Before epilepsy was understood to be a neurological condition, people believed it was caused by the moon, or by phlegm in the brain. They condemned seizures as evidence of witchcraft or demonic possession, and killed or castrated sufferers to prevent them from passing tainted blood to a new generation.
“The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over,” Sapolsky said.
If there’s no free will, there’s no such thing as “fair” or “unfair.” Things just happen, and we’re powerless to change them.
“We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.”
If I have no free will, I literally can’t stop doing that.
The problem with arguments against free will is they generally need to implicitly assume free will exists to even have a discussion about it.
Sucks that he doesn’t, but I’m built different. That’s probably why I didn’t waste decades trying to answer a philosophical question that doesn’t ultimately matter.
