We have no free will, and this is not a big deal
I was introduced to the wonderful neuroscientist and primatologist, Robert Sapolsky, more than 10 years ago, via a colleague. He told me: "you should watch his lectures on the human behavioral biology at Stanford". Wow, mind blown. Highly recommended...
etorreborre.blog16 min read
Yes, exactly right. The challenge is that there is a bunch of socially valuable stuff that everyone believes only works if we have free will. But that’s not the case, we can discard a belief in free will and still keep the good stuff, while also discarding some bad stuff.
It’s still possible to hold someone responsible for their bad actions, even if they couldn’t have “chosen” otherwise. It was still their (deterministic but undecidable) mental processes that produced the bad outcome. But it no longer makes sense to hate a person for harming you, any more than you would hate a storm for wrecking your house.
You should check out what Sam Harris has to say on this and also the concept of the “self”. The idea is that there isn’t even a “you” anywhere in your mind that is thinking thoughts. Our idea of “self”, though it seems so real, is just an illusion within our conscious experience, taking credit for the thoughts produced by our deterministic undecidable sub-conscious mental processes.