June 2, 2025 • 22 mins
Today we discuss Free Will, and we use the infamous scientist Robert Sapolsky as our starting place. He is a genius, but is her yet another victim to confirmation bias?
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Buy Trevor's Audiobook!
Buy the Physical Book: https://a.co/d/fMPgmFE
Email the Happy Fools @ happyfoolspodcast@gmail.com
Want to publish a book? Check out hemisphericpress.com
Check out our substack at hemisphericpress.substack.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to the God's Eye View Podcast, the companion podcast
for the God's I View Book. My name is Trevor.
I'm a clinical neuroscience researcher who has made a bad
career move and decided to spend most of his spare
time digging into the relationship between science and God. And
(00:35):
so I've been interested in science my whole life and
what happens when you're fascinated by science, or what tends
to happen, especially when you make a career of it.
You tend to spend a lot of time around like
minded people, and people who came up in you know,
the academy, the university and are now working professionally in
(00:57):
academia tend to be atheist. That's been my experience, especially
if you went through school at the time I did,
which was in the early two thousands, when college campuses
across the world were having debates between people like Richard
Dawkins and Hitchens and you know, theologians, and so the
cool thing to be was an atheist, and that was me.
(01:21):
That characterized me one hundred percent. And I you know,
at the time, of course, I didn't think I was.
I thought that way because it was cool because it
wasn't right, although it was popular. I thought it was
the logical conclusion, and I remember thinking back then I
would never be religious because it was illogical. But man,
(01:45):
a couple of years ago, I just started thinking a
little differently about this, and I started seeing some of
the biases in my own worldview. I realized that a
lot of the things I accused religious believers of we're
present in the university setting, often worse. You know, in academia,
(02:06):
you're really punished for not following convention, for not believing
the things you're supposed to believe, for not adhering to
the Orthodox and these are all kinds of things that
I had associated with religion. So anyway, over the years,
I begin to change my mind a bit and ultimately
have come to believe that you can make a logical,
(02:28):
scientific case for there being some force in the universe
that I'm now comfortable calling God. But call it what
you will anyway, So the book God's I View goes
through this. It goes through two hundred years of quantum
physics and a lot of neuroscience because that's my background,
(02:50):
and we kind of make the case that, you know,
I think at the very least we can say we
certainly have not disproved God, and often my opinion, I
think we've done the opposite. We've proved that he exists.
So one of the chapters is on free will, and
so that's the chapter I want to chat about a
little bit today, and I'm going to play some clips
(03:13):
from a scientist I imagine folks probably don't like because
he really sometimes repulses me as well. And that's Neil
de grasse Tyson in this interview, though I would say
he's actually the more reasonable of the two. He is
interviewing Robert Sapolski, who, by the way, I really admire.
(03:36):
I mean this guy, he is really a titan of science.
He's a Stanford researcher. He spent a ton of time
in Africa, you know, basically being living with baboons, and
he's written some incredible books that talk about, you know,
social animals and how psychology and social interactions dictate physiology.
(03:59):
He wrote this book called Why Zebras Don't get ulcers?
Incredible book. Behave was another good book. His most recent
book was Determined, which argues against free will. So I'm
going to play three minutes of this interview, and this,
I would say, is portrayed as the most compelling argument
(04:22):
against free will of the whole video, And man, it
doesn't do anything for me. But we'll see what you think.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I need that encouragement. But if this is an hypothesis
that is strongly supported by observations, what would have to
happen for you to say, I guess my hypothesis is wrong.
Because if anything anybody says or does you count as
evidence in support of your theory, then the theory isn't testable.
(04:55):
And if it's not testable, you're accepting everything as evidence.
Oh that he did that, I'm right, they did the opposite.
I'm still right. You chose a vania, I'm right if
you're right for everything.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I have to chime in and just say this is
actually not typically done between scientists. This, This is a
good question. This is a question that we should always
ask each other, Like what would you need to see
to admit that you're wrong? You know, that's a really
important question, even if just to help you make your
point better, you know, even if it's not true introspection,
(05:29):
but for you to really say, okay, what is the
weakness of my position? So that you can better argue
against it, even if you have a self interested take
on this question. This is an important question.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
How am I going to know if you're ever wrong?
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Here's how you falsify it. Show me And at this point,
like here, who's oh, proof to us, there's no free will?
Proof to us, there's no easter bunny. Prove to us that,
like there's until you turn around, there's somebody creeping up
behind you. Ooh they disappeared. That absence approved roof of absence.
That whole deal by now the onus is on.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Okay, I just got to say, again, that's such a
weak that's such a weak counterpoint to make you know,
this absence of evidence evidence of absence thing. But you
know what, fair enough, let's just keep using people.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Saying there's free will. And this is what would falsify
all of this. Show me a neuron or a network
of neurons or brain that just did something, and show
me that it did that completely free of its history.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
It wouldn't matter what the autophysics that happens all the time.
I mean, you have particles popping in and out of existence.
There's no there's no known cause for it. It just
is right.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah, this is this is where I get conniptions. When
quantum physics is wonderfully relevant to quantum physics, it's got
squat to do with.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Free And I'll just point out that's his dog in
the background, not mine.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Will issues because it's like, what this this this physicist
at MIT, Max Tagmark, is calculated with friends with Max
go on, Okay, he's carried twenty three orders of magnitude
that an indeterminists of atomic effect would have to scale
up to influence the behavior of a molecule.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
It doesn't.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I did not know heared.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, very very important. I did not know that. That
should shut everyone up who's trying to explain consciousness with
quantum physics exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
And it has an X because if they find a
way where somehow magically it bubbles up what you've just
explained as a mechanism for randomness, for random behavior, not
like the moral system you've had since you were in
your diapers in the consistency.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Okay, this is so good. I gotta stop it because
the first point is kind of nonsensical. And if it
didn't make sense to you, but that's because it would
make sense to no one. And I think that's why
Robert Sapolski quickly shifts gears to talk about, well, even
if quantum effects did appear, all they explain is randomness,
(08:10):
and it's you know, it's a good point because quantum.
So let's say we have a quantum system like a
spin state, you know, where we observe an electron, and
the axis in the spin is oriented upwards or downwards, right,
and so that is a binary system. It can be
upward down and so the state that it will assume
(08:32):
upon being observed is truly fifty to fifty. And the
randomness that quantum systems display is it's like true random randomness.
We don't know of anything more random than that. So
it's an interesting point that all he's saying is yet,
all quantum effects do is provide a mechanism for randomness.
(08:53):
But I don't think they realize that this is actually,
like incredibly important in the free will conversation because to
believe that free will is an illusion. It's a problem
because you cannot have let's just say, this computation cannot
(09:14):
lead to free will. Okay, so if you believe that
we are a classical system like a computer or like AI,
you cannot get to a to a state of free
will because everything is algorithmic, right, and so there needs
to be some initial stimulus, and that stimulus filters through
(09:35):
a decision tree that is a neuronal network, I suppose,
and comes to a conclusion that you could theoretically predetermine
if you knew enough about the system, like if I can,
if I can measure and trace every neuronal pathway and
subject you to a stimulus, I could predict your exact action.
(09:55):
That's sort of the current neuroscientific view on free will.
And he's saying, well, quantum doesn't do anything to change
that misconception. All it does is provide a mechanism of randomness.
And it's like, that's exactly the mechanism we're missing in
a computational model, which the brain is clearly computational. We're
missing that first domino, that first random domino, who makes
(10:18):
what makes the first decision, what sets the baseline? What
is the mechanism for an initial random impulse? And you know,
a quantum system obviously satisfies that niche a nit niche, sorry,
And so I think he's kind of like giving it
away here by saying this, But let's keep listening.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And even if we went there, it's not it's it's random, okay,
and it's still it's still not really in our control because
it's random exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Operation that's not what we're looking for. With we're looking for,
you know, you get somebody's funeral, and what do they
do is they trot out their oldest friend, who gets
to say, even when we were in kindergarten, they were
already like this consistency. You're not going to get consistency
like that. You're not going to get like a stable
(11:09):
moral compass or something out of quantum randomness. And everybody, yes,
you get randomnes.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
This is such a good point, and I don't think
he realizes he's making the exact opposite point that he
thinks he's making. It's like people, you know, scientists especially,
they want it to be one thing or the other thing.
Either we have free will and there's some mechanism for
free will and that explains every single thing about human psychology,
(11:40):
or we don't have it at all. And I think
a much more accurate, correct and logical viewpoint is sort
of the religious viewpoint, which is that there is a
ghost in a machine. You know, there's there's flesh and spirit.
So yes, the brain. Clearly, the brain is clearly associated
with me. It's I don't think anybody's arguing that that
(12:03):
there's regions of your brain that are associated with processing
a vision or hearing, or emotion, or cognition, or even morality.
None of these things are consciousness. Consciousness isn't conscienceness, it's
not morality, it's not logic, it's not intellect. It's something else.
(12:25):
There's someone inside the car driving your body, witnessing your life.
You have a perspective, and that perspective it certainly feels
real to me. And I think to argue that it's
an illusion, well an illusion for who who is the
(12:47):
illusion for? It's for some agent inside your body. And
I think the I think the religious viewpoint gets us
exactly right. This idea that there is that spirit or
soul that animating the flesh, and we know it's not
just neuronal This is this is is so frustrating Sepolski
is making this. He starts this commentary off by saying,
(13:12):
what would disprove my theory is if you could show
me a neuron who operates completely free from his his
from its history. Kind of implying that your neuronal network
is pruned is over time. Right, So you're you're born,
and you don't have any experience or memory or history,
(13:32):
and then over time you're you're shaped and your personality
emerges and your experience guides you. And he's presenting that
as an argument against free will. But that's insane. Of
course we have that the brain has a function, like
I don't think anyone who is arguing that free will
exists says, well, the brain doesn't play any role in
our lives. Of course it does, of course it does.
(13:55):
It's the engine, it's the machine. Yes, your personality is
a part your brain. But you're more than your personality.
You're more than your memory. Although people like to say
all we are is our memory, but we are we're
a perspective. We have a viewpoint. When something happens to me,
it happens to me. That word me means something. It's
(14:17):
describing the ghost, the spirit that inhabits my body. And
to just dismiss that as illusory, I don't know. It's weird.
But even more from a scientific perspective, it doesn't make sense.
Because we have identified many organisms multicellular and even unicellular
(14:40):
organisms that don't have anything resembling neurons or a brain,
and they are still capable of displaying basic memory, decision making,
fear avoidance without neurons. And so this isn't to say
(15:00):
neurons don't do anything. Of course they do. You know,
we wouldn't humans, wouldn't be humans without our cerebral cortex.
It's it's a wonder of physiology. It's amazing. I spend
my time studying it. I'm obsessed with it. I love it.
But I think it's a huge logical leap to say
that we get conscious experience and subjective experience from neuronal networks.
(15:29):
There's absolutely no evidence for that, and so I think,
I almost this is it's kind of lazy logic for Sepolski.
I really admire him, So the fact that he's using
this logic, it almost feels like he's intentionally muddying the
waters between subjective experience and personality and morality because a
(15:53):
lot of those things I think do come from the brain.
And so I'm thinking to myself, why would he why
would he intentionally be acting like this? Well, he gives
away his cards right here.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
In free will. I was fourteen when I had this
incredibly epiphanal night where I suddenly decided there's no free will.
I also, as long as I was at it that night,
decided there's no God and there's no purpose, and there's
just a big county and different universe. It was interesting
stuff going on the days.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Or there were there mushrooms involved in this?
Speaker 3 (16:33):
No, no, but there there was. There was religious trauma instead,
which I think is a much more effective way of
messing with your head.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Get out of here. Do you see what's going on now?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
So it was it was a wonderful sort of clarity
of oh I can't.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
I think that's yes, that's when that where it applies.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
So I have not believe in free will since then.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
So all Babboon ecological physiology and all rat monkey mice
neuroscience did was just to add more factoids to like
Richess machines for biological machines.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Come on, This is the exact opposite of what science
is supposed to be. This is what we ridicule believers for.
We ridicule them for confirmation bias. Listen, think about what
he just said. I had a traumatic experience as a
fourteen year old I was betrayed. I'm assuming because he
says he experienced religious trauma, which you know often comes
(17:40):
at the hands of someone you trust, someone who's religious
betraying you. Although there's all different types of this, he
has this pivotal experience that shakes his foundations and solidified.
He said he hasn't changed his mind about this since
that day, and that all of the science he did
just confirmed what he already knew to be the case,
(18:03):
otherwise confirmation bias. Does he realize what he's giving away here?
This is this is such an admission. This is such
a startling admission from one of the biggest, most well
known scientists out there, which is Suppolski. The guy is
really prolific, written eight amazing books. He's MacArthur Genius, Grand Recipient,
(18:29):
Stanford Blum and professor. He's you know, he's like one
of the goats of science. And he just admits that
his entire body of work is really the consequence of
like severe confirmation bias. In confirmation bias in you know,
(18:52):
a really sad way I do feel for him is
I don't want anyone to experience religious trauma. I you know,
my almost whole life as an atheist was basically a
consequence of how I perceived religious people to be. I
thought they were guilty of confirmation bias. I thought they
were illogical, I thought they were too certain. I thought
(19:16):
they were following blind faith. But that's all any of
us do, which I think this interview is a glaring
example of and you know, ultimately, I think I've come
to believe that logic can take you straight to the source,
right to Jesus Christ. Anyway, this, uh, I hope you
(19:40):
guys are somewhat interested in this. Basically, he's gonna say
he is going to connect the dots any way he
can to demonstrate that free will is an illusion. This
is an our interview. He talks about how you know
at the number of hours since you last eight is
one of the best predictors of judge sentencing, Like, if
(20:01):
you get a judge that hasn't eight for four hours,
you're going to jail. If you get a judge who
just had lunch, you're gonna get let off easy. Kind
of implying that we don't have free will. Our decisions
are dictated by our physiology. Yeah, I get that there's
an agent in my body who is influenced by biology.
If I'm really hungry, I might act a little differently.
(20:24):
If I'm really sad, I might make decisions differently. If
I'm really angry, I might jump to conclusions. But Who's I,
you know, in all those scenarios, when I'm saying I
might do this, I might do that. Who is that
agent that is being influenced by my biology? If I
didn't have a subjective experience of being alive, I would
(20:45):
accept this argument on its face. But no one wants
to explain the experience of being inside your head, viewing
the world, making decisions, being hurt, being loved, being afraid.
Who is experiencing that? This is just this is the problem.
(21:05):
We can't define consciousness even in science. But someone did
define it pretty well a few thousand years ago when
they talked about the ghost and the soul and the
spirit and the flesh. Thanks everybody. Please buy the book
on Amazon, God's i View by Trevor Lohman. If you
(21:27):
search God's iView on Amazon, it should pop up first.
It has a big black hole on the cover, so
you can't miss it. Please, if you enjoy the book,
leave me a review, and also if you have any
questions about the podcast or about the book, please email
God'siview Book at gmail dot com and i'll reply. Thanks everybody,
Welcome to the God's Eye View Podcast, the companion podcast
for the God's I View Book. My name is Trevor.
I'm a clinical neuroscience researcher who has made a bad
career move and decided to spend most of his spare
time digging into the relationship between science and God. And
(00:35):
so I've been interested in science my whole life and
what happens when you're fascinated by science, or what tends
to happen, especially when you make a career of it.
You tend to spend a lot of time around like
minded people, and people who came up in you know,
the academy, the university and are now working professionally in
(00:57):
academia tend to be atheist. That's been my experience, especially
if you went through school at the time I did,
which was in the early two thousands, when college campuses
across the world were having debates between people like Richard
Dawkins and Hitchens and you know, theologians, and so the
cool thing to be was an atheist, and that was me.
(01:21):
That characterized me one hundred percent. And I you know,
at the time, of course, I didn't think I was.
I thought that way because it was cool because it
wasn't right, although it was popular. I thought it was
the logical conclusion, and I remember thinking back then I
would never be religious because it was illogical. But man,
(01:45):
a couple of years ago, I just started thinking a
little differently about this, and I started seeing some of
the biases in my own worldview. I realized that a
lot of the things I accused religious believers of we're
present in the university setting, often worse. You know, in academia,
(02:06):
you're really punished for not following convention, for not believing
the things you're supposed to believe, for not adhering to
the Orthodox and these are all kinds of things that
I had associated with religion. So anyway, over the years,
I begin to change my mind a bit and ultimately
have come to believe that you can make a logical,
(02:28):
scientific case for there being some force in the universe
that I'm now comfortable calling God. But call it what
you will anyway, So the book God's I View goes
through this. It goes through two hundred years of quantum
physics and a lot of neuroscience because that's my background,
(02:50):
and we kind of make the case that, you know,
I think at the very least we can say we
certainly have not disproved God, and often my opinion, I
think we've done the opposite. We've proved that he exists.
So one of the chapters is on free will, and
so that's the chapter I want to chat about a
little bit today, and I'm going to play some clips
(03:13):
from a scientist I imagine folks probably don't like because
he really sometimes repulses me as well. And that's Neil
de grasse Tyson in this interview, though I would say
he's actually the more reasonable of the two. He is
interviewing Robert Sapolski, who, by the way, I really admire.
(03:36):
I mean this guy, he is really a titan of science.
He's a Stanford researcher. He spent a ton of time
in Africa, you know, basically being living with baboons, and
he's written some incredible books that talk about, you know,
social animals and how psychology and social interactions dictate physiology.
(03:59):
He wrote this book called Why Zebras Don't get ulcers?
Incredible book. Behave was another good book. His most recent
book was Determined, which argues against free will. So I'm
going to play three minutes of this interview, and this,
I would say, is portrayed as the most compelling argument
(04:22):
against free will of the whole video, And man, it
doesn't do anything for me. But we'll see what you think.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I need that encouragement. But if this is an hypothesis
that is strongly supported by observations, what would have to
happen for you to say, I guess my hypothesis is wrong.
Because if anything anybody says or does you count as
evidence in support of your theory, then the theory isn't testable.
(04:55):
And if it's not testable, you're accepting everything as evidence.
Oh that he did that, I'm right, they did the opposite.
I'm still right. You chose a vania, I'm right if
you're right for everything.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I have to chime in and just say this is
actually not typically done between scientists. This, This is a
good question. This is a question that we should always
ask each other, Like what would you need to see
to admit that you're wrong? You know, that's a really
important question, even if just to help you make your
point better, you know, even if it's not true introspection,
(05:29):
but for you to really say, okay, what is the
weakness of my position? So that you can better argue
against it, even if you have a self interested take
on this question. This is an important question.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
How am I going to know if you're ever wrong?
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Here's how you falsify it. Show me And at this point,
like here, who's oh, proof to us, there's no free will?
Proof to us, there's no easter bunny. Prove to us that,
like there's until you turn around, there's somebody creeping up
behind you. Ooh they disappeared. That absence approved roof of absence.
That whole deal by now the onus is on.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Okay, I just got to say, again, that's such a
weak that's such a weak counterpoint to make you know,
this absence of evidence evidence of absence thing. But you
know what, fair enough, let's just keep using people.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Saying there's free will. And this is what would falsify
all of this. Show me a neuron or a network
of neurons or brain that just did something, and show
me that it did that completely free of its history.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
It wouldn't matter what the autophysics that happens all the time.
I mean, you have particles popping in and out of existence.
There's no there's no known cause for it. It just
is right.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah, this is this is where I get conniptions. When
quantum physics is wonderfully relevant to quantum physics, it's got
squat to do with.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Free And I'll just point out that's his dog in
the background, not mine.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Will issues because it's like, what this this this physicist
at MIT, Max Tagmark, is calculated with friends with Max
go on, Okay, he's carried twenty three orders of magnitude
that an indeterminists of atomic effect would have to scale
up to influence the behavior of a molecule.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
It doesn't.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I did not know heared.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, very very important. I did not know that. That
should shut everyone up who's trying to explain consciousness with
quantum physics exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
And it has an X because if they find a
way where somehow magically it bubbles up what you've just
explained as a mechanism for randomness, for random behavior, not
like the moral system you've had since you were in
your diapers in the consistency.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Okay, this is so good. I gotta stop it because
the first point is kind of nonsensical. And if it
didn't make sense to you, but that's because it would
make sense to no one. And I think that's why
Robert Sapolski quickly shifts gears to talk about, well, even
if quantum effects did appear, all they explain is randomness,
(08:10):
and it's you know, it's a good point because quantum.
So let's say we have a quantum system like a
spin state, you know, where we observe an electron, and
the axis in the spin is oriented upwards or downwards, right,
and so that is a binary system. It can be
upward down and so the state that it will assume
(08:32):
upon being observed is truly fifty to fifty. And the
randomness that quantum systems display is it's like true random randomness.
We don't know of anything more random than that. So
it's an interesting point that all he's saying is yet,
all quantum effects do is provide a mechanism for randomness.
(08:53):
But I don't think they realize that this is actually,
like incredibly important in the free will conversation because to
believe that free will is an illusion. It's a problem
because you cannot have let's just say, this computation cannot
(09:14):
lead to free will. Okay, so if you believe that
we are a classical system like a computer or like AI,
you cannot get to a to a state of free
will because everything is algorithmic, right, and so there needs
to be some initial stimulus, and that stimulus filters through
(09:35):
a decision tree that is a neuronal network, I suppose,
and comes to a conclusion that you could theoretically predetermine
if you knew enough about the system, like if I can,
if I can measure and trace every neuronal pathway and
subject you to a stimulus, I could predict your exact action.
(09:55):
That's sort of the current neuroscientific view on free will.
And he's saying, well, quantum doesn't do anything to change
that misconception. All it does is provide a mechanism of randomness.
And it's like, that's exactly the mechanism we're missing in
a computational model, which the brain is clearly computational. We're
missing that first domino, that first random domino, who makes
(10:18):
what makes the first decision, what sets the baseline? What
is the mechanism for an initial random impulse? And you know,
a quantum system obviously satisfies that niche a nit niche, sorry,
And so I think he's kind of like giving it
away here by saying this, But let's keep listening.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And even if we went there, it's not it's it's random, okay,
and it's still it's still not really in our control because
it's random exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Operation that's not what we're looking for. With we're looking for,
you know, you get somebody's funeral, and what do they
do is they trot out their oldest friend, who gets
to say, even when we were in kindergarten, they were
already like this consistency. You're not going to get consistency
like that. You're not going to get like a stable
(11:09):
moral compass or something out of quantum randomness. And everybody, yes,
you get randomnes.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
This is such a good point, and I don't think
he realizes he's making the exact opposite point that he
thinks he's making. It's like people, you know, scientists especially,
they want it to be one thing or the other thing.
Either we have free will and there's some mechanism for
free will and that explains every single thing about human psychology,
(11:40):
or we don't have it at all. And I think
a much more accurate, correct and logical viewpoint is sort
of the religious viewpoint, which is that there is a
ghost in a machine. You know, there's there's flesh and spirit.
So yes, the brain. Clearly, the brain is clearly associated
with me. It's I don't think anybody's arguing that that
(12:03):
there's regions of your brain that are associated with processing
a vision or hearing, or emotion, or cognition, or even morality.
None of these things are consciousness. Consciousness isn't conscienceness, it's
not morality, it's not logic, it's not intellect. It's something else.
(12:25):
There's someone inside the car driving your body, witnessing your life.
You have a perspective, and that perspective it certainly feels
real to me. And I think to argue that it's
an illusion, well an illusion for who who is the
(12:47):
illusion for? It's for some agent inside your body. And
I think the I think the religious viewpoint gets us
exactly right. This idea that there is that spirit or
soul that animating the flesh, and we know it's not
just neuronal This is this is is so frustrating Sepolski
is making this. He starts this commentary off by saying,
(13:12):
what would disprove my theory is if you could show
me a neuron who operates completely free from his his
from its history. Kind of implying that your neuronal network
is pruned is over time. Right, So you're you're born,
and you don't have any experience or memory or history,
(13:32):
and then over time you're you're shaped and your personality
emerges and your experience guides you. And he's presenting that
as an argument against free will. But that's insane. Of
course we have that the brain has a function, like
I don't think anyone who is arguing that free will
exists says, well, the brain doesn't play any role in
our lives. Of course it does, of course it does.
(13:55):
It's the engine, it's the machine. Yes, your personality is
a part your brain. But you're more than your personality.
You're more than your memory. Although people like to say
all we are is our memory, but we are we're
a perspective. We have a viewpoint. When something happens to me,
it happens to me. That word me means something. It's
(14:17):
describing the ghost, the spirit that inhabits my body. And
to just dismiss that as illusory, I don't know. It's weird.
But even more from a scientific perspective, it doesn't make sense.
Because we have identified many organisms multicellular and even unicellular
(14:40):
organisms that don't have anything resembling neurons or a brain,
and they are still capable of displaying basic memory, decision making,
fear avoidance without neurons. And so this isn't to say
(15:00):
neurons don't do anything. Of course they do. You know,
we wouldn't humans, wouldn't be humans without our cerebral cortex.
It's it's a wonder of physiology. It's amazing. I spend
my time studying it. I'm obsessed with it. I love it.
But I think it's a huge logical leap to say
that we get conscious experience and subjective experience from neuronal networks.
(15:29):
There's absolutely no evidence for that, and so I think,
I almost this is it's kind of lazy logic for Sepolski.
I really admire him, So the fact that he's using
this logic, it almost feels like he's intentionally muddying the
waters between subjective experience and personality and morality because a
(15:53):
lot of those things I think do come from the brain.
And so I'm thinking to myself, why would he why
would he intentionally be acting like this? Well, he gives
away his cards right here.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
In free will. I was fourteen when I had this
incredibly epiphanal night where I suddenly decided there's no free will.
I also, as long as I was at it that night,
decided there's no God and there's no purpose, and there's
just a big county and different universe. It was interesting
stuff going on the days.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Or there were there mushrooms involved in this?
Speaker 3 (16:33):
No, no, but there there was. There was religious trauma instead,
which I think is a much more effective way of
messing with your head.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Get out of here. Do you see what's going on now?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
So it was it was a wonderful sort of clarity
of oh I can't.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
I think that's yes, that's when that where it applies.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
So I have not believe in free will since then.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
So all Babboon ecological physiology and all rat monkey mice
neuroscience did was just to add more factoids to like
Richess machines for biological machines.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Come on, This is the exact opposite of what science
is supposed to be. This is what we ridicule believers for.
We ridicule them for confirmation bias. Listen, think about what
he just said. I had a traumatic experience as a
fourteen year old I was betrayed. I'm assuming because he
says he experienced religious trauma, which you know often comes
(17:40):
at the hands of someone you trust, someone who's religious
betraying you. Although there's all different types of this, he
has this pivotal experience that shakes his foundations and solidified.
He said he hasn't changed his mind about this since
that day, and that all of the science he did
just confirmed what he already knew to be the case,
(18:03):
otherwise confirmation bias. Does he realize what he's giving away here?
This is this is such an admission. This is such
a startling admission from one of the biggest, most well
known scientists out there, which is Suppolski. The guy is
really prolific, written eight amazing books. He's MacArthur Genius, Grand Recipient,
(18:29):
Stanford Blum and professor. He's you know, he's like one
of the goats of science. And he just admits that
his entire body of work is really the consequence of
like severe confirmation bias. In confirmation bias in you know,
(18:52):
a really sad way I do feel for him is
I don't want anyone to experience religious trauma. I you know,
my almost whole life as an atheist was basically a
consequence of how I perceived religious people to be. I
thought they were guilty of confirmation bias. I thought they
were illogical, I thought they were too certain. I thought
(19:16):
they were following blind faith. But that's all any of
us do, which I think this interview is a glaring
example of and you know, ultimately, I think I've come
to believe that logic can take you straight to the source,
right to Jesus Christ. Anyway, this, uh, I hope you
(19:40):
guys are somewhat interested in this. Basically, he's gonna say
he is going to connect the dots any way he
can to demonstrate that free will is an illusion. This
is an our interview. He talks about how you know
at the number of hours since you last eight is
one of the best predictors of judge sentencing, Like, if
(20:01):
you get a judge that hasn't eight for four hours,
you're going to jail. If you get a judge who
just had lunch, you're gonna get let off easy. Kind
of implying that we don't have free will. Our decisions
are dictated by our physiology. Yeah, I get that there's
an agent in my body who is influenced by biology.
If I'm really hungry, I might act a little differently.
(20:24):
If I'm really sad, I might make decisions differently. If
I'm really angry, I might jump to conclusions. But Who's I,
you know, in all those scenarios, when I'm saying I
might do this, I might do that. Who is that
agent that is being influenced by my biology? If I
didn't have a subjective experience of being alive, I would
(20:45):
accept this argument on its face. But no one wants
to explain the experience of being inside your head, viewing
the world, making decisions, being hurt, being loved, being afraid.
Who is experiencing that? This is just this is the problem.
(21:05):
We can't define consciousness even in science. But someone did
define it pretty well a few thousand years ago when
they talked about the ghost and the soul and the
spirit and the flesh. Thanks everybody. Please buy the book
on Amazon, God's i View by Trevor Lohman. If you
(21:27):
search God's iView on Amazon, it should pop up first.
It has a big black hole on the cover, so
you can't miss it. Please, if you enjoy the book,
leave me a review, and also if you have any
questions about the podcast or about the book, please email
God'siview Book at gmail dot com and i'll reply. Thanks everybody,
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