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Comment by afpx | Hacker News Reader

His book “Behave” seemed to be well done. He cites everything he claims (I’ve only looked at a few of them, but they seemed like legit studies). I haven’t followed much of his free will argument but it makes sense he’d go down that path because the premise of Behave is that our actions are just the result of many physical processes.

One thing that keeps me open-minded about free will is that, yeah my actions may be the result of natural processes, but I also have the ability to reflect upon those actions so that my responses change the next time. But, then again I would probably defend the idea of free will even irrationally. In my opinion even if I don’t have free will I still have to live like I do.

Edit: I just googled Behave citations and one of the first things to pop up was someone claiming he has bad sources. But, I didn’t investigate that person’s claims either. So, be skeptical I guess.

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I am not a religious person but I experience the Universe as a consciousness that pervades the entirety and contains all the intelligence required for it's operation. I agree with Erwin Schrodinger that "“The total number of minds in the universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings” and I call that singular consciousness God. Our brain does produce consciousness but tunes into it.

So you can see why I might vehmently disagree with people like Saplosky who attemt to reduce us to mere machines. How depressing, which is ironic, since Saplosky's Stanford lecture on depression really started me on the road out of my depression.

Does it really matter if there are many minds or one? That just shifts the question to whether this "universe mind" is fundamentally mechanistic or not.

I'm confused by your question. I'm hearing it like "does it matter if there are many gravity wells or just gravity?" because I believe science will once day find consciousness is the 5th fundamental force, perhaps the one the ties the other four together

What I'm saying is whether consciousness is a fundamental force or not is orthogonal to whether it has free will.

So you're saying a conscious Universe could still be Newton's "clockwork universe"? Well, Einstein did say "God does not play dice with the universe" but I think the quantum direction is where the riddle of consciousness may be be found. The beauty and terror of our own minds is the uncertainty that lies in the choices we make and the outcomes we get from those choices.

I don't think quantum mechanics fundamentally changes things, either. If you look at it from the Copenhagen perspective, sure, you get randomness, but I don't think many people would seriously argue that adding a true RNG to an otherwise mechanical contraption makes it any less mechanical, even if it becomes unpredictable - the real question behind "free will" is not whether branching is deterministic, but rather whether the entity has any degree of control over it. And if you look at it from the many-worlds perspective, then you just have parallelized determinism.

My personal take on this is that the question itself is meaningless because we cannot define "free will" in any coherent way that is actually testable. It all boils down to defining what "conscious" and "self" mean, which are themselves very fuzzy concepts that elude clear definitions. My solution to all this is to just stop wasting time on it, since I don't think there are any practical implications to it (and if there's no free will - whatever that means in practice - then my opinion is itself predetermined in any case).

I agree with you that the question of free will is a waste of time, which is why I generally avoid it. Maybe if you are a student of Catholic Church doctrine and have a final exam coming up? Sapolsky does not write from a Catholic perspective, but his audience might have been brought up with it so his writings might be provocative for them and thus profitable for him. I've been watching his career with more amusement than irritation. He is classic case of a regular guy becoming an "influencer." The same thing happened to Jordan Peterson. At the same time [2015] I found Sapolsky's lecture on depression I found Peterson's. Both not well known at the time. Both lectures really helpful. Both now well known influencers.

It’s natural for human brain to find explanations for the supernatural. We are born with a “God” placeholder in our brain, just as infinity is a concept.

The idea that consciousness is 5th fundamental force sounds great but doesn’t make any sense.

Everything in universe is interaction of particles in force fields. We have mathematical definitions for them in standard model of physics.

And consciousness is what we experience in our brains as a model of reality. It’s a much more complex emergent concept arising from how neurons are wired together to process input -> output signals. Consciousness boils down to signal processing. Which down the stack of atoms and subatomic particle requires the fundamental forces.

Very different things. Put in a different way, they are fundamental because they explain everything in observable universe.

That being said, I respect your right to believe.

> emergent concept arising from how neurons are wired together

That's a magical concept as well. A theory like mine. Time will tell. I only wish I was around when they figure it out.

The problem with consciousness is most people have varying definitions of what they mean by it.

Most don’t even believe any other animals other than humans can be conscious. Or that computers can be conscious.

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

- Max Planck

Do you often discount studies and science when it comes to ideas that don’t align with your natural instinct?

Is addiction a disease or a moral failure? Is depression a chemical imbalance or is it your own fault, maybe just “exercise and smile more”?

Questions of that nature are fair but simply being against a researcher or author because they have a viewpoint different your own is entirely what’s wrong with so much of discourse today.

You're implying that Robert Sapolsky speaks the truth the contradicts my belief system. Maybe you're thinking I'm Catholic (I'm not) who see free will as a gift from God that allows humans to freely choose to love and obey Him. Catholic doctrine holds that free will is granted to humans by God as part of being created in His image and likeness. Without free will, humans could not be held morally responsible for their actions. The ability to choose between good and evil is fundamental to Catholic understanding of sin and redemption.

No, I think Robert Sapolsky's focus is too narrow and materialistic, ignoring almost everything that makes us human. In the story of the seven blind men and the elephant, Robert Sapolsky is the blind scientist that feels the trunk and proclaims the elephant is a snake. Robert Sapolsky's science is flawed. If human behavior can be explained by chemicals then why do we need his colleagues in other departments at Stanford, such as the psychologists?

My point was he was doing what he does to make money Malcolm Gladwell style and I thought there was nothing wrong with that but that was a reason why I didn't take him seriouly.

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