You may think you chose to read this, but Stanford scientist Robert Sapolsky would disagree. He says virtually all human behavior is beyond our conscious control.
It has a paragraph with the explanation: Basically he says our behaviors are driven by our brain chemistry, genetics, and biases formed by prior events. Every decision we make is a culmination of those things. We think we’re in control, but we’re really just following a pre-ordained script.
Can’t decide if I’m onboard with that. Definitely not onboard with letting criminals off the hook for bad deeds. If your “brain script” leads you to kill, you just need to be removed from society. Sorry.
While we can identify influences that have common outcomes, the fact that there are different outcomes at an individual level supports free will. Free will does not mean you are free from influence, just that there is an opportunity to make a choice.
Poverty leading to increased crime does not result in everyone in poverty committing crimes.
Different outcomes at an individual level supports the idea that individual humans are not exact copies existing in the exact same environment. If on the other hand different outcomes does support free will then the fact that electrons put through the same process (influences) can end up with different spin-states means that electrons have free will.
that there are different outcomes at an individual level supports free will.
Well I think their argument is that this doesn’t follow. To have variation between individuals all you need are different influences over the time leading up to the measured outcome. That basically everyone is assured essentially unique genetics and a unique existence from conception (no two people occupy the same body, apart from twins briefly) guarantees that everyone has unique influences.
So the question then is what is the relationship between influences and behaviours and can we measure whether variations in the former are sufficient to explain variations in the latter.
All of which excludes the argument that many people basically lead to similar outcomes under similar influences.
This is where I suspect the scientist’s thoughts/theories will fall down. In the end, it seems to me we need a complete or at least pretty good theory of consciousness to truly get to bottom of this. We don’t. Arguably we’re pretty clueless on how any sophisticated cognition works all the way up from biochemistry to behaviour. So I’m not sure how certain anyone can be either way.
I mean, I am on board with that. There probably isn’t free will.
But, we should continue to jail those not following society’s rules. If we could jail hurricanes so as to not cause damage, we would—why is jailing a person any different?
There’s always been one piece of this that has bugged me. I’d like to hear - from someone who is familiar enough with both neurons and quantum theory - an explanation on why thoughts are physically too big to be influenced by quantum randomness.
The quantum scale is characterized by an action comparable to the Planck constant, hbar=6.6x10-16 eV s. A quick wikipedia search tells us that the typical electric impulse needs at least 25 mV (from -70 mV in the resting state to -55 mV in the threshold), and lasts around 1 ms, giving an action of 2.5x10-5 eV s, which is 300 billion times larger that the quantum noise.
Definitely not onboard with letting criminals off the hook for bad deeds. If your “brain script” leads you to kill, you just need to be removed from society. Sorry.
Yea the article wasn’t particularly thoughtful. As you say, justice can simply preventative without being punitive. But on balance, aiming for rehabilitation can still make some sense even without compassionate anti-blame arguments. There are limits to how much we want to keep people out of society and it costs money, so prisoners will return to society at some point.
So what’s the best approach for preventing harm? If a blame-worthiness approach premised on free will is fundamentally false, or at least not correct enough, then ideas about punishment and deterrence would likely be ineffective compared to more rehabilitation based approaches.
If your “brain script” leads you to kill, you just need to be removed from society
If you accept strict determinism, the fact that killers should go to prison is one of the “biases formed by prior events” that will determine that most people won’t become killers. Which in turn determine us as individuals in a society to create and enforce justice systems.
I think that we have free will but it’s extremely limited, but we are capable of weighing our emotions and logic to make a choice. I’m always extremely skeptical of people that say we don’t have free will, so when they do they better have some really solid evidence. Otherwise what’s the point of nature evolving consciousness? Merely to be a passive observer in our predetermined lives? Evolution is effective, if it didnt need it then it wpuldnt have evolved it woth so many animals. Consciousness is there to help us make decisions and map out visions that are beyond the capability of simple automatons.
My bone to pick with this article is that there is no talk about the research that was done to reach the conclusion, so I just have to take this dudes word for it. And I don’t feel like reading his book. And based on where we are in science either this is a sensationalized take or this dude is filling in a lot of blanks with his opinions.
It has a paragraph with the explanation: Basically he says our behaviors are driven by our brain chemistry, genetics, and biases formed by prior events. Every decision we make is a culmination of those things. We think we’re in control, but we’re really just following a pre-ordained script.
Can’t decide if I’m onboard with that. Definitely not onboard with letting criminals off the hook for bad deeds. If your “brain script” leads you to kill, you just need to be removed from society. Sorry.
While we can identify influences that have common outcomes, the fact that there are different outcomes at an individual level supports free will. Free will does not mean you are free from influence, just that there is an opportunity to make a choice.
Poverty leading to increased crime does not result in everyone in poverty committing crimes.
Different outcomes at an individual level supports the idea that individual humans are not exact copies existing in the exact same environment. If on the other hand different outcomes does support free will then the fact that electrons put through the same process (influences) can end up with different spin-states means that electrons have free will.
Well I think their argument is that this doesn’t follow. To have variation between individuals all you need are different influences over the time leading up to the measured outcome. That basically everyone is assured essentially unique genetics and a unique existence from conception (no two people occupy the same body, apart from twins briefly) guarantees that everyone has unique influences.
So the question then is what is the relationship between influences and behaviours and can we measure whether variations in the former are sufficient to explain variations in the latter.
All of which excludes the argument that many people basically lead to similar outcomes under similar influences.
This is where I suspect the scientist’s thoughts/theories will fall down. In the end, it seems to me we need a complete or at least pretty good theory of consciousness to truly get to bottom of this. We don’t. Arguably we’re pretty clueless on how any sophisticated cognition works all the way up from biochemistry to behaviour. So I’m not sure how certain anyone can be either way.
I mean, I am on board with that. There probably isn’t free will.
But, we should continue to jail those not following society’s rules. If we could jail hurricanes so as to not cause damage, we would—why is jailing a person any different?
There’s always been one piece of this that has bugged me. I’d like to hear - from someone who is familiar enough with both neurons and quantum theory - an explanation on why thoughts are physically too big to be influenced by quantum randomness.
Very back-of-envelop calculation:
The quantum scale is characterized by an action comparable to the Planck constant, hbar=6.6x10-16 eV s. A quick wikipedia search tells us that the typical electric impulse needs at least 25 mV (from -70 mV in the resting state to -55 mV in the threshold), and lasts around 1 ms, giving an action of 2.5x10-5 eV s, which is 300 billion times larger that the quantum noise.
Well, that’s simultaneously both very enlightening and kind of depressing. Thanks for spreading the knowledge.
Yea the article wasn’t particularly thoughtful. As you say, justice can simply preventative without being punitive. But on balance, aiming for rehabilitation can still make some sense even without compassionate anti-blame arguments. There are limits to how much we want to keep people out of society and it costs money, so prisoners will return to society at some point.
So what’s the best approach for preventing harm? If a blame-worthiness approach premised on free will is fundamentally false, or at least not correct enough, then ideas about punishment and deterrence would likely be ineffective compared to more rehabilitation based approaches.
If you accept strict determinism, the fact that killers should go to prison is one of the “biases formed by prior events” that will determine that most people won’t become killers. Which in turn determine us as individuals in a society to create and enforce justice systems.
I think that we have free will but it’s extremely limited, but we are capable of weighing our emotions and logic to make a choice. I’m always extremely skeptical of people that say we don’t have free will, so when they do they better have some really solid evidence. Otherwise what’s the point of nature evolving consciousness? Merely to be a passive observer in our predetermined lives? Evolution is effective, if it didnt need it then it wpuldnt have evolved it woth so many animals. Consciousness is there to help us make decisions and map out visions that are beyond the capability of simple automatons.
My bone to pick with this article is that there is no talk about the research that was done to reach the conclusion, so I just have to take this dudes word for it. And I don’t feel like reading his book. And based on where we are in science either this is a sensationalized take or this dude is filling in a lot of blanks with his opinions.