People will continue to deny this and continue to be "crueler". I'm not a scientist but I figured this free will out at age 12 because it's intuitive and always felt it ever since and challenged myself to see where it was wrong without doing any studies. Determinist factors of biology and environment just make sense. This is what makes religions extra-cruel.. they think man has free will. I call it something less imposing - free choice. But it means little as "free choice" is just a term to avoid bad arguments with crazy bible believers. There is no Free Will. You don't need to be a genius to know. I figured out that people all thought they were better than they actually were through self-illusion. I also knew that the importance of looks is downplayed age of 6. Intelligence is way more important in life than Niceness. It's a cruel world we live in from that perspective.

I try my best to get as many people who have any interest in human behavior to watch his 25 part lecture series. I was so floored when I first went through it, I had to go back and listen to it again and again.

He has a great style where, apparently without referring to notes, he is practically telling stories about what he is teaching. And aside from the subject matter at hand he shows the students as things were learned along the way by researchers, as soon as it seems you nail something down, other evidence will show up showing you missed something. Then sometimes the focus on the field might even reverse itself. And then shown that's not quite right either and while gathering all this information, it's time to go down another rabbit hole and learn something completely unexpected on the subject... It's a way of not only learning how to learn but develop an awareness that there's something you have overlooked as a life lesson as well. Beyond only pursuing research, learning how to expect that life will throw you curve balls. And to not stress about catching them but over time figuring that out, with the right attitude you can juggle those curve balls as well. And have some fun with the unexpected, and maybe you'll get some brilliant insights into your life as a bonus Lecture after lecture.

They are indeed wonderful.

@@1eviledy Likewise! It's hands down the best 40 hours or so I've ever spent, and the most enjoyable. I really appreciate Stanford having those up. In an ideal world, I'd wish that everyone that pursues a degree in psychology (or medicine) would watch it. It's such a good primer on the different ways in which behavioral theory can be and has been approached, and the ways in which cognition is a biological process, not simply a matter of freely chosen thoughts. AND a reminder that psychology and mental health practice is still evolving, and should not be regarded as if it's got everything figured out.

Absolutely! What an amazing class. I loved how he would ‘sell’ an idea or perspective for the first half of the class and then tear it apart for the remainder. Excellent thinker, writer, researcher, and philoosopher. A true renaissance man.

His 25 lectures are better medicine than any pharmaceutical medicines made

Just praise? I question his silly notion of calling primates people. Typical empiricist failing recognize the significant difference between us and all existence. more than meets the eye to not just the human being…but all the natural world.

When I first heard Dr. Sapolsky I saw him as wearing a 3 piece suit, and I was so surprised to see him in reality.

I much enjoy learning from his discoveries and stories in behavioral biology, but his ideas on philosophy, economics, history, and justice are fairly underdeveloped and i hope he doesn’t try to deviate too far from his academic expertise. The future will not look back kindly on Maoism either, which is something like what he suggests by doing away with a merit-based society. Also, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and trauma to the prefrontal-cortex, are neurological disorders not intrinsically psychiatric / mental illness. They are born, or fell into these not by intent, and are nothing at all like sociopathy which is a controllable and curable state of mind. Rather convenient omission. Nevertheless a society that tried to filter for all of these in our criminal system, for not having an implicit sense of self control / agency / freewill, would be cost prohibitive for any modern society. We didn’t do so because it was ‘right’, but because it’s too costly to do what’s right, by having a tiered system of incarceration. And, it would likely be gamed and abused beyond recognition even if we did

"Luck" has nothing to do with it, weren't you listening?!? {lolol 😉}

nice one!

and.....?

My brain compels me to agree.

Exactly. It’s a self defeating assertion.

Lol 😂

"Abolish the Criminal Justice System" is complete nonsense. You would have to be an ugly bearded academic priest to believe that. Here we are the new priest class to tell you what is true.

It's not even a very good illusion. Who really feels that their decisions come from nowhere, rather than from a myriad causes that a little introspection reveals almost immediately.

Your comment is pointless.... No regrets though 😂

Tío, pa leer tu libro, por fa!

I feel like a mathematical fact of the universe. If everything that happened before me happened, then I will appear and happen too.. if I had free will I would not be here responding to a UKposts post about free will. Free will would mean I could for go back in time infinite amounts of time and make decision differently every time to see which option is the best for me

How can you do anything but what is determined for you."We should" "I should" nah if you (choose) to believe this it can only be "We must do" "I must do"

Were you forced to write this against your will.? What da heck?

By your own statement, you have no choice but to "agree" and you are not free to "find you freedom". Before you can be a philosopher you have to use concepts correctly, including the concepts that underlie them. There is no such thing as knowledge without choice, and there is no such thing as choice without free will.

@@wetwingnutDo define “free will”, then.

@@i.ehrenfest349 A legal term that has nothing to do with science, it has to do with morals. Something Saposlki and the new priests of the age have deemed "Old and Mistaken".

Agreed. The desire for retribution is a natural reaction when someone has suffered a terrible loss at the hands of another, but it's not an instinct that the criminal justice system should be endorsing, much less codifying. That's why the admonition against "cruel and unusual punishment" exists.

​@@jimwilliams3816quite often, crime is retribution itself.

A fantastic example of mental gymnastics.... if we are pointless machines with no freewill... then no potential, no regrets, no responsibility, no crime.... it's like the problem of evil for the classical theist. No way around the obvious.

Ya I would like to hear him flesh that out a bit. He mentions morals but where do these morals come from if we are just biological organisms, just damn luck. If al we are is just matter in motion then there is no moral standard.

@@markxivlxii1390matter follows unwritten laws though... in another example: our cells don't attack each other because of chemical / physical barriers evolution has created for them to cooperate. In a single organism when these rules fail to be followed by the cells of the organism in which they have no control over, the organism would otherwise be considered to have some sort of autoimmune disease which will subsequently lead them to perish soon without medical intervention. This is just one example of how what our language defines as "morals" exists in other dimensions of our reality.

Causal explanations cannot account for how humans reason. There is no causal explanation for causal explanations as such. Free will, or freedom, is the ability to reason. If free will does not exist, then truth is not possible. The pursuit of truth is a social activity of giving and asking for reasons. By giving reasons for the nonexistence of free will, you are exercising your own free will. It’s quite a paradox.

It stops being tricky once you realize that the only way for a rational human being to not have any free will is to be dead.

@@VanLifeIsAPsyOp I did not falsely define free will. Denying the existence of free will would be like slapping Frederick Douglass in the face. Coming from a tenured professor from a private university- that’s rich.

Well yes and no. Sometimes it's a continuation of what I was thinking in my dream prior to waking or a reflection on said dream. I've also been practicing mindfulness so I'm fortunate enough to have zero thoughts some mornings which does indeed make the first thought a conscious decision. Free will is basically just freedom of choice/decisiveness, the ability to say yes or no to one option when presented with multiple decisions and to be a willful individual with a strong ego.

The first thought I had this morning was about the billard ball universe of Newton that can be dumbed down to oversimplified mathematics... and then I extrapolated that idea to cover my entire day and this comment.... Tomorrow when I wake up I am going to consider how that thought was already embedded in the initial conditions of the big bang...

Respectfully, I disagree. Consciousness is an emergent property of cells working together to create a complex system. It is not a non-thing but rather a purely material thing which explains why our consciousness is altered when drunk, high, tired, angry, injured, etc. also the “you”doesn’t make sense. In reality we are a collection of atoms, with trillions being added to our body as we speak and trillions being lost as we speak. Where do you draw the line? If I lose a carbon atom, have I lost a part of myself? Is that lost carbon atom still name? What if I was reduced down to a single carbon atom and the rest of my atoms where in seperate galaxies, where am I? No i argue that the “you” isn’t really a thing rather a concept that we perceive as being real due to biology, and instead is just an arbitrary collection of atoms concentrated into this life form for a small (galaxy wise) time period.

Yeah, Abolish the criminal justice system is click bait BS. He should be ashamed, but I doubt he has those emotions, as he is so much better and smarter. I have heard enough from the new priests of our age.

​@@yanapostolides601someone's amygdala is riding them ^^ 😂

So probability?

Perfect said

Causality is the thing-action relation, not the prior event-later event relation. Wood burns because can burn. If wood could not burn, no prior event could cause it to burn. A thing acting is the properties of the thing acting. Volitional Consciousness-N. Branden, in Psy Self-Esteem

There actually are very few current physicists who believe in determinism in the strict sense of the word. That doesn't mean we have free will, of course, but there might be a sense in which there really is an element of randomness in our decisions. Randomness has nohting to do with capriciousness or uselessness, though. A choice determined by strict causes can be capricious and useless. And if we had free will, that would not mean we would act randomly : that would mean we could be moved by maxims and principles (motives) rather than physical causes. Actually, in itself, an act determined by an exterior necessity seems quite "random" to me.

@@freyc1 Causality is the thing/action relation, not the action/reaction relation. Wood acts in a specific way because it is wood, not a frog. Ive never heard a tree croak, nor seen a frog w/leaves. There are 3 types of stuff in the universe, each w/a specific type of action. Matter, life and mind. And action/reaction, purpose and free will. Free will is mans unique power to initiate an action within the mind. Specifically, its the power to focus or evade focus. Focusing is necessary to reasoning. Evading focus is necessary to rationalizing. This is known via common human experience, prior to and the context of science. A man who did not, somehow, experience the concrete, matterial universe and his mental power to initiate reasoning and control his reasoning about the universe could not be a scientist. Volitional Consciousness-N. Branden, in _Psy. Of Self-Esteem_, online

the world is not proven to be deterministic as we cannot predict what a single particle will do next, only the likeliness. (And it certainly hasnt been rewound) Thats all you need though, the brain doesnt need exactness. Determinism is a non-issue

Sapolsky doesn't cover autism as much as I would like in his Human Behavioral Biology lecture series (Stanford UKposts channel), but certain sections gave me a lot of insight into myself. Molecular Genetics gets into the complexities of heritability and gene expression, the Limbic System is a great primer on the biology of an overactive amygdala and sympathetic nervous system. The whole series left me feeling much more grounded in the neurological underpinnings of who I am, which is handy when dealing with a society that tends to suppose that all behaviors are the result of freely made decisions.

​@@jimwilliams3816 autism seemed very conspicuously absent in his lectures. Particularly when he discussed the symptoms of schizophrenia, some of which were identical to ASD.

And then the church or the local council will sell the land you're buried in to a property developer, and your grave won't even exist anymore. Think on that, the next time you are feeling so self-important.

So, Hitler was trying his best? Should we not judge him too harshly?

@@RefinedQualia Indeed we shouldn't. Because the atoms of his body were just behaving according to the Schroedinger Equation. And so are mine and yours.

@@RefinedQualia The mouse does not consider the morality of infesting your home. That does not mean you should not let your cat hunt the mice. Just because an infectious bacterium does not have free will doesn't mean we shouldn't go easy on them.

@@RefinedQualia He had no choice, and neither did the people sentencing him. LOL

Said more accurately, whether trying or not trying, they cannot do otherwise at each microchoice.

Why amazing?

Many people choose to evade focusing their minds, thus they cant control themselves. Modern culture is basically a nihilist attack on values and their base, the mind.

You just need to look closely at yourself.

Ummmmm. No it means nothing... neither does your comment or anything at all... You are a pointless machine.

No, we are not the same. If you ever had the chance to grow up while still remembering your childhood self, then you will know that you are not the same person today that you were at age three, five, ten or fifteen. So why would a person who is not you be like you? Of course they are not.

But what if you don’t want to be in this script, and so you decide to opt out via self deletion, but wait, you can’t do that because you don’t have the free will to make that decision unless your preprogrammed life decides that is the direction you’ll take. Around and around we go.

@@schmetterling4477you were the same awareness at 3 as you are now. The only thing that’s changed is the body mind.

Stupid compared to what? That whole philosophy is weak-minded and anti-human. Human beings are magnificent creatures whose full potential hasn't even been reached yet in terms of what we can learn and achieve, materially and mentally speaking. To give up your "idea" of free is basically you saying "this world is too complex for me to understand, so I'll just pretend I'm a rock"

@@spinz7 So you are agreeing with me that I am not the same. :-)

But how free are those choices? What drives them? Can you control your random thoughts? Can you control your emotions? All of those drive your choices.

If free will doesn’t exist, those who hate also have no choice in the matter. This guy’s argument is incredibly biased and inconsistent on the most basic logical basis.

@@rolisreefranch they shouldn't be hated but the ones that did hate them didn't have any choice in hating them at that moment in time and space. It is in fact logical. This doesn't imply that they can't learn to not hate them and do differently the next time( after absorbing more info about the big picture).

In Christianity there is also the saying that you shouldn't judge anyone. This also implies that you shouldn't judge the one that is judging, and not judge the one that is judging the one that is judging and on and on..... this is a mess

@@rolisreefranch what is your beef ? ?? ? - it seems he is biased toward truth as opposed to falsehood - bro

@@henrychoy2764 his argument is illogical

​@@TheRed7000totally misunderstood.

That is not completely true actually. Some people are so hurt, say Traumatized by their past & really that's all that they "feel" inside. Their brain has been stunted. This is why you see so many domestic violence survivors stay with or example marry such abusive people. Men & women; it goes both ways. It's in a way, comfortable and familiar to them. ...But I get what you meant. If only everyone chose to not put themselves through such hell. It's bot a Concious & Subconscious decision simultaneously.

Free will is on a spectrum. Knowing you are separate from your mind is the first step in developing awareness that you have control, but you have to exercise free will just like a muscle. If you don't use it, you operate on base level primal impulses.

yep as we see now in the cult like rightwing movements globally, which resulted in the first genocidal war of choice in Europe since the worst calamity of all time, ww2. We must prevail against RU, the west MUST prevail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!@@jonomehigan451

Some people do.

Also to politics crooked as cops fbi atf ss nazis you got that right my friend capitilism a love story. 😂😂😂 ftw

Sorry but what would prayer do?

@@houtbay9 not a thing if it means nothing to you. Prayer is a way of offering up healing to the Great Good.

@@peopleunite3605 I honestly did not mean to be disrespectful. But as far as I know there has not been a single recorded event where prayers to the deities resulted in healing. If that were to be the case then the hospitals would be empty. But if it offers help as a crutch to lean on in difficult times, then that's fine.

​@@houtbay9positive intention if nothing else and that cant hurt

​@houtbay9 wow you are really smart!!

In this region where there is this free will (the portion of choice that is free that you say is limited), according to what information and/or with what capacities/computational abilities do you do this deciding? If in a given moment you are free from your circumstantial fabrication (indoctrinations and up from there into the stratosphere of uber complexity, of the constantly recursive interplay of information, DNA, physiological events and cognitive experiences), then what is this separate being acting for - what does it believe, what "side" is it on, and why? By why, what I mean is, how did it get the way it got? If this is where freedom resides, then this entity must be free of prior setting, by the universe or deity, of proclivity, of (for the theists and those who are surreptitiously entranced by their work across the ages) good or evil. And then comes the differentiation - that which provides for free will its only place for employment - the existence of right and wrong choice. When you are there, feeling free from your "banal" or "mere" natural self, about to make an important decision, you say you are free from it, but yet the decision you're about to make does not - CANNOT - come from a void. There is stuff there. Stuff has to come from somewhere. Variability of stuff is how we explain both physical and cognitive differentiation in creatures, and so a non-free will version of the world is completely plausible, but for our feeling. But how do we explain variability in that which is said to be free of divine or cosmic interference (so that it can be called free)? When you try to come up with a way in which a thing once free of differentiation arrives at differentiation, nothing but circular logic, infante regressions and outright violations of freedom are available to explain it. There is zero free will. The setting of the free will cannot come from: 1) "You." By you we mean either the non-free will self or the free will self. The former cannot be, because this would make the qualities, proclivities, opinions and information of the free will the handi-work of the non-free will, thereby violating the free part. The latter cannot be because this is circular - a good free will making free will makes a good free will, and a bad free will making free will makes a bad free will. This grounds on an inherent state, and thereby violates free will. 2) A God. This violates freedom. 3) The universe. This violates freedom. 4) A third entity that makes free wills. This leads to an infinite regression, because a good free will making free will maker makes a good free will, and so in order to escape a potential inherency, we need a fourth entity, and on and on and on. The assertion that free will is not an entity, unique for each person and attached to each person, but capable of vetoing the natural self to which it is bound, but merely a property of the universe, does not work, because said property would be equally available to all people, making it background noise in the equations of all human choices, which in turn are made by the only thing we have to posit such a capacity (having put free will off to being a mere property of the universe) which is the naturally caused person. Entity versus property of the universe is the primary shell-game we play to swap back and forth between so as to protect what we feel to be the case (that we have free will) from logical destruction. In the history of our personal making are indeed choices that we made - to study something, to dedicate to something - but these are themselves the products of the aforementioned recursive soup and prior choices, which in turn are the products of the same, and the chain keeps going back, and never is a choice not a product of what came before, until we arrive back at the first choice, which itself has only causation without consciousness to have spelled it.

I have not seen or met a neuroscientist or a neurobiologist or a biologist who has not said that we are not all equal and that there is individual performance, every one of those guys says 'free will does not exist'. Don't let the biologists mislead you, of course there is free will. It would be wiser if they said that free will is useless.

@@usacut6968 We meet again. When you say "of course free will exists," based on the rest of your comment I don't think I need to go too deep into the matter and can skip to suggesting that instead of reforming to "free will is useless" change "of course we have free will" to "of course we have freedom (to choose, where we in fact do)" because free will does not simply refer to the freedom to choose, but refers instead specifically to that which exploits this freedom - is THAT thing subject to a creation of type - of proclivity, opinion, bias, as well as agility of discernment - that itself comes from anywhere but prior causation? Think of yourself in that moment where you feel yourself to be free, perhaps in a decision dilemma of some importance, and you've felt to have stood back and taken a view of what has been pulling on your psychology. Because you did this modicum of self-analysis, you feel like you are existing as a person outside of the causation - you are aloof and detached. Some in the no-free will crowd will try to use certain scientific diagnostical studies, or interactive thought games, to illustrate that there's no free will, but there's a more slam dunk way to do it. Simply look at that detached self and ask, Does it have a perspective - a point of view and a personality - proclivities, opinions, beliefs, a partisanship unto the good or the evil? If it does, then these things qualify as "stuff" - attributes that do not qualify as the emptiness and/or equality across peoples that's implied by free will. This entity is free, but free to do as it is designed to do, or, as it wants to do. The question then is: Are we free to change this? Or, alternatively put, where do changes to this come from, ultimately? When you try to come up with a way in which a thing once free of differentiation arrives at differentiation, nothing but circular logic, infinite regressions and outright violations of freedom are available to explain it. There is zero free will. The setting of the free will cannot come from: 1) "You." By you we mean either the non-free will self or the free will self. The former cannot be, because this would make the qualities, proclivities, opinions and information of the free will the handi-work - and only the handi-work - of the non-free will, thereby violating the free part. The latter cannot be because this is circular - a good free will making free will makes a good free will, and a bad free will making free will makes a bad free will. This grounds on an inherent state, and thereby violates free will. 2) A God. This violates freedom. 3) The universe. This violates freedom. 4) A third entity that makes free wills. This leads to an infinite regression, because a good free will making free will maker makes a good free will, and so in order to escape a potential inherency, we need a fourth entity, and on and on and on. The assertion that free will is not an entity, unique for each person and attached to each person, but capable of vetoing the natural self to which it is bound, but is instead merely a property of the universe, does not work, because said property would be equally available to all people, making it background noise in the equations of all human choices, which in turn are made by the only thing we have to posit such a capacity (having put free will off to being a mere property of the universe) which is the naturally caused person. Entity versus property of the universe is the primary shell-game we play to swap back and forth between so as to protect what we feel to be the case (that we have free will) from logical destruction. In the history of our personal making are indeed choices that we made - to study something, to dedicate to something - but these are themselves the products of the aforementioned recursive soup and prior choices, which in turn are the products of the same, and the chain keeps going back, and never is a choice not a product of what came before, until we arrive back at the first choice, which itself has only causation without consciousness to have spelled it. Now run the chain forward from there, and witness that there is no place for a pure and featureless entity to make its mark, and if it could, what would it even do, being featureless?

Well, having no free will is essentially saying choice is an illusion because a person will always default to their best choice. This is not true anytime someone makes a choice that goes against their better judgment.

​@@mr.modooglio It didn't go against their "better judgement" in the moment, but only in retrospect, even if it's valid to say that, given slightly different circumstances, they had some things on-board according to which they may have chosen "rightly." Circumstances being what they were, with countervailing desires being what they were, and with powers of rationalization being what they were, they chose "their best choice." The phenomenon of regret, and recognition that one was not so clearly predetermined to behave regretfully, does not substantiate free will. The devil is in the details of "not so clearly," the sum of which lay contrary to the assumed net motivation, proclivity or status on the evil/good spectrum. Alternatively, if one chooses "wrongly" and was fully aware of doing so at the moment, then they have an on-board sum of motivations to not do so that is insufficient to culminate in them subsuming the desire to do wrongly.

It's a fun topic to discuss, but it ultimately shouldn't change who you are imo

Your second paragraph contradicts your first. Free will is immediate, a context of proof. Proof is an action of the free will.

Remember your analogy next time you ponder whether to put your fork into either the beef steak or the potatoes. Choose one, then change your choice, then change it again, and then close your eyes so the choice is random. And then tell me that what you just ate was neurologically determined.

From the godhead I suppose

it's a stupid phrase for weak, lazy, simps

That's not wisdom at all, it's a redundant phrase that basically says "don't have a reason for anything" which is kind of the opposite of wisdom. No account of morality, knowledge, reasoning, or circumstance is implied

@higginswallop5009 every single thing you just said is subjective. Of course you'd say that because your programmed to. If the big bang is real, everything is just random cause and effect, therefore you don't have free will. Of course you're gonna say that.

The best comment!

Dream on. People are not born good.

They have no free will to love knowledge this way, right? Their brains just aren’t wired that way.

There is nothing brilliant about an incredibly outdated notion of reality. QM is not deterministic.

Yep. It’s like people who say that haven’t thought through the entire ramification of what they are suggesting.

As much use as there is to say we _should_ imprison humans.

I think he is saying that if we are to be logically consistent it should be abolished, if we truly care about fairness it should be abolished.

@@Zanuka Perhaps, but it’s just not practical. It sounds better than it really is. Imagine allowing a serial killer to run loose and doing whatever he wants but isn’t arrested just so we can be logically consistent. It wouldn’t be fair to the victims, right?

@@josephbrown9685 I don't think he's advocating to abolish prisons, etc, but the concept of justice. You still prevent harm and death if you can, even knowing the cause of said harm/death was inevitable. One could also argue it makes logical sense to prevent said harm and death if viable (i.e. despite our inevitable ignorance). New 'justice' is about protecting (as much as possible) those who have done no harm, caused no death and about (if possible) the rehabilitation of those criminals so they wont harm or kill in the future. The true notion of justice is ultimately based on free will, which determinists don't believe in.

You made those decisions based purely on all the conditioning that lead to that moment. This is where the ego defends itself vigorously, thinking that just because it did something that others may judge as unpredictable that it must have been made out of free will

Your example is not about "free will" (independence). Your example is really about "will-power" (persistence). Using your example, one can show that you did not make an independent (your own) decision. Your decision was governed by others (and by philosophical extension, by the laws of physics - by determinism). If you decided to be "clean shaven", why did you focus on hair? Because in your social world, hair/beard is "a topic" -- you weren't born with this topic in your mind on the day of your birth. You learned the idea of "clean shaven or not" from society. Second: If you decided to be "clean shaven", is that really your decision? How about hair elsewhere on your body? Did you decide to eliminate (shave) hair from every part of your body? Likely not. Do you continue to shave your entire body, every day? You most likely do not. For example, do you shave your arms and knuckles -- which have very small (harder to see) hair? Likely you do not. The reason you do not is because your society does not consider it "good" or "bad" to shave your knuckles -- your society is neutral on this, and so you are also neutral. Your idea of _which parts of your body to shave, and how frequently_ -- this came into you from your society. You do or disobey your society/others, based on your desire to either be within or be antithetical to your society. You did not make your own decision. Your decision to ONLY shave a few parts came from the body-parts that your society finds "important". If it was truly your own independent decision, you'd be shaving areas that your society doesn't care about. Another way to see this: did you decide to pierce your toes? In most societies, it's common for people (mostly women) to pierce their earlobes. But I know of no society where it's common to pierce one's own toe (on your foot). So if you had made a decision that was irrelevant to your society, then you'd be making that decision independent of your society. If someone pierces their earlobes, it's because their society finds that "important" behavior. No society finds it important to pierce your own toe (or thumb, or knee, etc.). These decisions "come" into us, from our society (from the things our society finds "important" -- the things it finds acceptable or unacceptable).

@@keep-ukraine-free528You could have stopped earlier in your own response. You started just fine distinguishing the difference but then went on to confuse them yourself. In fact, there are 3 effects at play: Will, free will and basic willingness.

Yes but this is not the lecture I would choose to describe his brilliance this is the one that I would use to describe his irrational ignorance

Observe the females in a troop of baboons for a day or two and you will for sure change your mind about that..

Oooo...such a sad experience for you 😢. At 62 I know my women friends / family are my most joyous, empowering, loving cheerleaders I've ever experienced . Sadly my mother shared your view, thus creating her own reality of same 😢 Perhaps look for lovelier women friends ? P.S. and Yes I've been happily married to my MALE husband for 43 years ! ❤

Deluded Bot obviously. Darwinian dumb on steroids.

From my understanding, it's not punishment and reward that need to disappear from our society but rather the context in which they are being used at the moment. What Sapolsky is saying is that we shouldn't punish people because "they deserve it", but rather because punishment is a useful tool in reshaping somebody's behaviour. He thinks we should focus on rehabilitation rather than revenge.

@@ubird-ch8vxso true

“We” is a tricky subject.

Circumstances and life events led to that outcome. It felt like free will, but it’s an illusion

You made choices that resulted in your stopping drinking. But if we could examine your life and brain up to the micromoment before you made each choice, you would see that each of those choice outcomes was determined by the physical structure of your brain. Free will means you could have done otherwise. At each microchoice you could not have done otherwise. The laws of chemistry and physics in your brain followed the laws of nature.

@@GeezerBoy65 I could have done otherwise, and kept drinking, but I made a conscious choice to stop. I still have the occasional urge when I'm stressed (I own my own design business, married, and have 2 kids), and remain 3.5 years sober from alcohol. Feels like some sort of agency, and as I've understood myself better (in a more meditative way) I've begun to understand myself and the tricks my own brain can play on me. I understand what you're getting at, but those certainly seem like some claims that would be hard to prove. Perhaps this is why Sapolsky is having such a hard time writing his book. The claims you are making aren't falsifiable. Falsifiability, is the easiest way to distinguish science from pseudoscience. So if I'm wrong, prove it :) I'm still somewhat agnostic on it, and that just feels like the question that can't be answered. Maybe down the road, this ties into consciousness in some way, so who knows. I'm open to the idea that there are things out there we don't understand. For now; with my own life experience, I lean towards the direction that we have a minimal agency of sorts. Sam Harris always uses the example of serial killers lacking the impulse control due to their own brain, so that certainly exists, where we are born in some capacity that we can't control. I still love and greatly admire Sapolksy.

The question is, WHY did you quit drinking, and why did you quit when you did? Chances are, you reached a point where things got bad enough for you that it was LOGICAL for you to decide to stop, or maybe they became good enough for you that you decided you should avoid the pitfalls of drinking so they do not ruin your life. Up until that time, there was not enough pressure on you. You weighed the outcomes of drinking, vs not drinking and, until such time that you did quit, you calculated that the drinking was preferable. Did you make a decision? Yes, but it was all based on your body/brain and your society, family, etc. In another time or place, you may not have had these pressures or lessons, and you may have died being an alcoholic. Calculating is not the same as having free will. In fact, free will makes no sense unless you were omnipotent and had NO biases, no desires, etc., and you built yourself and the universe. Even "gods" do not have this. Even they come into existence with biases, i.e. they are judgemental, they hate gayness, they like harassing humans, or whatever.

in other words, it was purely luck that made you who you are, so to blame you for making "bad" logical decisions, or "good" ones, is just not logical. We can still evaluate you given our current morals but it was never your choice to be born to be a hero, a "dirtbag", or something in between.

​@@itoibo4208 The claims you're making aren't falsifiable. Science can't currently prove this, and neither can you. I've heard your claims from everyone who disagrees with me on this. I'm even willing to admit that I can't prove it either. Even if my own perspectives turn out to be fraudulent, I still know I am a better person for quitting drinking. So I'll just stay in my helpful delusions for now, even if I don't know the actual 'why.' There are plenty of scientific studies that show positive effects of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, so that leads me to personally believe that we could have some agency. Is it 10%? 20%? I don't know.

Leftism is the product of an unfocused mind, no more rational than traditional religion. Mans life requires punishing the haters of mans life. Redemption is an evil man trying to be good after he has been punished.

​@@VanLifeIsAPsyOp So Vladimir Putin deserves only rehabilitation for launching a catastrophic blood bath on eastern europe?