You have no free will at all | Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky

Summary

In a thought-provoking interview on 'Big Think,' Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a distinguished professor at Stanford University and acclaimed neuroscientist, delves into the concept of free will and its implications for humanity. Sapolsky challenges the traditional understanding of free will by arguing that our behaviors are shaped by a multitude of factors, from biology and environment to societal norms and personal experiences, all of which are beyond our control. He introduces the concept of 'distributed causality,' which highlights how countless microscopic influences contribute to our actions and decisions. The interview explores the impact of these factors on human behavior, the role of the frontal cortex in decision-making, and the importance of understanding the root causes behind actions. Sapolsky also discusses the implications for society, particularly in the legal system, where he advocates for a quarantine model that focuses on protecting society from dangerous individuals without resorting to blame or punishment. His insights encourage a deeper reflection on the nature of human agency and the complex interplay between our biology, environment, and societal constructs.

Takeaways

• 🧠 The human frontal cortex is the part of the brain least influenced by genetics and is shaped by environmental and experiential factors well into adulthood.
• 🧬 Our genes have evolved to allow the frontal cortex to be more influenced by environmental determinism rather than strict genetic determinism, reflecting the complexity of cultural learning.
• 📚 Dr. Robert Sapolsky's book 'Determined' builds on his previous work 'Behave', aiming to clarify the concept that free will may be an illusion due to the biological and environmental influences on our actions.
• 🤔 The concept of free will often overlooks the critical question of how an individual's character and intentions are formed, which is influenced by factors beyond their control.
• 🌐 Distributed causality refers to the multitude of factors, from an individual's current environment to their ancestral culture, that contribute to their actions and decisions.
• ⏳ Small, seemingly insignificant factors such as hunger, fatigue, or stress can significantly impact a person's decision-making process, as demonstrated by various studies.
• 👶 Childhood experiences and the environment during upbringing play a crucial role in shaping an individual's brain and behavior, affecting their actions later in life.
• 👵 Parenting styles and cultural practices are passed down through generations and are instrumental in perpetuating cultural values and norms within a society.
• 🧪 The study of cross-cultural differences reveals how child-rearing practices are adapted to instill the values necessary for survival and success within a specific cultural context.
• 🧵 The evolution of the human brain, particularly the frontal cortex, has been influenced by the need to learn and adapt to the complex social structures and moral codes of our societies.
• 🌟 While the concept of free will may be challenged by deterministic views, the ability to reflect on our actions and their causes allows for a form of 'steerability' within the system, encouraging a deeper understanding of human behavior.

Q & A

How does Dr. Robert Sapolsky define free will in the context of the human brain?

Dr. Sapolsky argues that while people often believe they are exercising free will when they make choices, this perspective overlooks the critical question of how they became the type of person who would have that intent at that point. He suggests that our actions are the result of a complex interplay between biology and environment, both of which are beyond our control.

What is the significance of the frontal cortex in terms of genetic influences and environmental determinism?

The frontal cortex is the part of the brain that is most free from genetic influences, as it continues to be shaped by the environment and experiences even a quarter-century after birth. This is in contrast to most of the rest of the brain, which is largely sculpted by experiences within the first two to three years of life.

How does Dr. Sapolsky's concept of 'distributed causality' apply to human behavior?

Dr. Sapolsky's concept of 'distributed causality' refers to the multitude of factors, from neuronal activity to cultural upbringing, that contribute to a person's actions or decisions. It emphasizes that there isn't a single cause for any behavior but rather a complex web of influences that together determine the outcome.

What is the role of the environment in shaping our behavior according to Dr. Sapolsky?

According to Dr. Sapolsky, the environment plays a significant role in shaping our behavior. He explains that our actions are not just a result of our current environment but also the cumulative effect of all experiences from the moment we were conceived.

How does Dr. Sapolsky's view on free will impact our understanding of responsibility and punishment in society?

Dr. Sapolsky suggests that if we truly accept the lack of free will, then the concepts of blame and punishment become less meaningful. Instead of punishing, society should focus on understanding the root causes of harmful behavior and采取措施 to prevent such behaviors, similar to a public health approach.

What is the evolutionary purpose of the delayed maturation of the frontal cortex?

The delayed maturation of the frontal cortex, according to Dr. Sapolsky, has evolved to allow humans to learn the complex social rules and moral codes of their society. This extended learning period is necessary because it takes time to understand the nuances of societal norms, which are not genetically hardwired but are learned through experience.

How does Dr. Sapolsky explain the impact of childhood experiences on the development of the brain?

Dr. Sapolsky discusses how childhood experiences, such as the style of parenting and cultural practices, can have profound effects on brain development. These experiences help shape the neural patterns and influence how the brain is wired, which in turn affects behavior and decision-making later in life.

What does Dr. Sapolsky suggest as an alternative to the concepts of praise and reward if free will is an illusion?

Dr. Sapolsky implies that praise and reward are also challenging to justify if free will does not exist, as they are based on the assumption that individuals have control over their achievements. Instead, he suggests recognizing the role of circumstances and opportunities that contribute to success.

How does Dr. Sapolsky connect the concept of 'distributed causality' to the story of Phineas Gage?

Dr. Sapolsky uses the story of Phineas Gage to illustrate 'distributed causality'. Gage's dramatic personality change after a severe brain injury shows how a single, identifiable cause can have a concentrated effect on behavior. However, in most cases, behavior is influenced by a multitude of factors that are not as easily identifiable.

What is the significance of the study mentioned by Dr. Sapolsky regarding judges' decisions and their meal times?

The study demonstrates how a seemingly unrelated factor, such as the time since a judge's last meal, can significantly impact their decisions. This illustrates the concept of 'distributed causality', showing that even minor environmental factors can have a substantial influence on complex tasks like decision-making.

How does Dr. Sapolsky view the role of education in preparing people to reflect and make better decisions?

Dr. Sapolsky suggests that education plays a crucial role in training individuals to stop and reflect before making decisions. By fostering an understanding of the complexities of decision-making and the factors that influence it, education can help people become more thoughtful and less impulsive in their choices.

Outlines

00:00

🧠 Insights on Free Will from Dr. Robert Sapolsky

Dr. Robert Sapolsky discusses the unique nature of the frontal cortex, which is significantly influenced by environmental factors rather than genetic determinism. He explores the concept of free will, emphasizing that while we perceive our choices as free, they are actually shaped by biological and environmental factors beyond our control.

05:02

🎯 Distributed Causality Explained

Sapolsky elaborates on the concept of 'distributed causality,' explaining how various factors, from immediate environmental stimuli to historical and cultural influences, shape human behavior. He highlights the complexity of understanding actions through the lens of multiple contributing factors, contrasting it with the simplicity of attributing behavior to major events like brain damage.

10:03

📜 The Story of Phineas Gage

Sapolsky recounts the famous case of Phineas Gage, whose personality drastically changed after a traumatic brain injury. This case exemplifies how significant damage to the frontal cortex can alter behavior, demonstrating the importance of this brain region in self-control and decision-making.

15:07

⚖️ Judges and Decision-Making Influences

Sapolsky discusses a study on parole board judges, showing that their decisions are influenced by factors such as the time since their last meal. This example illustrates how even minor physiological states can significantly impact decision-making processes.

20:09

🏫 Education and Reflection in Society

Sapolsky explores the idea of training individuals to be more reflective and aware of the distributed causality influencing their actions. He emphasizes the importance of creating societal conditions that encourage deeper contemplation and understanding of one's actions and decisions.

25:09

🤖 AI and Free Will Discussions

Sapolsky touches on the emerging discussions around artificial intelligence, drawing parallels between machine learning and human cognition. He debates the notion that complex systems, whether biological or artificial, could exhibit properties akin to free will.

30:09

🌊 Understanding Emergent Properties

Sapolsky explains the concept of emergent properties, using examples like wetness and consciousness. He clarifies that while complex behaviors and traits can emerge from simple interactions, this does not equate to free will, as it does not alter the fundamental nature of the components involved.

35:11

👶 Cultural Impacts on Brain Development

Sapolsky describes how different cultural practices, such as child-rearing methods, shape brain development and behavior. He contrasts collectivist and individualist cultures, illustrating how these cultural norms influence everything from parenting styles to societal values.

40:11

🐟 Collectivist vs. Individualist Perspectives

Sapolsky provides examples of how collectivist and individualist cultures differently interpret and react to scenarios, such as viewing a lone fish. He also discusses how ancestral environments, like desert or rainforest, shape cultural traits and values.

45:12

🧬 Evolution and Brain Development

Sapolsky delves into the evolutionary aspects of brain development, particularly the delayed maturation of the frontal cortex. He explains how this delay allows for greater environmental and experiential shaping of moral and decision-making frameworks.

50:13

🌏 Passing Cultural Values Through Generations

Sapolsky discusses how child-rearing practices are designed to pass cultural values and norms to the next generation, shaping brains to reflect societal beliefs and behaviors. He highlights the importance of these practices in maintaining cultural continuity.

🍎 Steerability and Decision-Making

Sapolsky addresses the concept of 'steerability,' explaining how understanding the influences on our decisions can help us make better choices. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing the factors that shape our actions to navigate life's challenges more effectively.

🛑 Reframing Blame and Reward

Sapolsky argues that traditional notions of blame and reward are incompatible with the understanding that behavior is shaped by factors beyond our control. He advocates for a more nuanced approach, focusing on understanding root causes and promoting positive change without attributing moral judgment.

🔒 Quarantine Model for Dangerous Individuals

Sapolsky proposes a 'quarantine' approach for dealing with dangerous individuals, similar to public health strategies. This model emphasizes protecting society while understanding and addressing the underlying causes of dangerous behavior, without invoking blame or punishment.

Keywords

💡Frontal Cortex

The frontal cortex is a part of the brain associated with higher cognitive functions like decision-making, self-control, and personality expression. In the video, Dr. Sapolsky discusses how the frontal cortex is uniquely shaped by environmental and experiential factors rather than genetic determinism, highlighting its late maturation as an evolutionary adaptation to learn societal norms.

💡Free Will

Free will is the concept that individuals have the power to make choices that are not determined by prior events or circumstances. Dr. Sapolsky challenges the traditional notion of free will, arguing that our actions are the result of a complex interplay of biological and environmental factors beyond our control.

💡Determinism

Determinism is the philosophical position that all events, including moral choices, are determined by previously existing causes. The video explores determinism in the context of human behavior, suggesting that our actions are not freely chosen but are determined by a multitude of factors, from genetics to environment.

💡Distributed Causality

Distributed causality refers to the idea that a complex behavior or decision results from numerous contributing factors rather than a single cause. Dr. Sapolsky uses this concept to explain human actions, indicating that they are influenced by a vast array of elements from brain chemistry to cultural upbringing.

💡Environmental Determinism

Environmental determinism is the idea that an individual's development is strongly influenced by their environment. The video emphasizes that the human frontal cortex is particularly malleable to environmental influences, which is crucial for learning the complex social norms of our culture.

💡Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system, including the brain. The video uses insights from neuroscience to discuss the biological basis of behavior and the impact of brain structure and function on our actions and decisions.

💡Evolution

Evolution is the process by which species of organisms change over time through selective pressures. Dr. Sapolsky discusses the evolutionary reasons behind the development of the human frontal cortex, emphasizing its role in adapting to various social environments.

💡Cultural Influence

Cultural influence refers to the impact of one's culture on their behavior, values, and beliefs. The video explores how cultural practices, such as child-rearing styles, shape our brains and influence our actions in ways that reflect the values of the society we live in.

💡Child Rearing

Child rearing encompasses the practices and attitudes towards raising children within a particular culture. Dr. Sapolsky highlights how different child-rearing methods across cultures can lead to distinct behaviors and mindsets in adults, reflecting the importance of early life experiences.

💡Blame and Punishment

Blame and punishment are concepts that involve assigning responsibility for wrongdoing and enforcing consequences. The video challenges these concepts by suggesting that, in a deterministic view, individuals cannot be held fully responsible for their actions due to the multitude of factors influencing their behavior.

💡Quarantine

In the context of the video, 'quarantine' is used metaphorically to describe the approach of isolating or constraining individuals who pose a danger to others, not as a form of punishment, but as a means of public safety, reflecting a shift from retribution to prevention and understanding.

Highlights

The human frontal cortex is the part of the brain least influenced by genetics and is continuously shaped by environmental and experiential factors well into adulthood.

Dr. Robert Sapolsky discusses the concept of free will and its implications for human behavior and responsibility.

Sapolsky's book 'Determined' serves as a follow-up to 'Behave', aiming to clarify the misunderstandings about free will.

Behavior is the result of a combination of biological, environmental, and experiential factors, not merely a product of free will.

The idea of free will often overlooks the critical question of how an individual's character is formed by factors beyond their control.

Language and the way we describe human actions are filled with implications of free will, which can be misleading.

Sapolsky introduces the term 'distributed causality' to describe the multitude of factors influencing human behavior.

Cultural, environmental, and genetic factors all play a role in shaping an individual's actions and decisions.

The story of Phineas Gage illustrates the significant impact of brain damage on personality and behavior.

Small, seemingly insignificant factors can have a profound impact on decision-making processes in the brain.

Judges' decisions in parole cases have been shown to be influenced by their blood glucose levels.

Sapolsky emphasizes the importance of questioning and reflecting on the reasons behind people's actions multiple times.

Education and societal structures can be designed to encourage reflection and understanding of the complexities of human behavior.

The concept of emergence in complex systems does not support the idea of free will as an emergent property.

Sapolsky argues against the use of blame and punishment, proposing a model of quarantine for dangerous individuals instead.

The idea that success is earned is challenged; instead, Sapolsky suggests considering the unearned privileges that contribute to one's success.

Sapolsky concludes by advocating for a society that protects its members without relying on the concepts of blame or meritocracy.

Transcripts

- Your frontal cortex is the part of your brain

that is the freest from genetic influences

because it's still being sculpted by environment

and experience a quarter-century after you plopped out there

whereas most of the rest of your brain

is sculpted by two or three years worth of experience.

Whoa, we evolved, our genes evolved

to free our frontal cortex from strict genetic determinism,

and to make it much more sculpted

by environmental determinism.

- Today on "Big Think,"

we delve into a thought-provoking conversation

with Dr. Robert Sapolsky.

He shares with us his insights

on his concept of free will or the lack thereof,

and its profound implications for humanity.

Robert Sapolsky is a distinguished professor

at Stanford University, acclaimed for his expertise

in biology, neurology, and neurosurgery.

Renowned as a MacArthur Genius Fellow

and a research associate at the National Museum of Kenya,

Sapolsky offers a unique perspective on the human condition

drawing from over three decades of experience

as both a field primatologist

and a laboratory neuroscientist.

Widely hailed as one of the best science writers

of our time, Sapolsky is the author

of several bestselling books,

including "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers,"

"The Trouble with Testosterone,"

and his latest work, "Determined."

Dr. Robert Sapolsky,

thank you for joining us on "Big Think" today.

- Well, thanks for having me on.

It's a pleasure.

- So I'm curious, why did you write this book?

- Well, I had no plans to,

in that I thought I had written the necessary book

about five years ago or so.

2017, I published a book called

"Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst,"

and it's incredibly- like 800-page nightmare of a book.

And in the aftermath, doing a lot of lecturing about it

and one of the themes that comes through in the book

is our behavior is the end product

of what happened to us a second ago, a minute ago,

an hour, a year, a decade, a lifetime-all of that.

And I figured when I would lecture to audiences about this

and take them through this,

they'd all come away saying,

"Oh, I get it, there's no free will whatsoever."

And instead, there'd often be questions like,

"You know, given all the stuff you were just telling us,

it seems like there might be a little bit less free will

than we often think."

And I realized, "Oh God, the book was way too subtle.

I have to write one now of just hitting people over the head

saying there's no free will, there's no free will."

So that's the follow-up book.

- You've written "Behave," you now have "Determined,"

and you've at length explained why we don't have free will.

I'm curious if you could provide us

with the most succinct version of that argument for us,

just to foreground things for our audience.

- Sure.

Everybody thinks they're seeing free will

when we choose something.

We're consciously aware of doing it,

we know what the consequences are likely to be.

Most importantly, we know there's alternatives

available to us.

And for most people that's necessary and sufficient,

there's free will.

And my whole point is that misses everything that's going on

because you're not asking the only important question,

which is: How did you become the sort of person

who would have that intent at that point?

And the answer is because of the biology

over which you had no control,

interacting with the environment

over which you had no control,

stretching from one second ago

to the moment you were an fertilized egg.

And when you look at how that stuff works,

there's not a crack anywhere in there

in which you can insert

sort of the everyday intuitive notion of free will.

- One of the things that I think trips people up

is just how much our language that we use

to describe human action is just laden with meaning

that feels like free will.

I'm curious, how much time do you spend thinking

about the language that you use to describe human action

and human behaviors so that it can somewhat be divorced

or separated from this idea of free will?

- Where people sort of get into terminology troubles there

is a difference between- you can be a causal mechanism.

I could pick up something

and I've caused it to move upward in the air.

I have caused every molecule in it to move upward.

Is the ability to be a causal agent, causality

the same thing as free will?

No, I may choose to do this at this point

but that has nothing to do with the issue of

"How did I become the sort of person

who would say that to you at this point,

and do this with my right hand instead of my left hand,

and not find some item here to lift up at the same time?"

And people get gummed up at, yeah, we make choices

and we cause things to happen, and it splits in the road.

We even make decisions as to which thing

we're going to make happen, this instead of that.

But again, that's not an issue of demonstrating free will.

- In preparation for this interview

I watched the conversation that you had with Alex O'Connor

of the wonderful "Within Reason" podcast.

And in that conversation

you use this term 'distributed causality'

to describe the multitude of things that can lead up

to a person performing an action or making a decision.

And I really wanna dig into that.

What is distributed causality

and how does it influence the actions that humans perform

or the decisions that humans make?

Hey, Big Thinkers.

We're gonna return to the interview

with Robert Sapolsky in a moment

but I wanna talk to you

about our Big Think membership program.

If you wanna dive deeper into Big Think content

you should become a Big Think member

and join our members-only community at members.bigthink.com,

where you can watch videos early and unlock full interviews.

What is distributed causality

and how does it influence the actions that humans perform

or the decisions that humans make?

- Great.

Okay.

So somebody behaves, does something or other

and why did they do that?

Why did that occur?

And part of the answer is,

"Well, what went on in their neurons

a tenth of a second ago?"

But what you're also asking is, "What stimuli

in the environment in the previous minutes

got those neurons to do that?"

And you're also asking

what did this morning's hormone levels have to do with it?

And you're asking what does the plasticity of the brain

in the previous months to decades-

trauma, heartache, finding love, finding God-

all of those things change the brain.

And then before you know it, you're asking

what are the person's adolescence and childhood

and fetal life have to do with it?

What are the genes have to do with it?

And remarkably, you gotta go even one step further back.

What kind of culture were your ancestors inventing?

Parentheses in what sort of ecosystems

'cause that had something to do with it.

Culture centuries ago, why is that relevant?

Because your mother mothered you according to the ways

in which she was raised in her culture

or translated a different way.

Your brain was being constructed at that point

as a function and part of what your ancestors

were up to a millennium ago.

And the key thing there in terms of distributed causality

is like you're trying to figure out

why somebody did something-

and this is someone who had a car accident

and had massive amounts of damage to their frontal cortex.

And as a result, they can't regulate their behavior.

And it's easy for us to see where

some unacceptable behavior of theirs came from.

Yeah, massive brain damage.

There's this big, massive cable of causal explanation

going from that car accident to why they did what they did.

Distributed causality is the much harder thing we have

for people where there's not an easy explanation

because what you're doing instead

is looking at the gazillion little microscopic threads

of influence from your ancestors' culture

and your fetal life and what color underwear

you're wearing today and all of these things.

And it's so much harder to not only see

all these little microscopic threads,

but to believe that when you put them all together,

that is as causative of a cable

as something as simple as like a massive car accident.

It's easier for us to see in those cases.

It's really hard to see that there's a gazillion things,

each of which contribute one-gazillionth

of a percentage point to explain what went on.

- One of the things I was wondering if you could do for us

is sort of relay the story of Phineas Gage.

He's obviously a famous example in neuroscience,

but it seems like it's what I would call

something like concentrated causality

where we are able to identify what changed

and what the change was to the person's brain.

So do you mind relaying that story for us?

- Phineas Gage marks like year zero

that brain science had something important to say

about how we become who we are.

1840s: Phineas Gage was a guy working on a railroad crew,

building railroad lines and somebody screwed up

something or other with some explosive TNT

and he did something and the result was an explosion

that blew a 13-pound, three-foot long iron rod

up through one of his eyes and out the front of his head,

landing 50 feet away and taking with it

Phineas Gage's frontal cortex landing out there.

And the amazing thing was this shot through

with sufficient force that it like cauterized

all the blood vessels, like he wasn't bleeding out

or anything, he was just kind of sitting there saying,

"Whoa, that's weird."

And like all sorts of people were saying like,

"Whoa, there's a hole going through your eye

there up to the top of your head."

So they took him to the town doctor

and showing how bizarrely clean of an injury this was.

He rode part of the way or he walked part of the way

and he got to the doctor who could finally give

like a medical diagnosis.

The doctor looked and said, "Whoa, you got a big hole

going on there between your eye and the top of your head."

And that was about the state of science at the time.

And the key thing is this sober, reliable guy

who was the foreman of the work crew

became this impulsive, foul-mouthed bully

doing all sorts of inappropriate stuff,

was unable to keep a work schedule,

wasn't able to work for years afterward.

And what one had just seen was something or other

in this part of the brain has a whole lot to do

with self-control and gratification,

postponement and emotional regulation.

And Gage was like the perfect case

of one single unsubtle TNT-driven explosive cause

of his winding up having very poor regulation

of his behavior.

And what we've learned since then

is look at a gazillion events in fetal life and childhood,

all of which are shaping the frontal cortex

into whether it's good at making right decisions or not.

So he's the one everybody learns because it was so dramatic.

And yeah, all you do then is look at subtler stuff

and it has the same thing.

Your frontal cortex is made of brain stuff

and your ability to do the right thing

when that's the harder thing to do

is made of brain stuff also.

- I'd love to dig into some of that brain stuff.

And I know other parts of the body and your microbiology

and even your environment can impact

this distributed causality.

If say there was like an hour or even seconds

prior to an action or a decision being made,

what are some like specific systems

that could lead to an individual

or a person taking a specific type of action?

- So you've got a nice volunteer

and you've given them this task,

which is they have to decide

whether or not to shoot somebody

under the following circumstance.

They have a fraction of a second to look at the person

and to decide if the thing in that person's hand

is a cell phone or a handgun.

We know exactly the relevance of this to the real world.

And it turns out all sorts of things modulate

people's ability to decide what it is they're seeing

in a fraction of a second.

Are you hungry?

Are you tired?

Are you scared?

Are you stressed?

Are you in an environment you consider

to be dangerous or benevolent?

Is it nighttime?

Is it daytime?

And as we know, tragically,

what's this person's skin color?

Are they a young male?

All of that stuff.

And it shows that your brain in a fraction of a second

will make different decisions

as to whether or not that's a handgun

based on the stuff that's been going on in the previous hour

exactly as you say.

What we also know is say if that person,

if they're male, if their testosterone levels

had been elevated over the previous 24 hours,

part of the brain would be functioning differently,

part of the brain called the amygdala-

and what happens is you look at somebody

with a neutral facial expression

and you're more likely than average

to decide that instead they look threatening.

So you're that much more likely to decide

it's a handgun and pull a trigger.

And if you went through trauma, combat trauma a decade ago

and had PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder,

your amygdala would have grown bigger

and been more reactive

and been more likely to send a signal to pull the trigger

before you had the chance to say,

"Wait a second, let's look a second time

and see if that really is a handgun-

it's a cell phone."

All of this from one second ago

to how much stress hormones you were exposed to

when you were a fetus going into that moment

as to whether or not you're gonna make

a totally tragic decision in a fraction of a second.

- In thinking about that example, it's like, "Yes, okay.

I'm in a threatening situation.

It's pretty obvious that some of these sort

of environmental stimuli might impact my behaviors."

I mean, we have reaction times as it relates to predators

and things of that from our evolutionary biology-

like I get that.

I can see how those other factors might impact the decision

that I'm making in that particular moment.

But one of my favorite anecdotes from your book

was actually about judges and parole

and how their decisions are also causal related

to things that they're doing earlier in the day.

Do you mind talking about that example for me?

- I love this study,

and I should say it's become quite prominent.

I should also say a number of other researchers

have challenged the results along statistical lines

and the authors have completely refuted those challenges

and the basic finding has been replicated,

all of that, it's solid.

So this was a study published

in this very prestigious journal,

looking at a bunch of parole board judges

and all the parole decisions they made

over the course of the years,

hundreds, looking at the simple question,

is there anything that predicted who they let go free

and who they sent back to jail?

And it turned out that the single most powerful predictor

was how many hours it had been

since the judge had eaten a meal.

Appear before the judge

right after they've just had a great lunch

and you had approximately 60% chance of getting parole,

by a few hours later, you're down to 0% chance.

Oh my God, what's this about?

What this is about is your brain is expensive.

It takes a huge amount of energy to run,

and it's 3% of your body mass, it takes 25% of the energy

and if you got low blood glucose,

your brain isn't gonna work as well,

and especially the parts of the brain

like your frontal cortex that are saying,

"Wait, wait, wait, don't just jump to a fast decision

and send them back to jail.

Think about this guy's life.

Think about his perspective in the world.

Think about, think a second time, a fifth time,

do the harder thing," and it's easier for your brain

to instead say, "Just send 'em back to jail."

And what's amazing to me is not only that we understand

some of this workings of it,

but what's also amazing is you sit down

one of those judges at that point and say,

"Whoa, that's really interesting.

Remember right after lunch, you had this guy here

who had done X and you paroled him

and just now this guy here who had done X also

and you sent him back to jail, what's the difference here?"

The judge isn't gonna talk about his blood glucose levels,

he's gonna talk about freshman philosophy class

or something and studies since then have extended it.

If you wanna get a loan from a bank,

do not go and ask for one

when the person hasn't eaten for hours.

If you want somebody to spend more time

looking at your resume, if you're applying for a job,

ask him to look at it right after lunch,

that yeah- that has something to do with it.

Yeah, that's part of what's going on

and your brain is embedded in your body.

- When I heard that anecdote, part of me thought about

like, what do we do with this piece of information?

Like specifically from like,

if people are performing important actions

and making important choices,

where things like whether they ate a meal early enough

for their body to sort of like have sufficient energy

for them to do sort of some of the higher level processing

that they need with complex decisions,

it feels like that's an easy solve, like eat something.

- Yes, eat something.

And I had the singularly interesting privilege

on a number of occasions to talk to groups of judges

about exactly this and whoa,

they do not like hearing about this study.

Yeah, that one's an easy fix, eat something.

What's not as easy of a fix is,

"Whoa, you were exposed to a massive trauma 20 years ago,"

or "Oh, you were raised in poverty,"

or "Oh, your fetal brain was pickled in alcohol

because your mother-" for those, for the ones

where it's way in the past there,

I think the easiest take home lesson

is every time you're making a decision

about why somebody just did something, including yourself,

stop and question it and think about it a second time

and a fifth time and a 10th time.

And as part of that decision,

because you can't imagine what the world is like

for that person as part of that decision,

because their face doesn't register with yours

as much as an "us's" face does there,

just be skeptical and think again and again,

and especially when you're tired

and you just wanna make a fast attribution.

- One of the things this brings to mind for me

is just like, how do we prepare people as a society?

I think in this context,

I think about it in terms of education,

and I actually think about it

in terms of America's founding fathers.

Thomas Jefferson wrote a whole book on education

and how it was important for society

to educate future generations.

And they were thinking about it as a civic sense

and like what our civic duty is.

But I think about these sorts of conditions,

how do we train people to stop and reflect?

How do we get them to be the type of person

where that is the likely course of action

that they are going to take?

I think about what we're talking about here

in those terms as well.

So I'm curious, how do we create the conditions

that make it possible for the likely action

that a person is going to take

is when they're going into a situation

where they might be stressed out

or they might make a decision

that could be harmful to some other person

that they stop and reflect

and realize all the distributed causality

that might be causing them to take a certain action

or be prone to a certain action at a certain point in time?

- Fantastic question because part of the ability

to question and think a second time and a fifth and a 10th

is did you wind up being the sort of person

who could do that, who could do that well?

Are you so invested emotionally

that you're unwilling to change your opinion?

Are you like perverse enough

that you wanna come up with the opposite of it?

Yeah, how'd that happen?

The key thing here is,

one of the things that people panic about

when you say, "Oh, there's no free will."

I mean, they say, "Oh my God, don't tell people that

they'll run amok and there'll be murderers on the streets."

And in addition, if there's no free will,

if everything was determined, nothing can change.

And you couldn't possibly be more wrong than that;

enormous change happens.

And the key thing is we do not choose to change,

we are changed by circumstances.

And we are changed by those circumstances

as a function of who we had been made into

at the moment we experience it.

Look, you got two people, they go in to watch a movie.

It's totally inspirational, it's great.

And one person comes out of the movie changed, changed.

They make different decisions in their life.

They say, "Oh my God, that was so inspirational.

I'm immediately gonna give my life savings away

to Doctors Without Borders."

And the other person comes out changed,

changed so that they make different decisions in life.

And they say, "Oh my God,

the cinematography was so amazing in that movie.

I'm gonna spend the rest of my life

at the feet of the cinematographer worshiping them."

Whoa, they were both changed.

Neither of them chose to change.

They were changed by experience.

And they were changed as a function

of who they had turned out to be

at the moment they went into that movie theater.

So that's exactly where we get sort of prescriptions.

Not only are we biological machines

like worms and redwood trees and crabgrass and stuff,

but we're the only biological machines

that can know that we're biological machines

and have some insights as to where the buttons are

and where the levers are

and to understand what makes certain types of changes

more readily happening than others.

And there's a whole world of changes you could bring about

in people to make them's, for example, seem so different

they hardly count as humans.

Every single dictator out there, every ideologue,

every genocidal, whoever intuitively knows

how to bring about those changes in people.

Yeah, we know how to change behavior

and we get more insights into it all the time.

And another way of framing that is we learn more

about the levers and the buttons.

And one of the most interesting things that come out of it

is we have this meta-level of you were changed by experience

and say, "Whoa, I'm totally moved by that movie

and I never knew about that historical tragedy before.

I'm going to go read some more books about it.

I'm going to go reinforce that."

We're capable of observing the change in us

and understanding what will make it

less likely or more likely.

"Oh my God, that was the most depressing movie on Earth.

I'm going to now counteract that

by go listening to K-pop for the next 12 hours

so that my mind is completely drained of it."

Yeah, we even understand what our levers are within us.

And if we've been trained to respect that process

and reflect on it, then that whole thing.

Yep, it's these recursive loops built around the fact

that we can know our machine-ness.

- I wasn't planning to talk

about artificial intelligence today

but you called us a biological machine,

and I think it's kind of interesting

and "recursive loop" is a term that you use

which is one of the things that

as people have been experimenting with

things like large language models

that they've been talking about the ability

for them to teach themselves and to learn.

I wonder if in some sense that some of the confusion

that we've had around this idea of free will

is in part because we've never met another intelligence

that can also spit back to us

in terms that we're familiar with

that speaks the same language as us.

I wonder if you have any thoughts

about the relationship between the machine intelligence

that we're starting to interact with

even though it's at levels that are far lower

than what we consider human intelligence per se,

and how that is going to interact

or potentially shift some of our notions around free will

because those things aren't self-directed yet.

They're programs, they're input, output

but in some sense, they're spitting back to us

things that feel intentional

and we're imbuing them

with these sort of anthropomorphized values.

So I'm curious if you think that's going to change

or tip the way in which people think

about things like free will.

- Well, for starters, I have to admit

that I am beyond ignorant about all of this.

I don't even know enough to be wrong about AI.

Like I'm up to being able to handle a mouse on a computer.

That's about what century I'm functioning in

and that's thanks to my wife teaching me how to use a mouse.

So all of those caveats,

I think these issues are absolutely going to come up

and they're gonna bring up a really interesting,

fascinating, seductive domain

that actually has nothing to do with free will;

which is the notion that at some point

these computers are gonna be so powerful

with enough component parts

that stuff is going to emerge that's so complex

that it could only be described

on the level of what has emerged.

And it's got a parallel-

which is we throw enough neurons into our brains-

our basic neuron is not all that different

than one in a fruit fly,

but we have a hundred million

for every one that a fruit fly does,

and throw enough of them together and more is different;

and outcome stuff like consciousness and theology

and music and aesthetics and all of that

emergent stuff comes out

that only has properties at that emergent level.

A molecule of water, H2O, cannot feel wet.

Wetness is an emergent property of a whole.

So that's like the most interesting stuff on Earth,

and emergence how your brain wires up most efficiently

and it's the same way that ants

expend their least energy foraging

and it's the coolest stuff and I love that stuff.

But then there's the seductive like quicksand

to decide that free will is an emergent property.

And the reason why that doesn't work

is every model you have out there of people saying,

"Oh, you throw enough neurons in there or whatever it is

you throw in to make a computer AI-ish,"

you throw enough stuff in there

and with enough quantity, you invent quality

and out will pop not only consciousness,

maybe AI is going to do that and it does in us,

but maybe free will as well.

And the problem is that every single model

of how an emergently complex system

can now generate free will requires that emergent level

to be able to reach down

to those little simple component parts

and make them work differently and make them work smarter.

And that's like saying, you put enough ants together

and not only can they construct this whole amazing

ant society and colony and architectural stuff

in their passageways,

but they also like suddenly are able to speak French-

and it doesn't work that way.

And the whole point, the amazing thing about emergentness,

you start with some stupidly simple thing

like a neuron or a ant or a whatever the hell computers

are made of, a vacuum tube or something-

and the whole point is each individual one is really simple

and has a very finite number of rules.

And often the rules are solely about how you interact

with the elements immediately around you.

And the amazing thing about emergence is

they're just as stupid and simple

when they're inventing things like philosophy

coming out the other end, that's the whole point of it.

Every model that says free will is an emergent property

requires the ants and the individual neurons

to suddenly do stuff that they can't do,

to be freed from their own histories.

So emergence is the coolest thing on Earth

and I torture my students with hours of lectures on that,

but that's not where you're gonna get free will from.

- Emergence is one of those things

that I struggle to understand too.

And even when you say you can only describe

the property at the emergent level,

from a metaphysical sense, I'm not even sure what that is.

And the wetness example is instructive.

I get that intuitively, the interrelation

between the different molecules that make up H2O

and how they interact and produce wetness

as an emergent property.

But when it relates to something like consciousness,

and this is probably just the mystery of consciousness

at this particular moment,

I'm lost at where this emergence sort of sits.

Could you help me sort of understand that?

Like where is emergence as a property

sort of within this material world that we inhabit?

- Well, the way to think about it

is it's simply a consequence of numbers.

You take one ant and you put it on a table

and it's just wandering around randomly

and it makes no sense.

And you do 10 ants there and it's kind of the same.

And you put a hundred ants and I don't know,

maybe they start marching at a line or something.

And you put 10,000 of them there

and suddenly, collectively, in a "wisdom of Antdom,"

they know how to build a whole colony

with like different jobs.

And like they know how to make slaves out of aphids

and milk them for that.

And they do all this incredible-

and it's simply properties that come out of that level.

An emergent property in us,

where in the brain is conformity?

If you were raised in a box

and you spend your whole life in a box,

conformity is never an issue for you.

Conformity is only something that emerges

when you're surrounded by other people

and you care about what they think of you.

And that's like, there's a nuts and bolts

that makes some people more conforming than others,

and why we're more conforming

when we're stressed or feel insecure.

There's like the nuts and bolts underneath the levers,

the buttons, the building blocks are churning away

explaining how conformity varies from one person to another.

But the most important thing is

you can't be a human living alone on a desert island

and conform or not to conform

to something about human behavior.

Conformity or being an anarchist

or being like a fan of Mozart or anything

are only traits that emerge

when you have other humans to interact with.

So that's a classic case.

- With distributed causality,

we sort of talked about the short-term effects,

the things that can be happening at the minute,

the second, the hour-length of time

that would impact or influence human actions

or behaviors or decisions

that someone is going to execute

at a particular moment in time.

And we've even talked about things like child rearing,

what is the sort of things

that are going to impact a person's decision later in life

because of the context of how they were raised.

But I'm thinking about broadening the lens even more:

What are some of the things from genetics,

from epigenetics, from our evolutionary history

that ladder up into these distributed causes

that influence human behavior,

human actions and human decisions

when they are interacting with other humans

or society writ large?

- Here's like a great example of it-

back to the frontal cortex.

Its evolution is really interesting.

It's the most recently evolved part of the primate brain.

We've got more of it or more complicated wiring

than any other primate;

it's like totally amazing.

Yeah, there's been this evolution

of an increased capacity for self-regulation

and impulse control and making the right decisions,

all of that.

Evolution has given us an additional interesting thing

with the frontal cortex.

Most of your brain is wired up

and going about its business by the time

you're three years old, five years old.

Some new stuff comes online when puberty upends everything,

but your frontal cortex is not fully mature

until you're about 25 years old.

It's the last part of the brain to mature.

What have we just explained?

We've explained why adolescents act in adolescent ways,

and why like 15 year olds are not putting away

their allowance for their retirement funds.

But then you ask sort of a mechanistic question:

Why does it take 25 years for this part of the cortex

to get wired up?

Whereas say this part of this part

is in the first few years of life.

Is it because it's a more complicated building project?

Are there neurotransmitters that are only found

in the frontal?

Nah, it's the same exact constituent parts.

It's not a more complicated building project.

What it is is we have evolved to have delayed maturation

of the frontal cortex.

Why is that?

Because if the frontal cortex's job is going to be

to make you to do the harder thing

when it's the right thing to do,

it's really challenging learning

what counts as the right thing.

You gotta learn your society's hypocrisies.

You've gotta learn your society's rationales and lies,

and "Thou shall not kill."

But if you kill one of them,

we're gonna give you a medal and vote for you

and maybe like preferentially mate with you.

It takes a long time to learn this stuff.

And we have a longer delayed frontal cortical maturation

than any other primate and it's minuscule in rodent.

And this is a recent evolutionary invention.

Let's frame it this way:

Your frontal cortex has evolved.

The genes that specify your frontal cortex have evolved

to make you as free from genes as possible.

Your frontal cortex is the part of your brain

that is the freest from genetic influences

because it's still being sculpted by environment

and experience a quarter century after you plopped out there

whereas most of the rest of your brain

is sculpted by two or three years worth of experience.

Whoa, we evolved, our genes evolved

to free our frontal cortex from strict genetic determinism

and to make it much more sculpted

by environmental determinism.

Totally cool because one culture

has a completely different set of moral compass rules

than another culture, and they're hard to learn

and they can't be coded for genetically.

You gotta spend a whole lot of time

learning what counts as the right thing

among the people with whom you're dwelling.

- That's absolutely fascinating.

I mean, one of the other favorite anecdotes

from your book, I believe, was talking about mothers

from different parts of the world

and the ways in which they sing to their child,

how long they hold their child,

how long they let their child cry before picking them up

and the different impacts that could have

on the neural patterns on their brain.

I'm curious if you could sort of like talk about that

a little bit more 'cause I find it absolutely fascinating

that even those sorts of things

can have impacts on how your brain develops.

- It's immensely interesting stuff.

Okay, when you study cross-cultural differences

and psyches and all sorts of things like that,

the classic comparison everybody gets around to

is studying collectivist cultures

versus individualist cultures.

Collectivist cultures, people are far more cooperative.

You do psychological tests,

and they think in terms of "we" instead of "me."

There's all like wonderful ways of demonstrating.

Where are the collectivist cultures

on Earth most prominent?

Southeast Asia, rice-growing regions,

where you and the whole village

have to plant this person's crop today.

And then all of you collectively

plant the next person's tomorrow

and the next person after that,

and you all harvest in one day.

And you're also cooperating collectively

with 50 other villages to maintain this irrigation system

that starts in the mountains 100 miles away

and that you've been collectively maintaining

for centuries and centuries, literally.

Individualist world:

The U.S., poster child for individualistic mindset,

because we're mostly peopled by dependent descendants

of malcontents and individualistic-like troublemakers

who fled wherever they were to come here.

The U.S. is incredibly individualistic.

Ask like an American, "Tell me about yourself,"

And they'll say, "Well, I'm a urban planner or a barista."

Take somebody from Southeast Asia

and on the average, you ask them, tell me about yourself,

and they will say, "Well, I'm a parent, I'm a child."

It's relational stuff like that.

Okay, so hooray, different sorts of cultures.

And you look and there's different sorts

of mothering styles.

And as you mentioned there,

collectivist culture mothers on the average

sing more quietly to their child

than individualist cultures mothers.

There's differences, you start crying,

you're an infant, you start crying-

on the average, how many seconds do you cry

before mom picks you up?

In collectivist cultures, mom picks you up earlier.

In individualist ones, it's a longer delay

because they're toughening you up.

When do you start sleeping alone?

How much physical contact?

All of that, like you show like classic

sort of cultural linguistic child training and stuff.

If you show a kid a picture

of there's a whole bunch of fish here

and there's a fish here in the front-

and this is a colleague of mine

who did wonderful research on this-

and you get somebody from an individualist culture

showing this to their child.

And the mother is saying, "look, look at this fish,

this leader, this is the fish that's the leader

of all these other fish."

And then you get somebody from a collectivist culture

who's of that mindset.

And the mother is saying, "Oh, look at this fish,

this poor fish, he's all alone.

He can't be with the rest of the group.

He must've done something very wrong

where everybody else doesn't want him to be."

Like completely different mindsets with that.

And you get contrasts- were your ancestors,

desert dwellers or rainforest dwellers?

If they were desert dwellers,

they're significantly more likely

to have invented a monotheistic religion.

Rainforest, polytheistic.

If your ancestors were pastoralists

wandering the grasslands with their cows

or camels or goats or whatever,

they're much more likely to have come up

with what's called a "culture of honor."

If somebody transgresses against you,

you transgress twice as bad back at them

because if you don't, they just stole your camel,

tomorrow, they're gonna come and steal the rest

of your camel and your wife and daughters.

But if you're a rainforest forager,

you don't invent a culture of honor.

All this stuff goes into it.

And the job of every generation's child-rearing practices

is to create a child whose brain has been constructed

to replicate the cultural values that you have

and thus passed on and passed on.

Okay, fabulous example of this.

Southeast China, rice-growing, flat floodplains;

you get this extremely collectivist mindset.

There's a small pocket of Northern China mountainous

where people instead do wheat growing

and it's very individualistic in how it's done.

And you get people there who are just as individualistic

as somebody living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan

or whatever.

And here's an experiment showing, not in the farmers,

their grandkids who were university students-

this was this totally cool study-

you go to a Starbucks there,

and the researchers did an experiment.

There's two tables here and they moved two chairs

so that they're back to back.

They're blocking the way between the tables.

And here comes your subject who's being observed

and what do they do?

And if it turns out, if you were raised

in the collectivist Southeast Asia rice-growing

floodplain culture, you're more likely than average

to walk around the table.

And if you come from the individualistic,

wheat-growing ends,

you pull the chairs apart

because you are the captain of your own fate.

And whoa, this is because your grandparents

either like planted seeds

with 400 members of the village at once,

or they looked out on the horizon

and like thought of like heroic,

like cowboy movie soundtracks

before doing it all on their own.

This makes you act differently two generations later

in a Starbucks just outside your university in China.

Whoa, that stuff matters as well.

- You know, that was fascinating.

I just wanna double-click on one thing you just mentioned:

You talked about child rearing as it relates to society

and I was curious to get a sense of,

do you think that the evolutionary role of society

is to ensure that the culture survives

into the next generation?

- You know, there's this great aphorism

in like evolutionary theory

that sometimes a chicken is just an egg's way

of making another egg.

If I were much more monomaniacal of a neurobiologist

and were put in charge of the world,

I would say that social anthropology

is the study of how you wire up a brain

like your parents' brains.

Yeah, that's like crazy, stupid, reductive,

but on a certain, yeah, to pass on your values,

to pass on your beliefs, to pass on what you love,

what you hate, who you would kill for,

who you would die for, what myths you have of heroism,

what's gonna happen to you after you die,

whether revenge or turn the other cheek-

and all of that gets taught to us at a very early age,

and reflects what our ancestors invented,

and how mom and grandmom, etc., were raised-

and all of it reflects how you constructed the brain.

And not in this, as you say,

this volitional conscious sense,

but it's just the wind tunnel

that plays one of the big roles

in sculpting the sort of brain you're gonna have.

- You know, I certainly plan things all the time.

If I wanna lose weight and I wanna eat better,

that's a thing that I just do as a human.

I feel some agency and some steerability

of those decisions that I have.

And it's not that you've lost those things,

but you can better understand what those things are.

How would you explain to people

that even though there is no free will,

there's still steerability in the system to some extent.

Like how would you help people parse those differences?

- Well, that's that whole example

of going into a movie theater,

and you are changed by it

as a function of who you are when you went in,

and you have the potential as a meta-thinking human

to be able to then reinforce that pathway

with a recursive loop, all of that.

Let's translate that into you.

Let's unpack you.

How do you turn out to be the sort of person

who knows what constitutes a healthy diet?

How do you be the sort of person

where your values include wanting to forego

an all-Cheetos diet

instead to wanna be able to be healthy?

How did you turn out to be the sort of person

with a frontal cortex

that could make you actually stick with that resolution?

How did you turn out to be someone where you lucked out

and you live in a neighborhood

where there's actually like fresh food that's available?

How did all of those contributed to that moment?

And I think what that translates into,

sort of most effectively for what people should think about,

is if you really believe this stuff

and take it to its logical conclusions-

where nothing more than the biology and environment

over which we had no control-

if you really believe that,

blame and punishment never make any sense

either, intellectually or ethically.

Likewise, praise and reward never make any sense.

And those are the logical conclusions that come from this.

That being said, like I've thought this way since I was 14,

and I can actually function this way

for about three and a half minutes every month or so

'cause it's really, really hard.

And what you gotta do, I think, is do the,

"Okay, how did they become who they are?

And what privileges did I have that I didn't earn

that had something to do with

how I turned out to be who I am?"

And go back and think through that a second time,

a fifth time, the tenth time,

when it's a setting that really matters,

when you're about to judge somebody strongly

because almost certainly if you think you know why they did

what they just did, you're gonna be wrong

because you're not thinking of a million distributed causes.

And virtually every time you decide,

"Well, I just did a good job, I deserve my corner office,

I deserve to be CEO,

I deserve to have running water and electricity,"

any version of you winding up being one of the lucky humans,

think about how you wound up this way,

and how by one little thread being different

could have been a totally different story.

So if it's gonna be hard, and it's incredibly hard for me,

and I think for anyone, if it's gonna be,

save it for when it really matters,

for when you're really judging

with a whole lot of sense of blame

or you're judging with a whole lot of sense of praise,

especially if it's for yourself

or people who are like you, who look like you

and pray like you and eat like you

and love like you and all that.

Yeah, those are the times when do the hard work,

go back and remember all we are is the end product

of what came before.

- You know, I know you've done a lot of work

in the legal system, within the criminal justice system:

what should we do about those sticky situations

where it's, you know, people are behaving

in ways that are harmful to others

and there needs to be some consequences

to help to prevent them from harming other people.

If it's not blame or punishment,

what is the way of looking at those sorts of things?

- Yeah, this is the juncture where people

like burn a book like mine and saying,

"Oh great, you're just gonna have murderers

running around the streets!"

Of course, you're not gonna have murderers

running around in the streets

any more than you have cars whose brakes don't work

out on the streets.

You put the car in a garage,

but you don't go in every day with a sledgehammer

and smash the car over the top

because it has a crappy soul-

it just turned out that way.

And in the same way, if you've got someone who's dangerous,

you gotta protect society from them.

You constrain them, you "quarantine" them,

which is a word that is getting a lot of currency

in sort of criminology circles.

And with the same concept borrowed from public health,

you have to quarantine the person

because they are dangerous to other people.

You quarantine them the absolute minimum

needed to make them safe and not an inch more than that.

You don't preach to them in the process

and you put lots of effort into understanding root causes.

How did they wind up being a dangerous person like that?

What can you do to make fewer of those sorts of people

in the future?

And this seems like totally wild and implausible

because there's dangerous people out there.

Here's a sample of us using quarantine models

with dangerous people:

You're an airline pilot.

It's hay fever season

and you're taking a lot of antihistamines or something.

And as a result, you're drowsy

and you don't fly a plane at that time.

Whoa, we don't like burn them at the stake.

We don't say they've got a terrible upbringing

or no capacity for empathy

because if left alone, they would crash a plane.

We say, gotta quarantine you

when you're taking something that makes you drowsy.

You can still go and like go get a coffee at Starbucks,

which is clearly on my mind right now.

We're not gonna preach to you about how you're rotten.

And we, the airline, go fund research

on how to make antihistamines

that don't make pilots drowsy.

Whoa, we're running society

where we have drowsy pilots who would be dangerous

and we protect people

without invoking a sense of responsibility.

And that's so obvious, it doesn't even occur to us

that that's a realm

where we've subtracted free will out of it.

The flip side is praise and reward make no sense.

Meritocracies are as insupportable

as criminal justice systems.

But you got a problem there.

You gotta protect people from incompetent people

doing stuff that's difficult.

If you got a brain tumor,

you really don't want them to pick someone randomly

from off the street to take out your brain.

You want them to spend years and years being trained.

You wanna protect people from murderers

by quarantining them.

And you wanna protect the populace

from people who are not up to doing difficult tasks.

And that requires skill and work and motivation

and all of that.

That one's a tough problem

because you have to figure out

how to motivate someone to like sit there on Saturday night

when their roommate is going and getting falling down drunk

and they say, "I gotta study instead."

You gotta figure out how you're gonna motivate people

if you're not gonna have a world

where they come out the other end feeling entitled

and feeling like they are intrinsically

a better human than others.

- Robert, thank you so much for this discussion.

This has been really illuminating,

and I'm really grateful to talk with you

about free will, determinism

and just the constraints that exist

within all of our behaviors and actions

that we take as people.

- Well, thanks for having me on.

It's a pleasure.

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