Speaker 1: Now really.
Speaker 2: Really now, really hell, and welcome to really no really
Speaker 2: with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who ask you.
Speaker 1: To make a great choice and please subscribe.
Speaker 2: That said, the right choice, or any choice, for that matter,
Speaker 2: may not be yours to freely make. Stanford biologist and
Speaker 2: neuroscientist doctor Robert Sepalski has rankled the scientific and philosophic
Speaker 2: communities by arguing one simple point, there is no free will,
Speaker 2: and human beings only think we're making our own decisions.
Speaker 1: Really no really. When Jason and.
Speaker 2: Peter heard this, they realized they had absolutely no choice
Speaker 2: but to contact doctor Sepalski so they could get him
Speaker 2: to explain his thesis in a simplistic way that maybe
Speaker 2: even they could understand, and surprisingly he did.
Speaker 3: There it is.
Speaker 4: Fun recording under an airport. It's really fun.
Speaker 5: I can now we identify with the I can assess
Speaker 5: that from a G for four engines supposed to t oh,
Speaker 5: that plane is going on a.
Speaker 4: Little bit of Toulent. Don't you don't say that? In
Speaker 4: today's world, I had no choice. See look at that
Speaker 4: for a segue.
Speaker 5: Look, today's episode is about you hit me. You hitting
Speaker 5: me a lot choice. We have a professor on big article,
Speaker 5: big book, doctor Robert Sapolski, major guy, big guy who says,
Speaker 5: we have no free will, and beings have no free will.
Speaker 4: It's an illusion illusion. So we said, really and do
Speaker 4: it like Doug Henning.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 5: I wish you could remember Doug Henning. But he he
Speaker 5: made himself disappear many years ago.
Speaker 6: He died tragically and young. He had a very serious
Speaker 6: cancer and he died.
Speaker 5: He was a lovely and as big as a huge,
Speaker 5: huge as magician.
Speaker 4: But he was kind of like doing the hip. He
Speaker 4: was the hippie era. TI died in Canadian and oh, okay.
Speaker 5: So if it's okay with everybody, I'm disappearing. He he
Speaker 5: cared about the audience. But this the free will issue.
Speaker 5: It's a bit heavy for us.
Speaker 6: If you've listened to the show and understand, listen, you
Speaker 6: sent me a ton of research on this, and my
Speaker 6: eyes rolled up in my head.
Speaker 4: I started, you know, and I do have free will.
Speaker 4: I'm not reading this.
Speaker 5: I started prepping and after reading seventeen pages, I said,
Speaker 5: I don't understand anything that spread determinism, yeah versus antideterminism.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So when he comes on, what we got to say
Speaker 5: is imagine that you're looking at toddlers who're basically just
Speaker 5: learning the language, and explain it that way, because from
Speaker 5: millennia people have been arguing, the greatest thinkers of the
Speaker 5: world have been arguing whether we have free will if
Speaker 5: youre not right, or no free will? The danger there
Speaker 5: is if we admit that we don't have any free will.
Speaker 5: The ramifications are huge.
Speaker 6: Apparently the government doesn't tell us that aliens are amongst
Speaker 6: us because they don't think. They think they'll be global chaos.
Speaker 6: We won't be able to it. We can and they
Speaker 6: will just be You know that hails in comparison if
Speaker 6: you say to the world, hey, human beings have no choice.
Speaker 4: We do what we do. We have there's no we
Speaker 4: can have no say. Here's the answer to that. Here's
Speaker 4: what happens.
Speaker 5: Then I shot a guy, So say to me, guy,
Speaker 5: you shot a guy.
Speaker 4: No free will, no will? That's right. So let's talk
Speaker 4: to this guy.
Speaker 5: Doctor Robert Mars Sapolski has joined us, and I'm thrilled
Speaker 5: to have him.
Speaker 4: How are you, sir?
Speaker 3: Thank you, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 4: Delighted.
Speaker 5: It's fascinating when we heard about your book and your
Speaker 5: take on free will and.
Speaker 4: Just tell the audience the man's credits for a second.
Speaker 6: So so we know who we're dealing. Well, I understand
Speaker 6: you're jumping. You have no choice in this. I understand.
Speaker 6: I understand.
Speaker 4: Don't touch me. My my thing would be all right.
Speaker 5: So at the fast Professor Biology, Neurology, Neurological Sciences, Surgery,
Speaker 5: neuth surgery at Stanford University, an addition or research associate
Speaker 5: at the Nash Museums in Kenya, and you spend part
Speaker 5: of your year talking about free will, and you spend
Speaker 5: part of the year with baboons. And my favorite thing
Speaker 5: this is that part of the year is that part
Speaker 5: of them. And my favorite thing is your quote was
Speaker 5: like their human cousins, Baboons live in large, complex social
Speaker 5: groups and have lots of time to devote to being
Speaker 5: rotten to each other, just like humans. So what kind
Speaker 5: of person is it? Touched does what you do which
Speaker 5: is so heady and then says, you know what to
Speaker 5: the wife and kids, I'm going to Kenya. I'm going
Speaker 5: to live with baboons in the tent for a little bite.
Speaker 5: See in a couple of months. What is that all about?
Speaker 3: The critical thing is that for Eich of those seasons,
Speaker 3: I didn't say to the wife Sea we went together.
Speaker 3: She research. Yeah, No, I've spent forever kind of straddling
Speaker 3: two businesses, being a brain scientist and being a primatologist.
Speaker 3: For thirty three years. Would spend nine months a year
Speaker 3: in the lab doing stuff to neurons and sticking jeans
Speaker 3: and them things like that, and then three months a
Speaker 3: year hanging out with baboons in the sad getty and
Speaker 3: going back to the same baboons each year, which is
Speaker 3: pretty heavenly.
Speaker 5: And we should say the reason you do that is
Speaker 5: because they are so similar to humans in the study
Speaker 5: kind of intersected what you're doing with your brain science.
Speaker 5: So let's start with that because it's heady and talk
Speaker 5: to us as if we're toddlers.
Speaker 6: Just going to say I preface this Robert by saying
Speaker 6: Peter was lovely. He sent me twenty three links to
Speaker 6: your work and about fifty pages of things you've written,
Speaker 6: things you've said, things you've dealt with, and.
Speaker 4: I understood nothing. Well, it's why.
Speaker 5: It's hard, and it's heady, and it's confusing, and it's
Speaker 5: complicated in the sense for a layman you look and
Speaker 5: free will has been argued for what millennia, okay by
Speaker 5: some of the great thinkers of our time.
Speaker 4: And what that does the human beings to say? And
Speaker 4: where you negate morality and it's in consequence?
Speaker 5: Yeah right, So yeah, that's why I wanted to talk
Speaker 5: to you about because it is it's a it's a
Speaker 5: big petty subject. It involves criminal justice, it involves brain chemistry,
Speaker 5: I mean dopamine and serotonin. So when you say there's
Speaker 5: no free will, what does what does that mean? First
Speaker 5: of all, give everybody the context of what does that mean?
Speaker 5: Even how you, how you why you went into that conclusion, Just.
Speaker 3: To orient I'm officially in the lunatic fringe of people
Speaker 3: who think about this sort of thing, and that you know,
Speaker 3: lots of people who study the brain and biology and
Speaker 3: behavioral of that conclude this all sorts of domains where
Speaker 3: we have much less agency. I'm out there at the
Speaker 3: extreme with a handful of other people saying I don't
Speaker 3: think there's any free will whatsoever. And I've actually thought
Speaker 3: this way since I was fourteen. I had a very
Speaker 3: revelatory night where it all suddenly hit me with great clarity,
Speaker 3: and this is how I've been thinking ever since. And
Speaker 3: sort of where I get at it is, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm a scientist. I study how the brain works, how
Speaker 3: behavior works, that sort of thing, and when you look
Speaker 3: at it in enough detail, there's no free will. And
Speaker 3: the trouble with it, like ninety nine percent of people
Speaker 3: immediately disagree with that, and like ninety five percent of
Speaker 3: philosophers to is they get completely gummed up on the
Speaker 3: wrong notion of what free will is, oh, which is
Speaker 3: you're sitting there and you're making a choice. You're making
Speaker 3: a choice. Do you want to do this or do
Speaker 3: you want to do that? Do you want to press
Speaker 3: this button or that one? Do you want to like
Speaker 3: pull a trigger? Do you want to like tell somebody
Speaker 3: you like the dinner they made. You're making a choice,
Speaker 3: you have an intention to do that, and most importantly,
Speaker 3: you know you don't have to do it. There's alternatives
Speaker 3: available to you. You don't have told the trigger. You
Speaker 3: can order vanilla ice cream instead of a rocky Road. You
Speaker 3: can tell the host that the meal is appalling instead
Speaker 3: of saying it's wonderful. And this feels like free will
Speaker 3: because you have intent and you act on it, and
Speaker 3: you know you didn't have to do that. And for people,
Speaker 3: in most cases and for the whole criminal justice system, right,
Speaker 3: this is necessary insufficient. This is free will. And where
Speaker 3: I come in is that it is completely irrelevant to
Speaker 3: anything having to do with free will, because asking okay,
Speaker 3: did the person intend to do it? Did they know
Speaker 3: they didn't have to, they knew they were turning this
Speaker 3: all of that, What that's doing is asking somebody to
Speaker 3: review a book and all they get to do is
Speaker 3: read the last sentence of it, because you've missed everything
Speaker 3: that's come before. And when you look at somebody who's
Speaker 3: formed this intent to order this kind of ice cream,
Speaker 3: or to press the button and nuke somebody or not,
Speaker 3: or any of these moments of intent, what you're not
Speaker 3: doing is asking the only possible question, which is, so,
Speaker 3: how do you turn out to be the sort of
Speaker 3: person who would have that intent? How'd you wind up
Speaker 3: in this moment? What went on a second ago and
Speaker 3: in a minute ago, and an hour ago, in fifty
Speaker 3: decades ago that made you this person at this moment with.
Speaker 7: This intent and not just intent on like this very
Speaker 7: narrow level of oh I now am going to intent
Speaker 7: to tell this muscle to press this button?
Speaker 3: Or whatever. How'd you wind up being somebody who could
Speaker 3: show up for a psychology experiment where they say push
Speaker 3: this button? How do you wind up in a university
Speaker 3: where'd you get an interest in psychology? How do you
Speaker 3: wind up being someone who would volunteer for a study?
Speaker 3: Where'd you learn to read and write? How come you
Speaker 3: didn't die from Ricketts when you were six because you
Speaker 3: picked the wrong continent to be born on. Why didn't
Speaker 3: you wind up being the sort of person where you
Speaker 3: walk in there and you see they're testing the previous
Speaker 3: student volunteer and they're all busy with them, so you
Speaker 3: steal the grand student's laptop and run out. How do
Speaker 3: you wind up being the sort of person where instead
Speaker 3: you're now sitting here and they say push the button.
Speaker 3: Whenever you feel an intent? How'd that happen? And it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter what intent you have at that moment and
Speaker 3: that you acted upon it and you knew that had alternatives,
Speaker 3: because how do you become the person who had that intent?
Speaker 3: Because you could not have intended anything other than what
Speaker 3: you intent From the moment you were fertilized egg, all
Speaker 3: of that was turning into oh you are at this
Speaker 3: moment and you had no control over it, and that's
Speaker 3: where there's no free will.
Speaker 4: Nich Okay, wow.
Speaker 6: So now that I first of all, I kind of
Speaker 6: just gotta be good because I followed that.
Speaker 4: So did I. But I have questions. But I have
Speaker 4: questions about following you too, I do too.
Speaker 6: But I guess my first question is does any of
Speaker 6: that matter in the moment if I, if I choose
Speaker 6: or don't I know that this bell irritates Peter if
Speaker 6: I choose to ring it, no matter what all the
Speaker 6: millennia of input that brought me, whoever I am, to
Speaker 6: this point to make that choice. The fact of the
Speaker 6: matter is I have made this choice at this moment,
Speaker 6: and is part of your thinking, inclusive of the idea
Speaker 6: that it doesn't matter why I did it because I
Speaker 6: had no choice and therefore there should be no consequence
Speaker 6: or judgment to me doing it.
Speaker 3: Well, there should be consequences, sort of the mechanical sense,
Speaker 3: Like if I were Peter, it would be totally morally
Speaker 3: appropriate to lunge across the table and grab your arm
Speaker 3: and say I will thraddle you if you do that
Speaker 3: once more, and thus try to intervene with you or
Speaker 3: behaveor and constrain it. But in sort of moralizing sense,
Speaker 3: it makes no sense at all if you really truly
Speaker 3: believe there's no free will. It makes no sense at
Speaker 3: all to ever blame or punish anyone for anything. And
Speaker 3: it makes no sense to ever praise or reward anyone
Speaker 3: for anything. And it makes no sense to feel like
Speaker 3: you've earned anything, you're entitled to anything. And it makes
Speaker 3: his little sense to like hate somebody for what they
Speaker 3: did is to like hate an earthquake or something, because
Speaker 3: none of us had any control as to how we
Speaker 3: turned out to be the sort of person who would
Speaker 3: do what we just did.
Speaker 4: So his daughter is in the house, by the way,
Speaker 4: we have to talk to his daughter.
Speaker 6: We have who walks the walk and talks to talk.
Speaker 5: I don't want to get that's so heady that people
Speaker 5: don't get it. But it's nature nurture. If your parents
Speaker 5: it's a mentors everything that happens to you, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 5: it's all still in that bundle on. How are you
Speaker 5: going to end up reacting to this thing? Is that
Speaker 5: kind of accurate?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, that's that's exactly it. And take somebody, sit them down,
Speaker 3: have him fill out a questionnaire about their sort of
Speaker 3: political views, their social politics. They're economic, there, geopolitical, all
Speaker 3: of that have them sit down in the room that
Speaker 3: smells rotten garbage, and on the average people become more
Speaker 3: politically conservative. These are not big effects. You can't disprove
Speaker 3: free will by making a room smell of rotten garbage.
Speaker 3: But like, that's one piece of the story. Second piece
Speaker 3: your fetus. Your fetus, and your mother is stressed while
Speaker 3: you are in her womb. She's like homeless, she's a refugee,
Speaker 3: she's a who knows what, and she secretes elevated levels
Speaker 3: of stress hormones and as a result, they or your
Speaker 3: brain in those stress hormones and you as a fetus,
Speaker 3: and as a result, when you were an adult, you've
Speaker 3: got about a twentyfold increased likelihood of an anxiety disorder
Speaker 3: or a depression or like. Third domain, here's this one.
Speaker 3: What were your ancestors up to five hundred years ago?
Speaker 3: What kind of cultures were they constructing, and what kind
Speaker 3: of ecosystem were they living in, Because that influenced what
Speaker 3: kind of culture they came up with. If your ancestors
Speaker 3: were hunter gatherers, you were much more likely to believe
Speaker 3: in polytheistic gods. If they were desert dwellers with camels
Speaker 3: and goats, you're more likely you've turned out to be monotheistic.
Speaker 3: If your ancestors were farmers and it's hard for people
Speaker 3: to come at night and steal all your crops, you
Speaker 3: wind up with a different culture than if they were herdsmen,
Speaker 3: where some varmint could show up and rustle your cattle,
Speaker 3: and your ancestors would have invented a culture of honor
Speaker 3: where if somebody crosses you, you stay them ten times worse,
Speaker 3: or else they're going to disrespect you. And that explains
Speaker 3: a huge amount of patterns of crime in the United
Speaker 3: States between the South and the Northeast because of who
Speaker 3: settled there, like crazy ass Northern Ireland, Northern Scottish herdsman
Speaker 3: settled the South and developed a culture of honor. And
Speaker 3: you could do a psych experiment now with kids who
Speaker 3: come from Mississippi versus kids who come from like Andover
Speaker 3: or something, and they show up and on the average
Speaker 3: they will have different indocurrent responses to somebody who disses them.
Speaker 3: As part of the experiment, who bumps into them in
Speaker 3: the hallway intentionally, It says, watch a jerk, because you
Speaker 3: got raised in the culture that your mother was raised
Speaker 3: and that her mother was raised in, going all the
Speaker 3: way like, so that has something to do with it.
Speaker 3: And what was happening when you were a fetus, and
Speaker 3: what the smell is in the room, and what color
Speaker 3: you're underwear are this morning, and if they fit right
Speaker 3: or not, and what the socioeconomic status was in your
Speaker 3: neighborhood and everything in between. And you put all those
Speaker 3: pieces together and there's not a crack anywhere in there
Speaker 3: in which you could shoehorn this notion of free will.
Speaker 5: So are we approaching minority report where someone can feed
Speaker 5: into this computer all of that stuff and predict that
Speaker 5: you're going to commit a crime. That's predictive crime, predictive outrage, predictive, this,
Speaker 5: predictive that behavior. Yeah, So are we approaching minority report
Speaker 5: where someone can feed into this computer all of that
Speaker 5: stuff and predict that you're going to commit a crime.
Speaker 4: That's predictive crime, predictive outrage, predictive, this, predictive that behavior.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, we're not very good at it yet, but
Speaker 3: we're willing to run some aspects of society based on it.
Speaker 3: We are willing to constrain the behavior of people who've
Speaker 3: done nothing because we know they are going to be dangerous.
Speaker 3: We are willing to run society that way. Your kid
Speaker 3: has a nose cold, and you keep them home from
Speaker 3: kindergarten tomorrow because they have a pre crime minority report
Speaker 3: and rule which is pleased. If your kid has a
Speaker 3: nose cold, keep them home from school so they don't
Speaker 3: get everybody else sick. Your kid doesn't have to go
Speaker 3: in and get everybody else sick. You can have this
Speaker 3: pre crime move of saying, please keep your child at
Speaker 3: home so they don't get everybody else sick, and you
Speaker 3: could intervene based on predicting the outcome, and we can
Speaker 3: protect society from a dangerous individual, your sneezy kid without
Speaker 3: invoking free will. They don't have a rotten soul for
Speaker 3: having done that, despite the fact that the times in
Speaker 3: the past people would have thought.
Speaker 6: That taking what you're saying verbatim is that you gave
Speaker 6: an I think I'm going to attribute it to you
Speaker 6: where you said, you know, we used to believe epilepsy
Speaker 6: was a demonic possession, and then we understood it medically,
Speaker 6: and we treated it medically and we've had great success
Speaker 6: with it.
Speaker 4: We understand it differently.
Speaker 6: Is anyone working on correcting what we think of as
Speaker 6: aberrant or destructive behaviors based on these theories of it
Speaker 6: being a cacatenation of environment and background and exposure and
Speaker 6: all and you know, oh cool word.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Every time somebody tries to figure out, like, does
Speaker 3: Parkinson's disease have a genetic component? Does it have an
Speaker 3: environmental component? Where every time, even more pertinent to suit
Speaker 3: of all this thinking, they figure out there's a subset
Speaker 3: of people with Parkinson's who when they take their meds
Speaker 3: that replace dopamine and do it in a certain way,
Speaker 3: there's a subset of them where they then become compulsive
Speaker 3: gamblers and compulsive risk takers because something screwy is also
Speaker 3: happening with dopamine in another part of the brain. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, they gambled away their life saves a bit.
Speaker 8: No, it's like this medicaid in about fifteen percent of
Speaker 8: people who have this version of this gene but don't
Speaker 8: have that version of that gene or what dopa meane,
Speaker 8: this drug also does this to this part of the brain,
Speaker 8: and they have a problem with compulsive gambling. Okay, we
Speaker 8: can kind of figure that one out.
Speaker 3: I get it. Let's have some really like complicated like neurochemistry.
Speaker 3: Now it's much harder for us to figure out, Oh,
Speaker 3: because of this kind of instability at home when they
Speaker 3: were a kid, and those cultural values in this mixture
Speaker 3: of genes that they had, and the time they got
Speaker 3: the concussion when they were eleven, or that's why they
Speaker 3: turned out to be a compulsive gambler. It's a lot
Speaker 3: harder to figure that one out. Like somebody gets like
Speaker 3: a big chunk of their brain blown out and they
Speaker 3: have trouble regulating their behavior. You see it, there's this
Speaker 3: cable of causality and lack of free will that has
Speaker 3: produced this person whose behavior is unregulated. It is so
Speaker 3: much harder, though, to see that there's one hundred gazillion
Speaker 3: little spider webs of causality from culture and fetal life
Speaker 3: and what your third grade teacher said to you, and
Speaker 3: what happened that time, and what do you have for
Speaker 3: whether you have gas this morning or not at all,
Speaker 3: to realize that all those gazillion spider webs put together
Speaker 3: form as thick of a cable of causality, as like
Speaker 3: the easy cases, oh, brain damage.
Speaker 5: On a scale of one to ten, how much pushback
Speaker 5: you get you get from your community people who study.
Speaker 3: Brain oh, about eleven goes all the way up to
Speaker 3: eleven on that one. Most of the philosophers have like
Speaker 3: come at me with philosophical like sharpened knives and stuff,
Speaker 3: So they haven't been happy. All sorts of people, like
Speaker 3: all of us, don't really cotton that much to the
Speaker 3: idea that there's no free will because it's like potentially
Speaker 3: depressing as well.
Speaker 5: No choices we make aren't our choices that they're predetermined.
Speaker 5: It is a hard thing to swallow, and even if
Speaker 5: you couch it in the way that you did where
Speaker 5: you're saying, no, it's not that you're limiting your choices.
Speaker 5: It's just look at who you are and why you
Speaker 5: made those choices, rather than you're not making those choices.
Speaker 5: You are making those choices, but they're predicated on a
Speaker 5: whole lot of other crap that maybe you're not taking
Speaker 5: into consideration. I mean, is that as simplistically as I
Speaker 5: can put.
Speaker 3: It, that's perfect. That could be like the banner for
Speaker 3: the whole Yeah, exactly. It's a bummer, but it's kind
Speaker 3: of how we turned out. But for me, the most
Speaker 3: important thing, like this, this book of mine, I've been
Speaker 3: flogging about how there's no free will. Like, the first
Speaker 3: half is, there's no free will, there's no free will.
Speaker 3: The second half is, oh my god, what if people
Speaker 3: actually started believing there's no free will? What's going to
Speaker 3: happen then? And a lot of the book of that
Speaker 3: section is people are not going to run amock. We
Speaker 3: can fix that. We're not going to have murderers running
Speaker 3: around on the streets. We can fix that. We're not
Speaker 3: going to have incompetent people taking out your teeth and
Speaker 3: the dentist. No, we could fix that as well. It's
Speaker 3: possible for things to change all of that. But then
Speaker 3: you get to the but oh, this is such a bummer,
Speaker 3: This is so demoralizing. What do you do with the
Speaker 3: existential despair computed? And what I've gotten to is, if
Speaker 3: you're bummed out by the notion that there's no free will,
Speaker 3: and maybe you really didn't earn your corner office or
Speaker 3: your fancy degree or with if you're bummed out by that,
Speaker 3: by definition, you're one of the lucky humans. Because for
Speaker 3: most people out there, what people believing in free will
Speaker 3: when there isn't means it's okay with society that you're
Speaker 3: treated way worse an average for reasons you had no
Speaker 3: control over. Like if you're bummed out by this, it
Speaker 3: means you've had the luxury to be treated better than
Speaker 3: average for reasons you have no control over. But for
Speaker 3: most of earth, for most people, the notion that like, actually, no,
Speaker 3: you have no control over that is incredibly liberating. It's
Speaker 3: really good we don't burn old ladies at the stake anymore,
Speaker 3: and for believers, they had control over the weather.
Speaker 5: But it also it gives you license to say I'm
Speaker 5: a victim too.
Speaker 3: It does, but you're as much a victim of any
Speaker 3: It makes the word victim even irrelevant after a while,
Speaker 3: and makes words like forgiveness irrelevant. All it is is
Speaker 3: who we are. It's like okay to pat people on
Speaker 3: the head and use reward and punishment as purely instrumental tools,
Speaker 3: because they could be very effective in some settings, but
Speaker 3: they're not virtues, and they're not they can't be in
Speaker 3: and of themselves, And the world really does become a
Speaker 3: whole lot more humane when, like you know, we're all
Speaker 3: roughly in the same age range that I bet when
Speaker 3: we were kids, Like the kids sitting next to you
Speaker 3: in fourth grade is not learning how to read very well.
Speaker 3: And there were all sorts of explanations that I certainly
Speaker 3: agreed with with they're not motivated, they're lazy, maybe they're
Speaker 3: not so sparred, all of that. And then somewhere between
Speaker 3: our childhoods and now people figure it out, Oh, you
Speaker 3: could have, like the architecture of neurons in this part
Speaker 3: of your cortex screwed up, and as a result, you
Speaker 3: flip letters that have closed loops, and you got dyslexia,
Speaker 3: and you got trouble learning to read. And you're not lazy,
Speaker 3: you're not unmotivated, you're you just this thing happened during
Speaker 3: fetal development. And like it's a much better world that
Speaker 3: like we like discover somebody as a learning difference and
Speaker 3: they've got dyslexia, rather than like you get these testimonies
Speaker 3: at age forty that damn if only I had gotten
Speaker 3: my dyslexia diagnosis when I've spent my whole life hating
Speaker 3: myself for Yeah, all we've seen is that every one
Speaker 3: of these junctures becomes more humane. Hey, you know what,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter how much like self discipline you have
Speaker 3: and whether you secretly hate yourself or not, if you've
Speaker 3: got a screwy version of a gene for a receptor
Speaker 3: for a hormone in your hypothalamis, no matter what you do,
Speaker 3: you're going to be obese. And it's not because you
Speaker 3: hate yourself. And it's not because you got your brain
Speaker 3: doesn't respond to a satiation signal because you got a
Speaker 3: screwy version of the It's not your fault. It's not
Speaker 3: your fault. You didn't choose who you loved. You didn't choose.
Speaker 3: You didn't choose. You didn't choose to be really smart
Speaker 3: and motivated. You didn't choose to make terrible choices and
Speaker 3: have horrible self discipline. You didn't choose. It just turned
Speaker 3: out this way.
Speaker 4: I also didn't choose to be bald. I just want
Speaker 4: that put out there. I didn't choose it. I didn't
Speaker 4: choose it. I didn't choose one hundred years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 4: your farming community, family, Yeah right, But here's the here's
Speaker 4: the question.
Speaker 6: I guess how I had enough trouble raising my kids
Speaker 6: with a sense of right and wrong, morality, ethics, compassion, mercy, whatever,
Speaker 6: you know, qualities, that we would love our children to.
Speaker 4: Be imbued with. And I was. I was believing in
Speaker 4: free will and joy.
Speaker 6: So, knowing what you know, believing what you believe, how
Speaker 6: do you guide a child towards being who they are,
Speaker 6: being the result of their destiny as you lay it out,
Speaker 6: but also someone who understands about consequence and about their
Speaker 6: actions and with a sense of right wrong morality?
Speaker 4: What have you?
Speaker 3: Well, this is something my wife and I wrestled with
Speaker 3: endlessly have how to deal.
Speaker 9: With our specular, atheistic, mechanistic, biological sheets of scientists, also
Speaker 9: by training what to do with our kids.
Speaker 3: You know, it's just as easy of a path towards
Speaker 3: decent people. Before you judge somebody, think about how they
Speaker 3: wound up being who they are, and how that might
Speaker 3: have been totally different than you, and maybe how they
Speaker 3: didn't have your privileges, blah blah, all of that. Before
Speaker 3: you decide you should be really impressed with yourself about something,
Speaker 3: think about all the things you had going for you
Speaker 3: that other people didn't. And most importantly, every time you
Speaker 3: think you understand why somebody just did something, including yourself,
Speaker 3: think about it a second time, and a fifth time,
Speaker 3: and a tenth time and think about it from their perspective,
Speaker 3: and how maybe you would have viewed that differently when
Speaker 3: you were a little bit less knowledgeable about this or that,
Speaker 3: and think, go back and think about it again, and
Speaker 3: maybe you won't reach quite the same conclusion about who's
Speaker 3: deserving of this or that. And remember that all of
Speaker 3: this is in the context that, hey, you're incredibly lucky
Speaker 3: you don't have scurvy, you don't have malaria, you don't
Speaker 3: have warlords rampaging through the neighborhood eating an abandon you
Speaker 3: do the streets, or like, yeah, you've got a really weird, special,
Speaker 3: privileged perspective on stuff. Don't forget that.
Speaker 5: But no hair is a flight a fight flight response.
Speaker 5: You know, you're reading science that the new inspire momentarily
Speaker 5: before we make a decision. They fire before you make decisions,
Speaker 5: so they predate your decision, which would explain the lack
Speaker 5: of free will whatever. Is that a good example of
Speaker 5: what you're saying.
Speaker 3: It's a great one. It's a little micro sliver of that,
Speaker 3: because that's all like what's going what went on in
Speaker 3: the last second that had nothing to do with free will.
Speaker 3: It's one particular domain. It's a pretty important one, because
Speaker 3: a part of your brain that decides things like if
Speaker 3: you're terrified and if you want to react aggressively and
Speaker 3: stuff process's sensory information about a half second before you
Speaker 3: consciously do, and before you know it, you have, like
Speaker 3: a peace officer mistaking somebody's cell phone for a handgun
Speaker 3: and pulling a trigger, And before you know it, you
Speaker 3: have a whole science of showing why if that person
Speaker 3: looks this way and instead of that way, you're more
Speaker 3: likely to make that mistake. In a tenth of a second.
Speaker 3: Why if you're tired, you're more likely to make that mistake.
Speaker 3: Why if you were raised in this sort of neighborhood
Speaker 3: instead of that one, you're more likely to decide that
Speaker 3: the cell phone is a handgun. All that stuff going
Speaker 3: into and oh no, they shot an unarmed guy because
Speaker 3: the cop comsists, Oh, I was sure when he reached
Speaker 3: for his wallet he was reaching for a gun. And
Speaker 3: we know that's that's one little micro sliver of all
Speaker 3: this stuff playing out. Well.
Speaker 5: I hope we did okay and didn embarrass ourselves with
Speaker 5: the questions we.
Speaker 4: Asked if we did, It's not our phone.
Speaker 5: Oh your family, it's generation blame your ancestor answer anyway,
Speaker 5: I understand doctor supposed to be. Thanks so much, really
Speaker 5: appreciate you.
Speaker 6: Pleasure to have you, and thank you for doing as
Speaker 6: you do and outstand job of taking something that really
Speaker 6: was I couldn't wrap my head around it. And now
Speaker 6: you got me thinking and I will.
Speaker 4: I will be spending some time and talking about that.
Speaker 4: That's what your great great great great grandfather said. Oh,
Speaker 4: thanks for.
Speaker 3: Being on with us, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 4: Total take take care of yourself. Are you convinced.
Speaker 5: No, because it's so complex, but I'm open to it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but I also understand why there's so much us.
Speaker 6: Here's what's interesting to me is I had dinner last
Speaker 6: night with Gab and Noah, my boys, and I told
Speaker 6: them we were going to have this guy on and
Speaker 6: I said, in his theory is there's no free will
Speaker 6: in a nano second. They both went, yeah, he's right,
Speaker 6: of course not it's.
Speaker 5: All And I wonder if that generations that generated because
Speaker 5: it is fascinating.
Speaker 4: Look DNA in illness.
Speaker 5: People are predisposed to stuff because of their parents, their grandparents,
Speaker 5: generations going epilepsy that they thought it was something else.
Speaker 5: But once you have more knowledge that person doesn't have
Speaker 5: control over that. So that's a minor free will thing.
Speaker 5: And then you go, well, this person the committed the crime,
Speaker 5: but they had a tumor that and we now know
Speaker 5: that that's that kind of goes toward his argument or.
Speaker 6: I'll tell you like, so, here's my fear is that
Speaker 6: you know, where does this put us in crime and punishment?
Speaker 4: And I thought you would enjoy this.
Speaker 6: I googled crazy defenses people have had for crimes, and
Speaker 6: I'm just I'll share four of them with you. There
Speaker 6: was one case where a young man in his teens
Speaker 6: I believe, plowed his car into a group of people
Speaker 6: with his truck. That's terrible. Four died, nine were injured.
Speaker 6: And his defense was affluenza. Oh yeah, I remember that
Speaker 6: his wealth prevented him from appreciating the consequences of his actions.
Speaker 5: His wealth and then I would say also that his
Speaker 5: wealth should also, yeah, help him get through the twenty
Speaker 5: two year or thirty year prison turn.
Speaker 4: Well he did not. He was not found guilty.
Speaker 5: Oh that was I remember that case. He was a lesser, trust, yes,
Speaker 5: but I remember that case. People went out of their
Speaker 5: mind from that. Yeah, that he was so that his
Speaker 5: world was so screwed up, yep, that it allowed you
Speaker 5: to forgive him for what he did because he didn't
Speaker 5: realize what he did.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: There was a doctor testified that a gentleman had a
Speaker 6: history of sleep sex sex somnia. Remember that one s
Speaker 6: pervaded by the more than sixteen alcoholic drinks he had
Speaker 6: had the night and magic mushrooms he consumed the day before.
Speaker 4: And the gentleman was ultimate acquitted of rape. This is
Speaker 4: this one. A lot of people know. How did he
Speaker 4: what was conclusion? He acquitted he had sex omnia?
Speaker 6: The twinkie defense Harvey Miller remember and George Moscow and
Speaker 6: San Francisco murdered by then White. His lawyers argued diminished
Speaker 6: capacity given his bouts of depression, wherein days before the
Speaker 6: murder he ate only twinkies, and they argued the junk
Speaker 6: food altered and the jury acquitted of murder and a
Speaker 6: convicted of voluntary manslaughter. And the last one is people
Speaker 6: that have taken what is called the matrix defense, saying
Speaker 6: that in the moment of their of their that they
Speaker 6: were convinced they were living in an alternate dream like.
Speaker 5: Well we are, but that doesn't get you apparently, Wow,
Speaker 5: apparently I gotta talk. It does if I can say
Speaker 5: the word balls on our part, Well, the balls get
Speaker 5: away and you know how good you have to be present?
Speaker 4: Did a jewelry? Yeah? Why is that defense?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 6: And it's not far from what we did on sign
Speaker 6: Felt when Jerry George urinated in the parking garage because
Speaker 6: they couldn't find a man's room and they said I
Speaker 6: have urmsatysis.
Speaker 5: Well they lied and made up something that didn't exist
Speaker 5: at all. At least this one was basically so mister Google.
Speaker 10: Hon Yes, wow, Yeah, I didn't have any free will
Speaker 10: to understand the last twenty minutes. I understand since we
Speaker 10: now have the loss of free will, I wanted to
Speaker 10: give something back and give you a reminder of things.
Speaker 3: That are free.
Speaker 4: Oh I like it.
Speaker 10: Lollipops at banks, Halloween, can't.
Speaker 4: Hold on, hold on.
Speaker 5: We went from the we we went for it because
Speaker 5: you were interested in finding out about we wanted.
Speaker 4: We said it was in the news, a huge yea.
Speaker 4: We were going to nothing. But nothing in the brank
Speaker 4: is free. You can't just walk in, yes you can.
Speaker 6: You can't stay you can you can't can take a
Speaker 6: lollipop and walk out where you I.
Speaker 10: Will videotape myself walking into a bank saying thank you
Speaker 10: very much to the teller, and I will go ahead.
Speaker 4: Let's see.
Speaker 10: I'll just sense it's going over. I got two last
Speaker 10: ones that then I think I'm gonna skip over the
Speaker 10: library books, Microsoft word is free as long as you
Speaker 10: use your kids email address.
Speaker 4: Talk slower because people I didn't know just to just
Speaker 4: say yes.
Speaker 10: And of course the best free thing of all public radio.
Speaker 4: You gotta buy a radio donations. But that's okay, that's good,
Speaker 4: good job, nailed it, nailed it. You know, that's just free.
Speaker 4: Those sneakers on the power you know that is free COVID. See,
Speaker 4: that's the spirit, that's the spirit. Thank you, producer, Lori,
Speaker 4: thank you producing David. Thank you to all of you
Speaker 4: for watching and listening. And yeah, they had no choices free. Really.
Speaker 2: As another episode of Really No Really comes to a close,
Speaker 2: I know you've been wanting to know more about the
Speaker 2: Monty Hall problem and or what that is and how
Speaker 2: you can use it to choose wisely most of the
Speaker 2: time that answer in a moment. But first let's thank
Speaker 2: our guest, doctor Robert Sapalski. You can follow the good
Speaker 2: doctor on TikTok where he is at a Primates TikTok,
Speaker 2: and you can find his latest fascinating book, Determined, a
Speaker 2: Science of Life Without Free Will wherever you get your
Speaker 2: hard copy or electronic books. Find all pertinent links in
Speaker 2: our show notes. Our little show hangs out on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,
Speaker 2: and threads at really No Really podcast, And of course
Speaker 2: you can share your thoughts and feedback with us online
Speaker 2: at reallynoreally dot com. If you have a really some
Speaker 2: amazing factor story that boggles your mind, share it with
Speaker 2: us and if we use it, we will send you
Speaker 2: a little gift. Nothing life changing, obviously, but it's the
Speaker 2: thought that counts. Check out our full episodes on YouTube,
Speaker 2: hit that subscribe button and take that bell. So here
Speaker 2: updated when we release new videos and episodes, which we
Speaker 2: do each Tuesday, So listen and follow us on the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: And now the.
Speaker 2: Answer to the question, what is the Monty Hall problem
Speaker 2: and how.
Speaker 1: Can you use it to make good guesses?
Speaker 2: Monty Hall was the original host of the game show
Speaker 2: Phenomenon Let's Make a Deal. Often on the show, he
Speaker 2: would offer a contestant a choice of one.
Speaker 1: Out of three doors.
Speaker 2: Behind one door would be a prize, but behind the
Speaker 2: other two would be nothing. After the contestant chose, Monty
Speaker 2: would reveal one of the two remaining doors containing nothing.
Speaker 2: This would confirm that one of the two remaining doors,
Speaker 2: including the one the contestant chose, had to contain the prize.
Speaker 1: Then mister Hall would ask.
Speaker 2: The contestant if they wanted to change their mind and
Speaker 2: choose the door they had not chosen initially.
Speaker 1: And this is the Monty Hall problem.
Speaker 2: Now, most people would reason that there is no advantage
Speaker 2: to changing your choice is either way you have a
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty chance that your first guest was the
Speaker 2: right one. But statisticians and scientists have proven that assumption
Speaker 2: to be false.
Speaker 1: How you may ask, well, here's how.
Speaker 2: When the contestant made their initial choice, their odds of
Speaker 2: choosing correctly were one out of three, but the second
Speaker 2: offering allows them to make a one out of two choice,
Speaker 2: the odds of which are far better. It may seem ridiculous,
Speaker 2: but science and research has shown that if you change
Speaker 2: your mind and pick the other door at this critical moment,
Speaker 2: if you increase your odds being correct from thirty three
Speaker 2: percent to sixty six percent.
Speaker 1: And that is the edge that every gambler dreams of.
Speaker 1: In short, don't be afraid.
Speaker 2: To examine your choices, even if you didn't make them freely.
Speaker 2: Really No, Really is a production of iHeartRadio and Blaise Entertainment.