0:08

Hello and welcome to the Origins Podcast.

0:10

I'm your host Lawrence Krauss. Robert

0:14

Sapolsky is a genius or

0:16

so says the MacArthur Foundation when they gave him

0:18

a genius grant. Whether

0:21

he's a genius or not, I've known him

0:23

personally and of his work for many years and

0:25

have always been

0:27

impressed by both the depth

0:29

and breadth of his work. You can tell how accomplished

0:34

a scientist he is by how many departments

0:37

he's a member of at Stanford.

0:39

He's a professor of biology and neurology

0:42

and I think neuroscience and

0:45

who knows what else at Stanford University. And

0:48

he's worked on primates and

0:50

neurobiology and a host

0:53

of other things. Wrote a great book called

0:55

Behave and he has a new book out

0:58

and the new book is called Determined,

1:01

the Science of Life Without Free Will. When

1:04

I heard about it I wanted to

1:06

speak to Robert. We've been for years trying

1:08

to set up a time to

1:11

talk in general

1:13

about aspects of neurobiology and this seemed like a

1:15

good starting off point. And I got

1:17

to read the book before it came out

1:21

and it's a long book and for me it was

1:23

a challenge initially because

1:25

as someone who recognizes

1:28

that there is no such thing as free will based

1:30

on the laws of physics and has seen a host

1:33

of books that I find rather tedious about

1:35

free will, some by people I've known, I

1:38

was a little worried about reading this but I knew that Robert

1:41

always has gems to share.

1:43

And the book is chock full

1:46

of his own perceptions. It's fun

1:49

just like he's fun and

1:53

one can learn a lot about neurobiology. And

1:55

then discuss the important question of once

1:57

you accept that there is no such thing as free will.

2:00

He really takes on head

2:02

first the more difficult

2:06

question of what do you do about

2:08

responsibility and guilt

2:11

and blame. So in any case,

2:13

we did what I love to do on the Origins

2:15

Project. We talked about his own origins and

2:17

he and I shared four things that

2:19

I knew about. And

2:21

then we had a rollicking discussion of

2:24

many aspects of free will, neurobiology,

2:28

society and consciousness

2:31

as well, which is a subject I've written about in

2:33

my new book. And I was happy to see that

2:36

it passed muster

2:38

with him,

2:39

one of the experts. It was a great discussion.

2:41

He's a remarkable individual and

2:43

really fun to listen to and talk to. So

2:46

I hope you'll enjoy listening to it and watching

2:48

it ad free on our Origins

2:51

Project podcast on our Critical

2:53

Mass website where

2:56

paid subscribers will get to see the whole

2:58

podcast ad free. Of course,

3:00

you can listen to the podcast on

3:03

any site that podcasts can be listened to.

3:05

And then eventually the video

3:08

will come up on our YouTube channel, on our Origins

3:10

Project YouTube channel as well a few days

3:13

later usually. No

3:15

matter how you watch it or listen to it, I

3:17

certainly hope that you

3:19

will be as thrilled

3:22

and pleased and entertained and educated

3:25

as I was when I had

3:27

my dialogue with Robert Saposky.

3:38

Well thanks so much for joining me, Robert.

3:41

We were saying before I pressed the record

3:43

button that we were amazed we actually never have

3:45

been in the same room to our knowledge. We've

3:48

crossed paths intellectually and as

3:51

you know I admire and respect you tremendously.

3:53

So it's such a thrill to finally after

3:56

all this time be able to have a long discussion.

3:59

So thanks for coming.

3:59

coming on.

4:00

Well, thanks for having me on. The

4:03

respect is mutual. That's

4:06

great. I appreciate it. I, this,

4:09

this was no easy task. In fact, it's

4:11

probably this, this was one

4:13

of the hardest things I've had to do for many

4:15

reasons. I want to talk about

4:18

your new book, which by the time this

4:20

airs will be, I'm going to try and time it to

4:22

the, to the airing of your new book. I have a pre-production

4:25

version. Your

4:27

book determined about free will. One

4:29

of the hardest things for me, it was

4:32

not an easy task to work through it for a variety

4:35

of reasons. There's a lot there.

4:37

But also I come

4:40

into this

4:41

with the absolute conviction for everything

4:44

I know saying there's no such thing as free will. So it

4:46

was hard for me, you know, accepting

4:48

this fact. I thought, well,

4:52

given that I don't, you know, think there's

4:54

free will, why am I really motivated to go

4:56

through this? And that was hard at the beginning.

5:00

But of course, what's great is that

5:02

our reasons for

5:04

my a priori regions for not thinking

5:08

there was free will sort of are almost not

5:10

orthogonal, but don't have much overlap. You

5:12

actually know how the brain works, or at least a lot more

5:14

than I do. And so your arguments really

5:17

were

5:19

quite useful. I don't think I needed

5:21

them. Because basically,

5:24

you and I both don't think there's a magic somewhere

5:27

in the middle. And that's

5:29

really what you need, as we'll talk about. So

5:31

that was one of the reasons I found it hard. But the other

5:33

is there's a lot in this book because this book covers

5:36

so many different interesting things. And

5:39

that was the other part. I love your mind.

5:41

I've always loved your mind. I love your writing. And I

5:43

think it was just it was

5:45

hard because it's a joy to read. I wanted to skip

5:48

parts and I couldn't. And

5:51

and the footnotes of which there are tremendous.

5:53

I as a rule, I try not to read footnotes

5:56

in books. But I read every footnote here because,

5:58

of course, the footnotes are where you get to put. and

6:00

all the stuff where I really

6:02

get to see how your mind works. In any case,

6:05

it was worth the effort, and I hope this

6:08

discussion will be worth people's effort

6:10

because we're really going to dig down and deep into the

6:12

ideas as well as summarize. But

6:17

this is an Origins podcast, and

6:20

I like to find out about

6:22

people's origins. I'm particularly interested in yours.

6:26

What led you to

6:28

the remarkable long and winding road that

6:30

you've taken with so many

6:33

branches, almost like

6:36

the emergent complexity of a

6:39

neural system, as

6:41

we'll talk about. I've

6:45

read a little bit of your biography that I could,

6:47

as much as I could find, and

6:49

I found out your father was an architect.

6:54

But clearly, and he was an Orthodox Jew. Your

6:57

mother was, I assume, as well.

6:59

The more we

7:01

learned, the more we realized coerced.

7:04

Yeah, okay, interesting. He

7:07

was from Eastern Europe, but he came from

7:09

Eastern Europe? Yeah, he came

7:11

over just after the revolution

7:14

as a young

7:16

adolescent, a very good time to get

7:19

out of that area. He

7:21

came over from the old country as a fetus,

7:24

so she

7:26

didn't remember as much stuff back there as

7:28

a fetus. Yeah, she was born in the States. Yeah.

7:33

Okay, so that's, but now I want

7:37

to find out a little bit, and you were brought

7:40

up as an Orthodox Jew. And

7:44

one of the things, I was born as

7:46

a secular Jewish household and

7:48

brought up in that way, where

7:51

the only thing I learned, my mother kept

7:53

telling me about being Jewish, is that learning

7:56

was a big deal, and reading, she tried to convince

7:58

me that was a big part of religion. And

8:00

but you obviously

8:03

love learning and reading and of course. A

8:07

lot of it's probably hardwired but but.

8:11

Who would the biggest influence your so obviously

8:13

your father had influence because you write about my don't like

8:16

to learn about your mother to who for example.

8:18

As an architect when you're a

8:20

kid i know you want to love gorillas

8:23

right away but what got you interested

8:25

in that i don't know that i'd like to. I'm

8:28

not. Trying

8:32

to get into to. To

8:35

murky and quick sand ish of.

8:38

She for psychotherapy.

8:42

But i was like eight

8:45

when my mother my mother started

8:48

take it to museum and natural history

8:50

and incredible. Percented

8:53

to feel by all it just i've encountered who

8:56

like instead of growing up out in the bush and his

8:58

parents were missionaries a researcher. They

9:01

grew up in some urban and at some

9:03

point they they stumbled into

9:06

the natural history museum that was

9:08

it that's that's the

9:10

day they imprinted on geckos

9:12

or. Whatever

9:15

so we went

9:17

into the primate exhibit somewhat randomly

9:20

and if you ever go in there there's this.

9:23

stuffed

9:24

mountain gorilla like right

9:26

at the entrance and may not be at the entrance anymore,

9:29

but like he's been on their postcards

9:31

forever it was shot by like carl

9:34

achley in 1912 probably

9:36

with teddy roosevelt is gun

9:38

bearer but it's this

9:41

like. diorama of this

9:43

taxiderm mountain gorilla

9:45

silverback and like

9:49

something clicked and

9:52

if i'm going to get all all fuzzy

9:55

here and stuff like

9:57

both of my grandfather.

10:00

others died more than 50 years before

10:02

I was born kind of thing and everything. And

10:05

like something on some

10:08

visceral level, this just seemed

10:10

like this would be the greatest grandfather on Earth.

10:13

And I just wanted to go live inside the diorama.

10:16

I think that's that's what

10:18

was going on there. That's

10:21

where it came from. I was wondering, there had to have been something

10:23

where you grew up in New York and there's not a

10:25

lot of silverback gorillas,

10:28

at least non-metaphorical

10:31

ones. That's why I wanted to live in the diorama.

10:34

I don't know about you, but I'm still

10:36

trying to come to terms with the fact that Brooklyn has

10:38

now become a trendy place to live. It

10:42

was not. Yeah,

10:45

yeah, no, it wasn't then. Exactly. But

10:48

it gave you that opportunity, which,

10:51

as we'll talk about, gave

10:53

you good luck and

10:57

had a huge influence. Now I understand where that came

10:59

from. And you basically

11:02

did live in that diorama. I

11:04

mean, you willfully

11:08

chose as soon as you

11:10

could, as far as I can see, to actually experience

11:13

to go and for then for three decades to continue

11:15

to try and live in that diorama at some level, which

11:19

really impressed me and amazed me and also

11:21

made me envious in some sense, but I

11:23

was talking about privilege and good

11:26

luck. Yeah, yeah. Well,

11:28

but you know, well. But

11:31

for whatever reason, you took advantage

11:34

of the privilege and good luck. I

11:37

would say it would be grit, but I know better. But

11:44

so so that's interesting. So your mother actually

11:46

had the biggest influence that way. What about reading?

11:48

I assume I'm always interested

11:50

in reading was vitally significant

11:53

for me. And I'm always interested in what did

11:55

you did you read a lot when you were a kid? And if so,

11:58

did that example come from either parent or not?

12:00

Oh, I've

12:03

read obsessively.

12:05

And like, I, I guaranteed

12:08

I was going to be like, kicked

12:11

in the rear and schoolyard perpetually

12:13

by, I don't know, in fourth grade,

12:16

like, who's your best friend, Essie?

12:18

And I said, books are my best friend. Oh, my

12:20

God, this kid has no instinct for

12:22

how not to just beg to be

12:24

abused and bullied. Yeah,

12:28

books were, were pretty great.

12:32

It's, it's tempting to do a whole escapism

12:35

thing, but I guess part of it

12:37

was also just getting patted on the head that this

12:39

was like a nice metric for being a good,

12:42

good, compliant boy. compliant

12:44

boy. Were they in that available in the house?

12:47

Or I mean, I mean, or, or,

12:49

or not? I mean, what does that an example or something

12:51

you picked up? Again, I'm interested just

12:54

in comparing my notes to myself in some ways.

12:56

Um, their

12:59

number, it was it was not quite a book

13:01

obsessed house, but there was like a decent

13:03

number there. But once once libraries

13:06

started to be a part of the picture, what we

13:08

did have I, I, do you remember the book of knowledge?

13:12

Yeah, of course. Oh my

13:16

God, we had the book of knowledge. And

13:18

like, I would get up early, like on

13:21

Sunday morning and just read the book where

13:23

you could see like an article in there

13:25

about like this newly finished ship

13:27

called the Titanic and is like

13:29

this ancient is phenomenal. Yeah,

13:34

I yeah, I love

13:36

those things. I, and I, and I ended

13:38

up getting a subscription to book

13:40

of knowledge type stuff. The time life books.

13:44

I remember that my 20 volume thing was my

13:46

first thing. I spent my allowance on it when I was

13:48

a kid because there

13:50

were books in my house, but not but not but

13:52

not. Yeah, not enough. Yeah, yeah. And

13:54

so Yeah,

13:57

one of them would show up like every six and a smell.

14:00

So good. Yeah. First

14:02

came out of the box. I still have

14:05

them. I still, I just put them up and I, you know,

14:07

I'm never going to get rid of them because it,

14:09

it means so much. So there's so many, you know,

14:11

and of course they're outdated, but that's what's great to great

14:14

to, that's what's great about science is they're

14:16

outdated. It actually makes progress.

14:20

And they admitted somewhere afterward that that was wrong.

14:23

Yeah, exactly. That's the being wrong

14:25

as well. You know, I, I talked about

14:27

that in my new book. I think admitting you're wrong and

14:29

not knowing is a key part of science. Um,

14:32

now, okay. So now I see where the

14:34

sort of background, by the way, as Orthodox

14:37

Jewish, whether your mother was coerced in or

14:39

not, did they,

14:42

did they have plans for you? I mean, my

14:44

mother wanted me to be a doctor and my brother to be a

14:46

lawyer, but did they, did they want that

14:48

kind of thing for you? Was there, did you feel any pressure

14:50

to be a professional in that way? Um,

14:54

frantic, ceaseless, crushing,

14:57

heartless pressure to become a doctor. Um,

15:01

where my, my wife and I have like tried

15:03

to figure out the chronology because it was a

15:06

long time ago, but

15:08

we think this is the case, uh,

15:10

that my father started off in med school,

15:13

like in the second year of the depression, and there's

15:16

going to be a

15:17

cancer and ran out

15:19

of money and,

15:22

uh, never finished. Um,

15:25

like we've, we've got his like stethoscope

15:27

and microscope in the back of some closet

15:30

upstairs from 1930, whatever. Um,

15:35

you know, there, there's

15:37

a couple of possible holes in the story, but at least

15:39

that, that can hold

15:41

together broadly. So he,

15:44

uh, you know, he knew how to do drafting.

15:46

He had gone to Stuyvesant high school in

15:49

New York and like, he got a job doing that

15:53

in an architectural firm and then decided

15:55

to start going to architectural night school. And

15:58

before it was over with, he was a. professor

16:00

of architecture kind of

16:02

thing, but not

16:05

quite daily, but not far from about the

16:08

highest possible calling would be to go

16:10

like be a doctor and cure cancer.

16:15

All right. Well, okay. Did he talk

16:17

to you much about, I mean, did he talk too much about science

16:19

or his interests or did no, I

16:21

mean, no, that doesn't happen. Kids

16:23

often forget to ask their parents what they're saying.

16:28

They came in sort

16:30

of frenzied monologues.

16:34

He was a very, very large

16:36

presence, but he was not a very approachable

16:38

one.

16:41

He'd had a tough time with things

16:44

and like he was doing

16:46

his best. Yeah, yeah.

16:48

Well, he obviously did. And it's interesting

16:50

to see that that pressure came from a

16:52

different place for me. And I've

16:54

already said this a bunch of times, I think in different

16:57

contexts, my neither my parents finished high school,

16:59

but but the, and for them, it was

17:01

especially important to be a doctor because it represented,

17:04

you know, going beyond and,

17:06

and,

17:07

and, and, and I, again,

17:10

when, when I got my first, I got

17:12

a fancy job at Harvard, and I never forget my,

17:15

my mother phoned my, my then wife at the

17:17

time and

17:18

immediately said he still can go to medical

17:21

school. It's still fine.

17:24

Uncanny. I

17:26

had the same when I was getting

17:29

like, trying to pick where I was going to go have

17:32

a job, I got an offer from like Cornell med

17:34

school, the neuro there. And

17:36

so, well, I'm considering it and coming back

17:38

to New York or whatever. And they said, that would

17:41

be a good inside connection

17:43

if you decide that

17:46

is freakish. Yeah, that is.

17:48

That's amazing. Oh, I'm glad I brought it up. I wasn't

17:50

gonna but that's bad. That is freakish. Now,

17:53

you I

17:55

have to ask you this, did you did you learn Swahili?

17:58

I mean, I know he started till do Did you ever like,

18:00

did you learn enough to... Yes,

18:04

I'm terrible at languages, but it

18:06

was just kind of by force.

18:10

I became sort of functionally

18:13

fluent by about my fifth or sixth year

18:15

there. And all has been a decay

18:18

since then. I

18:20

took Swahili for two

18:22

years in

18:23

college, and it

18:25

being the times that it was, the book was

18:28

entirely written for African Americans

18:31

thinking about roots and stuff. So it was mostly

18:35

learning how to talk about Charlie Parker and

18:37

Swahili, stuff like that. Okay, well,

18:39

at least... And it turned out the

18:41

instructor was Tanzanian, so I learned Tanzanian

18:43

Swahili, which was like showing

18:46

up in the Bronx speaking the Queens English

18:48

or something, to Kenya. But

18:52

I was eventually able to get

18:54

by, but I'm pretty bad at languages.

18:57

I should have pointed out that, I mean, people may wonder if we

19:00

don't know why I even brought that up, but you actually

19:02

decided when you were still a

19:04

teenager, early a teenager, that in

19:06

addition to learning about, if you wanted to learn about

19:08

gorillas, you would learn. So you started to learn Swahili

19:11

when you were in your early teens, right?

19:14

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And

19:17

I was writing fan letters to

19:19

various

19:20

primatologists when

19:22

I was in high school and

19:24

eventually got to sit at the feet

19:26

of one for four years. And that was

19:28

a

19:29

major disappointment. But yeah,

19:31

I sort of was intent.

19:37

I think I had to have been the only

19:40

like Jewish kid in Brooklyn

19:42

in the 1970s, sitting on the West side, independent

19:46

train, the B train, reading a biography

19:49

of Joe Mocagnata day after day.

19:53

Yeah, that would have gotten some, it'd be interesting to see

19:55

what would happen today if you were doing that.

19:58

And it's a different world. But

20:01

you went, so you, that, it

20:03

was kind of natural then to major,

20:07

it went to Harvard, right? And did

20:09

biological anthropology? Yeah.

20:11

And,

20:13

and, you know, and that's sort

20:16

of, I guess, biological anthropology. I'm wondering

20:18

why it wasn't like, more,

20:22

I mean, biological anthropology is not directly

20:26

focused on primates. You could

20:28

have done primatology and I'm wondering what, what, what.

20:32

Well at the time, this was just at

20:34

the time that like the great sociobiology

20:38

shitstorm hit. In

20:41

fact,

20:42

it was amazing. It was

20:44

amazing. What did you do, did you take classes from him or something?

20:47

My first semester is when he published sociobiology

20:50

and yeah, like

20:53

spending college, like

20:55

arguing about whether he or Lewinson

20:57

made sense and it was incredibly

21:00

stimulating time. You

21:02

know, at the time, a bio-anthro

21:04

included primatology. They

21:07

shortly after that, things are bad enough and

21:09

there had been enough like

21:12

drive-by shootings between the social and

21:14

for people in the bio and for people that they

21:16

split into two departments. But

21:19

yeah, that was, that was, yeah. And

21:24

it's part of, you know, and you, and as you say, and it's

21:26

clear, I mean, you are, one of the things I

21:28

admire and I'm jealous of is, you know, I've

21:30

always liked the idea of being a generalist and

21:32

you, you have, you've been a generalist

21:34

in, in, you know, in a clear way.

21:38

I mean, achieving levels of levels

21:41

in a wide variety of fields and it's nice

21:43

that you could start that generalization

21:46

with bio-anthro. It

21:48

was, it was, and it was a low

21:51

profile department so you could get away

21:53

with like just happening, not

21:55

to take all sorts of requirements

21:57

and things. And it was, it was.

21:59

Nobody paid attention to their part from

22:02

then it was very quiet. It's

22:04

sort of around then that I then

22:06

started my like in my neurobiologist

22:09

or primatologist crisis, because

22:12

said primatology

22:14

God at whose feet I was sitting got

22:17

sick my freshman year.

22:20

He was fine. Everybody

22:22

canceled all of his classes, including

22:25

a couple I was going to take and sort

22:27

of the last minute saying, Yeah,

22:30

maybe I'll take an intro neuro class. They

22:33

probably have something to say about behavior instead of

22:35

just us evolutionary biologist blown

22:38

away by it and like

22:41

ever since deciding on my neurobiologist

22:43

around my primatologist and

22:45

sort of that was that he anticipated.

22:49

My question is, I was wondering if you did by, you

22:51

know, biological anthropology and you like primates,

22:54

why you then went

22:56

to do, you know, your PhD

22:58

in neurobiology and now that I guess that's

23:01

the reason I would seem like a jump, but

23:05

and sort of by then the

23:07

way that the totally intellectually

23:10

fabricated way that I saw them as connected

23:13

is like I go study behavior

23:16

and stuff and baboons and exactly at the point

23:18

where I would say, wow, what's

23:20

going on inside. I'm not

23:22

going to lose in disguise hippocampus because

23:25

like I've known him for years and his mother was great.

23:28

So I'll go do stuff to rats in the lab

23:30

and just what I'm learning about the brain there and

23:32

saying, huh, I wonder if this works in like real

23:34

animals out in the real world I get to

23:37

go back to the baboons so they

23:39

were synergistic.

23:41

You know, I couldn't decide which. Yeah,

23:44

actually I was good. Well, I guess it's because of the love of

23:46

the bamboons are the great apes that because I

23:48

was going to say, you know,

23:52

I actually just had a discussion with Peter Singer

23:54

and who who's

23:57

lovely interesting talk to and his we talked

23:59

about. Animal experimentation

24:02

and some of the silly things that have been

24:04

done in the name of psychology on animals, the

24:07

torturing of animals that didn't, you know, in order to try

24:09

and understand how humans work. When it was clear

24:12

often that if you want to really understand

24:14

how humans work, you probably should examine humans

24:16

and, you know,

24:19

certain torturing of rats was probably

24:21

not going to give you huge insights into post-traumatic

24:24

stress syndrome and humans and stuff. But, but,

24:28

but, but you didn't want, but,

24:30

you know, we could have chosen work on humans, but

24:32

you just found apes more interesting.

24:37

I would say more understandable, but maybe

24:39

the word is more palatable or more.

24:42

I wanted

24:45

to get out and do field work somewhere in the middle

24:47

of nowhere. Yeah, no, I can understand that. You

24:51

know, and in your general, you are lucky

24:53

to have a position that

24:56

that actually explicitly demonstrates

24:58

your generalness.

25:00

I

25:01

mean, again, I always wanted, but I didn't always, because I

25:04

wanted to, I started a degree in history and

25:07

as well as physics, but I quickly learned that the

25:09

intellectual baggage required me to do a degree in mathematics

25:11

as well as physics, and that took all the time.

25:14

But, but you, you have, you have professors

25:16

in biological sciences, neurology, and

25:18

this really always amazed me, neurological science

25:20

and neurosurgery. And

25:23

my mother would have been very happy if I was a

25:25

professor of neurosurgery, but.

25:28

Well, you better bet I trotted that out

25:30

when I went back for Hanukkah. You

25:33

know what? Yeah, I

25:35

think at one point the neurosurgery department

25:37

had some sort of visiting committee, and

25:41

they suggested they needed a little more basic

25:43

researchers in the department. So I was friends

25:45

with the chief of neurosurgery who said,

25:47

hey, can we put your name on the letterhead?

25:50

Oh, ever since

25:52

then, I've been a member of the department. I

25:56

have to say that at one point I was vice dean

25:58

of the medical school of case.

25:59

for about six

26:02

months. And I don't think I ever

26:04

told my mother. I worried about what that would

26:06

imply. So I think it would go.

26:09

But it did intrigue me. So your professor, I

26:11

mean, and it's quite appropriate given all

26:13

of the breadth of your, the lovely

26:15

connections you make between neurobiology and

26:18

behavior of human behavior

26:21

and behavior of great apes. It

26:24

is a lovely symbiotic relationship.

26:26

And it's, and I guess it took someone

26:28

like you to realize that that was

26:31

useful. I'm intrigued

26:33

at you. And I guess I'm intrigued and impressed

26:36

that among that collection of departments in which you're

26:38

a professor, psychology isn't one

26:41

of them. And I was wondering, I was

26:43

intrigued by that.

26:47

That's a good question. Nor is anthropology

26:49

there, although they've also

26:51

purged like virtually everyone

26:54

except the social and cultural anthropologists.

26:56

So that war has been won

26:59

there. I don't know. I

27:01

talked to psychologists. So I

27:04

can occasionally say the right

27:06

nouns and get away with it. But yeah,

27:09

clearly some of the stuff I've

27:11

done has involved my having

27:13

to like interact with them a lot.

27:16

Yeah,

27:17

no, it's interesting to me that anyway, we'll

27:19

get, people will see when we talk about the

27:22

context of trying to address this question

27:24

of free will, which I wanted to move to.

27:27

You mentioned, obviously you've

27:31

agonized, I guess that's the right way to put it. You've

27:35

thought about free will for a long time, obviously.

27:40

And agonizing, by agonizing,

27:42

I don't think the agonizing was, I suspect

27:45

you recognized like

27:48

me that there was no

27:50

obvious scientific reason why

27:53

there should be free will. So maybe you didn't

27:55

agonize about the science, but you agonized to try and understand

27:58

how to demonstrate.

28:01

explicitly or

28:02

address this question. How long

28:04

you been thinking about it? Is it an issue that's always bothered

28:06

you? Or?

28:09

Well, I think once I started

28:11

getting acne, that was right around

28:13

the time when logical things happened. Like I was

28:16

having all sorts of like angst

28:19

and

28:20

contradictions. And,

28:23

you know, during one sort of particularly agitated

28:26

period, I

28:29

woke up at two in the morning one night

28:32

and said, oh, I get it.

28:36

God doesn't exist. What's

28:38

going on? And then shortly after that

28:40

was, oh,

28:42

and there's no free will. And that

28:44

was followed by, and it's

28:46

a totally empty, empty and

28:48

different universe. So

28:51

that cured everything right there. That

28:54

wasn't all. It did for me too. I

28:57

didn't, I'm not sure I had an epiphany that way. In

28:59

fact, I meant to ask you that.

29:01

I noticed that age 13 is when you

29:04

kind of had

29:06

this realization, that's what this bio says.

29:09

Age 13, for

29:13

me, it was a gradual thing, but I actually sort

29:15

of became, I mean, age 13 was

29:17

when I burst bar mitzvah. And that

29:19

experience enough was enough to turn me off

29:22

religion forever if it

29:24

hadn't already been that way. Was the age 13

29:27

a coincidence for you too, or no?

29:29

No, not at all. Of

29:32

course. I would

29:34

say just from focusing

29:37

on the ways in which often

29:40

ancient and well-established cultures

29:42

have influenced your life, and in which

29:44

the purpose of every generation is to inculcate

29:47

their offspring into the same cultural values.

29:50

You know, age 13 is when they're

29:53

really pressing

29:55

court on that one. So that's

29:58

kind of when, inevitably, the...

29:59

This doesn't make any sense and this

30:02

isn't right. So

30:04

now you mentioned it though, it shows that they understood

30:06

neuroscience a little bit because you point out

30:08

how in fact prefrontal cortex and

30:11

I mean it's that period when things are developing. So

30:13

if you're going to inculcate, that's

30:16

probably a really good time to do it. And

30:18

especially do it in a way where they somehow

30:20

make you feel guilty for a

30:22

pogrom that happens in the 15th century. So the very

30:25

worst thing you could do right now is

30:27

make your children stop putting that

30:29

as well. Well guilt is a huge

30:31

part of that I think. But you know it's

30:34

interesting when you said you smiled when you cured

30:36

everything when you woke up in the middle of the night.

30:39

And I want to follow that up. We'll come back

30:41

near the end of this six or

30:43

seven hour discussion to

30:47

this question because you almost

30:49

apologize or make it appear as if

30:51

recognizing that there's no free will.

30:54

Is and should be a depressing thing. But

30:57

one could often say and I'm often asked

31:00

that I mean it isn't recognizing there's

31:02

no meaning no cosmic meaning to the universe

31:04

and no God also

31:07

a depressing thing and

31:09

we'll talk about its impact on morals because you talk

31:11

about that. But for me it was

31:13

exactly the opposite and maybe it's just the wiring.

31:16

It was it's liberating and

31:20

energizing

31:22

to know both of those things

31:24

because it makes sort of it makes you understand

31:27

your place and it makes every moment in some ways

31:29

more precious if you understand that there's

31:31

nothing guiding it and there's no. And

31:34

that you're here for a short time and and you

31:36

dealt a set of cards and

31:40

and and that's life and you might as well use it.

31:43

Well you're you're made

31:45

of more resilient stuff than me. Somebody

31:49

somebody did right by you meeting up to that

31:51

point or somebody's

31:54

nutrient level when you were a fetus did right by you. But

31:56

yeah, that's the next step.

31:59

notion. I

32:02

mean, this is, I just

32:05

agree to blur the manuscript for

32:07

a book of someone, a scientist

32:10

who experienced

32:12

just a horrendous nightmares

32:15

family tragedy. And

32:18

the book is about like, how

32:20

he has found comfort in science. And

32:24

I sure can't wait to read it because

32:26

like, how do you do?

32:29

Science just seemed like the only intellectually

32:34

sustainable default

32:36

state to try to understand things,

32:39

but it sure does not

32:41

give comfort much.

32:43

Yeah, well, I guess again, it's all in its

32:45

long on the attitude. I do

32:48

I since we're both

32:50

atheists in that sense. But obviously,

32:52

for some reason or other, I've been labeled it. It's

32:55

higher in my profile.

32:58

And because I've spent time trying to protect

33:01

things like the teaching revolution in schools and

33:03

got involved in that, because the

33:05

biologists weren't doing it enough, in my opinion, that's why

33:08

they're right. You you died for our sins.

33:13

But but because of that, I

33:15

spent a lot of time talking to people about this issue.

33:17

And I, I do think that that that

33:20

real realizing one talks

33:22

about loss of faith, and even that, that's

33:25

already propaganda, or that's already promoting

33:28

a reality that doesn't

33:30

need to be it's not a lot, you don't lose anything

33:32

you gain, I think. And if you indicate

33:34

people that you can gain by making every

33:36

recognizing every moment for precious, if you have

33:39

a mentality, and you recognize

33:41

it, then you don't have to,

33:42

then then then

33:44

you gain. Anyway, I think that's

33:46

the kind of, you

33:48

know, if I'm going to do a feel good or try to try

33:51

to be a, you know, I don't try to be

33:53

advisory. One

33:55

of those kind of advice scientists, but but

33:58

but if I did, I mean, that's I think that's

34:01

the argument and I'm going to try and argue it

34:03

later on. I

34:06

struggled a lot with the last half of this book

34:08

because I can see your angst. We'll

34:11

get to it.

34:12

But

34:13

I think there's, I can see a happy

34:15

way out and maybe it isn't, but we'll see if you

34:17

think about it.

34:19

Well, I think I finally,

34:21

it took me like

34:23

a huge amount of time to get to

34:25

the end there because like

34:28

how can this not just be, well,

34:30

this sucks and is pretty demoralizing, but

34:33

you know, we're adults. That's

34:35

the way the work to see that there is

34:37

actually a good feature

34:40

of it and a liberating one. I

34:43

sure can't convince myself of it most of

34:45

the time. And not only did I write the damn

34:47

book, I read it even at various points.

34:52

Yeah, it's a hard pull. But

34:55

it's kind of, it's reminding me of that

34:57

great rebranding that

34:59

atheism has tried to do in recent

35:01

years. We are not just about

35:04

what isn't. We are not just atheist.

35:07

We're not just like saying, I don't

35:09

believe there's a God and as always we're at it, I

35:11

don't believe there's an Easter bunny. No,

35:14

it's a positive. And the whole rebranding

35:16

is humanism. And to be

35:19

able to say like the

35:21

source of human goodness is

35:24

human. That's

35:28

not just saying, you

35:30

know, it wasn't in seven days

35:32

that the world got created and like

35:35

smoting is probably not a good thing most

35:37

of the time. Yeah,

35:41

there's rooms for positivity in there.

35:47

Well, I think, you

35:49

know, well, I think as I'll argue, and

35:52

I was reminded of a quote from my

35:54

late friend Christopher Hitchens here. I

35:57

mean, I don't think we have a

35:59

choice. And I think that we

36:01

should, you know, I'm

36:04

getting ahead of myself, but in some sense, part

36:08

of the last part of the book is saying, well, we have, how

36:10

can we, wanting there to be

36:15

free will and believing their free will is so

36:17

ingrained, how can we get over it? But I think we

36:19

just recognize

36:21

that not

36:24

thinking in terms

36:26

of free will is just part of the way we're wired to.

36:28

And that's, we don't have the choice

36:31

to not want, to not emotionally

36:34

want there to be free will. We

36:36

have the, we don't have any choice, I'll

36:38

agree with you there, but we can intellectually through

36:41

learning, we'll argue at some level, recognize

36:44

rationally that there isn't. But

36:46

I think, you know, recognizing

36:49

that we don't have the free will to not

36:52

emotionally believe in free will is just something

36:54

we have to accept, I think, and should not struggle with.

36:57

To some extent,

36:59

I mean, Robert, Robert Rivers,

37:01

like one of the pioneering social

37:04

biologists during one

37:06

period got very interested in publishing

37:08

stuff on the evolution

37:10

of the capacity for self-deception.

37:13

Yeah. And essentially saying,

37:15

if you're going to have a species that can

37:18

know the future, like the

37:20

only way you're going to get up in the day is the

37:22

ability for self-deception. Equally

37:26

interesting is the notion that

37:29

evolution of self-deception, because the

37:31

best way to convince people of your laws

37:34

is to believe your laws and competition

37:37

and all of that. So he got very interested in

37:39

that, but just the very notion that if you're

37:41

going to be this smart,

37:45

it's a pretty helpful thing. Oh, yeah, yeah.

37:47

Well, I've always say we all, every one of us has to believe

37:49

six impossible things for our breakfast just to get

37:51

up. You're like your colleagues, you're like a job,

37:53

you're like your spouse, whatever

37:56

it is, but you just got to get out of bed. okay.

38:00

I mean, but a great thing is to recognize

38:03

it's okay to recognize it's an illusion, but to

38:07

recognize it doesn't diminish the fact that

38:09

we know we have it and almost

38:12

revel in it. But anyway, let's

38:14

get to, you know, I could have spent time talking

38:16

about the last book, Behave, which is a precursor

38:18

to this, but this book, Determined, is

38:21

about free will. And

38:23

by the way, it seemed to me not only have you agonized

38:25

about it for years, when did you really start to think

38:27

about it? It was when you realized that there's no

38:30

God at the same time as when you began to think

38:32

about it. And then you've

38:34

actually also put your not your money, well, you

38:36

may have money where your mouth is, you've actually

38:38

gotten involved and

38:40

if,

38:42

consequentially, if there is no free will,

38:45

then there's a question of responsibility and punishment,

38:47

which we'll get to. And you've gotten involved in prisons,

38:50

in court cases, and really taken this

38:52

on, which I really admire as well. You've

38:55

internalized it or at least shown that.

38:58

Well, before it's lauded, I should

39:00

just basically say it's a totally fun hobby,

39:03

because it's a totally fun hobby,

39:05

you find out about some of the most

39:08

horrific

39:11

things that can happen to people.

39:14

And as a result of that damage, some

39:16

of the most horrific things they could do to other

39:18

people and like what totally broken

39:20

system it is, but it's

39:22

kind of like, it's

39:25

cool trying to convince 12 skeptics

39:27

who are getting to decide whether or not this person

39:29

is going to be in jail for life to think

39:31

differently. It almost never works.

39:34

And it's cool to have a smart

39:37

DA during cross examination,

39:40

who wants to argue it. So, you

39:43

know, it's a version of that.

39:45

But well, it's okay. I always tell people

39:47

you what you're what you're saying is just simply, you

39:50

have to enjoy what you're doing. I tell people

39:52

that most scientists, most

39:54

scientists, you know, I don't become scientists

39:56

to save the world, your cancer or

39:59

whatever they do. because it's cool

40:01

and they like it and it's in the process of some

40:03

good comes out of it that's great that's great

40:05

too but because dry

40:08

ice is just like fun to play with yeah

40:10

exactly yeah magnets and

40:12

all the rest I often ask

40:14

people why they didn't become physicists I was going

40:16

to say because it's so neat why

40:18

didn't you anyway by the way did you ever

40:21

did you ever toy with that physical

40:23

sciences or is always biological

40:25

sciences that you

40:27

always biological and always

40:29

like cutting every corner to like

40:31

avoid the chemistry requirements and stuff

40:34

just just not my temperament

40:36

I've I've had to spend years and

40:38

years filling in the the

40:41

crater holes of where I didn't get the basic

40:44

information that's okay that's

40:46

okay because you know that's what it's for I you know

40:48

I learned a lot more physics I forgot my

40:50

PhD than before anyway but but uh

40:53

you know that's where you you yeah it's all right

40:55

because that's called lifelong learning now

40:57

the basic premise of determined

41:02

basically that

41:06

there are you know and and and

41:08

you might say why is this why is

41:11

there so much here to just say

41:13

two things there's no one cause decision

41:15

making no decision is made by some magical

41:18

thing it's always caused by series

41:20

of causes which then have causes which then as

41:23

you said at the beginning of the book turtles all

41:25

the way down and

41:27

the second is that if that's the case

41:30

then

41:30

what then the notion

41:32

of responsibility for

41:34

your decision making

41:36

if if there's if there's no random

41:39

no spontaneous decision making if there's

41:41

no free will if everything is based

41:43

on as on on

41:45

some physical biological uh chemical

41:48

process then then

41:51

we have to re we

41:53

have to renounce or at least rethink

41:55

what we mean by taking responsibility for

41:57

our actions those are the two if I were to some

42:00

summarize, is that a reasonable summary of

42:03

the general context of the book? Yes.

42:06

Okay.

42:07

Now, having done that,

42:09

I want to unpack it, and there's

42:12

a lot to unpack.

42:19

And I have to say, I was cursing

42:21

you last night when I was reading the last 100

42:24

pages and I was staying up all

42:26

night. But

42:29

I took solace from the realization

42:31

that I had no choice in the matter. And

42:35

do you know the quote from, I was alluding

42:37

to it from Christopher Hitchens when he was asked about free

42:39

will. You know what quote he said? He

42:41

said, yes, I have free will, I have no choice.

42:44

But that's wrong. But

42:47

I think if we just said, yes, I feel I

42:49

have free will, I have no choice, that'd be right. You

42:52

have like one of the theological loops

42:54

for getting to that.

42:56

I can't remember Aquinas

42:59

or who knows what, or no

43:01

doubt someone much more closed minded than that,

43:03

saying like, God

43:06

is so glorious, so

43:08

amazing, and having granted us free will that

43:11

we have no choice but to worship it.

43:15

Perfect.

43:16

That captures

43:18

it. Yeah. That's

43:21

great. I got to remember the answer. Well,

43:24

look, I periodically I'm going to read quotes of yours

43:26

because I like them. And it'll allow

43:28

me a chance to give you a chance to expand

43:30

upon them. Obviously, not as

43:33

much detail as the book, but at least give a sense. But

43:36

basically, right off in the very beginning,

43:39

where you talk about turtles all the way

43:41

down, you say to reiterate, when you behave

43:43

in a particular way, which is to say, when your

43:46

brain has generated a particular behavior, it

43:48

is because of the determinism that came just

43:51

before, which was caused by the determinism

43:53

just before that, and before that all

43:55

the way down. The approach of this

43:57

book is to show how that determinism

44:00

works, to explore how the biology

44:03

over which you had no control interacting

44:06

with environment over which you had no control

44:09

made you you.

44:11

And when people claim that there are causeless

44:13

causes of your behavior that they

44:15

call free will, they have a,

44:18

fail to recognize or not learned about the

44:20

determinism lurking beneath the surface and

44:23

or be erroneously concluded

44:25

that the rarefied aspects of the universe

44:28

that do work in deterministically can

44:30

explain your character, morals and

44:33

behavior.

44:34

Now

44:36

so the point is, you see, you

44:39

know, to say that that things are deterministic is fine

44:41

and then it'd be a very short book. And a lot

44:43

of people have written not so

44:45

short books that basically don't say any more than that

44:47

and I won't alert to some to some of those people.

44:51

But you want to talk about the biology of

44:53

this and and I think that the neurobiology

44:55

of it and I think that's what makes it

44:58

incredibly enlightening to learn

45:00

about this. But but

45:02

you you basically come

45:07

down to say, okay,

45:11

you need to look at all of science to

45:14

do this and as a generalist, you

45:16

you you, you, it

45:20

fits in your your sort of

45:22

natural parietal elections. Crucially all

45:24

disciplines, all these disciplines, you talk about many disciplines

45:27

collectively negate free will because they are all

45:29

interlinked, constituting the same

45:31

ultimate body of knowledge. If you

45:33

talk about the effects of neurotransmitters on behavior,

45:36

you are also implicitly talking about the genes

45:38

that specify the construction of those chemical messengers

45:41

and the evolution of those genes, the field

45:43

of neurochemistry, genetics and evolutionary biology

45:46

can't be separated. And it goes

45:48

on. So this

45:52

notion that that

45:54

there's this biological basis requires us and

45:57

we'll talk about each of those aspects,

45:59

particularly. But logically,

46:03

you frame the argument as there's

46:06

four complementary ways of thinking. And I want

46:08

to get you sort of to elaborate on that. You say,

46:10

we have a choice. The world is deterministic and there's

46:13

no free will. The world is deterministic

46:15

and there is free will. The world is

46:17

not deterministic and there's no free will. And

46:20

the world is not deterministic and there is free

46:22

will. So we're

46:28

going to unpack those more carefully. But

46:30

do you want to give it sort

46:32

of an expansion of each

46:36

of those areas and what the central concepts

46:39

of why there are fallacies in some and not others? Yeah.

46:43

And, you know, two by

46:45

two matrix where two of the

46:47

four are a lot more interesting

46:50

than the other two. One of them

46:52

makes no sense at all, which

46:54

is the world is not

46:56

deterministic, but you don't have free will.

46:59

And I don't quite know how you get there.

47:01

And I don't think I've read anyone that's

47:04

just making sure like fill out the matrix

47:06

there. The

47:09

there

47:10

is not determinism and there is

47:12

free will. Is this somewhat

47:16

off in the ozone view

47:18

of libertarian philosophy, libertarian

47:21

in an intellectual sense rather than political? And,

47:25

you know, I got pulled into reading

47:27

any of this philosophy stuff, kicking and screaming,

47:29

but it appears to be like

47:32

a very minority view. The

47:34

most common one is that,

47:37

yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a deterministic

47:39

world. I'm not a

47:42

I'm not a lot. I'm not a whatever. Yet

47:44

there's like atoms and

47:47

we're made of cells and like there's

47:49

rules to the physical universe and stuff. But

47:52

somehow, somehow, some ball somehow

47:54

that's compatible with

47:57

us still having free will.

47:59

And this.

47:59

Compatibilism, one is what

48:02

I spend most of the book carrying

48:05

my hair out because what the polls

48:07

show is 90, 95% of

48:09

philosophers say that they are deterministic

48:12

compatibilists and a shocking

48:16

number of neuroscientists when

48:18

you really back them up in a corner and

48:20

you try to get them to look

48:23

at what it is that they just said or advocated.

48:26

But it's this notion that, yeah, yeah, yeah,

48:29

of course, like I'm a modern 21st

48:31

century, all of that. And

48:35

we're made of stuff and the universe has rules

48:37

and all that, but somehow, somehow,

48:40

somehow, there's room

48:42

for this intangible thing

48:45

to still be lurking in there and that's

48:47

the essence, that's the us of us

48:50

and that's the us of us that gives

48:53

us agency. And

48:56

of course, the fourth truly lunatic

48:58

fringe version of the matrix

49:00

is the one that I'm saying, which is a completely

49:03

deterministic world and there's no free will whatsoever.

49:06

Compatibilism is incompatible

49:09

with the way the world works.

49:12

Okay, great. And a premise

49:15

which I agree with as a

49:17

physicist and

49:19

it was, so I have my will get to some of

49:22

the physical arguments, but so it's, for me, it's wonderful

49:24

to see the biological basis as well. But

49:27

as a physicist, it seems to me that that's

49:30

clear. It's certainly interesting

49:32

that 90% of the, we'll

49:34

get to it, we'll get to the fact that we spend a lot of time,

49:36

it doesn't say much about philosophy, which

49:40

is fine because, and

49:43

by the way, it's not just me, some people

49:45

think I trash philosophy too much, but I, again,

49:47

was talking to Peter Singer, who's a philosopher

49:50

and it was fun to see him trash

49:52

philosophy because a lot of philosophers talk

49:55

about how animals don't have rights because it's

49:57

clear they don't have rights. I mean, as if, as

49:59

if there's, you know. No, and we'll

50:01

get to it, but it's almost low-hanging fruit

50:03

in some ways to see the arguments

50:05

that are presented. Okay, that's

50:08

great. That puts

50:10

things in context. But you actually mentioned,

50:13

and I think it's worthwhile saying, what do you mean

50:15

by free will and what do you mean by determinism? The next

50:17

thing you talk about that. And so I'll give

50:19

you a chance to sort of briefly explain what you

50:21

mean by free will and what you mean by

50:23

determinism.

50:25

Well, this is where everybody

50:28

spends half the conference on arguing

50:30

about debt solutions and stuff. But

50:34

I think,

50:35

well, maybe the place to start defining free will

50:38

is what it's not, even though

50:40

lots of people go for this. And

50:44

this is a super influential

50:47

way of seeing free will

50:49

where there isn't because it's what

50:52

runs through the entire criminal justice system.

50:55

You got somebody on trial and essentially

50:57

trials revolver and three questions.

51:00

Did this person after they figure out what the person

51:02

did, did the person intend to

51:04

do it? Did they know what

51:06

the consequences were likely to be? And

51:09

did they understand that there were alternatives? They

51:11

could have done something else. And if the answer to those are

51:14

yes, that's it. The person showed free

51:16

will and lock them up. And

51:19

an equivalent myopia

51:22

has run through sort of one field of like

51:25

neurobiologists thinking about free will. And

51:28

this is from this like a landmark famous

51:31

experiment in the 1980s by Benjamin Libet. And

51:35

you've read any damn paper

51:37

on the biology from by this second paragraph

51:40

outcomes. Libet and you want to screen

51:42

Libet's the one who's done that study. That's

51:45

the famous one. He sat people down and basically

51:47

said, here, do this, do this

51:50

behavior and do it

51:52

whenever you feel like it. Press

51:54

this button and, you know, whenever you feel

51:56

like it and we're going to hook you up to all sorts of like

51:58

modern ways to see what's going on. on your brain

52:01

and your muscles and all of that. And out

52:03

of it came this incredible

52:05

finding. So you

52:08

put people in there and like you're monitoring

52:10

what's happening in their brains when they decide

52:12

to do something. And what they

52:15

reported was at the

52:17

moment that someone said, that's

52:20

when I got the intention to press

52:22

the button, you could already tell

52:24

from their brain, like up to a

52:26

few seconds before that they had decided

52:29

to push the button. Oh my God,

52:31

everybody learned. Neuroscientists

52:34

have just shown your brain

52:36

knows before you do. With, of

52:38

course, this ridiculous like dichotomy

52:40

there. But like people

52:42

have been fighting about it ever since was

52:45

the do can you

52:47

tell the difference between when

52:49

you intend to do something and when you know

52:51

that you intend to do it and was there a better

52:53

way of measuring the milliseconds and

52:56

like, like there's still papers

52:59

being published, saying

53:01

things like, Libit had

53:03

his head up as he was so wrong, like,

53:06

four years later, people are still fighting over it.

53:08

Because it's essentially the question of

53:11

when you believe you intend to

53:13

do something, has this

53:16

imaginary separate construct, your

53:18

brain already decided to do it. And

53:22

both in that route, and the courtroom,

53:25

that's the most ridiculously useless

53:27

thing to do. Because

53:30

like the metaphor I use, it's

53:32

like trying to review

53:35

a movie based on only seeing the last three

53:37

minutes of it. Because whether it's

53:39

in the courtroom, or whether it's hanging

53:41

with Libit and his detractors, in

53:44

both cases, you're not asking

53:46

the critical question. Yes, yes, yes, the

53:48

guy intended to do this and we could

53:50

have done other. Yes, yes, yes, the person

53:52

did or didn't intend before this

53:54

part of their brain had a bunch of action potentials.

53:57

Where did that intent come from? And

54:01

if you're going to talk about free

54:03

will, you're not off the hook

54:05

if you just say the person intended to do that.

54:08

Where that intent come from. Why

54:11

did that psych 101 freshmen

54:13

show up to do this experiment for Libet

54:15

that day, instead of like

54:17

coming in and stealing the guy's laptop and sneaking

54:19

up? Why was that? Where

54:22

does intent come from? And the answer

54:25

is, if you figure that out, that's

54:27

where any semblance of free will goes down

54:29

the drain.

54:31

Okay, that's great. That's

54:33

great. Let me, I was going to go to Libet anyway,

54:36

but we'll take a break for a second

54:38

to talk about determinism, because I want you

54:41

to explain it too. But since you brought up

54:43

Libet, and when I was writing

54:45

my book on consciousness, obviously I had to address

54:47

it. It never

54:51

seemed to strike me as a problem, because all it indicates

54:53

is it confirmed my, I should say,

54:55

my pre-pret election in

54:57

advance, which was confirmed by

55:00

everything I read about consciousness. Which is that consciousness

55:02

is just a surface phenomena. So, yeah,

55:05

I mean, okay, so people report that. But

55:08

everything we know says you really don't know

55:10

your perception of what's going on. It's totally different

55:12

than what's going on in your brain. And so,

55:14

okay, so that proves it. Big deal. It

55:17

just proves what you kind of know anyway,

55:19

that people, that people sense of why

55:21

they're doing what they're doing is wrong.

55:26

It's the same reason, you know, philosophers

55:28

could come up and say, there's

55:31

determinism, but

55:34

there's no free will. Why? It's

55:36

because reason

55:39

is the slave of passion, as you might

55:41

have said. Yeah, if you really

55:43

want that to be the case, you can find a reason for it. But it's no, but Libet,

55:45

I mean, it's fascinating.

55:48

As far as I know, there's still debate about whether

55:50

that delay was really

55:52

there. Although you pointed out at one

55:54

point, there's some evidence that the prefrontal

55:57

cortex begins to experience

55:59

some. some other action

56:01

potential tens up to ten seconds before

56:04

which i was shocked by.

56:06

Which is when they went

56:08

from moving from medieval electroencephalograms

56:11

on the skull to modern imaging stuff

56:14

and check back to ten. It's that point

56:16

when people start arguing can

56:18

we tell the difference between intent

56:21

and urge are we seeing

56:23

her and if that

56:26

point where you say you know

56:28

this is. Sort of interesting and

56:30

i have like all sorts of respectable

56:32

colleagues who. I spent a lot

56:34

of time working on this problem

56:36

but it's not where

56:38

you're going to prove or disprove free will

56:41

because you got there for the last three minutes.

56:43

Look for the end of it okay and we'll get to the

56:45

fact that it's a lot more than the last three minutes you have to go

56:48

through. Hours days years millennia

56:50

and millions of years but but let's

56:52

but let's just it just clarify

56:55

our definition so I think you've discussed that a little

56:57

bit let's talk about determinism and

57:00

in the context of what you mean and maybe in context

57:02

of the plus or or someone else.

57:06

Well, not not a

57:09

La Plaussian demon. Which

57:12

is the other he always has to come up in the second

57:15

paragraph also just somewhere a little

57:17

bit okay they they check

57:19

the boxes I held

57:21

off to three paragraphs before it did so

57:24

I am a maverick. determinism.

57:27

I basically define it

57:29

by exclusion.

57:30

Which

57:37

is you look at why something happened

57:40

and as soon as you're informed enough to

57:42

know that all sorts of things influence

57:45

stuff that we're not aware of that could

57:47

be very distal in time or place that could be subtle I could

57:49

be subliminal blah blah blah etc etc. It's when you look why something

57:51

has happened and there's no contributing factor.

58:00

that requires invoking magic.

58:04

That's the key point, the invoking magic. We'll

58:06

get to that.

58:07

And as I say later, I think it

58:09

reminds me of my favorite Sydney Harris cartoon,

58:11

which I'll remind you of if you don't know of it with some point

58:13

later.

58:15

But this, okay, so that's the term, that's

58:18

sort of the question of whether there's magic

58:20

or whether there's, or whether things are, you know, or

58:22

not, really that, I agree. That's what

58:24

you really mean by determinism. If there's some, if

58:27

the laws of nature somehow

58:30

break down somewhere in the middle,

58:33

and given that the laws of nature are deterministic,

58:35

and one of the things I hope to,

58:38

I don't know whether they're correct, I hope to change your picture of this,

58:41

when we get to quantum mechanics, quantum mechanics is deterministic.

58:44

I think you've been led astray there. Oh

58:46

my God. Although, you know, it's

58:49

fine that you, the argument is that might not

58:51

be, and you could still show it doesn't make a difference, but I

58:54

think it's even, you don't even have to worry

58:56

about that. Well, I was in a path of

58:58

last night saying, oh my God, I

59:00

have the nerve to write two chapters about quantum

59:02

mechanics, and we're talking, I'm talking

59:04

with you tomorrow. So you've just

59:07

confirmed everything that

59:08

I knew had to be learned, which is like

59:11

calling me a dilettante as a compliment.

59:14

No, no, but it's okay. I mean, it's okay because

59:17

what, in some sense it was conservative.

59:19

I would, I would, I'm gonna be generous, but I would say

59:22

where I would disagree with you, you go overboard

59:25

and then show that even if it's overboard, it doesn't make

59:27

a difference anyway. But

59:29

we'll talk about that. But

59:33

I do wanna get, I mean, central to all of

59:35

this, just to make it clear, and that

59:37

we, you know, that my understanding is from

59:39

your book and my other things is the same

59:41

is that we realize that we,

59:44

that most of, that our conscious, what we

59:46

define as consciousness, what we define as intent,

59:49

what we perceive as all of these things, is

59:51

just our awareness is just the tip of

59:53

an iceberg, that it's the

59:56

last stage of a detailed, and

1:00:01

the brain that we still don't understand,

1:00:04

and we understand contributing

1:00:06

factors, but this

1:00:10

sense of free will, like everything else,

1:00:13

like even our sense of consciousness

1:00:16

is somehow a post-Hulk illusion. I mean, we're

1:00:18

piecing together a world

1:00:22

in which we have an us in our

1:00:24

brain and a me, and

1:00:26

there's some continuity, and

1:00:30

that's what our brains

1:00:32

is doing, but it doesn't... That's

1:00:36

the end result, not the beginning.

1:00:39

Is that a reasonable

1:00:41

to say? Yeah. Okay,

1:00:44

now, one of the ways to

1:00:48

demonstrate this, other than just talking about

1:00:51

it, the fact that reporting is unreliable. By

1:00:53

the way, it was... I

1:00:56

know you read that part of my book on that,

1:00:58

and the experiments Michael

1:01:00

Gazzaniga on the split-brain

1:01:02

thing were, for me, just so overwhelming that

1:01:05

you invent this perfectly

1:01:07

rational explanation, which is obviously totally

1:01:09

false for why you're doing something, but

1:01:11

you give lots of examples, because you know what you're talking

1:01:13

about. I just sort of read a few, and

1:01:15

I appear to know what I'm talking about, but

1:01:18

one of the ways

1:01:20

you can show that people... That

1:01:23

this sense of free will is an illusion is

1:01:26

an experiment, a psychology experiment, that

1:01:29

this sense of agency is illusory, is

1:01:36

having people push a button when their hands are

1:01:38

being controlled by something else. You

1:01:40

want to talk about that for something? I found that quite interesting.

1:01:43

Yeah, that's the one that really pushes

1:01:46

lots of people over the edge there. There

1:01:49

are means these days, one

1:01:52

likes standard ones, this very cool

1:01:54

thing, transcranial magnetic stimulation,

1:01:58

where you... you can stimulate

1:02:01

a certain part of the brain and make

1:02:03

somebody do something. Like this is

1:02:05

not suddenly make them become a libertarian

1:02:08

when they weren't, but this is like, you

1:02:11

could make their index finger

1:02:13

contract

1:02:14

no matter what you try to do.

1:02:17

And if it's done subtly enough,

1:02:20

you will believe you decided to do that.

1:02:22

I mean, I've had that done on me and it's the weirdest

1:02:25

thing imaginable. Or there's all sorts

1:02:27

of ways of manipulating the Libit

1:02:30

scenario where they

1:02:33

add like an extra

1:02:34

bell or something,

1:02:36

which you were told is driven by

1:02:39

your volitional intentional

1:02:41

doing whatever and where

1:02:44

they can manipulate that in ways where you

1:02:46

will feel as if you decided to wait

1:02:48

a little bit longer that time before

1:02:52

buzzing it. There's- It's

1:02:54

amazing. I mean, it's wonderful. It's wonderful

1:02:56

the control you can have that just, I

1:02:58

mean, to explicitly

1:03:00

demonstrate these things, which one could

1:03:02

talk about vaguely. I love that. And

1:03:05

you really feel like you're choosing

1:03:06

to press that button,

1:03:08

you've had it done on you. It's the

1:03:11

weirdest thing. It's a good thing I didn't believe

1:03:13

in free will beforehand or else I would have stopped

1:03:15

believing in free will. But

1:03:18

we know this, there's incredibly

1:03:20

smart people who are paid a whole lot

1:03:22

of money to make you believe

1:03:25

you really want to buy some

1:03:27

nonsense crap that they're advertising.

1:03:30

You know, it shows how much you want to believe in

1:03:32

free will that you can do an experiment like that

1:03:35

where you have this sense of agency and

1:03:37

it's completely explicitly

1:03:39

an illusion because

1:03:41

it was created. And yet it doesn't, that's

1:03:45

not sufficient to convince people and will lead a

1:03:47

lot more and you spend a lot of time

1:03:49

because you want to talk about, you want to try and address all

1:03:51

of the arguments

1:03:54

that you've heard over the years, I think, that you're trying to

1:03:56

finally address it, because

1:03:58

you've heard all of them. But you then... you

1:04:00

then go to consciousness self where you I was

1:04:02

really pleased to say that you know obviously

1:04:05

I think it's right and agrees with me but but

1:04:08

but that what you know consciousness is an epiphenomenon

1:04:10

I love that where you point which

1:04:13

which by the way noam Chomsky

1:04:16

said to me in a different context but he said but

1:04:18

we say consciousness is an irrelevant hiccup

1:04:22

which I was I'm gonna quote that

1:04:24

over and over and

1:04:29

and

1:04:31

the

1:04:32

the key part of this irrelevant hiccup

1:04:35

which is really central

1:04:37

and and this is

1:04:39

the whole part of the question

1:04:41

that the the hard problem of consciousness

1:04:43

as people would might say some

1:04:45

people have said is what is

1:04:51

what you know some people say the hard consciousness

1:04:53

problem conscious is what is the we that makes

1:04:56

us but the really interesting question me is what

1:04:59

what gives us the illusion of a we that's that's

1:05:01

the problem I would want to answer but but

1:05:03

um but you say something like our

1:05:06

brains generate a suggestion and we then

1:05:08

judge it this dualism

1:05:10

suggests thinking back century so it's

1:05:12

it enters into even I

1:05:15

guess into into sort of the parlance of

1:05:17

at least some of neuroscience and a lot of philosophy

1:05:19

that somehow there's a separation between our

1:05:21

brain and

1:05:22

the we

1:05:24

you want to elaborate on that a little bit in your perspective

1:05:26

of that

1:05:26

and it's totally

1:05:29

false and just

1:05:31

to show sort of the pedigree that comes with

1:05:34

like arguably the most

1:05:36

influential compatibleist philosopher

1:05:38

on earth right now talks about exactly

1:05:40

that model with a possibility

1:05:43

generator an idea generator

1:05:46

that comes it and then you pick then

1:05:49

the dichotomously pristine

1:05:53

made of marshmallow you

1:05:55

floating around up there picks among

1:05:57

the possibilities based on your learning

1:06:00

experiences and your values and all

1:06:02

that.

1:06:03

And like that's, that's where

1:06:05

free will slips in. Yeah, and

1:06:07

I don't and that and you,

1:06:09

I think I want to I want to there's an elephant

1:06:12

in the room here and it's Dan Dennett. And

1:06:15

and I do want to I do want to mention

1:06:17

that because it seems to me it demonstrates I know

1:06:21

Dan and a friend of mine for a time

1:06:23

but it amazes me how

1:06:25

can how someone who is

1:06:28

remarkable in his arguments about many

1:06:30

things can be so confused and

1:06:33

logical that somehow obvious

1:06:36

nonsense like that. If

1:06:41

he can be that confused and logical, it should

1:06:43

make you suspicious about the rest of the of

1:06:45

the field. Yes.

1:06:48

And

1:06:48

just to show where I think that's coming

1:06:51

from. Like I

1:06:56

tiptoed around him with kid gloves.

1:06:59

Insofar as I think a

1:07:01

lot of his values come through a lot

1:07:03

of his philosophizing and ways

1:07:05

that I think tell us about how

1:07:08

he's gotten some very wrong conclusions. How

1:07:11

can he be so smart that he concludes that this

1:07:15

quote that gives it all away in

1:07:17

one of his talks and you can find the zillion

1:07:19

versions of it on YouTube in one of his books, saying,

1:07:22

Oh, my God, I wouldn't want to live in a world in which

1:07:24

no one thought there was free will because they'd just be

1:07:26

running amok and rapist and violence.

1:07:29

And besides, we wouldn't

1:07:31

be able to feel like we earned our prizes.

1:07:34

Yeah, yeah. Well,

1:07:36

that's why the guy

1:07:39

is invested in free will. There's

1:07:42

not a whole lot of people who are saying, Oh, my God, if people

1:07:44

stop believing in free will, I won't be

1:07:47

able to feel like I earned my low

1:07:49

socio economic status, and

1:07:51

my abusive parents and my

1:07:54

Yeah, I

1:07:56

will come to that. I think you mentioned that very

1:07:58

thing at the end and I want to talk about. I want to talk

1:08:01

about how a way out of that too. Maybe it'll

1:08:03

help Dan, but oh

1:08:05

good. But you know what is surprising

1:08:08

is to hear Dan is, you know, like

1:08:10

me, and in many ways, well,

1:08:12

and always more well known atheist.

1:08:16

But it's so ridiculous to hear that sentence,

1:08:18

because you could replace free will with religion

1:08:20

and God. And he would argue completely

1:08:23

the

1:08:23

opposite. I want to live in a world

1:08:25

where there's where people didn't believe in there's God, because

1:08:28

if they did, then they're running amok.

1:08:30

And like, Dan, don't you see the complete

1:08:33

illogic of that? And I must say, I

1:08:35

thought wouldn't have blessed me with my

1:08:37

endowed chair. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

1:08:40

Exactly. God wouldn't. But

1:08:42

you know, but and I don't want to pick on Dan too

1:08:44

much, although I think he deserves it in this case.

1:08:50

Is this

1:08:53

all of this argument that somehow there's

1:08:55

a there's a generator

1:08:57

or you're inventing something that no

1:08:59

one's ever seen or measured, that

1:09:02

somehow allows you around, get

1:09:04

around the problem that there's no evidence whatsoever.

1:09:06

And every logical argument you can think of shows

1:09:08

there's no place for free will. It's

1:09:11

and later on, we'll talk about that reminds me of the

1:09:13

God of the gaps argument, the more we learn, the plate,

1:09:16

the less place there is for free

1:09:18

will to exist. It's a very similar argument.

1:09:20

When I was reading the book, I wrote

1:09:22

a God of the gaps at one point later on in the book.

1:09:24

But let me remind you

1:09:26

this Sydney Harris cartoon, which

1:09:29

you can use in your lectures if you haven't. It's

1:09:31

two physicists that are blackboard, have you

1:09:34

seen that? That thing? Or was a

1:09:36

long equation. And then and then in the

1:09:38

middle, it says and then a miracle occurs. And

1:09:40

then one of the guys says the other I think you should

1:09:42

be a little more explicit at that right

1:09:45

there. But it's exactly that

1:09:47

right? It's it's perfect.

1:09:50

It's exactly that. And you have

1:09:52

to presume magic. But what intrigued

1:09:54

me I do want you to elaborate on one thing. It's almost

1:09:57

the last sentence of the of Oh

1:10:03

yeah, in that particular section

1:10:06

of the book you say, okay,

1:10:12

thinking that it's sufficient to merely know about the intent

1:10:14

in the present is far worse than just intellectual

1:10:16

blindness, far worse than believing

1:10:19

that it is the very first turtle on the way

1:10:21

down that's floating in the air. In a world

1:10:23

such as we have, it's deeply, ethically

1:10:26

flawed as well. Can

1:10:28

you just leave that hanging there and maybe because

1:10:30

you're going to want to talk about it later, but why

1:10:32

is it ethically flawed?

1:10:36

Because the subject about

1:10:38

whether there's free will at the

1:10:41

end of the day isn't about neuroscience and

1:10:43

isn't about philosophy and isn't about

1:10:45

the fact that we've created

1:10:48

a world that runs on

1:10:50

a myth that's just

1:10:53

and runs on a myth that

1:10:56

it is ethically defendable to

1:10:59

have a world in which all sorts of people

1:11:01

are rewarded for things they didn't earn

1:11:03

and a vastly larger

1:11:06

number of people live lives of misery

1:11:08

and deprivation and are viewed

1:11:10

as having been entitled to it for things they had

1:11:12

no control over either.

1:11:14

Okay.

1:11:17

Yeah, and we'll get, you know, sorry. Okay,

1:11:21

good. Okay.

1:11:22

I get worked up about this one.

1:11:25

Yeah, well, good. Well, I can't wait. If

1:11:27

you're worked up about this. Yeah. Well, that's

1:11:29

the part of the book where you can really sense the emotion and frustration

1:11:32

and yet also fear that you're

1:11:34

going to say something that, you know, people

1:11:37

are going to anyway, it's interesting. And

1:11:39

the bravery it took to write it down. I think

1:11:41

you talked about that viewer has, you know, one of the many,

1:11:43

there are lots of things that cause you to take

1:11:46

time in writing this book, but how people

1:11:48

respond to the obvious consequences

1:11:51

of what you're saying is terrifying

1:11:53

a little bit. I think I can understand that. You

1:11:57

next talk about where intent comes from, where you really begin

1:11:59

to get Into the into for me

1:12:01

the fascinating aspects of neurology much of

1:12:03

which i knew nothing about and so

1:12:05

is great learning experience for me also

1:12:08

depressing of course. Because

1:12:11

every time you learn i mean

1:12:14

it's driven home even things that are

1:12:17

the examples the explicit examples

1:12:19

and empirical examples of things that

1:12:22

i might have presumed exist. Are

1:12:24

are depressing like the fact that that

1:12:27

when you make decisions about things that you think are

1:12:29

decisions that you say in three different

1:12:32

studies subjects and brain scanners

1:12:34

alternated between rating the beauty of something.

1:12:36

Are the goodness of the same behavior and

1:12:39

basically and you say both types of assessments

1:12:41

activated the same region your

1:12:44

orbital frontal core cortex or osc.

1:12:47

More beautiful or good the more osc

1:12:49

activation. Is it for relevant

1:12:52

emotions about beauty gum up cerebral contemplation

1:12:54

of the scales of justice.

1:12:57

Namely you make decisions and it's

1:13:00

just explicit not just we

1:13:02

we know that you can measure the brain and see

1:13:04

that it is that these that

1:13:07

these external things which you shouldn't

1:13:09

which you don't think are affecting your rationality. Are

1:13:12

totally determining what you think is rational. Yes

1:13:16

and never in a million years

1:13:19

with the average person who's just made one of those judgments

1:13:21

saying oh that's interesting why did you decide

1:13:24

that. Oh it's because my orbital

1:13:26

frontal cortex evolve that it has trouble

1:13:28

distinguishing between the two because

1:13:30

just very recently that we evolved making moral

1:13:32

assessments rather than just like appearance

1:13:35

assessments

1:13:37

oh that's why i did that yeah

1:13:39

right. Exactly yeah

1:13:41

and and and it's true we we as

1:13:44

you point out that we that these moral assessments

1:13:46

are recent so yeah all of the biological

1:13:49

machinery was developed without that and we

1:13:51

built up. A

1:13:54

morality and a

1:13:56

rationale again trying to impose

1:13:59

that. on an infrastructure that

1:14:02

wasn't based on any of that. Once

1:14:04

again, if Hume had been around today,

1:14:07

he would say that reason is a slave

1:14:09

of passion. I mean, this gives

1:14:11

meat to that beautiful quote, I

1:14:14

mean, which he presumed, presumed

1:14:16

I guess on the basis of thinking

1:14:18

about things, but not with the evidence

1:14:20

that you have. And it's great to see evidence that specifically

1:14:23

shows over and over again that reason

1:14:25

is a slave of passion.

1:14:27

Well, and you used a great word

1:14:29

for describing all of the cluj of

1:14:32

like, oh, it's just this mishmash

1:14:34

that you kind of put together and improvised,

1:14:37

which is the human brain. Another

1:14:40

sound bite of the field, evolution is not

1:14:42

an inventor, it's a tinkerer. Okay,

1:14:45

what do we got here? And we suddenly have

1:14:47

like come up with a notion

1:14:49

of love. Where are we, okay,

1:14:51

give me some duct tape. This part of the brain

1:14:54

is gonna have a lid, even though for a

1:14:56

hundred million years we've

1:14:58

been doing this instead. So there's gonna be some mistakes.

1:15:00

Yeah, that's exactly it.

1:15:03

And okay, and then when

1:15:06

you, so you begin to, in each of these

1:15:08

cases for the first, when you talk about the

1:15:10

biological basis of trying to address this

1:15:13

fallacy of free will, of

1:15:17

perceived free will, you talk about, you

1:15:19

try and again, put meat on turtles

1:15:22

all the way down by saying, okay, you have this intent.

1:15:25

What about the minutes before? What about the hours

1:15:27

before? What about the days before? The millennia

1:15:29

before? The millions of years before? And I

1:15:31

wanna unpack that a little bit.

1:15:34

You talk about pre-existing

1:15:37

tendencies towards aggression. And

1:15:41

how you say,

1:15:42

Bawal,

1:15:49

because of how much life has taught them at a young

1:15:51

age that the world is a menacing place.

1:15:54

That people or that animals

1:15:56

in particular, that experienced

1:15:59

the fact that world's a... is a menacing

1:16:01

place, respond

1:16:04

with the kind of aggression that's

1:16:06

not surprising. That they don't control

1:16:09

that, it's based on their experiences,

1:16:12

minutes, hours, years, or lifetimes,

1:16:14

or genetically beforehand. Yeah,

1:16:17

exactly. One of the things that I was

1:16:19

interested in, and I want to throw these things in because

1:16:22

there's so many neat examples, is

1:16:26

just to show a sense that when we talk about

1:16:28

being good people by being monogamous versus

1:16:30

polygamous, you talk about different

1:16:33

species, and oxytocin

1:16:35

and testosterone, and

1:16:38

vasopressin receptor levels. When

1:16:42

you talk about what happened, I was going to quote it, but you

1:16:44

can talk about polygamous rodent species

1:16:46

versus monogamous rodent species. I

1:16:50

found this fact, once again, fascinating when you think about

1:16:53

this, what we impose as a moral

1:16:55

issue now is biology.

1:16:59

Biological and biological.

1:17:03

This is irresistible and so much

1:17:05

fun to teach about. Voles.

1:17:08

Voles are these little vole things

1:17:10

that run around, and there's all these different types.

1:17:14

There are mountain voles and prairie

1:17:16

voles in the great American West. They

1:17:19

turn out, despite having 99% of

1:17:22

the genes in common, they have very, very different social

1:17:24

systems, in that prairie voles

1:17:27

are monogamous. They form

1:17:29

parabonds, and mountain

1:17:31

voles are polygamous. I always

1:17:33

have to remember when I'm teaching this, okay, which

1:17:35

one is it? Garrison Keeler. Garrison

1:17:38

Keeler talks about the great American

1:17:41

values out in Wobekon, so that's

1:17:43

in the prairie. It's the prairie voles

1:17:45

who are monogamous. They turn out

1:17:47

not to be, but that's what I always have to

1:17:49

remember before I mess them up. Wow,

1:17:53

how'd that happen? Because they're so closely related.

1:17:56

They're so incredibly

1:17:58

cool work by...

1:17:59

like a bunch of neuroscientists over the

1:18:02

last couple of decades have completely

1:18:04

unpacked that system.

1:18:06

When you are a male vole

1:18:09

of either species and you're mating,

1:18:12

you've released this hormone vasopressin from

1:18:14

one part of your brain. And

1:18:16

what it does is it buzzes a part

1:18:18

of your brain having to do with reward and

1:18:21

whoa, they just explained sex feels

1:18:23

good. And then it turns out

1:18:26

that because of just a gene

1:18:28

and a duplication event, a change

1:18:31

in a promoter on a gene,

1:18:33

in other words, stuff that like dead

1:18:35

white males and lab coats and molecular

1:18:37

biology could explain. In

1:18:40

the prairie voles, the receptor

1:18:42

for vasopressin is more

1:18:45

widespread in responses than

1:18:47

the receptor in the mountain voles. So

1:18:50

for the same sex act,

1:18:53

they get a whole lot more of a buzz and

1:18:55

at that point, like basic behaviors and

1:18:57

takes over, wow, that was

1:18:59

great, I think I'll stick around. And

1:19:02

instead mountain voles are nomadic,

1:19:06

the males there and they're like gone

1:19:08

the next day. Okay, how do you know this? How do you

1:19:10

know this? One of those experiments where

1:19:13

like people's mouths

1:19:15

have to drop open, brilliant,

1:19:18

like molecular manipulation,

1:19:21

take the prairie voles version

1:19:23

of this gene and plunk it down

1:19:26

into mountain voles and

1:19:29

you make a monogamous, you

1:19:31

make a monogamous. It's

1:19:33

amazing, yeah. I mean, that's the kind of thing I love.

1:19:36

I mean, you can't argue with that, right? That's

1:19:38

what's great about it.

1:19:39

And okay,

1:19:40

so what about us? And

1:19:43

what about us and aren't we monogamous,

1:19:46

but what about divorce rates and what about most

1:19:48

societies that are polygamy and there's

1:19:51

incredibly convincing evolutionary

1:19:55

biology showing that among all the primates,

1:19:57

we're right in the middle. halfway

1:20:00

between being a classic pair

1:20:02

bonding monogamous species, the polygamous one,

1:20:05

and there's all sorts of interesting ways you can

1:20:07

show that. But in terms of this, say,

1:20:10

okay, so which version,

1:20:13

what kind of vole are we? And

1:20:16

it turns out we have different variants.

1:20:19

Some of us have one kind, some of us have

1:20:21

one another, and

1:20:24

that's predictive of things like how

1:20:26

stable of relationships you form. That's

1:20:29

predictive of things like how close

1:20:31

you stand to an attractive person

1:20:34

if you're already in a relationship.

1:20:36

Oh my God,

1:20:39

it's the same stuff. It's

1:20:41

like the same stuff that before it's over with is

1:20:43

produced like sonnets

1:20:46

or divorce lawyers. So there's

1:20:48

very human specific aspects to it. But

1:20:51

whoa, even that is

1:20:54

ultimately mechanistic. Yeah,

1:20:57

and so when we come

1:20:59

to responsibility, people who work in them for one

1:21:01

way or another, as you point out,

1:21:03

a lot of these things are gene variants or

1:21:06

affected by expression of genes, epigenetics, which

1:21:08

I wanna have you explain. The first time I really

1:21:10

understood, well, I'm not sure I still understand, but the first time

1:21:13

I think I understood it was reading your book. I

1:21:16

never could quite understand how, but it's

1:21:19

gene expression. Anyway, but

1:21:21

you sum this up by saying, thus the decisions

1:21:24

you supposedly make freely in moments that

1:21:26

test your character, like

1:21:28

monogamy, let's say, generosity,

1:21:30

empathy, honesty, are influenced

1:21:33

by the levels of these hormones in your bloodstream

1:21:35

and the levels of variance of the receptors in

1:21:37

your brain. It's just that,

1:21:40

not character. It's that. All

1:21:45

that like fidelity,

1:21:48

or if

1:21:49

you're in a different society,

1:21:52

all of the cultural values built around, you

1:21:55

should be fine being the third wife, or

1:21:58

you should wanna get as many camels. as possible

1:22:00

to get as many wives and that's

1:22:03

how we, that's the kind of people we

1:22:05

are. And whether it's one extreme

1:22:08

or the other, one of the ones in between, it's

1:22:10

imbued with value and

1:22:12

cultural judgment. And

1:22:15

that's not it. That

1:22:17

said, you know, it's not all what

1:22:20

version of the vasopressin receptor gene you have.

1:22:22

And those studies showing that and different

1:22:25

human correlates of it's not everyone,

1:22:27

it's just at a higher than expected rate. All

1:22:30

of our usual provisors there. But

1:22:32

if you knew about the vasopressin status

1:22:35

plus three more of the neurotransmitters

1:22:37

and seven of the hormones and this and that,

1:22:41

you're getting close to saying that's

1:22:43

why this person is this way instead of

1:22:45

that way. Well, again, I think of Dan Dennett

1:22:47

again with saying, you know, you

1:22:50

can't, you may not be able to

1:22:54

feel good about your accompli-, you know,

1:22:56

feel you deserve the prizes and similarly

1:22:58

you might, feeling that you've been a good

1:23:00

person is

1:23:02

great but you may also

1:23:05

realize that it's a genetic bit of luck

1:23:07

as well. Or all the

1:23:09

other biology. All of it, yeah. Or

1:23:11

an historical, genetic, historical,

1:23:14

in fact we'll talk about that. So

1:23:16

that's minutes to hours, you

1:23:18

know, hormonal influence

1:23:21

on your actions which are immediate.

1:23:23

But then you talk about, you know, weeks to years

1:23:26

really related to neuroplasticity which I

1:23:28

guess

1:23:30

is

1:23:33

becoming increasingly important.

1:23:36

And you say, to

1:23:38

jump to, sort of depressing in a way,

1:23:41

to read once again about adolescence

1:23:43

and its importance. Because

1:23:45

we, done of us, can have control. I mean

1:23:48

when you think about that you're

1:23:50

doomed, you're doomed in

1:23:52

some ways to act the way you are because of a period

1:23:55

in your life that you sometimes want to just forget. And

1:23:59

you say... If you're an adult, your adolescent

1:24:02

experiences of trauma, stimulation,

1:24:04

love, failure, rejection, happiness, despair,

1:24:07

acne, the whole shebang will

1:24:09

have played an outsized role in constructing

1:24:11

the frontal cortex because you point

1:24:13

out that's when it's being constructed.

1:24:16

Constructing the frontal cortex you're working with

1:24:18

as you contemplate pushing buttons. Of

1:24:21

course, the enormous varieties of adolescent experiences

1:24:24

will help produce enormously varied frontal

1:24:26

cortexes in adulthood.

1:24:30

Boy, isn't that depressing? Yeah,

1:24:34

but from my perspective, cool.

1:24:37

It's the aesthetic mechanism

1:24:40

for it. But

1:24:42

in fact, you point out even a better reason it's

1:24:44

not depressing. In some sense, it was a rhetorical

1:24:46

question because the next page you say, this

1:24:49

suggests something remarkable. The

1:24:51

genetic program of the human brain evolved

1:24:53

to free the frontal cortex from

1:24:55

genes as much as possible, namely if the

1:24:59

frontal cortex is being developed during a period

1:25:02

of learning of experiences

1:25:04

in a rational, intelligent, self-conscious

1:25:08

species, you'd want

1:25:10

that brain function which

1:25:13

really is what's governing much of your rational

1:25:16

behavior, I guess, to be

1:25:19

as free from genes as possible to be based on experience.

1:25:21

So you understand

1:25:24

the world as it in principle is

1:25:26

as opposed to the world that your genetic

1:25:28

ancestors might

1:25:30

have experienced.

1:25:31

Yeah, like basically

1:25:34

we have evolved

1:25:36

genetically more than any other

1:25:38

species to be free of our genes

1:25:42

and free of their deterministic powers.

1:25:44

That's a great thing. It's not a bad

1:25:46

thing. It's allowed us to get where

1:25:48

we are and necessary

1:25:51

for as

1:25:53

complex a brain as we have probably.

1:25:55

Well, unless you spend your late adolescence

1:25:58

where you're listening to species. every

1:26:00

day by a guy with a mustache

1:26:02

and a brown shirt and saying here's

1:26:05

who's responsible for problems in society

1:26:08

means formative

1:26:11

stuff is happening then and that

1:26:13

could be for better or worse.

1:26:15

In fact for worse you point out that you talk

1:26:17

about this ACE score which is what's

1:26:19

a adverse childhood experience

1:26:22

score which I guess psychologists

1:26:25

can get by looking at all sorts of neglect

1:26:27

and household dysfunction and abuse and all

1:26:30

of these categories that you may or may

1:26:32

not have experienced and you say for

1:26:34

every step higher in one's ACE

1:26:36

score is roughly a 35% increase

1:26:39

in the likelihood of adult antisocial behavior

1:26:41

including violence, poor frontal

1:26:44

cortical development, cognition, problems

1:26:47

with impulse control, substance abuse, teen

1:26:49

pregnancy, unsafe sex and other risky

1:26:51

behaviors and increased vulnerability to

1:26:54

depression and anxiety disorders.

1:26:57

Oh and also poor health and earlier death. So

1:27:01

you know that impact

1:27:04

is remarkable

1:27:06

and

1:27:07

one might say how does that impact happen

1:27:10

and that's where I may be introducing this too early

1:27:12

but that's this connection between genes

1:27:14

and environmental interactions

1:27:17

which I think is related to epigenetics.

1:27:21

So do you want to explain I mean people would say

1:27:23

look how can this be the genes are genes

1:27:25

you have a DNA how can

1:27:28

how can experience it's almost

1:27:30

sounds Lamarckian how can how

1:27:32

can experience experiences going

1:27:34

to change that chemistry of

1:27:37

the DNA backbone what

1:27:40

are you telling me what gigs and so why

1:27:42

do you why do you get around that question

1:27:45

and explain it better than I could. Yeah experience

1:27:48

environment all of that

1:27:49

doesn't change your genes your

1:27:52

genes that are made up a sequence of DNA

1:27:54

and a code and it doesn't change

1:27:57

your genes what experience

1:27:59

does is change the on-off

1:28:01

switches for your genes. How

1:28:04

readily you activate a gene, whether

1:28:07

you permanently silence it, how

1:28:10

readily you activate it under this circumstance,

1:28:13

but not that circumstance. What

1:28:15

epigenetics is about is the

1:28:17

regulation of genes. And it turns

1:28:19

out when you look at a species like us, the

1:28:22

majority of our DNA is not devoted

1:28:25

to the genes. The majority is devoted

1:28:27

to the regulatory elements. The

1:28:30

instruction manual is much

1:28:32

longer than the DNA code itself.

1:28:35

And what evolution is

1:28:37

mostly about, if you want to get into

1:28:39

a nuts and bolts level, is the evolution

1:28:42

of the regulatory control far

1:28:44

more than the genes themselves. And

1:28:48

what environment does is forever

1:28:50

after, in some cases, in some cases even

1:28:53

multigenerationally, make

1:28:56

it easier or harder to activate certain

1:28:58

genes.

1:28:59

Yeah, in fact, you say that when it comes to humans,

1:29:01

it can be silly to ask what a gene does, which is

1:29:04

the kind of thing my elementary

1:29:06

biology might have asked, because

1:29:08

I don't know much. But

1:29:11

you shouldn't ask what that does, but what it does in a particular

1:29:13

environment, because it's the expression.

1:29:16

It's the turning on and off. The genes produce proteins

1:29:19

that give instructions for production of

1:29:21

proteins and when that gets

1:29:23

turned on and off. And my also understanding of

1:29:26

how impactful those proteins

1:29:29

are in subsequent things is also environmentally

1:29:32

related.

1:29:33

Some of those proteins are

1:29:35

switches that turn genes on or off.

1:29:38

Yeah. Or you're regulating the regulators,

1:29:40

and it's regulators all the way

1:29:42

down. It's these recursive loops.

1:29:47

Yeah, OK. And that's, I think, incredibly

1:29:49

important to realize that. That's

1:29:52

how when one thinks of

1:29:54

there's, I guess, you can say,

1:29:57

OK, there's lucky genes, as people

1:29:59

say. born with lucky genes. But when

1:30:01

we talk about the spectrum of behaviors for

1:30:04

which we think we have free will in the spectrum of

1:30:06

people and for which we'll have

1:30:08

to take responsibility for good or bad actions, you

1:30:11

could say, well, there are two there are two components.

1:30:13

There's gene variants. The population

1:30:15

has gene variants, and some people do have

1:30:17

lucky genes, and some people have unlucky genes

1:30:19

in the sense of getting a variant that, you

1:30:22

know, related to vasopressin

1:30:25

or whatever. And then there's

1:30:28

the other aspect, which I really hadn't fully appreciated,

1:30:30

is exactly how the environment

1:30:33

affects the

1:30:35

mechanism by which environment affects

1:30:38

gene regulation is the other aspect.

1:30:41

So there's the variants in genes and

1:30:43

the variants in environmental experiences. And

1:30:46

it's that combination of those two that

1:30:48

determines who you are. Neither

1:30:51

of which you had any say in. Nine

1:30:53

of which you had any say in. Yeah, exactly. You didn't

1:30:55

even get to fill in an application form. Yeah.

1:31:00

And

1:31:02

just like you, yeah, in particular, we all realize

1:31:04

we didn't have any say in the choice of our parents. And

1:31:07

sometimes that's good. And sometimes bad.

1:31:09

And but it goes far

1:31:12

beyond that.

1:31:14

Now you say, okay, that's okay. So that's

1:31:16

basic biology. But beyond that, we

1:31:19

go back more than just years.

1:31:22

And more just

1:31:23

more than just your own life experience, but

1:31:26

the life experience of your ancestors, culture,

1:31:30

that which that you're irresistible.

1:31:35

It's totally cool. It's

1:31:39

totally cool. I'm a dilettante

1:31:41

in this area, because what do I know from like

1:31:44

cultural anthropology or history or stuff,

1:31:46

but different

1:31:49

cultures are different.

1:31:53

And there are historically

1:31:56

and biologically and ecologically.

1:32:00

logical reasons why different

1:32:02

cultures wind up in different ways. For

1:32:05

example, like way

1:32:07

back when traditional means of production,

1:32:10

you could be a farmer or you could

1:32:12

be a hunter gatherer or you could be a

1:32:14

pastoralist. And it turns out

1:32:16

that pastoralists, all the world

1:32:19

over, whether it's yaks or camels

1:32:21

or goats or whatever, are much

1:32:24

higher than likely to generate

1:32:26

what is called a culture of honor, where

1:32:29

it's built around retribution,

1:32:31

revenge, clan loyalties,

1:32:34

feuds that go for centuries, where

1:32:36

it involves forming warrior classes,

1:32:39

high rates of aggression, all

1:32:41

that sort of thing. And

1:32:43

whoa,

1:32:44

you hardly ever see that among the farmers or the hunter

1:32:46

gatherers. And what's that about? If

1:32:49

the bad people come and you're a hunter gatherer,

1:32:52

they can't steal your rainforest. If

1:32:55

they come to your farm, they can't steal all

1:32:57

your, they can't harvest your crops at night, but

1:33:00

sneaky low down varmints

1:33:02

can come and rustle your cattle

1:33:04

at night. Pastoralists

1:33:07

spend all their time raiding each other

1:33:09

and stealing their means of livestock. And

1:33:11

like in Africa,

1:33:14

I hang out near a pastoralist tribe

1:33:16

and like they have raids on each other and steal

1:33:18

all the cows and people have to take

1:33:20

revenge. And all of that, among

1:33:24

pastoralists, you have a special

1:33:26

vulnerability in being nomadic and

1:33:28

in your wealth being a

1:33:31

bunch of animals that could be stolen. And

1:33:33

they all evolve these similar cultures

1:33:35

of honor. And where if

1:33:38

you do not answer an insult

1:33:40

to your honor with twice the retaliation,

1:33:44

you're just like losing face and you're dishonoring

1:33:46

you and your family and your ancestors and your people

1:33:50

and all of that. And that

1:33:52

turns out to explain aspects,

1:33:54

geographical variations and violence

1:33:57

on this planet. Or as

1:33:59

another one.

1:33:59

Another

1:34:00

one, people whose ancestors

1:34:03

or people who live in rainforests

1:34:06

are much more likely than chance to invent

1:34:09

polytheistic religions.

1:34:12

People who live in deserts are more likely

1:34:14

to invent monotheistic ones. And

1:34:16

there's all sorts of ecological, you know, if you're

1:34:19

living in a forest where there's like a thousand

1:34:22

different edible plants that

1:34:24

you can use, it's not that surprising that

1:34:26

you decide that there's like a spirit

1:34:28

inside each one of those different plants and like

1:34:31

a thousand flowers blooming.

1:34:33

And like if you're living in the desert, everything

1:34:36

gets boiled down to just like

1:34:39

survival and very singular

1:34:41

things. And big surprise,

1:34:44

they come up with singular religions. And

1:34:47

you know, people like Jared Diamond have done brilliant

1:34:50

work analyzing how it is

1:34:52

that this planet was overrun

1:34:55

by the desert monotheists rather

1:34:57

than the rainforest polytheists.

1:35:00

And that's the planet we have now. But

1:35:02

that's a cultural difference. And

1:35:05

that one influences

1:35:08

like through shortly after birth, where

1:35:11

you were being taught, like ethics

1:35:14

come from and who you were

1:35:16

trying to please and whose

1:35:19

foot or whose plural feet

1:35:21

you'll be sitting at if you do things right

1:35:23

and wind up in paradise afterward.

1:35:26

And

1:35:27

that's from culture.

1:35:29

And I never understood that.

1:35:32

What I think is important is that relates to what

1:35:34

we're just talking about in a way that I hadn't really appreciated

1:35:36

before. I knew that, obviously, culture affects

1:35:39

people. And you know, when I talk to people, you

1:35:41

know, they don't seem to get, when I talk about religion,

1:35:43

isn't it surprising that the children of Christians

1:35:45

turn out to be Christian, the children are Muslims, the children are

1:35:48

Muslims. Even if there's some universal truth, isn't that a little

1:35:50

surprising? Of course, it's a cultural thing. But

1:35:52

now when you talk about, say, the

1:35:55

pastoralists and sort of retribution

1:35:58

and violence, Now

1:36:00

i kind of now i thinking about it by

1:36:02

chemically or no biology logically so

1:36:05

that experience undoubtedly affects

1:36:08

the regulation of jeans that that that

1:36:10

produce aggressive responses so

1:36:13

you can understand the

1:36:14

the.

1:36:15

How that culture and

1:36:18

the affecting. People

1:36:21

who's who's dna is the same but but

1:36:23

but but but the regulation

1:36:26

that dna is culturally determined

1:36:28

something.

1:36:29

And like

1:36:31

from a cultural perspective the job

1:36:33

of parents is to make kids

1:36:35

who will have the same cultural values as them

1:36:38

and translate it that into neurobiology.

1:36:41

Is to have their nervous systems constructed

1:36:44

in a way that this is what they will

1:36:46

carry along okay here's here's like one

1:36:48

of the all time cool experiments and

1:36:51

the only time i have seen a particular

1:36:54

word appear in the scientific journal. This

1:36:56

is incredible work by this guy

1:36:58

richard nesbit university michigan one of

1:37:00

the gods of social psychology and.

1:37:04

What it was one of those where the site

1:37:06

majors like come volunteer for this experiment

1:37:09

and ask questions about whatever and so

1:37:12

they go to the site department and there's

1:37:14

the lab they're going to down to the end of the hall

1:37:16

and they walk down the hall from the elevator and

1:37:19

unbeknownst to them the experiment

1:37:21

occurs in the hallway. Which is

1:37:23

it's a narrow hallway all these

1:37:26

like. Children chuncan

1:37:29

stuff and as they're walking down there's

1:37:31

a guy walking at you

1:37:33

he's a big guy working

1:37:36

on the project and what

1:37:39

he does is as he comes past

1:37:41

you he knocks into your shoulder

1:37:44

looks back and says watch it

1:37:46

asshole. This

1:37:49

is the experiment in print and

1:37:51

then what they do is they like

1:37:54

you come into the lab and they

1:37:56

give you all sorts of scenarios

1:37:58

of like moral quandaries. And

1:38:00

what would you do in response to this? And

1:38:03

what you see is people from

1:38:05

the North, Northern

1:38:07

United States, having been bumped

1:38:09

into has no effect on their answers.

1:38:13

And of course, there's the controls where

1:38:15

the guy doesn't do that. And people

1:38:17

from the South were now

1:38:20

far more likely if they were bumped into

1:38:22

than not to advocate violent

1:38:25

responses to these norm violation

1:38:27

scenarios.

1:38:28

And they elevate their levels

1:38:30

of testosterone and stress hormones.

1:38:33

Whoa, are you kidding?

1:38:35

The American South, instead of being settled

1:38:38

by these nice, like Quaker shopkeepers,

1:38:41

were settled by these, like, crazy-ass

1:38:43

Irish, Scotsman, shepherds and

1:38:46

stuff. And they brought a culture of honor.

1:38:49

And centuries later, you're

1:38:51

walking down a hallway in Ann Arbor,

1:38:53

Michigan, and that's going to influence

1:38:55

how much stress hormones you secrete. And

1:38:58

whether you advocate saying, you

1:39:00

know, they're just an idiot, but ignore them versus

1:39:03

rip their throat out.

1:39:05

Well, this culture stuff persists.

1:39:08

Wow. Yeah, it's just wow. I

1:39:11

love these examples. I'm really

1:39:13

happy with it. It's amazing because you can put

1:39:15

meat on all of these. You know, the

1:39:17

words sound nice, but the meat is what matters.

1:39:19

I mean, that's what makes it science.

1:39:21

And

1:39:22

we talk about, you know, I wrote down education

1:39:24

here because you talked about the purpose of

1:39:26

parents in some sense is to inculcate those

1:39:30

values and the cultural things to their children,

1:39:33

which is, by the way, the reason I argue

1:39:35

that for public education, the purpose

1:39:38

of education is to get you away from your parents, in

1:39:40

my opinion, which is I could never understand why

1:39:42

in the US we have this system where

1:39:45

parents somehow are supposed

1:39:47

to be able to impact on the education

1:39:49

of children because that's so, and why I like,

1:39:51

why I'm not always a big fan of homeschooling

1:39:54

because it seems to me that's the great opportunity

1:39:56

is to get people away to learn that the world

1:39:58

isn't exactly necessary. the way their parents say

1:40:00

it is.

1:40:01

Yep, exactly. Except,

1:40:04

you know, it's not by chance

1:40:06

that the school that your parents are going to

1:40:09

send you to is going

1:40:11

to teach some semblance

1:40:13

of their exact same values. You're not

1:40:15

going to go to a school if you're growing

1:40:17

up in Kansas and they teach you

1:40:20

that it is time for the workers of the world to

1:40:22

unite and overthrow their chains and you're

1:40:24

not going to go to a school and

1:40:28

I'm Chotka and they do. Yeah,

1:40:31

the parents still get in there.

1:40:34

Well okay, so this

1:40:36

we basically, I don't know whether we beat in the dead

1:40:38

horse, but we certainly added a lot of color

1:40:41

to it. And

1:40:45

part of the book about intent, you basically say

1:40:47

to summarize in order to prove this free will we

1:40:49

have to show that some behavior just happened

1:40:51

out of thin air in the sense of considering all

1:40:54

of these biological precursors, the ones we've talked

1:40:56

about and a lot more obviously in the book, it

1:40:58

may be possible to sidestep that with some subtle

1:41:01

philosophical arguments, but you can't

1:41:03

with anything known to science. And I think

1:41:05

that's the sort of the key thing. But

1:41:07

then when we

1:41:09

come to the padding on the back, the

1:41:13

question is, you know, people,

1:41:15

you know,

1:41:17

surely with grit and hard

1:41:20

work, you can overcome, you know,

1:41:22

the bad luck of your existence.

1:41:25

And the idea

1:41:27

is that

1:41:29

it

1:41:31

is a misunderstanding of history, which I think you

1:41:33

basically say, look, okay, these people are

1:41:35

saying, okay, there's no free will. I accept

1:41:37

everything you said about hormones and everything. So

1:41:39

clearly there's no free will in what you're doing now. But

1:41:42

somehow in the past, the

1:41:44

past, there was something you could

1:41:46

have done that, you know, to make yourself a better person

1:41:48

now. And somehow that it's

1:41:51

okay, it's somehow we can bury the free

1:41:53

will in the past. You want to elaborate

1:41:55

on that?

1:41:56

Or if you're a particularly fancy compatibilist,

1:41:59

somehow. in the future, which somehow

1:42:01

counts in the present, or whatever,

1:42:04

it's a notion of

1:42:06

like, what

1:42:09

brought you to this moment, and

1:42:11

the answer rather than being

1:42:13

because of what happened a second ago and a minute ago

1:42:15

and an hour and a million years ago in biology all

1:42:18

the way, it's because of

1:42:20

the key decisions you made

1:42:22

back when, which

1:42:24

is just like, oh, good,

1:42:26

they've just explained it by saying the puzzle

1:42:29

is now on back when. That's

1:42:31

what we're now trying to explain, and the trouble

1:42:34

is whatever was in the past once was

1:42:36

now, and why did this

1:42:39

behavior just happen? Because

1:42:41

of one second before, one minute before, et

1:42:44

cetera. It's

1:42:46

one of the like

1:42:48

dodges

1:42:51

in there. I mean, what you're bringing up also

1:42:53

is this total

1:42:55

least seductive

1:42:57

dichotomy, which is like

1:43:00

one compatibilist trick, which most

1:43:02

people advocate

1:43:04

is that you'll say, okay, okay,

1:43:07

there's some stuff we had no control over.

1:43:09

Like, I don't have a voice that

1:43:11

could sing opera.

1:43:13

I'm not tall enough to play in the NBA.

1:43:16

I don't have whatever receptor

1:43:19

for whatever neurotransmitter, so that

1:43:21

I've got this amazing analytical skills, whatever.

1:43:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have our natural

1:43:26

attributes,

1:43:27

and those are biological.

1:43:29

Yeah.

1:43:30

What isn't? What really matters

1:43:33

is what do you do with those attributes? Do

1:43:35

you put your shoulder to the grindstone?

1:43:38

Do you squander your gifts? Do

1:43:40

you get

1:43:42

going when the going gets tough too?

1:43:45

And that's where we've got this incredibly

1:43:49

sort of Judeo-Christian

1:43:52

temptation to say that that

1:43:55

is the playground of free will and judgment.

1:43:58

It's what we do with what we were

1:44:00

gifted or cursed. That's the measure

1:44:02

of a person. And that's

1:44:04

so destructive. I mean, like

1:44:07

it's got a nice nappy pamby liberal version

1:44:10

of it, which is when your kid does something

1:44:12

good, don't tell them, Oh, you must be so smart,

1:44:15

say, Oh, you must have worked so hard, because

1:44:17

you're fueling that side of the dichotomy.

1:44:19

And, and that's a good thing, because that's

1:44:22

instrumental value, not because

1:44:24

it has moral value. But it's

1:44:26

this huge dichotomy that

1:44:29

the natural attributes we have are

1:44:32

made out of atoms. And

1:44:34

whether you show backbone in a

1:44:36

moment of temptation, that's

1:44:39

the stuff that's made out of the fairy dust. And

1:44:42

the what you do with what you

1:44:44

got, what you do with those

1:44:47

crossroads and splits in the road and

1:44:49

all those things is made of the same

1:44:51

stuff. Because it's that frontal cortex

1:44:54

of the earth that decide, are you going

1:44:56

to show impulse control? Are you going to do long

1:44:58

term planning? Are you do? And it's

1:45:00

the exact same? How did you get the

1:45:02

frontal cortex that you have?

1:45:05

Because of one second ago and one minute ago and

1:45:07

all of that. And that's why

1:45:09

at some point,

1:45:11

somebody is going to decide to rob

1:45:13

the liquor store. And

1:45:16

instead, somebody is going to decide

1:45:18

to devote their life to doctors

1:45:21

without borders or something.

1:45:24

Exactly. The point that somehow

1:45:28

accepting that the instantaneous

1:45:30

moment of what you're, you know, that

1:45:32

your that your local intent to that moment

1:45:36

is biological control, but somehow, what

1:45:38

determined your local intent, which was earlier,

1:45:41

isn't biologically determined. It's that, it's

1:45:43

that irrationality. I had, you know, you

1:45:45

do give a, you know, to pick again on

1:45:47

dead orders, you pick up the

1:45:49

identity law, you know, basically says

1:45:52

that he says, so you know, when someone, when

1:45:54

he argued with someone that we have no control over

1:45:56

the biology or the environment thrown at us, Dennis

1:45:59

response was so what? The

1:46:01

point I think you're missing is that our autonomy is

1:46:03

something one grows into. It's

1:46:06

a process that's initially entirely beyond one's

1:46:08

control. But back when it

1:46:10

was happening, it was the same biology. So it wasn't

1:46:13

anymore. And

1:46:15

as one matures, one learns one's being able to control

1:46:18

more and more one's activities. But the

1:46:20

whole point is you just learned that you don't

1:46:22

control. I mean, you don't control them.

1:46:25

You control them, but your control over that of

1:46:28

that was determined.

1:46:29

Because was, was, once is. Yeah,

1:46:33

exactly. Was, was, once is. It's so

1:46:36

clear when one puts it that way. I guess I

1:46:40

don't see it. I think

1:46:42

the fundamental question, and as a physicist,

1:46:44