Problem solved
Seems fine.
Lol, unlikely to recur.
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A headline I never thought Iâd see. On the other hand, why not?
Yeah thatâs been popular in right wing derp circles for well over a decade.
Are we still fact checking blindingly obvious right-wing lies in 20-dickety-23? JFC
I love Sapolsky, but I just donât get the whole free will debate at all.
On some atomic/quantum level, sure the whole universe was pre-determined at the big bang. Maybe quantum effects really are random, but letâs assume God knows how the roll of the dice will come up, or you could run the universe backward in time, then you would still know the outcome for this iteration, yadda yadda.
But I donât think thatâs what Sapolsky is talking about. I think heâs defining free will as the ability to overcome childhood trauma and inherent psychological deficiencies. So in Sapolsky-land, you would still send a rapist to jail to protect society, but the judge would tell him âitâs not your fault, I blame your parents and defective genesâ as heâs hauled off to jail. Do I have that right, or am I missing something?
On another level, anyone whoâs ever overcome an addiction, or accomplished any kind of difficult growth as a person, will tell you that was a willful act that took all their courage and fortitude as a human being. I donât think telling a person in the throes of addiction they were always going to be an addict based on their genes and/or childhood trauma is helpful, any more than telling them theyâre a worthless person with no backbone is helpful.
I wonder if a guy like Sapolsky, whoâs always been an internally-driven massive achiever, doesnât get the massive struggle it can be for others to overcome their demons to achieve success in life.
I donât think free will is the right question, the right question is are you responsible for your actions? If you are responsible it doesnât matter whose decision it was to do the thing, itâs you who has to pay the price for it.
I donât think youâre missing it. You just canât accept it, which is understandable.
In the words of philosopher Shaun Nichols, âIt seems like something has to give, either our commitment to free will or our commitment to the idea that every event is completely caused by the preceding events.â
Sapolsky, Robert M⌠Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (p. 600). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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So you agree with me that the only thing that would change if we accept there is no free will, is that we tell criminals itâs not their fault, but still send them to jail?
Also your quote now has me confused as to whether weâre talking about the cosmos-level free will, or the human-level free will. Either way it still seems like a tautological point to me, given that no one can come up with a single example of anything anyone would or should do differently given free will does/doesnât exist.
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The article mentions that incarceration would be more focused on prevention than punishment. I think how that would play out in practice would be a lot more emphasis on population statistics for determination of parole and sentencing for example. Itâs kind of done now, but punishment usually is given an outsized role. For instance, most people age out of violence at a certain age. We donât take that into account right now because parole and punishment is largely determined by confessed culpability and heinousness of the crime. Also youâd look at crime as probability vs complete prevention. If someone gets out on parole and commits a crime, itâs a matter of looking at the odds that everyone on parole in that circumstance would commit a crime. Now itâs seen more as an automatic indictment of parole.
I still remember this as one of the all-time great chapter titles:
Sixteen: BIOLOGY, THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM, AND (OH, WHY NOT?) FREE WILL
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He tries to trace behavior down to basic biological processes. He doesnât get to the level of fundamental physics but I donât see how you can avoid that.
I think nothing can change because we can only act âas ifâ we have free will. I think Sapolsky is saying that too.
I canât really imagine how to live your life as if there is no free will.
This is akin to a âhidden variablesâ interpretation of quantum mechanics that has been shown empirically not to be true.
I believe that our internal narrative rationalizes what our bodies are doing anyway.
I remember one time i fainted, i was feeling light headed and i remember thinking as the ground was rapidly approaching my face, âyeah Iâll just lie down here real quickâ and i woke up with my face bruised because i evidently hit it at the speed of gravity. But i vividly remember my internal monologue coming to the decision to take a little lie down on the hardwood floor, as i was in freefall
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There is no personal free will because there is no individual, limited âdoer.â
Imo, the status of âfree willâ is identical in a classical world or a maximally indeterminate world. But I think we mean like 5 different things by âfree willâ, and we have some of those things and not others.
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Iâd love to have faith in the existence of free will, but somehow I just canât quite get myself there.
The only way to do the âfree willâ thing is to not think about it.
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Good money in ânewsâ.
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1714742602593886621?t=LZ3dDYgp-SQMxPv43Q5onA&s=19
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