Andrijana's Reviews > Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

Steps to concluding that free will doesn’t exist:

1. Read about the current science of animal behavior (p. 1 - 125)
2. Start to understand the ways in which we are shaped by a bunch of biological and environmental factors
3. Realize that we didn’t have control over any of those influences
4. Think “But what about all that quantum stuff, and randomness too!”
5. Read about all that quantum stuff, and randomness, and more weirdness (p. 125 - 240)
6. See how we haven’t yet found ways in which all that weird stuff could influence behavior and why we likely won’t find any
7. Accept those, but, see if you can save free will not as a truthful biological representation of reality, but instead as a social construct - useful in different circumstances, a necessary illusion
8. Find out about all the different ways free will as a concept is harming us, and how removing it doesn’t (p. 245 - 405) and you’re done!

Disclaimer: Becoming depressed, despaired or going berserk is not at all guaranteed after applying.
In fact, the opposite might happen as you will learn that not having free will doesn’t mean not being capable of change (actually you will learn some very cool mechanisms of change!), and it doesn’t mean not having will (assuming you define will as an internal reasoning process or some kind of intuition or inner voice, we do have that and it is important since that in turn influences us further, but, it is not free, since that process itself was also shaped by all which came before it), and it doesn’t mean humans aren’t awesome or that it’s cool not to be awesome.

After considering the lack of my free will and Sapolsky's witty, warm and charming writing, I cannot rate this book anything other than 5 stars.