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Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

What I ' not sure I understand is why does Dr. Sapolsky insist humans have exactly zero free will. Privileged to have (hmm, I'm not sure if this sounds humble or supercilious in this case) a rather healthy brain with sufficiently developed prefrontal cortex and other areas, no matter how depressed or aroused I am (I have probably never been either in a serious degree but nevertheless) I usually can "wake up", pause, overcome my urges and make a conscious decision to behave this or that way out of some logic, mindfully aware of the fact what I feel and think is subjective and mostly illusory. I agree the degree of freedom of the will in rather humble in the majority of people (me included) but why zero?

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Pardon for introducing philosophy here, but Schopenhauer‘s „A man can do what he [wants], but not [want] what he [wants]“ might be a good attempt at an answer. Past and current environment, genetic setup etc would completely predetermine the processes in your brain.

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/32734

Choosing what to want may be non-trivial in many contexts but I actually do this often. I often choose to want to do what I have to do and, given some effort, this switches me from feeling angry to feeling happy.

You have to ask yourself what makes you think about wanting something in that very moment. And whether any of the considerations you are weighing while thinking about this are actually created by you at will. You can go up one meta level: You can want what you want, but you can’t want to want what you want.

There’s this theory among physicists (I don’t know how it’s called) that if you started the Big Bang again, under the same circumstances, that everything would happen again, in the exact same way.

> You can want what you want, but you can’t want to want what you want.

This sounds false. "want to want what you want" sounds ambiguous. To me it can mean both the desire to be able to choose what to want (which is always true because it is kind of a developable superpower making you always satisfied) or "keep wanting what you already want" (which doesn't require any effort to change).

> There’s this theory among physicists (I don’t know how it’s called) that if you started the Big Bang again, under the same circumstances, that everything would happen again, in the exact same way.

This theory sounds intuitively obvious. But isn't there an opposite theory?

He mentions this in passing on the Mindscape podcast (with Sean Carroll). Essentially, he's read too many studies that have participants perform so called 'rational' tests whose outcomes are largely a function of the environment and not the 'given test' -- ie, the presence of a foul smell caused a statistical difference in the outcome of the test. Our capacity to reflect and internalize is, to him, another output of a vast and continual, unconscious, shaping all life undergoes.

> the presence of a foul smell caused a statistical difference in the outcome of the test

But the fact there is a statistical difference does not mean it affects everyone and in the same degree. E.g. they probably didn't test many experienced Zen monks trained to impartially and vigilantly observe what they perceive and feel and a couple of weird guys who do this naturally also didn't affect the statistics. Statistics is both a great tool and also a problem of modern science. I bet some medications dismissed for failing to show statistical significance in DBPC trials could actually work (by means of some real phenomenon rather than the placebo effect) in some rare cases.

> Our capacity to reflect and internalize is, to him, another output of a vast and continual, unconscious, shaping all life undergoes.

It probably is. No action can exist without a sequence of past interactions which led to it. Even if I stop, think and make a conscious decision, even if I try to come up with a non-standard one, this means my previous experience led me to the idea I even should. But this doesn't mean "humans have no free will", it means "free will" is a meaningless concept outside the realm of logic and neither saying it exists nor saying it doesn't makes any sense and being sad about this doesn't make any sense either.

I have been waiting for high quality studies on practitioners of meditation over the will and other meta-cognitive capabilities. If you ever come across some, please post them here!

The world is material. In this material world, everything that occurs has a physical consequence. We cannot introduce the concept of free will without introducing a non-material cause, eg souls or magic.

> I usually can […] overcome my urges and make a conscious decision to behave this or that way out of some logic

But what made you make that decision instead of a different one (or none)? You generally have no choice but to make the exact deliberate choice that you make in the given moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O61I0pNPg8&t=356

Can you give a rigorous definition of what you think of as free will?

I can give 2:

1. A totally undefined concept making no sense to say it exists as well as to say it doesn't.

2. The ability of a person to consciously observe, question and disobey what they feel. The degree in which a person is capable of this varies between different people and different circumstances.

Your first response is exactly why I asked that question. Most of the time, people who feel strongly about this topic struggle to find a rigorous definition which can actually be dissected.

> 2. The ability of a person to consciously observe, question and disobey what they feel. The degree in which a person is capable of this varies between different people and different circumstances.

And this of course raises the question of _where_ the choice to disobey feelings comes from, what factors are at play in that decision making process, and whether this process is even meaningfully different from just acting on your feelings.

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