I’m surrounded by free will skeptics! I had to laugh when a friend sent me the Armchair Expert podcast interviewing Robert Sapolsky. He has a new book out called Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will.
I ended up listening to it because I’m determined to have a podcast discussion club with some friends but I immediately realized what I was jumping into! Ack! I have several family members who have lectured about this topic and it just gets me annoyed.
To some extent I can agree with the situation that our choices, decisions, or behaviors are being driven by our childhood, generational traumas, and what’s happening around us.
But it still irks me.
If I’m driving down the street and I want to go straight instead of turn right all of the sudden, it’s my choice! Right? Or according to the free will skeptics in my life, it’s a series of… something… that led me to that moment.
The author pointed out that we have less free will when we are tired, sick, drunk, or stressed. Which I do agree with. He had some fascinating theories about growing up and how obvious things, like having access to books when you were a child, affected your future.
There were some interesting parallels about self-correcting. Can you self-correct?
Also, which is it – do you feel that people can’t be held responsible for their actions if there is no higher deity guiding you?
Or, do you think that simply being a human keeps you on the path to being moral.
If someone is not watching over you closely, will your ethics go out the window? How does religion play a part?
I really did like Dax’s thoughtful questions during the podcast though. He asked Mr Sapolsky why he positioned it as binary? Do you have free will, not not?
To an extent, I believe that 80-90% is guided by your past, biology, or whatever. But even the author said he doesn’t hold true to it 100% of the time. And while you can do probabilities you can’t predict, which Dax had really good pointed questions to that aspect. Everything that came before, brought you to this moment. It is very easy to look at the outcome and then look backwards and explain it. Here is the recipe that added up to the end result.
But okay, it might not be free will but then you move it back to free choice, where you have actions and consequences and the choice to choose between things. I keep trying to pin this down in my mind but it just irritates me.
Was he making room for it to be true for other people but not him? Robert Sapolsky said himself that he sometimes doesn’t hold true to that.
But can you predict forward? You can do probabilities but not true prediction. Every now and then it works out. The future is not known. It devolves into chaoticism theories.
Suffice to say I did not end up going out to coffee to the podcast discussion of this one but it would lead to an interesting discussion with someone with a bit more information than I have.
I think I will decline to read the book though! But I enjoyed the interview and it definitely led to some interesting thinking. 🙂
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