Making Sense of Free Will
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- čas přidán 13. 02. 2023
- In this episode, we examine the timeless question of “free will”: what constitutes it, what is meant by it, what ought to be meant by it, and, of course, whether we have it at all. We start with the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky who begins to deflate the widely held intuition and assumption of “libertarian free will” by drawing out a mechanistic and determined description of the universe.
We then hear from the philosopher who has long been Sam’s intellectual wrestling opponent on this subject, Daniel Dennett. Dennett and Sam spar about definitional and epistemological frameworks of what Dennett insists is “free will,” and what Sam contends could never be.
The author and physicist Sean Carroll then engages Sam with more attempts to find a philosophically defensible notion of free will by leaning on the unknowable nature of the universe revealed by quantum mechanics. We then listen in on Sam’s engagement with the mathematician and author Judea Pearl who focuses on matters of causation to tease out a freedom of will.
After a historical review of Princess Elizabeth’s famous exchanges with Rene Descartes, we hear from the biologist Jerry Coyne, who firmly agrees with Sam that a deterministic picture of reality leaves absolutely no room for anything like free will.
We then hear from the curiously entertaining mind of comedian and producer Ricky Gervais who was thinking about free will while taking a bath when he decided to phone Sam.
We conclude with Sam’s own response to concerns that an erasure of free will inevitably result in fatalism, loss of meaning, and passive defeat. Sam insists that the loss of free will actually pushes us in the opposite direction where we begin to see hatred and vengeance as incoherent and start to connect with a deeper and truer sense of genuine compassion.
About the Series
Filmmaker Jay Shapiro has produced The Essential Sam Harris, a new series of audio documentaries exploring the major topics that Sam has focused on over the course of his career.
Each episode weaves together original analysis, critical perspective, and novel thought experiments with some of the most compelling exchanges from the Making Sense archive. Whether you are new to a particular topic, or think you have your mind made up about it, we think you’ll find this series fascinating.
February 14, 2023
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Some of these comments of people hating on Sam are so strange...politics really has ruined everything.
sam brought himself to politics, you can say he used his free will to do so. don't get mad that didn't play out the way you wanted.
@@jhallin5185 Personally I don't care, everyone has their whacky opinions on whatever insert current thing is, but his philosophy on free will is completely uncorrelated to any of that.
I agree, and politics and democracy are synonymous. So when sam says idiot statements like an attack on our democracy, or Trump is a danger to democracy, what he means is an attack on his politics. You're welcome for clearing this up. 🙂
No they aren’t hating on Sam. They are being honest, Sam is a huge hypocrite. He’s doesn’t subscribe to his own ideology. He things ppl who do nothing wrong should be censored just cause he disagrees with them. He’s also has TDS and think we shouldn’t get second opinions besides the supposable “experts”
@@trystdodge6177 how is saying Trump is a danger to democracy idiotic?
Sams lectures on freewill are his masterpieces, and an astounding gift to mankind. I truly believe that.
So glad he chose to do those 😂 for all of us to remember
@@chazmcgooski83 I see what you did there. :)
Agreed. Though I SO miss his debates on religion.
no need to thank him, he couldn't help it.
Difficult to call the exercise of banality peddling a "gift to humanity". Breaking news: humans have more degrees of freedom compared to a rock; in other news - water is wet. Or "humans have free will but biorobots don't - lets debate definitions for the next hour!".
I LOVED this series in Waking Up. Talk about eye opening, and it resonated completely with me. I spend a lot of time explaining other's lack of free will too.
A very important topic with a very important social impact. A topic I'm glad Sam uses his platform to discuss.
A suggestion as to why is the illusion of free will so powerful? - Because our brains are not wired to feel/understand the concept of time. Time is unidirectional (at least, that is the only form that we experience), unlike space where we can experience 3 dimensions simultaneously, and go up, down, left or right. So we tend to imagine life is like a piece of land with multiple roads where we can choose one direction or another. Our memories are layed down like a story where we have taken one path or another - even if we are thinking about something we decided one second ago. So it seems intuitive that at any given time we have free will over where we choose to go.
But time is not like that, because whilst we can look back at the 'map' of how we got here, at any given moment the future does not yet exist. It is like travelling west to east on a map where if we stand still and look backwards (to the west) it is fully drawn, but if we look forwards (to the east) the map is completely blank. So we cannot consciously choose any given 'road' because at that moment no roads towards the east exist - they are only formed as we walk. And yet we have no choice but to walk eastwards - we cannot reverse time (go west). So in the absolute sense, free will must be an illusion, because otherwise it would require the ability to have awareness of the future before it happens.
Great job!!
Nicely put
Not bad. I would say, what we perceive as 'now' is like the needlepoint on a vinyl record. We see the recording of the past but cannot see the recording ahead of the future, since we are not outside of spacetime. So, from our only perspective posible, the illusion of freewill persists.
Hi SAM, I love listening to you on free will. Keep making more videos on free will with many examples from real world so that everyone of us can relate to it more and understand it more and make that thought process a part of our daily lives. I think it was pre-determined that I will write this comment and if you are reading this and considering to do what I just said, that is pre-determined too. Thanks a lot Sam. You are a wonder to the world.
Sapolski is on my list of “having dinner with anyone”. Fascinating, brilliant, and humble mind
So wild when he talked to Sam and admitted he partook in no recreational substances throughout his entire life, including alcohol, lsd, weed, etc. Respectable to a whole other degree.
Excellent - Thank You 😊
Regarding Sam’s description of ideas, thoughts, words seemingly appearing out of nowhere - I think this is where art trumps philosophy in its logic (or reliance thereon). William Kentridge speaks so eloquently on this (I’ll paraphrase here and not well 😅): He describes the creative process as simply and organically happening to a person, and once it’s happened (on paper, in spoken or written words etc) we subsequently form the ideas around our creation, moulding or shaping it into an image or cohesive argument. I think he is correct - when someone is truly inspired the depths of our subconscious organically generate the product of our lived experience and only then do our conscious brains mould it to fit the understanding we are aware of and which we wish to convey to others or influence them about.
Great stuff, as always.
Just Waaoooh! Sam called Sapolsky, too, for an interview on this topic. Yayyyyy!
Water isn’t really wet; because if you deeply deconstruct water, you find the truth is that it’s just hydrogen and oxygen, neither of which are wet, even when combined.
Therefore umbrellas are pointless.
What do you mean by this? Do you think this is analogous to Sam's argument somehow?
@@townhomes13 very much so.
@@LAZARUSL0NG if you don't explain it I will never be able to understand why. If you briefly elaborate a bit I might. Legitimately curious here.
@@townhomes13 I believe that Sam’s negation of ‘freewill’ applies the wrong level of analysis to the determinism of our reality, and that his subsequent inferences regarding problematic consequences for our established concepts of responsibility/culpability, etc. are not appropriate.
Similarly, (albeit more tangibly absurd) applying the wrong level of analysis regarding water, with reference to its ‘wetness’, *could* suggest, to an exotic thinker, that the phenomena we call ‘getting wet’ should more properly be regarded as an “illusion”; leading them to denounce all those in the employ of ‘big umbrella’ as hucksters, charlatans, or naive shut-eyes; wrongfully enriching themselves by taking advantage of the general level of public ignorance concerning the true nature of rain.
Just wanted to say thank you for talking with Lex Fridman recently - it was an amazing conversation with a lot of really well reasoned back and forth.
You earned yourself a subscriber and many future likes.
I love how eye-opening this topic is. Of all the topics Sam has covered, free will will always be in my top 3 most interesting.
What are the other 2?
Given that there is no practical real life difference whether humans have free will or not - the topic is nothing but meaningless speculation that's devoid of any merit.
@@feedme8991 if it were recognised libertarian free will doesn't exist there would necessarily be massive changes to the justice system.
@@bubbafowpend9943 How so?
@@feedme8991 If it's accepted that that we do, what we decide and who we are are products of prior causes beyond our control, then we'd have to move away from punitive justice and orient more towards rehabiliation based justice. Deterrents would still be useful in some cases obviously, but it would be impossible to justify, say, the death penalty, or life imprisonment. Some would still probably need to be jailed for life, but likely only in cases where they're on ongoing danger to others.
Brilliant. Clear and clear concise. And the music is excellent.
amazing thanks Mr. Sam
I always regarded Free Will as Sam’s magnum opus. Was a land mark read growing up.
Sam’s Free Will really ought to be the last word on the subject.
Dennett says he doesn’t control the wind but does control the boat, i.e., his decisions. But volitional acts are preceded by thoughts. And if thoughts actually arise in the brain, what exactly is the mechanism by which we create them there? Never mind that we don’t choose our brains.
Of course, the flip-side is what is this self that would have free will in the first place, and where is the evidence for it?
Interesting how otherwise very smart people fail to notice that free will is a fiction. I’d respect Dennett’s position if he just said something like, “Of course, there is no free will, but for the time being we still need to pretend that there is for the good of society.”
Fascinating. Thanks for posting 👏 🇬🇧
I know he has a lot of content on this topic but it’s a seriously big issue that infects so much of humanity. The concept of free will is deeply connected to the misperceived singular self. It’s a simple perspective change with powerful positive consequences. There’s a reason to harp on free will without restraint. Please post more.
Who, agreed. So much needless psychological suffering in this world. Most on their Ego driven Hamster Wheel. Clueless.
I do not mean this as a bad faith challenge, but as an honest truth-seeking question, as it's what I most struggle with regarding this topic; what difference does it make? I've listened to Sam at length on the topic (though I've not read his book) and I've been left genuinely puzzled as to how accepting an absence of free will matters. It seems to me as though at both an individual level and a societal level the way we accord ourselves is unlikely to change.
Like an example I've heard Sam use is to to view an "evil" person in a similar manner to an angry bear, or a deadly violent hurricane, as opposed to viewing that person as a thinking being with full agency who is choosing to harm others. If i fully accept that premise, I'm not sure how that changes how I'll approach or interact with that individual or how society should. I find the topic interesting on an intellectual level, but it seems like a thought exercise without applicable consequence to me.
Sam has talked about how it points to ending "retributive justice" in our criminal system, but collective knowledge of our system of retributive "justice" is a societal precondition that will determine individuals' future actions. That was a ridiculously wordy and high-brow way of saying, if jay walking is commonly punished by the death penalty, that's obviously not ethical, but there's going to be a WHOLE lot less jay walking; free will or no. If our collective priority above all other things is to end jay walking, it might be a good solution.
I don't think why people are doing what they're doing matters as much as how they'll behave in the future and how we can influence that. It seems like free will or not, the steps we can take to influence future behaviors are essentially the same. Sam says letting go of notions of free will frees you from hating "bad" people. But many of those "bad" people would presumably prefer to not be hated, no? If that's the case, isn't society collectively hating those "bad" people a communal good that is applying positive pressure on the bad person's future behaviors?
@@eckroattheeckroat4246
I have to agree with you, and I’ve made a comment with similar points. I can’t find a way through what seems like dissonance in the idea of a violent criminal being an unconscious hurricane while the victim or judge should be above retribution. How is the victim or judge any more free to do so in this scenario? Are they not equally albeit less destructive unconscious forces of nature? I find this reasoning circular and self defeating at the same time.
@@eckroattheeckroat4246 Not ok only this but if you see a person as an unconscious hurricane you will be less likely to allow for him to reform himself. We don't try to reform a rattle snake. If people are simply these unconscious forces it would make sense to give any convict a lobotomy and be done with it. We don't reform hurricanes even if we don't hate them. Sam says that giving up on free will removes any rationale for hating them but hatred isn't rational in any case. It is an emotion which if he is correct we have no control over in any case. His whole idea is incoherent.
I don't know why, but my favorite part of this conversation has to be hearing other people in the restaurant singing "Happy Birthday," in the background...
Wow this is the best video I've ever listened to.
Thank you
Your unconscious mind is YOU. You don't think to beat your heart, but there it goes and is you. You don't get to choose that. If you can choose, then are using your free will. If another points a gun at you, you are still choosing to obey rather than be shot, but it's not a free will, but a coerced will.
Sure but you're just moving the goal post. Now we are something we don't and can't identify with. It's something outside our experience. You could call free will whatever you want at that point.
The best thing. Thank you
The question really is, is there a free floating, conscious "self" that is directing the choices we make? The answer is obviously no. We do, however, make "choices" continuously. So, in a sense, it's not outlandish to characterize that process as free will of sorts. We are not making those choices at the point of a gun. The "choices" are nothing more than "computations", which provide the illusion that we could have chosen to do something else.
One of Sam's greatest weapons is his calm soothing voice. Why am I hearing a female robot?
I'm so sorry that this is happening to you
@@exoxy You should be sorry. You have free will and you used it to choose this jarring robot voice just to cause as much suffering as possible. You bear all the blame in this. I hereby grant you 10% forgiveness for your seemingly unsympathetic apology to Mr. Savajo. I do not have free will, so this is the best I could do on short notice.
@@troy3456789 i like you.
@@innerspacesurfer I'm just screwing around. Peace bro
I like her voice. I believe it's Megan Phelps Roper, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church who now speaks about the perils of that particular cult (and others).
Great song
20:28 really nails it.
While on one hand what is said here makes sense, what is being overlooked is the emotional aspect, the trauma, the potentially devastating psychological harm persisting in victims of crimes, from family members of victims to the direct victims themselves, and how this can be somewhat reduced in some cases by punishment or even death of the perpetrator.
It could be argued victims should try to overcome these reactions but attempting to override millions of years of evolved traits is going to be an immense struggle and cost in itself if even possible at all.
So you induce more unnecessary trauma just so people of 1 generation don't have to unlearn their faulty default? Trauma leads to new trauma. Better retrain that one generation and educate the newborns accordingly so a better system can arise 💟
If the universe is strictly materialistic, self-contained, and entire, than there can be no question that there is no true "free will".
But that is contingent on that "if".
Thanks 👍
Here's my issue: when Sam says things like "The murderer isn't morally responsible because he ultimatley did not give rise his own biological processes," or "The murderer isn't in control, because he did not control the thoughts in his brain," it seems like he is postulating an ethereal "self" that somehow exists outside of these processes. Why, when we are looking at the world through this physicalist lens, would we bother separating the murderer from his own biological processes? Who is "He" but precisely these things? And why would you need more than that to determine responsibility?
The point is just that when we speak of agents having agency it implies the opportunity to have done things differently which we know isn’t coherent with our physical interpretation of the world (assuming no randomness). We say it’s fair to blame the murderer for his murder but if we agree that he truly doesn’t control his thoughts and they’re emergent eventually of genetic, environmental, and random processes he has no control over at the individual level you can never truly blame him. That said when we speak of blame we typically aren’t talking about the real first principles free will responsibility, but if it intuitively seems like someone was responsible for their actions. This is epistomologically misplaced. We make exceptions for example for mentally deranged people because it’s painfully obvious they aren’t in full control of their mental faculty. Rationally, in a vacuum and at an individual level it would only make sense to extend these provisions to every human.
I make the caveats because at the societal level the concept of justice and responsibility are extremely useful evolved tools because they discourage the actions we’d like to see less of.
Well I disagree with you based on precisely the things I already said. Why do you differentiate between "he" and his thought processes if you are making a physicalistic interpretation of the world? @@avisrivastava4140
All preordained, a prisoner in chains, a victim of venemous fate. Of course Sam gets it, but he's perplexed at the lack of understanding out there. Me too, I blame religion for creating soft minds. And I blame soft minds for creating religion.
There are many catalysts that lead to the problems we see. The biggest one is the distribution of resources. I believe religion plays a part, but it's our job by necessity to find which catalysts we can reverse to best solve the problems. It's much easier to improve the distribution of resources than end religion.
@pouya fascinating, truly! i've had a sense of the reality you describe for some time, the 'created duality' from the ONE that started this, or did it self-start? Can there be a discernable difference? All great thoughts to ponder, and really my mind swims in the shallow end of the pool compared to some that do flyby's with their deep thoughts. I pick on religion because it gets the human condition so spectacularly wrong in so many ways, and free will is at the center of the misunderstandings. It has the answers, yet seeking is the lifelong experience that drives us internally. If you find the answers, or 'lift the curtain', game over. Makes sense to me...but just the word 'God' is freighted with so much attachment to religion, I just wish more people had been conditioned to equate God with the core human experiences of brotherhood and humility in our smallness, rather than some 'holy book'. It's insulting, deeply. It's amazing your grasp of God and consciousness, if you're a bot then you're a damn smart one and I just can't stop typing so I'd better stop. :)
I do miss the content, I was asking for the free sub for a while but I feel guilty after so many years taking for free and having to ask for sub every year. Your content is worth paying for been a fan since you started in public eye. But I can’t afford anything subscription based, pay my bills eat and that’s it. Do miss the content. Great stuff.
Just ask for a re-up.
@@513morris I know they would give it but feel guilty at this point. After so many years not paying you do feel guilt when you appreciate the content. But like I say I can’t afford anything subscription based if there was an option I would donate what I could then i would do when possible but you can’t. You stuck on fixed cost per month.
@@eh4372 I don't think there's any need to feel guilty. If you can't pay, you can't pay. You're not taking anything away from Sam. Whether or not you listen to his full podcasts, he gets no money from you. He does offer it for free for a reason though.
@@eh4372 I don’t think the guilt is warranted. One day you will give it back in some way :))
The analogy with the individual in the house there's no question about which option to choose choose option three The cure gun
I can't even choose the 3 options because whatever is done is what is chosen and none of it mattered what I thought because I cannot choose as I have no free will.
Sam Harris is right that the subject boils down to 'Is there magic or not'.
On the point of a 'soul' appointed to you not by your choice, a righteous God won't judge everyone equally, but to their ability. And while all souls are not equal, all souls have the capacity to choose Christ and be saved.
And if god is all powerful and all knowing he already knows if we’ll choose Christ. In fact he not only knew that, but knew whether we were going to heaven or hell before he even created the universe. He made it as so according to his plan. And if something happens in gods all powerful creation that wasn’t part of his all powerful plan, well then he’s not all powerful.
Unfortunately this is the type of thing that you either know or you don’t. Cus like Sam says best, you can’t Reason someone out of something they didn’t Reason themselves into.
So if you pre suppose a magic being creating the universe then you’re going to brute force whatever mental gymnastics and contradictions your ego needs in order to reinforce this irrational coping mechanism
Love this new series! Can we do "Torture Apologetics" as the next topic?
Another theory: What if there is no such thing as a "soul" and the electrical energy contained within these bodies, is actually a combined source of energy, from all energies contained within "the dome". In other words, while we may think that when we die, our soul might come back as another human being or animal, what if when we do come back, instead of an individual "soul", we actually come back as energy parts from other matter (non-exclusive to humans/animals). For all we know, re-incarnation may actually fuse our current "individual energy" (soul) with the energies of other matter (rock, water, earth, etc.). Wouldn't it be a bit presumptuous to think that each being on earth is assigned a unique "individual soul". We might after all just be a "living experiment" in a lab in some other dimension.
🤣🤣
"...hatred and vengeance as incoherent and start to connect with a deeper and truer sense of genuine compassion. " The problem with this argument is that it also renders love and gratitude incoherent. Why be grateful for someone's behavior if they had no choice but to engage in that behavior?
show this to your Valentines date, folks.
pretty sure she will CHOOSE to end our date lol
@@harryroadman1089 💀
It's semantics. The most popular definition of Free will means without outside influence. So anyone who is not being pressured by outside influences can have free will.
Compatibilism is semantics and misses the real problem that people face experientially from moment to moment. We truly feel like the decision makers of our next choices and Sam confronts this very notion by simply asking you to pay attention to how your next thought, intention, and decision comes about. It's hard at first but once the insight comes about it changes how you think about free will forever.
@@pedestrian_0 OK, point taken. My point, though, is that when the concept of free will is *spoken about* , typically (and to most people, I think), it simply means what I said above. Obviously an over-simplification, but it still has meaning. I think it comes down to how we define "free", doesn't it?. We call the U.S. a "free country", but we have laws and rules. A man is not free to go about raping women and/or robbing banks. Ultimately, humans obviously could not have been *free* to come into (or evolve into) existence. So, in that sense, nothing we do or think could be free. "Pedestrian" is a good handle, btw, - or so sayeth I. 😉
The intro is like that for a Cult Leader. So creepy!
Only feels like we are free to choose out of at least two options,
No, many go their whole lives without raping, taking advantage of others, stealing or lying when they can many of times all the time and countless times, and most situations u have many ways to go in a conversation or even in sports and chess there are multiple opinions besides black or white choices.
Sam giving his own job over to the ai voice machine
One of the greatest humans to have blessed our world 🌎 🙏. Thank you Sam
Hmmmm
You poor thing.
Your life must be so empty
@Black Lesbian Poet have you wrote good black lesbian poetry? Sorry, what a dumb question. Black lesbian poetry is like pizza it's always good.
@@trystdodge6177 Black lesbian poetry is good every time it is good. When it's really good, it is really good.
He supported the Iraq war and justified the use of torture. He argued for the legitimacy of the illegal use of Guantanamo Bay.
It's amazing how many people turn a blind eye to this warmongering narcissist and consider him as someone worthy of praise.
It's tricky to know for sure, but yes I believe reality is already determined. And I include strong emergence in that, so the future cannot be fully predicted. Who determined reality? Nobody, since by reality I include everything and then there isn't anything separate outside of it. Why do I have it as a belief instead of a scientific fact? Because causality is still an unsolved problem in physics.
I don't believe in free will, but that doesn't mean the illusion thereof can't be useful to solve problems. To me, the most important goal in the free will conversation is to disconnect the concept of individual blame for societal issues in order to identify the underlying societal issues that are puppeteering the strings of human autonomy. It's not to say we shouldn't punish individuals for their actions, it's just to say that we shouldn't only punish individuals with the expectation that the systematic conditions leading to punishable behavior will disappear.
Determinism says that the big bang is ultimately responsible for the state of the universe, so if we could reverse it, we could get rid of every "problem." But doing so is impossible and will also lead to the destruction of tons of things that aren't problematic. Intelligence is the ability to reverse the right combinations of catalysts relative to a problem, such that you diminish the replication of that problem. Those solutions must be dissected from the chain of events from the big bang all the way up to the problematic event. Often times, the most relevant catalyst of a systematic problem is very difficult to reverse in order to solve the problem, and the most common barrier is current human perception of that reversal. Other times, changing conditions in the present change which combination of solutions is ideal.
A simple example is the wealth disparity between black and white people. You could blame black culture or individuals for their actions. Or you could ask what events led to the development of that culture that we can reverse. You could reverse the wealth disparity with race reparations, but this punishes other races for the sins of their ancestors. This creates tension and division. Or you could reverse the wealth disparity with class-based welfare. In this manner, white people are not blamed specifically, and the results will likely be less divisive, as the disparity between poor and wealthy white people is also addressed.
The disbelief in free will is basically the acceptance that we are all a product of our environment. The acceptance that free will doesn't exist opens up the door to find solutions that would otherwise not be seen. It's the difference between critical thinking and coming to conclusions based only on what can be obviously seen. One person getting fat eating ice cream is perhaps just one person that loves ice cream. And obesity epidemic is much less likely to be purely a result of a society-wide ice cream addiction.
Nihilism also doesn't have to be the necessary conclusion of a lack of free will, nor is consciousness impossible without free will. In fact, consciousness is the bridge between the illusion of free will and lack of free will. You can move between these states. So in other words, you don't surrender all joy and hope because you don't believe in free will, you just spend a little bit more time being conscious of the free will, ego-driven illusion so that you can create a better world for yourself when you're in the illusive state. The entire goal of this free will conversation is to disconnect the ego from the problem solving process.
💚💛💜Amazing😍😍👍
So Sam had no say in whether he became a deranged supporter of corruption.
Schizo go back to your conservative puppet shills who feed you talking points because of the money that they're able to rake in. Of course it's not your fault you've been conned, I still enjoy teasing you
@@pedestrian_0 Good to see those experimental injections haven’t made you aggressive and deranged 😂
Background music is a hard miss in this segment and had to ultimately turn off the episode because of it.
great stuff Sam but it belongs in 1953 a time where they went into engineering details in car adverts, today we soley rely on spin as a singular persasion technique and also there is hope in an upcomming civil war. can you please help engineer us towards such a war or seperation? :)
Yeah, if I went back in time/had a re-run - different decisions could have been made.
An easy example. Back in college I liked two girls equally enough to not be able to choose which of them to go out with. And since I don't double time - I had to pick one. So I flipped a coin...
The same exact thing would happen jf you went back in time, you would’ve done exactly that and flipped the coin, picking that same girl over again, which would then end up with you here writing this same comment and with me replying to you
@@S7VENNN If spacetime is fundamental yes. But maybe it isn't. There are physicists that claim spacetime is doomed.
Maybe consciousness is fundamental 💟
Really? People can change their mind? Watch how Sam locks up when talking about god
If no new evidence has been presented concerning the existence of god, why would he change his mind? His point wasn't that people change their mind for no reason.
You have $10. Name something you can buy for $10, name something you can't. Your free will to buy or not buy is a parameter set by your circumstance/existence. Same with a million $'s. Proves more options equals more available actionable free will. But more is negated by impossibility such as flapping our arms to fly. Reality overrides that will, free or not.
Oh this is 'The Essential Sam Harris'. I was looking for The Optional Sam Harris. I was looking for somewhere to test my cheap-will. I say it's cheap, because every time I make a choice, I must pay the price.
The robobotic voice really puts me off
There is only that much free will as the pull of gravity, the heat of the flame, the deterioration of your body, the slow incoming of death - slowly, but inevitably. I always thought free will is a sort of illusion, it is just that gap between the imperatives that gives us an illusion of freedom. It is the process of how you'd like to live with the inevitable that makes this illusion acceptable, what is your poison kind of a way. In the east, it has already been identified as 'maya' - and karma, through the cycle of cause and effect. In the west, it has predominantly been due to determinism and how this became part of the reason movement, primarily giving rise to 'free will' as being the reason of why it all is as it is.
@pouya108 in short I do not think we are in a matrix...
@pouya108 Well, there has indeed been a prevailing hypothesis of reality being a simulation, but the reason why I think it is not accurate is because while we can predict imperatives in conventional physics, we deduce that these imperatives necessarily result in a reason behind physics, that there is collective consciousness and that there is overall purpose... because if there is no purpose, there is no need to classify reality as a simulation... think about it. Why would nature be a simulation? Because there is a deductive reasoning of a purpose, which seeks a reason for which we need a man behind the simulation, which I do not agree with. I do not see reason, purpose and the man behind the screen as being valid explanations. The simplest explanation has been elemental combinations, energy pockets combusting in varying degrees, depending how much energy is consolidated and depletion of these energy pockets. That's just about it.
I love Sam's view on free will but wish they'd discuss it in the context of individual stoicism rather than social morality.
3rd trimester is a baby not a fetus
Fetus literally means baby. It's the same word. Fetus is Latin for offspring. People using the word fetus often is a way to dehumanize the baby inside the womb
@@synthesizerneil fetus is the word low t liberal cucks use to dehumanize a baby. Because killing babies sounds worse than fetuses
Why are there birthday party sounds in the background?
Sam would be a compatibilist if he dropped his irrational commitment to the idea that most people "feel" that they have free will and that this "feeling" is a delusion. It's certainly true that people feel somewhat flexible, spontaneous, creative from moment to moment. And for that reason it's easy to sell them the idea that they have libertarian free will. But it's also possible to explain that these feelings are compatible with determinism and with compatibilist free will. The theory changes but the feelings stay the same. Dennett's position is therefore every bit as anchored to these feelings as Harris's.
Unlimited choices but no One to choose. Thoughts, like Hearing or Seeing arise without effort. Free Will, as with Will Power, and motivation are just thoughts, an Illusion.
how are they illusions? just because something is transient doesn't mean it's not real
how does it _matter_ that we have free will or not (or whether we _think_ or _believe_ we do or not)? if i drop a sledgehammer above your foot you can rationalize all you want, but... if you don't move your foot you're going to be uncomfortable for a while... even if the broken bones are only an _illusion..._
i'm just trying to grasp the value of the whole free will discussion and, so far, i'm not seeing it...
@@o.b.v.i.u.s it only really matters in retrospect. Seeing things could not have been different can reduce things like guilt, blame , unforgiveness
@@thane732 , an independent individual self called you, doesn’t exist. There is not a “you “ to even have a will. Your entire interaction is only happening in your consciousness.
@@cps_Zen_Run “your” consciousness, who’s this “you” you just referred to?
Yo Sammy, u should have Ekhart on!
How original...
2:52 the snag is the human ego.
The mood music is annoying and unnecessary.
It seems that the only thing we know is that we exist and that the only moment we know is now. Is the immediacy of knowing the core of free will?
@@despizeperform5367 what do you make of existence? Do you reason it as many exterior points being perceived at once, or as a state in which perception floats? Or anything else? :)
Do you think that consciousness is more like a something or a nothing? I usually think of it like a wave or the force of an object in motion. Like, neither of those things can be removed instantly, I don’t think, unless a precise counterforce is applied I guess. If it is like a wave, it would probably continue in some fashion after human death, I’d think. But the argument can be made for it to be a nothing also, since it can’t be found directly. By the same token, we observe nothing without it, so it seems to hold a unique place and possibly a unique relation to the observed.
@@despizeperform5367 also, I’m reading the master and his emissary right now!! Also a good book. :)
@@despizeperform5367 sorry for the incoming long reply: :P
I think consciousness seems most like a mix of the particle and wave natures of subatomic type particles. I have to imagine it is something like a photon, or… to be more woo, almost as an experience of the stuff that allows waves to wave.
If it were like a small particle, all of the information about it couldn’t quite be determined. There is something that strikes me as similar about consciousness needing to exist to realize space. Consciousness is somehow attached to reality, yet is unobservable itself by it. It makes me feel as though it’s part of a network of attempts to observe the undefinable, like finding position and momentum. It’s as if our mind is a wave of observation traveling through space, having evolved to understand.
Its as if understanding is something from nothing, where nothing is the fabric and we see only the pattern upon it.
@pouya108 hmmm do you think that the consciousness wave has an origin? Like a point in space or time?
I don't mean any thing but a came here to listen to sam, his voice make sense 😂.
The king of the shark jump.
"I do things" is called avidya in upanishads. Avidya means ignorance or illusion
i love sam but he needs to rewatch his panel with sean carroll.
Sapolski sounds like Adam West.
PLEASE stop with the Megan Phelps-Roper addendums. We are all having to scramble to grab our phones and fast-forwarding through them.
🔥 Long live Sam Harris. 🔥
🔥 Long live Robert Sapolsky. 🔥
One might have thought that the 6th rehashing of the same content would be finally free. One would be wrong.
If he admits to free will he is afraid it will lead to free content.
Sams contention that most people feel they have libertarian free will is wrong. What most people think about free will is accompanied by notarized signatures. The only time most people have ever encountered free will is when they transfer a title to a car. They go to a notary who asks them to sign a statement acknowledging that they are signing of their own free will. There are hundreds of millions of signatures attesting to this notion of free will. There is no other example of free will appearing in most peoples lives and so whatever this means in this context is what most people believe about free will.
It means simply that you are not being pressured illegally into an action you wouldnt do otherwise. You have made the choice based on what you believe to be in your own best interests. It has nothing to do with going into the past and choosing otherwise. That understanding makes no logical sense. If you could go back to a moment in the past where every quark was in the same place it was before you wouldnt be in the past but the present. You were never in the past you have always been in the present so if every part of your brain was in the identical state it was in you would be in the present. His whole idea of going back to the past makes no sense. If everything in the past was exactly the same then if you had free will in the past you would still have free will. Going back to the past doesnt tell you anything about free will.If I chose to get married because I love my wife and I went back in time I would still choose to marry her for the same reasons, It would not be free will if for some bizarre reason I chose not to marry her. That would be madness not acting in my own best interests.
Which brings up Sapolskys comments which are irrelevant to free will. He says that we arent really free because our choices are made by factors outside of our control. But that doesnt matter, if our choices are made because we believe they are in our own best interests then of course there are reasons for our choices that we dont control and may not be aware of. The fact that we are able to choose them are what gives us free will, not that we can control all of them. Take his example that people make more conservative choices in a room with a smelly odor. Is he saying that in a less odorous room we are unaffected by the environment? No there are always reasons for the choices we make, in the case of a foul odor its just another reason but there are reasons prior to that which can affect our choices. The fact that we dont always make rational choices doesnt negate the choices we make completely. Of course we can be manipulated into making bad choices. No one is saying we are completely free from influences. We make our choices because we have reasons, sometimes we dont know all of the reasons but they are still our choices to some extent. The smelly room doesnt flick a switch that determines which choices you will make it subtly influences what choice you might make stochastically.
Sams arguments are based on some really bad presumptions which are not coherent. He defines free will in the most ridiculous manner and then proceeds to shoot it down all the while assuring us that most people believe the nonsense definition he provides. This is why most philosophers dont take Sam seriously. He isnt a serious thinker.
I guess Harris has now gotten greedy. Apparently he also has no new ideas.
Not just that, if he’s wrong about this, he won’t admit it. He won’t retract his false hypotheses. The man has become what he began speaking against
@hewhohasthewhytolive canbearalmostanyhow
Oh god 😂 i hope Sam isn’t the one “informing” you, more like propagandizing you.
I hope you accept Brett Weinstein's offer to come on his show. Didn't think you're the type to criticize his viewpoints then turn down the offer to explain when pushed back on.
He can't choose to be on Bret's show because he doesn't have free will 😃
@@UtarEmpire very droll..
On a serious note though I agree. Sam should talk with Brett. I have tremendous respect for them both.
@@bertrandrussell894 why have respect for Sam, he doesn’t respect u or you’re opinions, he things the masses are too stupid to understand science or medicine he things we should just listen to the institutions without wavering, he also things we should have a technocratic society where the educated rule and tell the masses how to act and behave like during Covid, or how to think about Ukraine or government interference in free speech and open dialog.
@@Astarkiller That's an inaccurate and very simplistic way of looking at some of Sams opinions. We all have opinions, and you may not agree with a lot of Sams, but be realistic on some level when talking about him, because what you said came out in a very disrespectful and unrealistic manner. Sam in general is a logical guy, and doesn't usually jump to the unlikely conspiracy theories on most things. He questions things, but in a more logical and intelligent manner than the average person. When he doesn't see real evidence of something he doesn't usually believe it.
@@billj4525 yes he doesn’t see it cause he lives in a bubble, u are simping for Sam Hard here. He doesn’t want to see it. He doesn’t see that vaccines injuries are huge and he won’t bring ppl on to disgust it cause he doesn’t do his research and disagrees without the proof, not very logical, there was tons of evidence the vaccine didn’t go thru enough trials. Also there way tons and tons of evidence that Covid came from a lab and lockdowns were more destructive to humanity then constructive, also on trump he only points out his personality and none of the good achievements or great things he did as president. So he’s extremely biased which isn’t logical, he’s also partisan refused to go on shows he’s invited to as well as invite ppl from the other side.
Ppl who want to build Bridged and say any problem can be solved by having a conversation isn’t willing to have those conversations is rele telling of an irrational mind. Also those aren’t conspiracy theory u twat…those were truthful things that happened and the leftist media u follow told u they were conspiracies. I never heard they were conspiracies I hear they were true then i heard the media was trying to discredit those true things by labeling them as misinformation or conspiracies but they weren’t even close to that. So Sam was a coupe years too late. Not someone with his ear to the floor, or one to use logic and rationality to deduce facts and data and find a conclusion, I use the same logic and reason and I knew all about these truths sam still won’t acknowledge, he’s biased and politicized eveything in his life that he ignores stories and ignores certain creditable news sources cause of his political biases. He only last week heard about wats in the Hunter Biden laptop. He even admitted he lived in a bubble. U can be logical and rational all you want but if ur 2 years too late cause u discredit certain information for political reasons or won’t go on ppls shows who invite him on private and publicly but he refuses, it’s not at all a sign of a rational mind. He ignored friend and won’t answer their calls and emails cause of their political or medical opinions, and instead of debating them on it, he refused and only invites yes men onto his podcast now cause he’s afraid of being wrong. Irrational fear is not a sign of a sound mind.
I wonder how sam contends with the notion that treating people and ourselves as if we have free will is as inevitable as the fact we do not possess it kind of making the entire conversation moot some people are obviously determined not to understand a single thing sam has to say about free will so societies never will be determined based on an understanding we don't have real free will since they never have been and most likely never will be I'm sure Sam himself forgets from time to time and becomes annoyed at others what hope does the rest of humanity have
Why is this narrated by not Sam
I assume to give it a course module feel.
There is no free will. Thought is mechanical, the will is the summation of desire
You heard it here first folks
There is no free will, as we always choose decisions that will be good for our ego. We cannot make decisions against our ego. Even if it seems that we do things or decide against our ego (ego meaning the will to receive pleasure by any means) it is only seems such. We always go to pleasure and runaway from pain. So we choose according to our ego and not freely.
Hiding from Bret's offer of an honest yet somewhat controversial conversation, something which Sam is supposedly a champion of, won't make it go away
Schizo go back to your conservative puppet shills who feed you talking points because of the money that they're able to rake in. Of course it's not your fault you've been conned, I still enjoy teasing you
Why you dodging bret?🤨
There being whatsoever no practical real world difference whether humans have "free will" or not - the whole discussion absolutely lacks merit.
Now, the lack of free will doesn't equate to determinism - fat from it. Even for the simple reason that the universe that we live in fundamentally is not deterministic, but probabilistic with a very significant degree of randomness. So much so that we can act in a way that even the most advanced computer that has every atom in our body and even the whole universe perfectly mapped would still be unable to predict our behavior with any degree of reliability.
Free will makes no sense. First comprehend the sacrifice, then you won’t have to ponder upon the sweetness, you’ll just savour it. 😛
It was a very clever 4D chess move on Sam's part to systematically deny the existence of an independent free will first, laying a clear and broad foundation that absolves the individual of personal accountability, and then act like a completely deranged fool afterward. Very clever, indeed. Of course, part of his acting like a deranged fool involves constant complaints about individuals with whom he disagrees, thus demonstrating that his adherence to the principals he discusses in Free Will is selective at best. It's sad to see what has happened to Mr. Harris.
Either you're acting in bad faith or are lacking understanding, but in no way does the lack of free will do away with accountability, responsibility etc. Only with guilt.
If someone commits a crime, we still have reasons to appropriately punish the person. In no way does the lack of free will pull the rug from under the reasoning of locking up dangerous individuals for instance.
@@dawnkeyy Listen to Harris' comments about DJT. Compare them to his comments about Free Will. Either he doesn't believe himself in "Freewill" and is a huckster and a fraud, or he simply lacks the intellectual discipline to apply the principles.
The first argument doesnt work. If we set the universe back to the exact state it was in in the past it can tell us nothing at all. The reason for this is that it is the logical equivalent to saying "a is a" . This principle of identity can never yield new knowledge. This makes more sense when you consider the fact that if you had free will previously by resetting to the previous time then you would still have free will, if you didnt previously have free will you wouldnt. "A is A" cant tell us anything new. If my choice to get married was based on reasons which I evaluated as being in my best interest then those same reasons would still be operative and it would be very strange if those reasons were the same and for some unknown reason I chose not to get married. Free will is about choice and choice is about reason. Setting the time back to a previous doesnt change my reasons for choosing in the first place. If I want to know if my car can go faster I have to change something to see. Its a very strange argument to say that my car going faster is an illusion because I did the exact same thing I did before and got the same result. Its a fallacy that sees the past as unalterable and says we cant change the past therefore we cant make choices in the future.
This is Sams shell game. He never even provisionally defines free will. Instead he says what he believes other people think free will entails. But this is always a straw man. What free will means to the west has nothing to do with changing the past. In fact even sam knows what free will means and agrees we have it. Every time you transfer a title in America you go to a notary who asks you "Are you signing this of your own free will?" . It does not mean that you could choose not to sign it if you could go back in time. Free will means to choose what you believe to be in your best interests without illegal influence.
He doesnt understand how logic works. Consider this. If we could only know we have free will if going back in time we could choose differently than we did it could never tell us that. A deterministic universe would always inevitably lead us to the same question about whether we could make differnt choices in the past. It would put us into a perpetual loop of constantly resetting the universe to a previous time to find out if we had free will. If we always must make the same choice over and over again these would only ever lead us back to the time when we needed to travel back in time to see if we had free will. If the universe is deterministic then resetting the universe to a previous time can tell us nothing at all about free will. It is always "A is A" the principle of identity from which we can derive no new knowledge.
Sam is not a real deep thinker.
Like that voice 🍭
There are two wills, neither of which are "free". The will of our creator and the will of the snake. Which one are you?
You may be a deterministic system that would always do exactly the same thing if we rewound time, but *you* are that deterministic system that did exactly what you thought or felt was the best course of action at the time. Besides, we can only imagine we can rewind time, which means we're only imagining that kind of determinism. In practice if you can repeat the behavior you can redo it and do it differently however you like. In practice, in reality, being "free" means your life is decided by you, not to be able to do the impossible like rewind time. In a way you're confusing things you can imagine doing like rewinding time with "having the freedom" to do so, that if you can imagine it but cannot actually do it that must be an inherent restriction in reality rather than your imagination being detached from reality.
Sometimes I read comments and think "Wauw, this guy will never realise how unintelligent he is". This is one of those times.
@@ilikecommenting6849Oh great, another 13yo narcissist incapable of forming a counter-argument
Okay so he doesn't argue choices don't matter or that psychological continuity isn't a thing.
I honestly have no idea what you're trying to argue with the rewinding time thing, but Sam uses it to intuitively describe the implications of determinism. Same thing as when he says "if you and I swapped every atom, I'd have no choice but do whatever you were about to do"
Either way, try to decide what your next thought is gonna be and tell me how that worked out for ya
@@oldsoul3539 When a lack of intelligence is so evident, there's no point in arguing. I realise I sound very mean and maybe I should've kept my thoughts to myself instead. Honestly not trying to be mean but I'm not going to try and explain how ridiculous your original comment was.
@Charlie The Unicorn A lot of this kind of disagreement comes down to how people define themselves I think. Sam is quite reductionist and seems to reduce that which is "him" down to the perception inside of his head, I'd say we are our bodies and brains and all the activity within. When a thought "comes out of nowhere" it did come from you, just not the part of your brain that is able to percieve, just as a lot of your body has functions you're not constantly aware of or in complete control over, but I wouldn't say they're not part of you. Sam seems to like to imagine himself as a seperate thing to his physical body, if you and I did swap every atom, would we have swapped bodies or would we have just switched places? Before attempting to figure out "if you have free will", its helpful to define "you" as completely and realistically as possible.
...and sometimes all we need is a young child to point out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.
i guess it was determined from the dawn of this universe that i would one day shift from a feeling of great respect for you to a great feeling of you being a total f____t
And I guess it was determinism that made you continue to listen to him and watch his videos despite the fact the you think he’s a total f_____t. Or have you made a conscious decision to listen/watch his videos despite the fact that you dislike him. I’d rather believe that free is an illusion in this instance
@@Alex-yv4vr no
I would love to subscribe but unfortunately cannot....believe me I will oneday. Thank you for the bits and pieces you alllow me to hear. Funny...this is an example of me not having free will in this instance.
Grandiosity in full…. Nobody GAF….
Sam accuses compatibilist of redefining the term free will but the compatibilist definition of free will is the operational definition that is understood in law and all social sciences including economics and psychology. It is Sam who has defined it into an incomprehensible mess. Take economics for example. The dominant model of economics posits man as a rational actor who chooses to act in ways that benefiyt him the most. If the wages go down he chooses to work less, if beef goes up he buys chicken. He uses his reason to make decisions i his own interest. That is pretty much the compatiblist definition of free will operating in economics.Free will lies at the bottom of our entire legal system where you are held responsible for your choices. None of it has anything to do with a causal chain going back to the big bang.
BTW the causal chain going back to the big bang is a fiction. There is no causal chain. The idea is a misunderstanding of what causality means. There is a causal spider web that encompasses everything in the universe.
I really think Sam's youtube needs moderation. Like they don't have to accept all of these hate comments (although, its a little better now, maybe something changed but I think its just variance). The point of free speech is to stimulate new and interesting ideas, and to challenge old ones. But instead all you see are sort of dumb meme comments or people who are hate watching and just need to be as toxic as they can. This isn't useful, to anyone. But to Gad Saad viewers, or those who watch Weinstein et al., that seems to be all they care about. I'm sorry but banning people IS a good choice sometimes. Just like how we can refuse people into our home, we should refuse people onto our communities who behave like angry homeless people.
Of course a Sam Harris fan is upset that people get to say things they don't like. Of course a Sam Harris fan is calling for more "moderation"
I haven't watched this video and will use my non-existent free will to never watch this video. I can't see the point of wasting what may (may) be my one and only life of a 45 minute speech (or rant) about a "misnomer" concerning human "agency" or lack-there-of. Hopefully Sam's next video will get back on track to giving us insight on meaningful real world issues.
Free will, or the certainty that people have it holds more meaningful important implications to society today seemingly than ever before. It's always been important, but now that the US government has blessed a certain type of anti-white male racism and sexism, this one is worth shouting out to the ideologues and followers of ideologues.
@@troy3456789 I'm a white male and against white supremacist because what they truly support is the caste system of the elites like Trump who believe they are above the law. There are many shades of whiteness and I am considered as "honorary" white at best and white trash at worst. Don't be fooled by the far right's culture wars that are there simply to maintain the caste system.
@@redsparks2025 Anti-white racism isn't just limited to blacks, Muslims and Mexicans, m8. It's got full government support; who cares if it lacks supporting evidence. this government we have right now operates based upon faulty generalizations. If you are a white anti-white man, you are not alone.
@@redsparks2025 the caste system we have now is a creation of the fascist left. (fascism and communism occupy the same side of the same dumb coin). They are competitors in the authoritarian government war, not opposites. They both believe they can create happiness for all if they can just get *us little people* to behave like an ant colony or a bee swarm.
@@troy3456789 Everyone should care if anything lacks supporting evidence. Without evidence then there is a great danger that we maybe making the wrong decisions. Such decisions can be catastrophic, such as starting a nuclear war. Therefore evidence matters always.
Ahhh! So no one is going to talk to Mr. Harris anymore...so he does this. He is "compiling", you see.
Fascinating.
What are you on about? Now we need a “making sense of YawnDog” episode.
Yawn, needless psychological suffering arises when you resist What Is. May you be without suffering. Peace
@@cps_Zen_Run you suffer. despite all your efforts to align yourself with "what is," you still suffer. what does that tell you about your buddhist ideas?
@@cps_Zen_Run Insha'allah, brother.