Is There Free Will? The Unsettling Science Behind Our Everyday Decisions | Dr. Robert Sapolsky

Robert Sapolsky (0:00)

The only logical extensions of this are that you have earned nothing. You are entitled to absolutely nothing more or less than any other person out there.

Your needs, your pains, your desires deserve no more consideration than any other human on this planet. And then as long as we're at it, number two, hating somebody for anything makes as little sense as hating an earthquake.

Michael Gervais (0:25)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, a trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. And I'm so stoked to welcome a thinker that I have had the highest regard for. And I've been wanting to have this conversation for a very long time.

He is a rich thinker, he's funny. I just can't wait to introduce him to you. And so, like, just start it this way. If you had a bowl of M&Ms and a bowl of kale in front of you, which one would you choose if you wanted to choose health?

Okay, well, our guest today believes that you wouldn't actually have a choice at all.

Today's episode is with Dr. Robert Sapolsky. He is a renowned professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University. And his expertise on topics such as stress and free will and the intricacies of human biology and behavior, it's remarkable how deep he can go, how light and available he can make the information. And throughout his career, he's penned several bestselling works of nonfiction, including in 2017, a New York Times bestseller. It's called Behave. It's amazing. I mean, this book is deep and it's rich and there's so much humor in it. I think it's foundational. I think it's foundational for our entire community to read this book. And I don't want to put it up on too much of a pedestal, but I really think that it's a meaningful book for you to read if you are interested in how psychology, behavior works together for a better life. Now, in this conversation, Robert explores the profound ideas presented in his latest book, Determined, A Science of Life Without Free Will. So he challenges the conventional notion, what most of us hold, is that there is free will. And then he offers a compelling perspective on consciousness and reason and emotion. And he makes a thought-provoking, very logic-based approach that there is no free will. And so his words are that it's a myth. And if so, we talk about how this impacts our sense of self and responsibility, and how even a judge's level of hunger not only influences, but determines the verdict in a court case. Hmm, okay.

Talks about how our biology deeply influences our decisions. Talks about why understanding the absence of free will doesn't lead to chaos, but may pave a path for a more humane world.

And we get into so much more.

I mean, I want to encourage you to prepare yourself. I want to challenge you and maybe prepare you to embark on this conversation without anchoring yourself to my philosophy or his philosophy, and just go through it and be open and enjoy the position that he's taking. And the position he's taken, by the way, has cost him dearly.

His sense of joy and happiness, I think there's some sort of compromise that he's trying to figure this out because his logic is so sound. So I want to encourage you to go with the conversation, feel your way through it, see where you start to put up some blockers and just feel and think your way through this and have conversations with other people about this conversation. It'll take you somewhere. I mean, the whole tapestry of human behavior is complicated. And the guided wisdom of Dr. Sapolsky is awesome. His mind-opening philosophy and his skillful storytelling makes his research compelling. And the depth of the evidence to back his position is awesome. Now, for clarity here up front, he and I disagree, and we have fun with it. It's so stimulating how I felt in this conversation. And I hold that we have agency. And he says that that's silly, and so I encourage you to go on a ride here. So let's jump right into this week's conversation with the legend, Dr. Robert Sapolsky. Dr. Sapolsky, I'm really excited. I'm nervous to have this conversation. It's an absolute thrill to have the opportunity to sit down with you. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. And the nervousness is after spending time reading your philosophy and your position, it could change everything.

And you feel to me a little bit like a radical human with a match in their hand running around to grass huts and promising that it's going to be better if we burn the whole thing down. And I just want to say, I'm really excited to have this conversation with you.