Chris Boutté's Reviews > Determined: Life Without Free Will

This easily became my favorite book by Robert Sapolsky. I’ve heard some mixed reviews about the book, but this was by far my favorite. His other books took me forever to read just because I’d get so bored, but I think I liked this one even more because it had a bunch of philosophy and psychology rather than biology. There is a chunk of the book dedicated to neuroscience that was a struggle to get through, but other than that, I read this big book pretty fast because I enjoyed it so much.

Sapolsky argues on the side of determinism and that free will is mostly an illusion. For full transparency, this is what I believe as well, so there may be a little bit of a bias. But Sapolsky does an excellent job laying down his arguments and backing it up with research. I don’t think anyone can walk away from this book and not have their perspective changed a little. This book will give you a lot more empathy and shift how you think about crime and punishment.

And before you ask, “So he doesn’t think criminals are responsible for their actions?!”, I’ll stop you right there. He discusses this at length and explains why punishment is needed and explains why with some great arguments and stories that help make it make more sense.

I love this book and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic of free will.