We have no free will, according to a scientist.

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My understanding of it - they found some type of voltage gradient that causes flatworms, when cut (that's how they divide, external structural insult), if that gradient has been activated it will be two two-headed worms. Then either one of these two-headed worms can have it deactivated, they're cut again, and both make tails and thus you'd have the two-headed worm from earlier with two new one-headed worms.

Yes I see what you mean. The worms share memories
https://phys.org/news/2013-07-flat-worm ... ation.html

The authors hypothesise this may be due to stem cells which convert to new neural cells retaining/carrying the memories (although they admit more work needs to be done).

If you take this to be analogous to humans then its possible humans who have memories from an organ donor carry the memory but don't really know the origin and secondly carrying a memory does not mean they are carrying an identity e,g, conciousness. I can see how in the future, injecting stem cells into somebody from another person means you are also inserting their memories.

einstein said that although he could not believe in free will, he still had to ACT as though there was free will. it was not clear to me as to WHY he had to ACT as IF there WAS free will. the concept offends my sense of cause and effect.

According to the legal system people are capable of free will when they commit a crime.

“The law is an ass—an idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience”. (charles dickens, "oliver twist")

The way I'd understand needing to 'act' as if you believe in free will - if you don't do things correctly you'll end up with nature, other people, or life punishing you, or if you screw up badly enough (especially with nature or physics) possibly killing you. You're forced to have an engrained sense of keeping yourself alive, Sam Harris put it well when he talked about this at length at the start of an interview he had with an American Buddhist monk about the topic of death where he described most of our moment to moment choices being about evading the causes we're aware of that lead to death.

That need to take care of and look after yourself from moment to moment doesn't go away if you don't believe in free will. You're part of a causal structure where the outside world as well as your subconscious structures are throwing you some degree of surprise that you need to adapt to. Sometimes it'll be low stress and you won't be under pressure to take certain actions, other times you will be under considerable pressure or stress. Even if there's zero free will you won't be able to experience it directly (at least not easily) as you're a part of that drive train and can only 'sort of' view it as an impartial outside observer when your life isn't on the line.

Fun fact: He made the "ass" remark in response to the discovery that the law considered a man and his wife to be the same person. He didn't get on well with his wife.

I get on quite well with mine, but I still think the law is an ass if it thinks people are capable of free will. And if it didn't, things would go on much the same - accused claims he had no choice, judge says "neither have I" and hands out the same sentence.

No mystery there. To me Einstein was just stating the obvious.

We dont have free will, but we are forced to pretend we have free will in order to survive (as Tech said).

Except when you are being prosecuted in a court of law

I think it's more prosaic in that our decisions are to avoid negative consequences. In our formative years we are conditioned to learn to avoid punishment. Thus there are boundaries we set for ourselves in adulthood. Even acts of altruism or generosity are hard wired, humans need social bonds so acts of kindness are expected to be reciprocated. The same with concern for our environment, The land is ultimately a resource whether for our exploitation or our entertainment,

I really didn't say something less prosaic though, there's a spectrum from simple error to death and it occupies / comingles in the same space which is our responsibility to avoid making mistakes that put us at risk.

Yes, well on that continuum death is the ultimate punishment from bad decisions

It's not all that mysterious to me either, though I'd have a hard time explaining in plain English how it makes sense. I guess if I ask myself "why did I do x," a plausible answer is "because I am the man that I am, and I can't help that." It feels somewhat eerie if I see myself as an automaton out of my own control though, as just a part of the universe's collection of particles that are going where they have to go, and when I try, I keep snapping back into the "I have free will" mode. Hmm....I have to admit that those ideas don't really cut it like most of my explanations of most things seem to. Still, I don't know of anybody else who has explained it any more clearly, except maybe that quote "a man can will what he does, but he can't will what he wills" which I feel has a succinctness better than my efforts, but it's still somehow lacking.

A lot of what we decide to do is also programmed in our neural networks via our individual personality.

I don't buy into what this scientist claims. It reeks of an agenda and I wish more people were smart enough to realize that contrary to popular belief all scientists dont know everything. Many are also arrogant and arrogance is its own kind of stupidity.

Look at Sigmund Frued as a perfect example. People to this day treat him like a perfect genius but fail to realize he was nothing more than a sexually obsessed narcissist who hated women, stole much of his theories from other people's works, and he regarded his patients as "animals" and even experimented on them with bogus cures.

The man oftened referred to as the father of psychiatry was really just a crackpot and was the worst thing to ever happen to the study of Mental Health. But everyone somehow believes he was a praiseworthy genius to this day because that's the narrative that the media pushes.

I have a feeling it's going fo be the same sort of thing with this guy too.

I don't think the picture is as bleak as that. Few in the general population have even heard of Robert Sapolsky. The assertion that we have no free was controversial before he opened his mouth and remains so, and Sapolsky has his critics, e.g. this comment in the article the OP linked to: Sapolsky is “a wonderful explainer of complex......However, a person can be both brilliant and utterly wrong.”

Without evidence, we don't know whether he has an agenda or not, and I think it's better to focus on the assertions and not the man. Sometimes people are right for the wrong reasons.


Yes, but again I think you overestimate the problem. As soon as a person makes an arrogant statement, they've left the path of science. No doubt that kind of corruption goes on in the profession, but if it were the norm then science would fail to lead to practical inventions that work.


Freud wasn't a scientist. Many of his assertions were wrong or taken way too far. Freudian psychoanalysis isn't very often done these days, compared with psych meds and "talk therapies" that don't have much Freudian content. Most people don't think he was all that wonderful.

Well yes, just like Freud he'll make a few waves but his ideas won't take the whole world by storm. His waves will subside and we'll be left to cherry-pick the good bits. Nobody is free from talking rubbish from time to time.