Determined

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1. freedombenJul 2025
   I think you are ironically correct about that! We (including our neurons) operate at the deterministic level of physics. Measuring subconscious areas of the brain also demonstrates that "choices" we make aren't as made-by-our-consciousness as we think. Robert Sapolsky's books (especially "Behave" and "Determined" are phenomenal reads if this topic interests you.

   Now that said I don't think living your life as though you have no free will is a good life strategy. The illusion of free will is incredibly important. Fortunately we humans are masters at living with cognitive dissonance and inconsistent beliefs

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2. freedombenMay 2025
   Agreed, and to expand slightly, we do know that our brains are constructed on top of neurons, and neurons are way too big to be affected by quantum-level events. There's countless literature describing people who have had accidents or illnesses that damage parts of their brain and change personalities (typically without the patient being aware of any change and in most cases being in adamant denial about it), and we can now pinpoint quite precisely what many parts of the brain do. We even have AI that can now "read minds" to an extent based on measuring neural activity. The idea of "free will" is highly suspect given the deterministic nature of our brains. There are still some God of the Gaps arguments that try to save free will, but IMHO you have to really want to save it in order to accept many of those arguments. It's deeply uncomfortable to consider, but our brains are deterministic.

   This is not my field at all so don't take my word for any of it, but I highly recommend people interested in this read or watch Robert Sapolsky's work. His books "Behave" and "Determined" are utterly fascinating and get very, very deep into this in a way that is challenging but understandable for a non-Neurologist.

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3. drdaemanApr 2025
   > any hopes for a human society that place reason above emotion are fundamentally unachievable

   If you haven't read it, you may enjoy Robert Sapolsky's "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will". I haven't yet finished it (only halfway through the book) but I found it a very fascinating read so far, no matter whenever one agrees with the conclusions or not. And I think it resonates and kind of confirms your comment, coming at it from a neurological viewpoint.

   The book basically outlines which parts of the brain are responsible for our decision making. While I understand that he's drastically [over]simplifying things for readers' sake (as it's always the case with pop-sci), it provides a nice overview (a bunch of fun facts, with references to the actual scientific research where they came from) of how our decisions are heavily influenced by a lot of various things, in the context of your comment specifically - the processes going on in our brains that we can roughly call "emotions".

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4. rlnvlcApr 2025
   I highly recommend reading "Determined" by Robert Sapolsky.
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5. hyperGOct 2024
   Sapolsky wrote a 500 page rebuttal to this idea in Determined.

   It is quite a convincing book and maybe even a dangerous book in a sense.

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6. h0l0cubeMay 2024
   I don’t believe in free will either. You might like Determined by Robert Sapolsky. That said there’s a difference between a CPU executing a static program, and a human with self modifiable programming and actual existential parameters. Is a computer with a survival instinct and the ability to meaningfully adapt to affect its own survival agentic? I’d say yes. Conscious? I couldn’t say for sure but I also couldn’t rule it out
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