Sam Harris Free Will Lecture

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[realbobbyaxel]

Sam harris and his ideas on free will and determinism are still as relevant today as they were 10 years earlier, if not more so!

[leslie]

Dr. Harris has opened my eyes to so much.

[andrewjackson]

"In Hinduism the very idea of free will is non-existent, so there is no word for it. Will is commitment, fixation, bondage... To be free in the world you must be free of the world. Otherwise your past decides for you and your future. Between what had happened and what must happen you are caught. Call it destiny or karma, but never—freedom." - Nisargadatta Maharaj

[m.n.executor]

i knew that Ben Stiller joke was coming and i still laughed my ass off lol

[christinachapman]

The best argument Harris makes is when he notes that we think of free will as the ability to do what we want, without wondering where our wants come from. They are the result of prior causes, like everything else.

[SS-cdie]

I tried to tell a coworker we have no free will, he told me I was an idiot and made fun of me to everyone. I didn't think he'd get so angry. Why does it bother people so much?

[NC-ckoj]

This makes me feel very uncomfortable but I cant argue with a word of it

[BoxRoomStudio]

I would absolutely love to know how many people picked a Ben Stiller film

[JCorvinusVR]

I think the reason people so vehemently reject the idea of free will being an illusion is because of how important a sense of agency is to mental health. Maybe it's a defense mechanism? That and it seems so self-evident. My consciousness is constantly filtering and re-imagining things that are sent to it by the subconsciousness. There's a feedback loop of some kind. But the problem of causality remains.

[balistaAE]

Reading the comments, it appears i have listening to a whole different lecture than most people here.

1 - Sam is  saying that the commonly held notion of free will does not exist. This is important. You can define free will in such a way as to evade his criticism, and you are perfectly entitled to do so. But then you free will will no longer resemble what most people consider free will is.
2 - Sam actually goes out of his way to say that this is true regardless of the existance of Souls and that this is true in a deterministic (pre-determined choises) and indeterministic universes. It is actually the thing i find most remarcable about his view.

[ocolotav]

Sam Harris is one of the messiah's of the times the sad part is that a lot of people will get through their lives without hearing or understanding him.

[Grymbaldknight]

As a soon-to-be philosophy graduate thinking of pursuing a legal profession, the incompatibility of retributive justice with our understanding of determinism is something i've thought about a lot (due in part to lectures like this). As Sam says, how can you base a legal system around an absence of free will?

It's actually not too difficult, depending on one's perspective. The purpose of law isn't to punish choice, but punish action - and this is done in order to encourage criminal reform and keep dangerous people from causing further harm. You don't need free will to enter the picture if you're just trying to protect the public from criminal activity. The prospect of punishment also exists to dissuade people from committing crimes in the first place.

Sam also says - i think elsewhere - that intentionality is a big part of action, even though free will doesn't exist. If a person deliberates, plots, and commits a premeditated crime, it's more suggestive of a criminal mind than a crime of passion, or an act of negligence. Such premeditation is indicative of the fact that the individual is more dangerous - so, for instance, murder is more "deserving" of punishment than manslaughter, and so punishing on the basis of intentionality remains valid.

[tomoxfordable]

I'm studying determinism at the moment. Great lecture. Cheers!

[FernandoVazquez-ronw]

There are two levels to understanding this - that's why it seems so complicated. Level 1: We "seem" to be able to choose from a set of options (That's why we feel free), BUT Level 2: We cannot chose our choices or options since those were put there by genetics, environment and other random events. Therefore, we are not as free as we thought we were. I cannot choose between green, yellow, pink and red if all the colors I have been given in life are only green and pink - therefore, my options are limited and I am not free.

[Mockturtlesoup]

I remember the first time I voiced my belief/hunch that free will was an illusion. It was to my best friend who was driving us home from school sophomore year, and the conversation was extremely frustrating(as it often is with people who've never thought much about it before.)
Later, I started to wonder what people believed and had written about this, and was surprised to learn how common the belief is(i.e. that free will is an illusion), at least among philosophers, neuroscientists, psychologists, etc. What originally got me thinking about the lack of free will was just the basic premise of cause and effect, and that every effect has(at least one) cause(excluding potential quantum shenanigans, and probalistic outcomes in the micro scale), and thus if you could know everything that's happening, down to the subatomic level, you could predict/know what would happen next, as well as go backwards and learn every cause of every event, including human thoughts, behaviors, emotions, etc.
I actually do have Sam's book on free will(the short one with the red cover) but I'm realizing that I've never read, or at least have never finished, that book.

[themartialartsapproach]

I'm determed not to get involved in this discussion.

[kevinsayes]

I always keep a tab or two open on my phone browser with words I hear that I’d like to learn how to incorporate into my vocabulary, or at least have in the arsenal so to speak. I’ll go over them and practice them in a quick sentence whenever I browse anything until I feel I’ve got it down.

Every time I watch a video with Sam speaking (which is a lot), I find myself with 3-4 of these tabs. I love the way he speaks; both in his choice of words and phrases and his rhythm and delivery. The calm demeanor ties it all together into a very effective package.

[aliengod]

It seems so obvious to me the fact we have no free will, and I don't know how I feel about that.

[Pazzystar]

I wish Alan Watts was still alive... and had a seminar with Sam.

[XX-esvg]

I wanted to watch all the way to the end of it, I truly do, but I had no choice but to stop to go and prepare dinner.