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Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory

Free Will Is A Biological Illusion — The Experiment That Proved It Changed How I See Everything

Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory

Impact Theory

News Commentary, News, Business

4.75.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Welcome back to Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu. In today’s episode, Tom Bilyeu dives deep into one of the most provocative questions facing science and philosophy: Do we really have free will, or are we all just highly sophisticated NPCs—non-player characters—running a program inside a vast, resource-efficient simulation? Drawing on groundbreaking neuroscience experiments, the story of Phineas Gage, quantum mechanics, and the work of leading thinkers like Robert Sapolsky, Tom Bilyeu challenges everything we think we know about choice, consciousness, and the true nature of reality.

But this isn’t an episode about nihilism. Instead, Tom Bilyeu reveals why embracing the truth of a stochastically deterministic universe can actually make life feel more meaningful, freeing us from the weight of the past and inspiring us to make the most of every moment—programmed or not. Get ready to question your assumptions and see the world from a whole new perspective.


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What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here:

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If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast, Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Right now, I want to talk about a bet. You're losing every day. Someone says something important in a

0:04.6

meeting, a client drops an offhand comment that matters, a teammate floats a half-formed idea,

0:10.1

but you know it's gold, and then you bet yourself the same thing every time. I'll remember that,

0:16.0

but nine times out of ten, you lose that bet. Everybody does. Your brain wasn't built to retain 40 hours a week

0:23.1

of dense conversation. And the cost isn't just a forgotten detail. It's the follow-up you never make,

0:29.3

the promise that you don't keep, the connections that slip through your fingers. And Plowed is built

0:34.6

to make sure you win that bet every time.

0:38.4

It's an AI-powered device that captures the conversations you can't afford to lose.

0:43.8

Real meetings, real calls, real in-person discussions.

0:46.8

It records, transcribes, and turns hours of talk into searchable summaries, action items, and follow-ups. Ask it what was decided

0:56.5

last Tuesday. Ask it to draft the follow-up email. It already knows. So you can stop wasting

1:02.3

mental energy trying to remember everything and win the bet with yourself. Over 2 million people

1:08.2

are already using Plaud. Get 10% off with code Tom10 at plowd.

1:13.8

A.ai slash Tom. Ploud is spelled PLAUD. It's Ploud.aI.com and use code Tom 10.

1:25.2

In 2008, a team of neuroscientists in Berlin put people in an fMRI machine

1:30.2

and asked them to press a button, left hand to right hand, whatever they wanted. The researchers

1:35.3

then watched their brains, and what they saw demonstrated that free will is an illusion. Based on brain

1:42.6

signals, the researchers could predict which button each person was going to press up to 10 seconds

1:49.0

before the person became consciously aware of the fact that a decision had already been made. 10 seconds.

1:56.0

The people weren't actually consciously choosing. Their conscious mind was the last to know. The unconscious processes

2:03.3

were way ahead and the conscious mind just stepped in at the end, layered on a post hoc rationalization

2:09.9

for the action and then took credit for something it actually had nothing to do with. The experiment

...

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