I don't believe in free will. This is why.

Do humans have free will or to the the laws of physics imply that such a concept is not much more than a fairy tale? Do we make decisions? Did the big bang start a chain reaction of cause and effects leading to the creation of this video? That's what we'll talk about today.

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00:00 Intro
0:34 Has Physics Ruled Out Free Will?
0:52 Physics FTW!
4:14 Emergence
8:10 Free Will?
13:41 Decisions, Decisions
16:31 Why Does it Matter?
18:16 Learn More With Brilliant

[gradosproducciones]

Whenever i watch a Sabine video about free will, it is never by choice.

[godfreypoon]

I don't believe in free will, but I do believe in reasonably inexpensive will.

[onepartyroule]

I'm less interested in how a particle can decay and more interested in how it can come into existence.

[MarceloSeravalli]

I quote Sapolsky

"I was 14 when I stopped believing in free will"

[claypulley]

"To be a YouTuber you don't need to know anything!"

CLASSIC 😂

[tuttt]

I used to worry about this, but then I realized that it feels like we do, and that's the best we can manage.

[benswanepoel]

I am so happy I found your channel Sabine. Thank you!

[ardenspiro]

Woahh "Decoupling of scales" describes fluently an idea ive been writting about on and off for years, regarding subjectivity, objectivity and the very scale-relative state of reality. Fractals are an interesting relation, given they exhibit directly the scale relativity we speak of

[justgetmeonhere]

Sabine trolls the internet in her own dry humor way and I am constantly here for it. 😂

[lorienator]

I'm a psychologist (albeit a junior one) and in my time I have come across people who have had some realisation (or sometimes they may say 'epiphany' ... rarely in a positive tone) that they don't have free will. It is very rare that this is based on the realisation that comes from understanding quantum mechanics or differential equations, but simply from learning over time how much of the world around them dictates their choices (or rather, limits them).

The crisis that emerges is not one to be sniffed at; how would you feel if you had the thought that nothing was in your control? That you were on a fairground ride that you had never chosen to be in and that whatever curves, splashes (or even horrors) were always going to happen regardless of how much you loved of hated being on it? You are on a fixed rail in a single direction and all you can do is hunker down or throw your hands up in the air.

Well, in my very humble opinion, I believe determinism to be the correct answer to the the question of free will, but the challenge is how to then answer the devastated people who, for them, this is hideous, terrible and stripping them of the meaning of their existence.

I am kinda fortunate that I am a research psychologist and rarely client/patient/service user/insert-correct-name-here facing but also have the task of being pointed at by people who find out what I do and being ordered to "reveal your secrets!"

Well ... from what I have seen: some people who seek out psychology due to past trauma (which is pretty much everyone) can take from this a certain comfort: if this was always going to happen to them, then they had no say and they no part and it was not their fault (which is never is), and sort of ... accept that this was 'fate'. They couldn't have done anything to stop it and absolve themselves of the self-hate and self-blame that is often par of the course for these people.

Others become extremely bitter: for them, the fact that this would have always happened to them and that no matter how strong, how resilient, how brave they were, would never have made a difference. The cold, indifferent world would have always won.

So, the absence of free-will to the individual (who is probably not a physicist/philosopher/etc.) seems to be more complex than the concept itself, because on our level it really does not matter at all if is exists, but what follows from the question of it. Outside of the noble disciplines of the physical sciences, the real world implications are way (WAY) more significant, and the idea may be thousands of years old, but the actuality of it is so new because the noble(er? 😛) disciplines of the social science are still trying to catch up.

Some people may paraphrase the Tolkien quote: "Go not to the psychologists for an answer, for they will say both 'yes' and no'." And .... they have a point.

My advice is probably going to be: go to a psychologist if you are seriously considering your existence and the doing so is having detrimental effects on your life.

My other advice would be: you have as much free-will now as you did before this video/that appointment/that realisation, and consider what you could do now ... which is almost anything you can imagine. If you want to stop reading this rambling comment: do so! If you want to dress up like a chicken and move to Norway to study pine trees and howl at the moon every night: do so!

If you have a choice (real or imagined) then that has to be worth something .... right?

[inductor.]

As an atheist, one thing that provides me with comfort is knowing I dont have free will. Since its impossible to predict the complex direction of matter it is random to me and I "do my best with what I know" however reflecting on the past you realize it is set in stone and cannot ever be changed for the rest of eternity and everything that happened was going to happen. Since everything is on a path if you hypothetically knew the physics of every particle in the universe you could rewind time to the big bang, yiu can also fast forward time inifinitely.

[AliceB]

People really have to separate having free will from feeling like you have free will.
If we discover we don't have free will than that doesn't change anything about the human experience.

[jonnporter]

Am I the only one who can't wait for the days when a photon can go left or right without being judged for its motives?

[TheJilayne]

"I'm a physicist, please see a psychologist." This cracked me up! Between the content and Sabine's humour, my poor pea brain can barely take it. I love this channel.

[Wildminecraftwolf]

I think alot of people are uncomfortable with the lack of free will because it kind of implies someone could predict their entire life and future behaviours, kind of making them into a robot. A piano key. But the issue is, i think its impossible to calculate/predict this, because the calculation is reality itself in some sense.

[sieglindedeutersbotter]

When I hear the expression "free will" I always wonder what it is supposed to be free from. It is a semantic abstraction that doesn't make much sense on its own. You don't need science to see that.

[APaleDot]

"A man can do as he will, but not will as he will"
- Arthur Schopenhauer

[michaelq]

My Grandfather was something of a philosopher, he was also a coal miner, and a doughboy in WW1. He'd been a few places and seen a lot of trouble and he told me once that a man had about as much free will as a rock in an avalanche. I guess that is really true.

[rickniles]

The key insight of this whole video that got me screaming at the screen "Yes, yes, Yes!". Was that the brain is a calculator and we can't know the result of the calculation until it's done. That waiting for the the calculation to be completed is what people call "Free Will". That sums it all up for me. That is, your brain is making decisions and doing comparisons and calculations, but given the same input it's just like any other calculator and it's going to come up with the same answer. There was a story on NPR a few years ago about a women with short term memory loss that reset every five minutes or so. Given the same input she would answer EXACTLY the same, the same face expression, the same way she paused, everything to the point it was hard to believe it wasn't just a repeat of the recording. That was extremely insightful to me that, yes, we are just organic computers.

[jamesekennedy]

Sabine. I'm not a frequent youtube commenter, but I have to say thank you for this video. It has brought me a lot of peace. Weirdly. I don't know enough to know if you are right, but your explanation helped me a lot to leave my anxiety behind. In a very functional way, you have dramatically improved my life with this piece. Sadly, you didn't actually create free will denial, but explaining it to me turns out to have been more important. It releases me from feeling bad for the things I should have done or feeling pride in the things I have. The same goes for those around me. I don't need to feel bad or good because of what 'they' have done. Its just the universe doing its maths. Weirdly, it gives me some of the peace I can see that religion gives to others. In fact, if you decide to start a Free Will Denier religion, let me know where I can send me subscription.