Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Malcolm Gladwell)
- Your Highlight on Location 696-699 | Added on Wednesday, August 31, 2016 3:59:02 PM
They suggest that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act — and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment — are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.
Every day we make decisions. But does that mean we have ‘free will’? I remember the first time being confronted with the idea that there was no free will while listening to a podcast with Sam Harris, a neuroscientist renowned for his work in the studies of consciousness. My first reaction was, that’s just crazy, of course it exists, I make decisions, and often struggle in the process, all the time. But after about 5 minutes of digging into the idea, my position completely shifted. When thinking about free will, being ‘completely free’ as the phrase implies, there is no way for our wills and desires to be completely under the control of our selves. We are influenced by innumerable factors that affect our emotions which affect how we make decisions. Just to name a basic few: genetics, blood chemistry, bodily sensations including temperature, odor, fatigue and hunger, our gut microbiome, conscious and subconscious memories, societal norms…. The list goes on.
For those who are skeptical, take the example Steven Pinker uses in ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’:
‘Another clue that self-control is heritable is that a syndrome marked by a shortage of self-control, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (which is also linked with delinquency and crime), is among the most heritable of personality traits.’
Heritable traits, whether through genetics or the environment, obviously affect self control and impulsivity, and therefore the decision making processes we work with and the choices we make. Therefore, are we ‘free’ to decide anything? From my understanding, no way.
With all of those factors nudging, pushing and pulling us in various directions, how is that the default setting seems to be that free will exists? The reality each of us lives in, the way we perceive our environment, is a result of the stories we tell ourselves and as Yuval Noah Harrari puts it in his book “Homo Deus”, ‘Free will exists only in the imaginary stories we humans have invented.’.
One of my favorite ways to entertain myself at a party or bar is to ask a person, particularly someone I just met, ‘do you believe in free will?’ In social settings, this can be a fun, lively, if not pretty nerdy topic of discussion. The majority of the time, the person I’m talking to is recalcitrant to accept that there is no free will. But some people who have never considered the question before, say ‘no, no way is there free will’ right off the bat. But beyond fun, casual conversation, the idea of free will has implications in our individual lives and the societies we live in.
At the individual level, to be brief, this is another sales pitch to practice mindfulness. To take a moment to identify the things that might be affecting our subjective observations, and bring a bit more objectivity to our reality can be greatly beneficial.
At a society level, things can get very hairy considering how genetics, and heritable traits affected by the environment might affect behaviors and what should or can be done about those things in a society that strives to offer equal opportunity. I won’t go into it but another excerpt to think about comes from Harrari’s ‘Sapiens’:
‘Scientists studying the inner workings of the human organism have found no soul there. They increasingly argue that human behavior is determined by hormones, genes and synapses, rather than by free will – the same forces that determine the behavior of chimpanzees, wolves, and ants. Our judicial and political systems largely try to sweep such inconvenient discoveries under the carpet. But in all frankness, how long can we maintain the wall separating the department of biology from the departments of law and political science?’