Sign in with Facebook
Sara's Reviews > Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will
Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will
by
by
This is a very technical book, yet Sapolsky made a considerable effort to break it down for the average reader. I have a bachelor's in Psychology and have read Dennett and some of the other authors Sapolsky mentioned, so many of the experiments mentioned were familiar to me already, and I have given a fair amount of thought to the free will debate in my personal life.
He's good at timing his jokes to keep you interested when things get dense. Once, he even tells you to just skip an entire paragraph and come back to it later if you need it, which was great (I had no idea what that paragraph meant, anyway).
I can't speak to the science of the book, as to its accuracy or the methodology of the experiments. As a casual reader, however, I don't think it matters a whole lot whether or not his argument is "correct." What matters is how we respond to it. I actually would have loved a few more chapters at the end on this part of the argument (what do we do if there's no free will?) because I felt like that was the strongest part of the book. It leaves you questioning whether any choices you make actually matter, but it also makes some important points about our criminal justice system that happen to be in line with my views: i.e., punishment should be about protecting people from likely future harm, not retribution against the perpetrator. In some cases, we punish too harshly, and in some not enough. Jail time may not be the best punishment for some crimes, either.
Overall, it's a good introduction to the subject if you've never thought about it before. It provides a positive view of Determinism, rather than a bleak diatribe about how nothing matters.
He's good at timing his jokes to keep you interested when things get dense. Once, he even tells you to just skip an entire paragraph and come back to it later if you need it, which was great (I had no idea what that paragraph meant, anyway).
I can't speak to the science of the book, as to its accuracy or the methodology of the experiments. As a casual reader, however, I don't think it matters a whole lot whether or not his argument is "correct." What matters is how we respond to it. I actually would have loved a few more chapters at the end on this part of the argument (what do we do if there's no free will?) because I felt like that was the strongest part of the book. It leaves you questioning whether any choices you make actually matter, but it also makes some important points about our criminal justice system that happen to be in line with my views: i.e., punishment should be about protecting people from likely future harm, not retribution against the perpetrator. In some cases, we punish too harshly, and in some not enough. Jail time may not be the best punishment for some crimes, either.
Overall, it's a good introduction to the subject if you've never thought about it before. It provides a positive view of Determinism, rather than a bleak diatribe about how nothing matters.
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read
Determined.
Sign In »
Reading Progress
Finished Reading
July 9, 2023
–
Started Reading
(Kindle Edition)
July 9, 2023
– Shelved
(Kindle Edition)
August 1, 2023
– Shelved
August 1, 2023
–
Finished Reading
(Kindle Edition)
Comments Showing 1-4 of 4 (4 new)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Peter
(new)
-
added it
Aug 04, 2023 06:42PM
how did you get access to this book???????????????????
reply
|
flag
Free will can have multiple interpretations. One is that we are not born with it, and that we are all products of our environment, with free will arising and achieving potency in direct proportion to our growing self-awareness. One aspect of this self-awareness is learning about the reality of being a product of one’s environment. This very knowledge itself is one of many that catalyzes a transcendental break from automatic processes, allowing one to achieve free will.
Another useful transcendental knowledge is cultural relativity, whereby a person can study the ways and behaviors and responses and traditions of other cultures and thereby loosen one’s own adherence to personal cultural ideas and what had formerly been accepted as “normal” behavior.
This allows the toolbox of choice to be filled with a plethora of tools, rather than simply moving through life with only a screwdriver.
"Punishment should be about protecting people from likely future harm, not retribution against the perpetrator". Not only that, but remove the concept of requiring punishment at all, or at least framing it as such
Nothing really matters objectively speaking, but the part of the brain that creates meaning is predetermined to do so for the rest of the duration of its lifespan, alongside the interactions with the the environment which generate concepts of meaning in the brain. Its all meaning within meaningless, and a belief of free will that emerges in that mechanistic void. Its all quite odd how machines ended up believing that they’re not machines, and how natural selection decided that false beliefs were useful for the replication of genes. Its all very intriguing.
