Free Will Does Not Exist with Robert Sapolsky

Factually! with Adam Conover

Headgum

Comedy

4.4 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2024

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Does free will truly exist, or are we merely sophisticated meat machines running our biochemical programming with sentience as a byproduct? Stanford University neurologist Robert Sapolsky, having extensively studied the topic, asserts that not only is free will a myth but also that our insistence on its reality adversely affects the world we inhabit. In this episode, Adam speaks with Dr. Sapolsky about how choice is an illusion and the impact this has on our society, from workplace meritocracies to criminal justice reform. Find Dr. Sapolsky's book, Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will, at factuallypod.com/books

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a headgum podcast. I don't know what to think I don't know what to say
0:16.0	and that's all right that's okay
0:21.0	I don't know anything.
0:25.0	Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover.
0:28.0	Thank you so much for joining me on the show again.
0:30.0	You know, if you are ever 15 years old or or if you've ever gotten way too high, or both, you might have wondered whether free will really exists, right?
0:40.0	I mean, if your brain is just meat that controls your body and that meat is the product of a long chain of physical processes that obey physical laws,
0:49.0	well, do you really choose to do anything? I mean, how could you?
0:54.1	Look at being a baby.
0:55.3	During those first few months of life,
0:57.3	which we know have a profound impact on who you become,
1:00.4	can you do anything to influence the environment that you're born into?
1:05.0	Do we really choose who we become or what we choose to do?
1:09.0	Or do both nature and
1:15.0	the nature decide for us, not to mention the influence the society were brought up in and the chemicals that are coursing through our bloodstreams.
1:18.0	Do we choose to do anything at all?
1:21.0	But at the same time, it definitely seems to us like we are making decisions
1:26.0	about this or that constantly and in fact a huge amount of our society and our
1:30.9	legal system is based around the idea that we do make choices.
1:35.3	So if we were to abandon the notion of free will, well, what would that even entail?
1:41.0	What would it mean to do so?
1:43.0	Well, if you are into this line of thinking,
	...

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