re: Good News! Nobody is responsible!

Next car I can steal is free then? Cool.

Meh, he himself admits his thoughts will come across as crazy.

quote:

---

“The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over,” Sapolsky said. “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.” Sapolsky, a MacArthur “genius” grant winner, is extremely aware that this is an out-there position. Most neuroscientists believe humans have at least some degree of free will. So do most philosophers and the vast majority of the general population. Free will is essential to how we see ourselves, fueling the satisfaction of achievement or the shame of failing to do the right thing. Saying that people have no free will is a great way to start an argument. This is partly why Sapolsky, who describes himself as “majorly averse to interpersonal conflict,” put off writing his new book “Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.” Sapolsky, 66, has a mild demeanor and a Jerry Garcia beard. For more than three decades, he escaped the politics of academia to study baboons in rural Kenya for a few months every year. “I'm really, really, really trying not to sound like a combative jerk in the book,” he said. “I deal with human complexities by going and living in a tent. So yeah, I'm not up for a lot of brawls about this.”

---

But what he is saying - whether we like it or not - is that free will exists but it is overrated. The fact is we all have made MILLIONS of decisions in our lives that affected us later against our will. The time you didn't go out with friends and the woman who WOULD have been your perfect wife was there...but because you didn't go out you did not meet her.

Or read the story of form coach Georgia and Miami coach Mark Richts daughter. She is who she is because of Richt and because of America. What would be her fate had she not been adopted?

Free will or millions of fateful decisions we have no control over?

It's probably too "spacey" of a topic for the political talk message board and best suited to a college dorm bullshite session.

quote:

---

It's probably too "spacey" of a topic for the political talk message board and best suited to a college dorm bullshite session.

---

Watch the Michael Shermer interview with him that I linked on the previous page.I too thought it was more of a philosophical debate with a lot engaging in woo but his argument is a lot more grounded than I thought it would be. I can't get over top of the hill of no free will but I can get pretty close to the peak.

Kind of a pedantic argument. Meh.