372. The Science Behind Our Choices feat. Robert Sapolsky

Jan 10, 2024

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As we wrestle with the notion of humans as complex biological machines, we confront the unsettling idea that our behaviors might be preordained by genetics and our environment rather than a result of conscious choice. How do we walk the tightrope of acknowledging scientific revelations while grappling with our innate need to assign blame and praise?

Robert Sapolsky is a professor in the neurology department at Stanford University and the author of several books. His latest is Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will.

Robert and Greg discuss the neurological underpinnings of punishment and question whether our justice system is in line with our evolving understanding of human behavior. They examine the dynamics within societies that prioritize rehabilitation over retribution, as seen in the Norwegian criminal justice system, and ponder if mercy and forgiveness should be more central to our own.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

On exploring religious perspective on free will

40:32: If you've spent a hell of a long time thinking about where human goodness comes from, the human capacity to do evil, where its meaning from, what does pain mean and all of that, and it basically doesn't matter if you conclude there's a loving God or if you conclude it's an indifferent universe or if you conclude I am the captain of my fate or if you conclude we're just biological machines. If you've done that hard work, you are going to come out much, much more ethical than average. It's the people who say whatever in between where they are most easily malleable.

Is our brain prepared for adversity?

29:43: What we often view as a brain distorted by adversity early in life is a brain that was doing exactly what it should be doing for preparing for a world in which there was going to be nothing but that adversity, and it's only when you put someone in a different setting that you see the dramatic mismatch there.

The dopamine drive behind punishment and moral dilemmas

15:45: When I see some barbarian advocating some horrible, punitive, vicious, dripping with viscera sort of thing to do to some poor bastard or any such scenario like that, I got to remind myself of something that is a very, very reliable way of getting primate brains to release the neurotransmitter dopamine, and a sense of reward and good feeling is to get to punish someone, to get to punish someone when you feel in the right. That's an incredibly strong thing in us. That's a feature of how we're wired. Culture comes in; we can feel a sense of righteous justice being served by locking away somebody for life without parole, rather than in a town square, like using pincers to take out their eyes and then burn them in front of everyone, are shifting standards.

Where do we get our free will from?

18:19: I spend six chapters in the book going through the world of people who say, "Ooh, we get our free will from quantum indeterminacy. We get our free will from emergent complexity. We get our free will from chaoticism." Those are three totally cool areas, and they're amazing and all. That's not where you can get free will from, and the models they put up always require, at some point, things to work very differently from how they actually do.

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