Do We Have Free Will? | Robert Sapolsky & Andrew Huberman

If we have no free will, then my "choice" to believe that what Dr. Sapolsky is saying is true, isn't really a choice at all. If it's not really a free choice then the only reason I believe it is because of all of the environmental factors that he talks about and NOT because it's true. If we do not have free will then we can have no confidence that our beliefs are true including the belief that there is no free will. Thus his view is self refuting and should be rejected. This is why, as he states, 95%+ of philosophers don't agree with him.

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As a average 62 old male i disagree. My father was a life long alcoholic. Knowing i am predisposed to this i made/ make decisions to drink or not drink. A bender now and then ok. Having a regular bender is a warning sign and time to stop for a bit.

Hi Dr. Huberman,

I am a C2 ESL Ukrainian, in Ukraine since day 1 of the war. Plugging into your topic of the brain being influenced by environment and uplifting/depressing news - does feeling hopeless living under the risk of death from rockets and being unable to leave build and deepen my neural circuitry in the direction of perceiving life in general as traumatic and option-less? Would I have to rework myself again after the war? I feel stuck in limbo without feeling the world outside. Feeling a direction and being motivated is hard under these circumstances.

Thank you.

the thing i cant comprehend is he says that the decisions we make are predetermined. so the choice of me expressing myself to less deppresing events was also predetermined. same thing goes in reverse too. the people who changed were lucky ones cause their neurbiology and physiology allowed them to do so. they were gifted a human setup which was more appropriate to do "good" things.

I think there is an omitted strand of the determinist position here, which is that this implied capacity to become "more sensitized to optimistic stimuli" is itself fully determined by the set of prior conditions in one's anatomy (neurochemistry, psychology, etc) in its interactions with the external world. Therefore it's not possible for all, and such experienced optimism is therefore no more a choice than the experienced pessimism that preceded it ( but conditions the shift IN SOME PEOPLE towards optimism). Our desire to feel better about me, about the world, etc is not something I MADE, but something arising in the construction that neurobiology and its environment have created. Those engines are not "MINE" from some supervening place.

Yes we don’t have free will, or No, indeed we have free will.

You can only believe in free will, if you believe in a SOUL, in God or something supernatural.

Also keep in mind: If there is no free will, there is also no Good&Evil. Was Adolf Hitler an evil person if he didn’t have free will?

I cannot fully agree with this man eminent though he is a wet day may constrain my freedom but does not abolish it.

Not inside the simulation.

"Either from experience or making to the end of the right neurobiology class has thought you that change can happen within a framework of a mechanistic neurobiology. You are now more open to being made optimistic by the good news in the world. You are more likely to be inspired by this or that. You are more resistant to getting discouraged by bad news - simply because you know understand, it's possible." <3 LOVE THIS, great stuff. You can become much much better, even though it's just the particles in your body that end up causing it. But a wise person is opened to the possibility of this having a good effect on oneself.

I had to watch this video I had no choice. What's a poor sea slug to do? Wait! I can be inspired, hopeful and optimistic? Mechanistic biology is so cool.

Yes and no. Don't listen to these people on questions of consciousness and philosophy of mind. They're both materialists; materialism can't find consciousness in the brain.

Robert Sapolsky answer the question Directly. Yes or No! Not like other speakers! And I LOVE IT!

It seems for me that we are an expression of the univers and we are going in a direction. And more you are align with where the direction goes, more you feel a fulfillment. And as a individual human being we haven’t chose this direction.

Just to clarify, "will" and "freewill" are two very different things. "Will" has to do with willing something to happen, e.g., deciding to go for a walk, picking up a pencil, etc. (And a case could be made for that being largely deterministic.) "Freewill" has to do with making a moral decision, choosing between right and wrong. If one were to argue that freewill doesn't exist, then by implication they would be also advocating for there being no difference between right and wrong, or by extension, no difference between truth and error. Does anyone seriously believe that?

Sapolsky is a Legend.
This video is only a tiny spec what this man contributed so far.

Amor Fati

Interesting. But compared to the animals we have more possibility of using these parameters

Free choice or free will is definitely 100 % illusion, but the point is that our life is not ruled by such "facts"..reality is not an objectifiable thing it is mainly just a word..which is interpreted differently from every single person on this planet. If one is feeling free (in his decisions) he is actually free, if one is feeling constrained, he is actually not free.

What we call the mind is not stable at all does not know between right and wrong cold or hot and so on but what we do have is concepts the human factory instructing humans how to behave but nature will take its course at the end.

Actions and thoughts are caused by the depolarization of neurons along their axis as positively charged sodium atoms flow into the neuron through the volted sodium gates which punctuate the axis of the neuron..... therefore causing a positive charge to flow down the neuron......... if you don't control the sodium atoms flowing into the neuron you don't control your thoughts or actions

And that's it ....... Welcone to reality

The idea of "free will" was invented by early humans as a way to organize their communities. When people are taught that they have "free will" they can then be controlled by a power elite who now have a way to hold each person responsible for their actions. This was quickly codified into religion to entrench the idea and to exercise even better control over the population. "Free will" is, incidentally, a core part of our legal system. In the USA we have the largest percentage of our population in prison because of our strong belief in a "free will" and our belief that "liberty" is a basic human right. "Crime and punishment" is our slogan but it really makes no sense. We could build a more peaceful and just society by emphasizing that we are all part of a community.

We can't change ourselves by ourselves but our cells can be changed by our interaction with external circumstances. Do I have that right?

Love this thank you about Free will education.

Sapolsky contradicts himself in the first sentence.

Which soul manage and control the brain what to do and how to do?

"Although Sapolsky highlights the influence of neural processes on decision-making, the brain's complexity can also contribute to the emergence of novel thoughts and actions. The brain's ability to integrate information from various sources and generate unique patterns of thought might be a source of human agency and free will."

Good one! Rings right!

So, our actions are mechanistic and entirely governed by circumstance, hence there is no free will. Free will as sth "in your brain, but not of your brain". I wanted to argue with that and lost. :P I guess free will to me is a function of the scope of our cognition compared to a snail, but then... aren't the circumstances we respond to only of a broader array compared to a snail?

Nahhh 😂 !!!! Priceless

In much simpler terms.
You can't do, but you are done!

No me. No freewill. No immortality. OR A me that is immortal.

Both Dr. Sapolsky and Dr. Huberman are prolific authors and lecturers. They have written several books and articles on their research, and they give talks at conferences and on podcasts. They are both passionate about using their research to help people understand and manage stress.

I think that both Dr. Sapolsky and Dr. Huberman are doing important work in the field of neuroscience. Their research is helping us to understand the biological basis of stress and its effects on the brain and body. This knowledge can help us to develop better treatments for stress-related disorders and to prevent stress from causing damage to our health.

So ... consciousness is a ghost riding in a biological robot that's 100% programmed. Hmmm ... I probably agree, but then what the hell is the point of it? Nothing. What now? Can I choose to jump off a bridge? Damn, that was programmed too! No Exit.

This is just so pessimistic, imo. "I think, therefore I Am", does not define the who, what, when, where, how, and why of what we are, and it doesn't have to. Just because we are influenced by everything around us, as well as our physical makeup, doesn't disprove free will. It's just that free will is destroyed by the subjectivity of Plato's Cave. You lose control of cause and effect when you subscribe to subjective duality.

This dude sounds like a clown. Sam Harris has the only take that’s somewhat intriguing.

free will is this woo-woo term that nobody can truly define and the eventual answer might also be the same sort of answer in trying to define nothingness. It's an I don't know thing...as we don't know all the laws of physics, the laws that apply to other dimensions and exoplanets...ideas of the afterlife and the soul...so it depends on how you define it but no matter which way you flip it it's slightly obfuscated. But in general it's a nonsensical term

We have at most 4-5 choises too choose between per case, partly what you have afford to buy but even a millionair are trapped in his own mind and act limited (Howard Hughes was terrified of bacillus so his mobility was increased to none.) our taste and attractions are highly determent of our subconscious and get twisted of abusements.

Imagine that you have a rock. You hit the rock and split it in two. Inside, you see a message. It could be any message you like, perhaps it says "free will is a myth". Does this image that you recognize as a written message have any standing as evidence about what the message purports to be about?

Remember. This in an inanimate rock, formed by natural processes, stacked one on another since the beginning of the universe itself.

If the message has no standing (which it doesn't), then the same applies to anything else in the universe, including the thoughts and words of Dr Robert Sapolsky.

This is the fallacy of self-exclusion. Where in this case, we try to reason that something cannot exist by using a method (reason) that relies upon the very phenomena we are attempting to refute. The rational animal trying to prove that he is not rational.

Cause and Effect: Belief in a strictly materialistic Darwinian Evolution leads one to believe, albeit falsely, that there is no Free Will. And if there is no Free Will, then there is no Right and Wrong and no Moral Law. However, this belief is completely contrary to everything that is practiced and observed in nature, humanity, and the cosmos regarding cause and effect. This line of reasoning is what led to the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc and is the hidden underlying ideology / worldview justifying and directing many countries' Social Darwinian based foreign and domestic policies to the present. The Social Darwinian Materialistic Ideology / Worldview (Survival of the Fittest among nations, i.e. the continuous lawless struggle for resource wealth and world rule without regard to human moral / ethical standards or International / U.S. Laws) fabricates false scientific justification for racism and is the Root Cause of modern era World Wars and Perpetual Wars.

Robert, the science you rely upon for your argument is itself an example and expression of. Free will. At every step the carrying out of neuroscience requires the persons involved to exercise their own choices about what to do observe record and report.
Science is nothing but an exercise in attention to one set of parameters and ignoring others

TLDR: NO!

He forgot that thoughts and neurons can be the environment/circumstance/influence of another thought and neuron. And then some of those neurons basically embody "you". That's where the "degree" of free will come from. That's why people who are known to be brainy give the impression of possessing more free will.

Man can do what he wills, but can't will what he wills.

Arthur Schopenhauer

I love Sapolsky but you should take everything Huberman says with a grain of salt. He has a tendency to overstate where research is at on specific issues and he hawks supplements without much data behind them.

sapolsky is a great scientist but speaks in a monotonous way

the irony is that we live in a universe that caused us to believe that we have free will even though factually we don't.