If you read Robert Sapolky’s Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will or even the more subtle Behave he makes a very clear argument for why there is no free will and that humans are just self aware intelligent biological machines
Free will in the general context means that you are in complete control of the decisions you make, that is farthest from the truth.
Sure you can hack your body and brain to listen to you more, but you cannot be free from it completely.
When I say humans are just self aware biological intelligent machines, I am also making the most subtle point that allliving things are also biological machines with different levels of self awareness.
Cells have no self awareness but are definitely intelligent, they can adapt to various living conditions pretty easily so they are not just a simple set of basic rules.
DNA somehow has all the information needed for the cell to do this.
At the other end we have humans—with the most self awareness and high intelligence.
But in the middle we have the whole evolution tree from fish to reptiles to amphibians to mammals..
Consciousness or more simply self awareness is definitely a spectrum.
When Robert Sapolsky says there is no free will, he means that if we know your current body state perfectly, we can predict with 100% accuracy what you will do in the next moment given an input.
What is means that any choice you are making is pre-determined by your past, right from milliseconds before making that choice to millions/billions of years of evolutionary conditioning.
Say you go to a new restaurant and your wife is reading the menu to pick an item if you know your wife well enough, you can predict what she would like, even if it’s a restaurant which you never went to.
Doesn’t mean that she’s not making that choice. It’s just been pre-decided.
Yes, even though she is actually going through some options and trying to make a choice, if you know her, you can definitely predict it—this is a very simple argument for there’s no free will behind that choice.
If you can replicate her brain and body states perfectly, you can in the next moment, predict with 100% accuracy what she will do next, of course we need the algorithms that your brain and body is running as well.
And to clarify this doesn’t mean I can predict what she will do in an hour/day/month so on:
Human brain is actively learning from the environment, and our lives can turn upside down in a second.
Because environment is so unpredictable (at least with the current tech) its not possible to predict her body + brain state far in the future.
But if we can predict environment perfectly as well, then yes everything is pre-determined.
Humans are Just Self Aware Intelligent Biological Machines
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If you read Robert Sapolky’s Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will or even the more subtle Behave he makes a very clear argument for why there is no free will and that humans are just self aware intelligent biological machines
Free will in the general context means that you are in complete control of the decisions you make, that is farthest from the truth.
Sure you can hack your body and brain to listen to you more, but you cannot be free from it completely.
When I say humans are just self aware biological intelligent machines, I am also making the most subtle point that all living things are also biological machines with different levels of self awareness.
Cells have no self awareness but are definitely intelligent, they can adapt to various living conditions pretty easily so they are not just a simple set of basic rules.
DNA somehow has all the information needed for the cell to do this.
At the other end we have humans—with the most self awareness and high intelligence.
But in the middle we have the whole evolution tree from fish to reptiles to amphibians to mammals..
Consciousness or more simply self awareness is definitely a spectrum.
When Robert Sapolsky says there is no free will, he means that if we know your current body state perfectly, we can predict with 100% accuracy what you will do in the next moment given an input.
What is means that any choice you are making is pre-determined by your past, right from milliseconds before making that choice to millions/billions of years of evolutionary conditioning.
Say you go to a new restaurant and your wife is reading the menu to pick an item if you know your wife well enough, you can predict what she would like, even if it’s a restaurant which you never went to.
Doesn’t mean that she’s not making that choice. It’s just been pre-decided.
Yes, even though she is actually going through some options and trying to make a choice, if you know her, you can definitely predict it—this is a very simple argument for there’s no free will behind that choice.
If you can replicate her brain and body states perfectly, you can in the next moment, predict with 100% accuracy what she will do next, of course we need the algorithms that your brain and body is running as well.
And to clarify this doesn’t mean I can predict what she will do in an hour/day/month so on:
Human brain is actively learning from the environment, and our lives can turn upside down in a second.
Because environment is so unpredictable (at least with the current tech) its not possible to predict her body + brain state far in the future.
But if we can predict environment perfectly as well, then yes everything is pre-determined.