MailChimp

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Determinism -> Liberation and Compassion (Free Will Links)

Bob Geldof - Thinking Voyager 2 Type Things


Last week, Anne and I briefly hung out with a friend who found "we have no free will" to be destructive. Immediately after that meeting ended, I came across this Kevin Drum post, "Free will is mankind’s biggest myth" which linked over to the LA Times' "Stanford scientist [Robert Sapolsky], after decades of study, concludes: We don’t have free will."

In the article, of course, there are people who argue that realizing we have no free will is harmful, in much the same way many argue that realizing there are no gods is harmful. (Why the two topics were intertwined for me, as discussed in Losing.)

But as I explained in "Enlightenment June 2023: Emptiness and Freedom," my experience (and Anne's) is that recognizing determinism is absolutely freeing. My main mental task is trying to more fully internalize this fact. 

(I think that is one of the most important pieces I've ever written. Of course I do! But also of course, I could be wrong. I've been wrong many, many times.... But I could do no other at those times.)

From the Times article:

Before epilepsy was understood to be a neurological condition, people believed it was caused by the moon, or by phlegm in the brain. They condemned seizures as evidence of witchcraft or demonic possession, and killed or castrated sufferers to prevent them from passing tainted blood to a new generation.

Today we know epilepsy is a disease. By and large, it’s accepted that a person who causes a fatal traffic accident while in the grip of a seizure should not be charged with murder.

That’s good, says Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky. That’s progress. But there’s still a long way to go. ...

The greatest risk of abandoning free will, Sapolsky concedes, isn’t that we’ll want to do bad things. It’s that, without a sense of personal agency, we won’t want to do anything.

“It may be dangerous to tell people that they don’t have free will,” Sapolsky said. “The vast majority of the time, I really think it’s a hell of a lot more humane.”

Sapolsky knows he won’t persuade most of his readers. ... 

His true hope, he says, is to increase compassion. Maybe if people understand how thoroughly an early history of trauma can rewire a brain, they’ll stop lusting for harsh punishments. Maybe if someone realizes they have a brain condition like depression or ADHD, they’ll stop hating themselves for struggling with tasks that seem easier for others....

We are machines, Sapolsky argues, exceptional in our ability to perceive our own experiences and feel emotions about them. It is pointless to hate a machine for its failures.

1 comment:

Paul Ingraham said...

It sure feels freeing to me … but in a very abstract way, completely disconnected from my emotional reality. It’s seems more like fantasizing about winning a bunch of money than actually winning a bunch of money.