality.
If the universe is everything and everything is the universe, how come the phenomenon of human behaviour you decribe here can exist?
I guess I can understand that a universe, although likely having a set of laws governing it, does not have to be entirely logically consistent - the law of logical inconsistency probably exists in ours.
@@martinb4272 at the end of the day the models and ideas we form in our mind are beneficial to our biology.
@@martinb4272 all human behavior is ultimately the result of biological evolution - so it has little to do with the "universe" as a whole.
Humans behave in the way that evolutionary processes led them to behave : those had to be either behaviors that were beneficial or at least neutral in their effect
and it's easy to see why it's beneficial for humans to believe they (and others) have free will: it makes the social world more coherent.
it would have been incoherent (to a human) and also computationally prohibitive to try to model the world WITHOUT the concept of agents: i.e. - to see each person's behavior as the accumulation of a billion years of evolution, particle paths, neural connections, etc.
it is simply not a viable model of the world for a human to process
so humans think of others as agents, and of themselves as well - and it is a great model because it gives a lot of predictive power and can help navigate a complex social situation.
@@gatherfeather3122 Is that always the case?
“THOTs ARISE” is my next band’s name... and you can’t judge me for it .. I didn’t choose it
😂
🤣🤣🤣
@ZK Tay EXACTLY. I will judge a lion differently from a deer.
@ZK Tay fair enough. My choice says much about me and may be an indicator of the kind of choices I might make in the future... I now await your your judgement and all those he read my comment from now to the till the end of this RUclips post
@@chaitanyagaur7928 good point
Listening to this while walking my dog at night, being guided through the thought experiments and contemplating the implications was trippy.
Who was guiding the dog? 😂
Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free )
Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)
It seems most likely that free will doesn’t exist. Despite that, I choose to believe in a “binary” free will. Very limited, but still meaningful.
Given options presented to my consciousness that were selected out of my control, my consciousness has a voice of approval or disapproval. Yes or no. 1 or 0. Not always do I have this voice, not always does my voice effect my actions, but it’s still there.
It might be even more limited than that. Perhaps I don’t have a “yes” command, only a “no” or “stop” command. I can choose whether or not to actively disapprove of a thought or action. Once again, this voice doesn’t always have an impact on my thoughts or actions, and rarely is its impact significant.
In my opinion, we don’t know enough about the nature of consciousness to know with absolute certainty that it has no impact on the physical universe that generates it.
~~~
What I’m about to propose is basically nonsense, but hear me out.
Consciousness might come down to quantum particles interacting in a sufficiently interconnected way. These particles behave oddly enough & have small enough mass that perhaps the consciousness they generate can impact their behavior in the smallest of ways.
Perhaps instead consciousness has a small role in deciding which parallel universe it moves into at any moment of quantum uncertainty (so basically every moment.)
This concludes the nonsense section of my comment.
~~~
TLDR: Free will is definitely way more limited than most people think, and is most likely completely non-existent. Nonetheless, it’s interesting and fun to ponder very limited forms that free will might occupy.
I found this podcast to be the most complete reflection on reality that I’ve ever heard, akin to your interview with Donald Hoffman and headless Douglas Harding. I’m grateful for your selfless commitment to humanity, Sam. Thanks.
Free will is a contradiction in terms just like united nations - j krishnamurti ( either there is will or u r free )
Best book in the world - upanishads(mother of non dualism) ( for motivation to read this , please look at what some famous people around the world said on upanishads)
This should’ve been called Free Willy 2
Hahah. That’s first class.
Good 1
“The lack of freedom makes reason possible” very nice.
@ZK Tay sounds like that lack of free will talking
Is the function of reasoning an act of free will?
Reminds me of a well known Kantian aphorism, which is rather the inverse: "I had to restrict knowledge in order to make room for faith".
@ZK Tay What objections do you have to Kant?
you can easily have both. marinate on that
Ah, nice. Free will is my favorite philosophical topic of all.
its boring
You had no choice in the matter
@@SerendipitousProvidence I like to say that I make choices; it's just that whatever choices I made were the only choices I ever had. It's not like determinism means you're not making choices.
I'm partial to spells and hexes myself. It's where I first met Hermione.
@@Elintasokas Choice is the sensations associated with awareness and judgement
"you're not free to want what you don't in fact want". that's how I see it. I've seen it put as "you can do what you want but you can't want what you want."
@ZK Tay
Of course one can change what they desire, but they have to have a deeper desire to make this change. If you quit smoking your desire to do so was simply stronger than your desire to smoke.
I think Sam sounds lucid when he talks about free will, but babbles like Deepak Chopra when he goes on about the illusoriness of the self. Just sayin'
Yeah, he does get a bit hippie-like.
Thank you for talking about this topic again. It was the topic that brought me into listening to you speak. Amazing!
Free will keeps God interested in us
@@pineapplaplatypotato huh
@@twokidsmovies It’s true. Imagine being God. You’d want some excitement too
@@pineapplaplatypotato ohhh I see, tru
@@pineapplaplatypotato I thought god is supposed to already know what happens in the future, regardless of whether or not free will exists, so I can't imagine they would be surprised by any actions we are doing.
Bottom line: There is "will" but there is nothing "free" about it!
As a neuroscientist with so many years of mindfulness practice under his belt, it makes sense that Sam is playing mostly in those domains, but I don't think the free will conversation warrants any more evidence than physics.
You can start from the ground up: knowing the limitations and behaviors of spacetime and quantum fields, we are able to compute the energies and positions of particles at time t+1 from their current values at time t. If you want to go down the quantum route, you wind up with a distribution of possibilities rather than a precise value, but it still follows a logic.
From there, if you could accept that premise, it is just a matter of jumping up the layers of emergence, roughly:
(0)Physics -> (1)Chemistry -> (2)Biology -> (3)Neurology/Endocrine -> (4)Psychology
Keeping in mind that any layer of emergence can be sufficiently described by the layer beneath it, albeit with vastly more complexity (hence the necessity for distinct layers of emergence in the first place).
Our thoughts (4) are a product of the patterns of neuron distances and their neurotransmitters (3), biological molecules exchanged by specialized cells (2), highly complex organic molecules undergoing various cycles through hydrogen bonds and the like (1), all of which composed by atoms, thus quarks and fermions exchanging additional bosons, which is ultimately described by physical interactions (0).
The self as ego and the appearance of "you" as captain of the ship so to speak, does indeed seem to be an illusion. However, the denial of the role of this set of voices in its apparent ability to make choices and influence behavior as an autonomous being apart from the universe at large, is not necessarily the same thing as the denial of free will period. The question "does free will exist?" is most fundamentally not the question "could we have done otherwise," but is instead, as all conscious questions are, what conscious attitude about such a question will best serve the most wholly considered desires of the portion of conscious experience which considers it. This does not mean desire in the colloquial sense, but rather desire as urge which most resolves. Such an idea cannot itself be expressed explicitly in words, but exists manifestly and objectively in contexts such as returning to the base note in a scale after playing the note one half step below it. Is there free will? Well is there freedom and is there will? In some ways there are neither of these things, but when we speak of them we encounter their absence. It is equally invalid to deny the encountering of such an absence as it is to proclaim the "reality" of the implications beneath the words. When one exists in a state closer to, or less obstructed from, the source of our being, as Sam surely has many times, the illusion of conscious control becomes joyously clear. Additionally and however, these conscious experiences, questions, and even "illusions" are just as much a part of our infinite being as is the process of drawing closer to our origin. As such, the questions we hold and seek, and their answers, while we exist in these lives that we live, also contain the potential for Truth with a capital T.
We are wholly limited by our circumstances, and we will have always made the decisions of our past, but this claim is consistent with the perspective that we will have always "chosen" what it is that we chose.
So, do we have free will? Of course we do, for in our lives, our experience cannot be effectively communicated without the conveyance of the sense of choice.
So, do we have free will? Of course we do not, for our experience is, as Sam says, a fully integrated continuum with being.
My point here is that such questions truly do not have answers that are true or false in a conscious sense, for when we seek from the perspective of connection to the flow of our being, such questions cease to have relevant meaning, and when uttered do not convey anything coherent. However, as human beings whose logos exist in service of a communal and individual construction of life on earth, our experience, opportunities, and obligations are, in my opinion, able to be communicated to ourselves and to each other more clearly and with more utility when we answer: Do we have free will? with: "Yeah, pretty much."
Finally, Sam says everything is "just" happening. What is this "just?" Everything is happening, this is true. But there is no "just" for there is no possibility of additional context that such a "just" denies.
Much love and respect Sam! Thank you for everything you do~
ps I think the simulation is about me cause i was deciding between Chinatown and another film but thought Chinatown was boring so went with the other one, but mine other one was Kung Fu Panda, not Alien
Thank You! very profound thinking on your part!
@@bschil1 Thank you! That is very kind :)
You should have a debate with Sam!
You are a Master of what I call Dream Logic. I salute you.
@@SurrealMcCoyI was just reviewing this comment for a new project and saw your reply. I’ve never heard the term dream logic before, but I love it. Thank you for your kind words, and for introducing me to a new and succinct description of a kind of thinking that I value.
So I am a robot who can choose to practice consciousness-improving techniques that improve the quality of my life and the lives of those I care about? I can live with that.