WEBVTT

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I'm David Pinsoff.

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I'm David Petrozowski.

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And this is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast where actual evolutionary psychologists

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are actually evolutionary psychology.

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Yeah, they they do it and they talk about it.

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Enjoy.

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It's great.

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David, today we have a very special guest.

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Uh who is that guest?

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It's me, David.

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It's me.

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Wow.

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So I'm really not a guest.

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No, you're one of the co-hosts, but you're also a guest in this episode.

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Uh and it is our first uh solo episode with just the two of us in a long time.

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And I really uh I was missing having those because uh I always have a blast just doing

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one-on-one convos with you.

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And I think this one uh was no exception to that rule of those conversations being a blast.

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Uh and what what do we what do we talk about in this one?

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We had no choice but to talk about oh, that's a bad joke, free will.

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Yeah, that's right.

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All the implications, the philosophy, the psychology, the ethics,

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uh everything there is that revolves around this topic of free will.

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It really it it's a topic that energizes people in kind of an unexpected way for how

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abstruse and technical it is.

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Like people get really fired up about it and engaged in this question of whether or not we

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have free will.

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And so we get into why uh we as humans are.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Anybody whose sort of eyes are rolling back in the back of their head and they're like, oh

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my god, I don't want to listen to this.

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Um it this I think this is a very different conversation.

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It really like it cuts to an adaptationist approach to free will.

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And as David said, it there's a theory of why people feel strongly or

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feel anything about this, and that's part of the theory, too.

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So um, if you if you have any if you think you hate free will as an enterprise of

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sort of human inquiry, this episode might also be for you.

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Exactly.

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I think it's for people who love the free will debate and hate the free will debate in

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equal measure.

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Yeah.

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Um so yeah this was a this was a really fun one.

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Um you will have no choice but to enjoy it.

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Thanks David.

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All right David, I hit record.

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All right, we did it.

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It's our first solo episode in a long time.

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A long time yeah yeah I'm I'm I'm already pre pre uh exhausted from

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talking about what we're going to talk about today.

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Yeah, the the the pre-podcast discussion already uh yeah no but well but no but

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specifically free will so there's like a quote from I think it's Rumi who's like a Persian

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poet I mean um if people know I'm sure whatever century he was twelfth century or something

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I don't know um and it said it's basically like this is a disputation that will you know uh

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occupy mankind until like the sun explodes.

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Uh and that and that is against the partisans and necessitarians of uh free will or

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something like that.

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Oh man.

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So it's been millennia.

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I guess we're fulfilling uh Rumi's prophecy um against our own free will.

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It's fate.

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We're doomed to justn't we couldn't do otherwise, yeah.

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So, David, I have been I have been foolishly tackling free will.

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There's two parts to it.

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One is theoretical, conceptual, the other one is empirical.

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Um and I'm just gonna let you ask questions because there's so much to talk about.

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And I'm I only want to take about five minutes.

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So yeah, we're honestly I'm excited to learn things about this um because I'm I find this

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topic inherently interesting.

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I also find your your research and your perspective uh interesting.

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And so I'm happy to marry these two things.

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And I didn't I wasn't even aware there was empirical stuff, so I'm excited to learn about

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it.

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Yeah, we're in the middle.

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We're about to run it.

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Um in fact we actually just started highlighting it, but we have a enormous bank of studies

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planned.

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Yeah.

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Fantastic.

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All right.

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So I guess the first thing I I want to ask is like it's kind of an unusual topic for an

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evolutionary psychologist.

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You know, when people think about free will, they think about uh philosophy.

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Um, it's not usually the type of thing that an evolutionary psychologist would study.

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So, what business do you have uh uh nosing your way into this uh millennia-long

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debate?

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Yeah, no one none.

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None no.

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Uh I mean, yeah, that is the actual answer.

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Um, but it but it in some sense, this is always this goes in the category too of um

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somebody commented in one of our uh recent um yeah about how many times I say um on

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YouTube.

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So I really have to cut out my ums.

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I don't I don't usually uh say um when I'm teaching, but I think there's something about

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the zoom.

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We all have our ticks.

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Yeah.

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I my my favorite is uh.

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So you know maybe maybe I'll start saying um and you can say uh great.

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Yeah.

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So I have no business, is the short answer.

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The long answer is that as an adaptationist, I have business uh inquirying and inquiring

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into any aspect of human existence that is caused by adaptations, and

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specifically any concept that a human being is appealing to

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ultimately is a product of some constellation of adaptations.

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So when we talk about, you know, my mother or

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a chair or free will, part of being an adaptationist is saying,

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look, there's an organism that has a representation of something.

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And as an adaptationist, my job, if I want to be responsible for explaining

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this slice of reality, is to figure out what slap what slice of

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all of the adaptations in this organism are causing them to be able to represent the mother

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or the chair, or in this case, free will.

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And that's that third one is one I just picked off.

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So in that sense, I I am allowed as an adaptationist in the sense that all human

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activity, which includes scientific and philosophical inquiry, is up for grabs when

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you're an adaptationist.

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I I love that perspective.

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Um I I uh I wish it were more common.

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Um, you know, humans are animals.

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Uh philosophy and philosophizing is one of the things that we as animals do.

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Uh animals are bundles of adaptations and their byproducts.

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Uh and if we want to understand something like philosophy or philosophizing, we need to

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understand how it emerges from the adaptations and their byproducts.

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Uh and I see no alternative to understanding philosophical discourse except in

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those terms.

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It it kind of um would be unsettling for the participants in the philosophical discourse to

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see their own philosophizing explained in those terms.

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Um I I would suspect.

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Uh I don't know, do do people get uncomfortable?

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Do philosophers get uncomfortable with this approach?

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I mean, you know, psychology is a slow moving boat.

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Um, you know, it's like I the I think it was some politician used the metaphor of, you

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know, changing the government is like a steering a cruise ship.

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Uh, you know, and so if psychology is a cruise ship, you know, philosophy is, I don't know,

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a continent or something, I think it's a lot more slow going.

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I the I I do think, number one, I've only had a little bit of

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interaction with professional philosophers, like about this free will project.

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I talked to Christian Liszt, he's been very positive.

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Um, but the so that's the short answer is because

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I'm not one of them, there hasn't been too much reaction.

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But my reading of philosophy is this is sort of the logical consequence of what philosophy

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has already been doing.

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So at least since um sounds like really pretentious.

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Well, I would say like Wittgenstein or even oh yeah, like even um Kant, Emmanuel

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Kant, I think was an evolutionary psychologist.

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If you actually look at him, his point is: look, we're you can't there's no perspective

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independence in philosophy, and you can't understand what philosophy is

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unless you understand sort of the psychology that we're bringing to bear.

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I mean that's sort of his point indifferent.

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And so I do think that uh this is an inevitable part of adaptationism

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solidifying itself into human inquiry, is that um the there will

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be the the additional part of adaptationism entering into

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philosophy and and yeah, so I so I I I whether or not

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the individualist analysis is whether or not the philosopher

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the individual philosophers themselves um would agree or disagree just because you know

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they're humans and they want they they've had their own they've committed to their own

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status schemes in your language.

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Um I think that you can see a line of

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psychology generally becoming integrated into philosophy, um,

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at least in the sense of like Kant and these other folks thinking the we

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are using our own minds to do this enterprise.

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Um and and so um so I don't think that it's contrary to

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philosophy or even revolutionary.

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I think the philosophers got there first of being like this whole philosophy thing is sort

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of BS to the extent that we're actually just using our psychology to do it,

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and antipationism is just the next um part of pushing on that.

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Yeah, it's the next step of using psychological analysis to uh yield

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philosophical insight.

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Right.

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Um and I I want to actually bolster your point that this is a topic that should be of

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interest to evolutionary psychologists.

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Um and this occurred to me when I was looking at Donald Brown's list of human universals.

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So we talked about this on our very first episode, I believe, or maybe it was our second

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episode.

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Um, how this was inspiring for both of us, seeing a list of things that uh this

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anthropologist, Donald Brown, uh cataloged uh as as being universal across human cultures,

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or at least uh uh across the ethnographic record that he looked at uh in his book, Human

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Universals.

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And so I happened to be looking at this list uh for a different project.

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Uh and while I was looking at it, a few items jumped out at me uh, and I had the thought,

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oh, Dave should know about this.

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This is relevant to what Dave's working on.

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Uh and I started looking through it and I found all these things that make a pretty good

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case that the conceptual machinery underlying free will may well be a part of human nature,

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may be a part of the human cognitive phenotype.

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So here are all the things that I found in Don Brown's list that are relevant to the free

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will debate.

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You did your homework.

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I did my homework.

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So uh the first one is intention, The concept of intention or intending to do something

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is universal across cultures, at least according to Donald Brown.

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Choice making or choosing alternatives, universal.

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Decision making.

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This one's really interesting.

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Actions under self-control, distinguished from those not under control.

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That I find incredibly fascinating.

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That that distinction is made uh in so many cultures.

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Culture slash nature distinction.

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The distinction between something caused by culture or nature.

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Discrepancies between speech, thought, and action.

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So doing something that is contrary to one's uh words or thoughts.

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Uh self-distinguished from other.

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That one's pretty obvious, but it's I think relevant.

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Uh sanctions for crimes against the collectivity and redress of wrongs.

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So this is suggestive that there's some notion of deserts in the way we hold people

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responsible and punish them.

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Self as neither wholly passive nor wholly autonomous.

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Self as subject and object.

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And this one I find incredibly fascinating.

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Self is responsible.

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Yeah.

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So all those things I think are part and parcel of the discourse on free will.

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Yeah.

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Uh and I think this this at least we have a very strong uh prima facie case that uh

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the way we think about and talk about free will uh is rooted in fundamental aspects of the

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human cognitive phenotype, or at least the conceptual machinery that we bring to bear, this

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this is a pretty good candidate for being a part of human nature.

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So I think you're hitting on something that ought to be of interest to evolutionary social

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scientists.

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Yeah, I love that.

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And there's been a few people who I've talked to who are very dyed in the wool

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adaptationists who are sort of like, why are you doing free will at all?

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And in some sense, I say to them, just snip out free will and just say, look, there's a

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class of adaptations that are really important that you've just covered really nicely, that

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there hasn't been enough conceptual work, task analyses of empirical inquiry

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into that are really fundamental straightforward things that you would expect to be in an

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organism like us.

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Um so, yes, that um uh I would argue there's a

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large swath of the evolved phenotype that hasn't been looked at really.

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Um, and uh free will is a way into it.

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So free will has been a point of contention for millennia.

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You think, correct me if I'm wrong, you have a solution to this age-old quandary.

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Or at least some kind of solution.

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I think we have a new idea that moves our understanding of it forward.

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Um, and I do think there is a solution to it, but it's sort of the the Douglas Adams,

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you know, the the um what is the Douglas Adams book?

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The um maybe it's Hitchhiker's Guide or Life, the Universe, the something like that.

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But then they in one of the they said this is science fiction, Douglas Adams, where do you

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do you know Douglas Adams, David?

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Yes, I'm a fan.

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Yeah, Um so they make this giant supercomputer and it calculates the answer to life, the

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universe, and everything, and it spits out the answer.

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Do you remember what the answer is?

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Yes, 42.

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42, right?

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Exactly.

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Yeah.

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Wonderful, wonderful moment.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And in in this, the answer to the problem of free will is sort of like that.

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Um but but we do think there's an answer, and I do think there's a way to sort of look past

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it.

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Um and I uh yeah.

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So I I think we have something new to say about it.

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Yeah.

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So how do what is mismatch doing here?

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How what role is it playing?

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Yeah.

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so this is true.

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So there's been two parts to this.

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So since this has been something people have been worked working on for a really long time,

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it took some time to do.

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So there were two parts to this.

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The first part was um an adaptationist approach to the

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adaptations that are underlying what people are talking about when they talk about free

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will.

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And I have a our there's a and so this is basically a psychological explanation of

00:15:35.210 --> 00:15:37.850
what people are talking about.

00:15:38.940 --> 00:15:44.780
and then a psychological explanation of why there have been a there's been

00:15:44.780 --> 00:15:50.220
a debate about why science is maybe

00:15:50.220 --> 00:15:55.180
threatening the existence of free will for some people and not for other people.

00:15:55.500 --> 00:16:00.060
So it was the psychology of what are people talking about when they talk about free will.

00:16:00.140 --> 00:16:05.270
And then what's the psychology of the people who are debating the one side or the other,

00:16:05.510 --> 00:16:11.430
saying there is or isn't free will, or saying that science uh conflicts with free will or

00:16:11.430 --> 00:16:11.590
not.

00:16:11.750 --> 00:16:17.750
And then that was that was sort of the main first part um of the project, and that's

00:16:17.750 --> 00:16:20.950
the one that I've talked about, presented on.

00:16:21.270 --> 00:16:27.190
But as we were talking before we started recording, what I realized was sort of implicit

00:16:27.190 --> 00:16:32.980
in that thing was the idea of evolutionary mismatch, And

00:16:33.140 --> 00:16:38.900
I think the second part of evolutionary mismatch is sort of hitting the nail on the head.

00:16:38.980 --> 00:16:40.340
And I didn't realize it at first.

00:16:40.420 --> 00:16:45.780
And it's so it's taken me some time to sort of come around to the big picture

00:16:46.100 --> 00:16:52.100
idea where you get close to the language of sort of solving the problem of

00:16:52.100 --> 00:16:52.660
free will.

00:16:52.740 --> 00:16:57.300
And I think it's with this idea of sort of evolutionary mismatch combined with the other

00:16:57.300 --> 00:16:59.700
stuff of what's the underlying psychology.

00:17:00.310 --> 00:17:05.750
So for those who are unfamiliar, evolutionary mismatch is when the adaptations of an

00:17:05.750 --> 00:17:09.990
organism is mismatched with the current environment in which the organism finds itself.

00:17:10.390 --> 00:17:14.390
So because humans evolved in a very different environment than the one we now inhabit

00:17:14.470 --> 00:17:18.550
because of rapid technological and cultural change, many of our adaptations have failed to

00:17:18.550 --> 00:17:20.070
catch up to the current environment.

00:17:20.470 --> 00:17:26.310
The examples that are usually given are, you know, our uh craving for junk food and fast

00:17:26.310 --> 00:17:28.230
food that you know gives us heart disease.

00:17:28.390 --> 00:17:32.480
You know, we talked about this, how it's a bit simplistic in our conversation with Daniel

00:17:32.480 --> 00:17:36.000
Nettle, but that's uh an example that people uh bring up.

00:17:36.400 --> 00:17:40.000
Um another example is uh birth control and contraception.

00:17:40.160 --> 00:17:45.120
Uh I remember Stephen Pinker in his book How the Mind Works said that, you know, maybe give

00:17:45.120 --> 00:17:50.530
us another uh thousand generations and we'll evolve to um fear uh

00:17:50.530 --> 00:17:54.370
contraception the same way we fear snakes and heights and predators.

00:17:54.610 --> 00:17:54.770
Right.

00:17:54.930 --> 00:18:00.770
Um but to our credit, I think even the Karen Kramer episode and the um Brooks

00:18:00.850 --> 00:18:04.210
Shelza also sort of made added sophistication to that.

00:18:04.290 --> 00:18:09.330
That some of the decision making is about investment in the social world competition of

00:18:09.330 --> 00:18:15.170
your offspring, such that uh humans are not just maxing max maximizing their offspring

00:18:15.330 --> 00:18:15.650
numbers.

00:18:15.730 --> 00:18:16.050
Yeah.

00:18:16.700 --> 00:18:17.020
That's right.

00:18:17.180 --> 00:18:17.420
Yeah.

00:18:17.500 --> 00:18:21.900
And so in some ways I think mismatch, the idea of evolutionary mismatch has been a bit

00:18:21.900 --> 00:18:24.300
oversold, a bit overstated in evolutionary psychology.

00:18:24.380 --> 00:18:30.220
It's it's continuing to be revised by um new insights into the variability of uh human

00:18:30.220 --> 00:18:31.500
ancestral environments.

00:18:31.740 --> 00:18:35.980
Um Man Vier Singh has done some work on this, that the idea of the small scale uh

00:18:35.980 --> 00:18:39.580
egalitarian hunter gatherer society is something of a myth, that there is actually

00:18:39.580 --> 00:18:45.230
widespread variation in terms of the degree of of size of hunter-gatherer groups, their uh

00:18:45.230 --> 00:18:48.270
hierarchical nature, their centralization.

00:18:48.430 --> 00:18:53.390
Um, and so I I'm um continuing to be of the opinion that mismatch is has been a bit

00:18:53.390 --> 00:18:55.390
overrated in evolutionary psychology.

00:18:56.190 --> 00:19:00.270
But convince me that I'm wrong in the case of well, I'll say I'll say a really short one,

00:19:00.350 --> 00:19:05.390
which is also uh sodium sodium vapor lights from Roger Shepherd is a very good example.

00:19:05.630 --> 00:19:10.860
So these are lights that you know are different than terrestrial sun illumination in your

00:19:10.860 --> 00:19:15.500
car under a sodium vapor light, they become less prevalent because LEDs now.

00:19:15.660 --> 00:19:19.020
Um, but your car would look you know purple, but it was red, you know, and it's just

00:19:19.020 --> 00:19:24.300
because your visual system just sort of makes assumptions about the the the way the light

00:19:24.300 --> 00:19:24.860
works, right?

00:19:24.940 --> 00:19:25.980
It's just a mismatch.

00:19:26.060 --> 00:19:27.420
Um, so anyway.

00:19:27.740 --> 00:19:31.870
Um so this is right.

00:19:32.350 --> 00:19:38.190
In order to explain the mismatch part, I think it will be helpful to talk first about

00:19:38.830 --> 00:19:43.630
what people are worrying about or talking about when they're talking about free will.

00:19:45.070 --> 00:19:46.110
What are we worrying about?

00:19:46.270 --> 00:19:46.510
Yeah.

00:19:46.590 --> 00:19:48.030
So what is really at stake here?

00:19:48.270 --> 00:19:48.510
Yeah.

00:19:48.590 --> 00:19:53.710
So if you look back, so sit down, take it, pull up a chair, kids.

00:19:53.870 --> 00:19:57.150
Um, so this guy Epicurius, right, from like a long time ago.

00:19:57.230 --> 00:20:02.540
Um, but basically what happened was people started doing science and philosophy and they

00:20:02.540 --> 00:20:08.460
started realizing okay look sort of the world is understandable and knowable and

00:20:08.460 --> 00:20:13.740
the way that um we work ultimately is sort of um

00:20:15.020 --> 00:20:21.010
predictable maybe mechanical whether or not it's sort of probabilistic

00:20:21.010 --> 00:20:24.050
or deterministic, you know, that's sort of we can have that.

00:20:24.210 --> 00:20:25.330
We can talk about that later.

00:20:25.490 --> 00:20:31.410
But basically as people started talking about the scientific and conceptual analysis

00:20:31.410 --> 00:20:36.610
of like philosophy, people started to realize, well, maybe the way that we work is

00:20:36.610 --> 00:20:37.250
knowable.

00:20:37.490 --> 00:20:42.400
And then as soon as people started realizing that that might be true, then they realize,

00:20:42.560 --> 00:20:46.480
well, that might mean we don't have freedom to choose things.

00:20:46.640 --> 00:20:52.640
So, in other words, I walk around making decisions and I'm free to like

00:20:52.800 --> 00:20:53.760
do whatever I want to do.

00:20:53.840 --> 00:20:58.720
So, like right now, I could like close my computer and get up and go get a cup of coffee if

00:20:58.720 --> 00:21:01.200
I wanted to, you know, like that's something I could do.

00:21:01.520 --> 00:21:07.330
Um, and so you know, and when I can't do something, like if I got trapped

00:21:07.330 --> 00:21:12.130
in this office, it would be pretty distressing, you know, like I care about having my

00:21:12.130 --> 00:21:16.530
freedom, and my freedom is real, and uh that's that's a really important thing.

00:21:16.850 --> 00:21:22.850
And so we so we all walk around feeling like I can make decisions, I can do what I want to

00:21:22.850 --> 00:21:28.690
do, and um and then then comes along this idea, well, actually

00:21:28.850 --> 00:21:33.620
the way that you work is with a lunch a bunch of different little systems.

00:21:34.340 --> 00:21:38.100
And even in early days, before they even knew what the systems were, you know, the

00:21:38.100 --> 00:21:44.100
philosophers sort of decided in principle, somebody someday is going to figure

00:21:44.100 --> 00:21:47.780
out all the little mechanical doohickeys that make us up.

00:21:48.100 --> 00:21:52.500
And what they realized, and I think anybody who's sort of thinking clearly arrives at this

00:21:52.500 --> 00:21:57.540
conclusion is that those little doohickeys don't have free will.

00:21:58.050 --> 00:21:58.450
Right.

00:21:58.770 --> 00:22:04.370
So if you look inside any part of my

00:22:04.370 --> 00:22:10.210
body, there's nothing that corresponds to sort of freedom or decision or whatever.

00:22:10.370 --> 00:22:10.690
Yeah.

00:22:11.090 --> 00:22:11.250
Yeah.

00:22:11.410 --> 00:22:13.970
Your liver is not making decisions.

00:22:15.090 --> 00:22:16.930
Your lungs don't have free will.

00:22:17.170 --> 00:22:18.210
Uh your pancreas.

00:22:18.290 --> 00:22:18.530
Yeah.

00:22:18.610 --> 00:22:21.250
These are just mechanical systems that are with inputs and outputs.

00:22:21.490 --> 00:22:23.250
And the brain in theory should be no different.

00:22:23.570 --> 00:22:23.650
Yeah.

00:22:23.730 --> 00:22:28.220
So unlike me, so for me, you know, like I can I can look around.

00:22:28.380 --> 00:22:33.020
There's a bunch of inputs to me, but I ultimately at some point I make a decision, you

00:22:33.020 --> 00:22:33.180
know.

00:22:33.580 --> 00:22:35.100
But there's nothing like that.

00:22:35.340 --> 00:22:40.940
If you reduce me or cut me open or break me up conceptually or literally, you don't find

00:22:40.940 --> 00:22:41.580
anything like that.

00:22:41.820 --> 00:22:47.260
And this is then this fundamentally is the problem of free will, which is that is free will

00:22:47.260 --> 00:22:52.730
real given that either in principle or in practice,

00:22:53.050 --> 00:22:58.650
if you look into how we work, we don't see anything like

00:22:59.290 --> 00:23:03.210
freedom at the level of how we actually work.

00:23:03.530 --> 00:23:09.210
And so then people were saying, Well, look, if you if we don't

00:23:09.210 --> 00:23:15.180
find freedom down here, then maybe there's no such thing as free will.

00:23:15.340 --> 00:23:21.260
And pretty early on, it actually ended up being that some people really felt like that

00:23:21.260 --> 00:23:21.980
was true.

00:23:22.140 --> 00:23:25.980
And then other people were sort of like, well, that's okay, but we still have freedom.

00:23:26.300 --> 00:23:30.620
And this sort of became to be very to gloss over a lot.

00:23:31.820 --> 00:23:37.130
This became the free will debate, which is that and the free will debate's complicated

00:23:37.130 --> 00:23:41.370
because So I just I want to make sure that we get the three positions that you've just

00:23:41.370 --> 00:23:43.370
sketched in the So there are three camps.

00:23:43.450 --> 00:23:44.570
It correct me if I'm wrong.

00:23:44.970 --> 00:23:47.050
One is that we have no free will.

00:23:47.130 --> 00:23:48.170
This is determinism.

00:23:48.330 --> 00:23:52.330
We live in a clockwork universe with cause and effect where you can perfectly predict

00:23:52.330 --> 00:23:53.290
everything that's going to happen.

00:23:53.370 --> 00:23:56.730
If you have perfect knowledge of each state of the universe, you can predict the next

00:23:56.730 --> 00:23:56.970
state.

00:23:57.130 --> 00:23:58.010
That's determinism.

00:23:58.170 --> 00:24:00.570
Free will is an illusion uh F you.

00:24:01.580 --> 00:24:06.060
And uh the second camp is uh yes, we do have free will.

00:24:06.300 --> 00:24:06.780
F you.

00:24:07.260 --> 00:24:11.260
Uh uh, even though there's clockwork stuff in the universe, we are different.

00:24:11.420 --> 00:24:17.100
We have souls, we have uh consciousness, we have freedom, and we transcend all that stuff.

00:24:17.260 --> 00:24:18.380
That's the second position.

00:24:18.620 --> 00:24:22.380
The third position is sort of somewhere in the middle where it's like, yes, we're part of a

00:24:22.380 --> 00:24:27.180
clockwork cause-effect universe, and yeah, in theory you could break me down into all my

00:24:27.180 --> 00:24:32.230
components, but um that stuff is still compatible with me choosing and me having free will.

00:24:32.390 --> 00:24:37.830
So that is the compatibilist uh camp where yes, things are deterministic, but we still have

00:24:37.830 --> 00:24:39.990
freedom, and freedom is compatible with determinism.

00:24:40.310 --> 00:24:40.630
Yeah.

00:24:40.790 --> 00:24:43.590
I yes, it's this is why I was gonna, yeah, exactly.

00:24:43.750 --> 00:24:45.270
And I it it's complicated.

00:24:45.430 --> 00:24:51.300
So I think for me at least one way to clarify The the sides in the

00:24:51.300 --> 00:24:57.220
debate are there are some people who who are incompatibilists who think that

00:24:57.860 --> 00:25:02.980
understanding the world, the mechanical world, quote unquote deterministic world.

00:25:03.060 --> 00:25:04.900
We'll we'll just glump all these together.

00:25:05.060 --> 00:25:08.260
We'll we can always it's worth noting that even some people even think that an

00:25:08.260 --> 00:25:10.740
indeterministic world is also incompatible with free will.

00:25:10.980 --> 00:25:15.330
Like if stuff was random, like just like quantum fluctuations or whatever, like that's not

00:25:15.330 --> 00:25:16.450
really compatible with free will either.

00:25:16.530 --> 00:25:21.010
I'm just behaving randomly as a result of like you know random quantum fluctuations.

00:25:21.170 --> 00:25:22.530
That doesn't make me any more free, right?

00:25:22.770 --> 00:25:22.850
Yeah.

00:25:22.930 --> 00:25:23.410
So anyway.

00:25:23.650 --> 00:25:29.410
So there's incom so people who are um who think that there's a conflict, we'll just call it

00:25:29.410 --> 00:25:32.850
between like m be a mechanical view of the world and free will.

00:25:33.170 --> 00:25:33.650
Yeah.

00:25:34.180 --> 00:25:36.420
That that's a whole category people.

00:25:36.500 --> 00:25:39.220
And you can actually end up on two different places with that.

00:25:39.300 --> 00:25:39.460
Right.

00:25:39.620 --> 00:25:42.820
So you accept the premise that they're incompatible.

00:25:43.460 --> 00:25:48.180
But then you can say, Well, I don't think there's free will.

00:25:48.420 --> 00:25:50.740
And you go with the world is mechanical.

00:25:50.980 --> 00:25:51.140
Right.

00:25:51.380 --> 00:25:52.020
Right.

00:25:52.500 --> 00:25:57.380
And um, and those are sometimes called like it's uh it's called will illusionism, where

00:25:57.380 --> 00:26:02.020
it's just you just you just you say it's an illusion, and this would be like Sam Harris or

00:26:04.030 --> 00:26:05.710
uh why can't I think of his name?

00:26:05.790 --> 00:26:08.110
The zebras don't get all Robert Sapolsky, yeah.

00:26:08.190 --> 00:26:08.750
Uh that's right.

00:26:09.390 --> 00:26:14.270
So these are people who say, look, you guys who are not hard, we're hard-nosed scientists

00:26:14.270 --> 00:26:20.110
in FU to everyone who's wishfully thinking out there that food exists,

00:26:20.270 --> 00:26:22.350
nope it doesn't, grow up.

00:26:22.510 --> 00:26:24.910
That's their yeah.

00:26:25.380 --> 00:26:26.900
I don't agree with those people.

00:26:27.060 --> 00:26:29.780
Um or or the I'm not as as the Aussies would say.

00:26:30.020 --> 00:26:30.500
Yeah, exactly.

00:26:30.660 --> 00:26:31.060
Exactly.

00:26:31.220 --> 00:26:36.340
So so those are Willusionists and they they accept that the the conflict, right?

00:26:36.420 --> 00:26:37.860
The premise that there's a conflict.

00:26:38.100 --> 00:26:40.660
There's other people who believe in free will.

00:26:40.820 --> 00:26:42.100
They're called libertarians.

00:26:42.180 --> 00:26:46.810
It has nothing to do with the political party, but it's that they believe that, yeah, a

00:26:46.810 --> 00:26:51.130
mechanical view of the world is incompatible with free will, but they believe free will

00:26:51.130 --> 00:26:51.610
exists.

00:26:51.770 --> 00:26:55.530
And so they sort of believe, like kind of, I mean, if you really push on it, it's like sort

00:26:55.530 --> 00:27:00.810
of almost spiritualist, where it's sort of yeah, there's some uh invisible essence that

00:27:00.890 --> 00:27:05.290
that is transcendent over the gooey meat stuff.

00:27:05.370 --> 00:27:05.530
Right.

00:27:05.690 --> 00:27:05.850
Yeah.

00:27:05.930 --> 00:27:06.090
Yeah.

00:27:06.250 --> 00:27:06.490
Yeah.

00:27:07.210 --> 00:27:13.160
So those are two different uh results of this of the same accepted

00:27:13.160 --> 00:27:17.480
premise that the meat and the freedom are incompatible.

00:27:17.880 --> 00:27:18.120
Yes.

00:27:18.200 --> 00:27:19.160
That's a really interesting point.

00:27:19.240 --> 00:27:22.440
That in some sense they uh their disagreement stems from a deeper agreement.

00:27:22.680 --> 00:27:22.760
Yeah.

00:27:23.400 --> 00:27:26.680
They both are seeing the world the same way, that there is this fundamental conflict, and

00:27:26.680 --> 00:27:28.520
they just resolve that conflict in different ways.

00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:29.240
Completely.

00:27:29.320 --> 00:27:29.720
Yep, exactly.

00:27:30.040 --> 00:27:30.520
Okay, cool.

00:27:30.920 --> 00:27:33.960
Um and then and as you put it, then there's sort of a third category which is

00:27:33.960 --> 00:27:39.630
compatibleists, which who reject the that that meat and freedom are are not

00:27:39.630 --> 00:27:44.030
compatible, or or I don't know too many negatives, but basically they say that look, meat

00:27:44.030 --> 00:27:50.030
and freedom are compatible, and that everything, you know, like you know, going

00:27:50.430 --> 00:27:56.190
going to the store, listening to music, um, you know, seeing things, this is all made

00:27:56.190 --> 00:27:57.310
possible by meat.

00:27:57.550 --> 00:27:59.870
So why wouldn't my freedom be any different?

00:28:00.140 --> 00:28:00.380
right?

00:28:00.700 --> 00:28:02.540
The ability to choose is just made possible.

00:28:02.700 --> 00:28:07.180
I mean, and so this is somebody like Dan Dennett or Dina Roskies, or like me.

00:28:07.260 --> 00:28:09.500
I mean, I'm I'm I am a compatibilist.

00:28:09.660 --> 00:28:15.420
Although, again, upon in doing this project, I also realized, in some sense, what

00:28:15.420 --> 00:28:20.380
we're saying in this project about the up psych of free will

00:28:20.930 --> 00:28:24.850
argues that the compatibilists aren't entirely right either and that the incompatibilists

00:28:24.930 --> 00:28:25.570
do have a point.

00:28:25.650 --> 00:28:27.650
So I sort of even transcended my own.

00:28:27.730 --> 00:28:32.850
But like coming into this, and still to this day, if you if you had to put me in one of

00:28:32.850 --> 00:28:35.090
these categories, I would be a compatibilist.

00:28:35.970 --> 00:28:36.210
Cool.

00:28:36.290 --> 00:28:36.850
It's interesting.

00:28:36.930 --> 00:28:39.810
I I used to be uh an incompatibilist.

00:28:39.890 --> 00:28:43.090
I used to be uh in the Sam Harris camp.

00:28:43.170 --> 00:28:46.520
Uh and I think for bad reasons, it was more for vibes-based reasons.

00:28:46.600 --> 00:28:48.840
Like I liked the vibe of being like a hard headed thing.

00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:50.840
Yeah, you're a scientist, you're a rationalist.

00:28:51.000 --> 00:28:51.560
Yeah, no, no, no.

00:28:51.960 --> 00:28:52.680
There's a lot of trap.

00:28:52.760 --> 00:28:53.320
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:28:53.800 --> 00:28:55.160
And so I fell into that trap.

00:28:55.240 --> 00:28:57.080
I and I also liked the edginess of it.

00:28:57.160 --> 00:28:58.200
It was it was kind of cool.

00:28:58.280 --> 00:29:00.280
It was politically congenial too.

00:29:00.360 --> 00:29:03.640
Like, oh yeah, nobody pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps.

00:29:03.720 --> 00:29:03.880
Yeah.

00:29:03.960 --> 00:29:06.280
You know, we're all just, you know, deterministic things.

00:29:06.440 --> 00:29:06.600
Yeah.

00:29:06.760 --> 00:29:11.450
Um, you know, it it was it was, you know, fit with my like, you know, views on the criminal

00:29:11.450 --> 00:29:14.170
justice system that we should focus more on rehabilitation and not just desserts.

00:29:14.330 --> 00:29:19.690
Like it was all just uh uh it was a total vibes-based um decision that I that I regret in

00:29:19.850 --> 00:29:20.490
in hindsight.

00:29:20.570 --> 00:29:24.490
But uh I remember at some point I was just just persuaded, I was listening to a bait uh

00:29:24.570 --> 00:29:26.250
with Dan Dennett and some other philosopher.

00:29:26.410 --> 00:29:27.290
I think it was Greg Caruso.

00:29:27.450 --> 00:29:31.610
Yeah, Greg Caruso, yeah, because Greg Cruso is exactly uh well, I don't want to I don't

00:29:31.610 --> 00:29:35.770
want to paint him too hard, but he is he is very much in what you just said, which is he's

00:29:35.770 --> 00:29:41.740
arguing that uh a really strong uh retributive punishing view of

00:29:41.740 --> 00:29:45.180
criminal justice is sort of foolish in light of what we know.

00:29:45.420 --> 00:29:45.820
Yeah.

00:29:46.460 --> 00:29:46.780
Yes.

00:29:46.940 --> 00:29:49.740
And I remember listening to a debate, or maybe I was reading a debate.

00:29:49.820 --> 00:29:50.460
I I can't remember.

00:29:50.540 --> 00:29:52.060
It was a debate between Dan Dennett and him.

00:29:52.300 --> 00:29:55.900
Yeah, they have a book called Just Just Deserts is is the book of their debate.

00:29:56.940 --> 00:29:57.020
Yeah.

00:29:57.260 --> 00:29:58.060
Maybe I was reading that book.

00:29:58.140 --> 00:29:58.300
Yeah.

00:29:58.540 --> 00:30:00.790
Um and um it was interesting.

00:30:00.950 --> 00:30:04.630
I was reading the book, and while I was reading it, I was convinced by Greg Cruz.

00:30:04.710 --> 00:30:05.830
I'm like, oh, Greg's Greg's right.

00:30:05.990 --> 00:30:06.550
That's a great Danny.

00:30:06.630 --> 00:30:07.910
And then like points, yeah.

00:30:08.230 --> 00:30:13.110
As and then, but like gradually, as I continued to reflect on it, after I had read it, like

00:30:13.190 --> 00:30:17.030
weeks after, I ended up thinking, wait a second, no, uh, he's actually wrong.

00:30:17.110 --> 00:30:18.150
Dan Dan Dennett is right.

00:30:18.310 --> 00:30:18.630
Yeah, yeah.

00:30:18.870 --> 00:30:23.440
And I just like it just it was this kind of sleeper effect, or like uh something about Dan

00:30:23.600 --> 00:30:27.520
Dennett's points just kinda sunk in with me and then I realized, no, no, it it uh he's

00:30:27.520 --> 00:30:28.080
actually right.

00:30:28.160 --> 00:30:28.480
Yeah.

00:30:28.640 --> 00:30:31.840
That uh I and I I remember it was it was something about I was just thinking about like

00:30:32.000 --> 00:30:34.640
well what do they actually disagree about?

00:30:34.720 --> 00:30:35.680
Like Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:36.560 --> 00:30:41.440
Like both sides agree that we should have punishment and we should hold people accountable

00:30:41.440 --> 00:30:43.520
for crimes and we should have a criminal justice system.

00:30:43.760 --> 00:30:47.070
So like wha is actually at stake here?

00:30:47.230 --> 00:30:47.470
Yeah, yeah.

00:30:47.550 --> 00:30:48.830
And I realize that there's nothing at stake.

00:30:48.910 --> 00:30:49.070
Yeah.

00:30:49.310 --> 00:30:52.350
They both have the same opinions about criminal justice policy.

00:30:52.430 --> 00:30:53.950
They're both liberal progressives.

00:30:54.030 --> 00:30:58.510
Like they both, when it when the rubber meets the road, like they're both gonna behave in

00:30:58.510 --> 00:30:59.790
the world in the same way.

00:30:59.950 --> 00:31:01.390
So what are they really arguing about?

00:31:01.550 --> 00:31:05.870
When I realized that, I realized that um of course it's compatible.

00:31:06.030 --> 00:31:06.190
Yeah.

00:31:06.430 --> 00:31:11.760
Like uh when when when Greg is talking about, you know, you know, retributivism doesn't

00:31:11.760 --> 00:31:17.600
make sense, um, well, he uh it's just we can reframe retributivism in the

00:31:17.600 --> 00:31:23.440
terms of determinism, where what what punishment is is holding a uh a an incentive

00:31:23.520 --> 00:31:25.040
sensitive being accountable.

00:31:25.280 --> 00:31:25.360
Yeah.

00:31:25.520 --> 00:31:28.560
You know, when Sam Harris says, of course we should hold people responsible for what they

00:31:28.560 --> 00:31:28.800
do.

00:31:28.930 --> 00:31:30.370
Well, that's that's what the whole debate is.

00:31:30.530 --> 00:31:30.610
Yeah.

00:31:30.850 --> 00:31:31.010
Right?

00:31:31.170 --> 00:31:33.890
You can't just say that, well, of course we should hold people responsible because then

00:31:33.890 --> 00:31:34.370
there's no debate.

00:31:34.450 --> 00:31:34.530
Yeah.

00:31:34.610 --> 00:31:34.930
I don't know.

00:31:35.010 --> 00:31:39.170
So I ended up realizing that there's a way to reconcile our language with you know

00:31:39.650 --> 00:31:45.090
hard-headed facts about us as incentive-sensitive beings, being sensitive to our

00:31:45.090 --> 00:31:50.850
incentives, and uh distinguishing between um us when we're uh

00:31:50.850 --> 00:31:54.880
sensitive to our incentives and rewards and punishments, and us when we're not sensitive to

00:31:54.880 --> 00:31:56.000
rewards and punishments.

00:31:56.160 --> 00:31:59.840
And obviously it makes more sense to reward us and punish us when we're sensitive to

00:31:59.840 --> 00:32:02.160
rewards and punishments, that is, when we're freely choosing.

00:32:02.480 --> 00:32:06.240
And it makes no sense to reward and punish us when we're not sensitive to rewards and

00:32:06.240 --> 00:32:06.720
punishments.

00:32:06.960 --> 00:32:10.080
That's that just dissolves the whole debate, I think.

00:32:10.400 --> 00:32:11.920
That's just that's what we're talking about.

00:32:12.080 --> 00:32:13.760
And there's no incompatibility there.

00:32:13.840 --> 00:32:17.040
So it eventually dawned on me and I changed my mind and I became a compatibilist.

00:32:17.280 --> 00:32:17.840
Yeah, but anyway.

00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:18.960
Yeah, but no, no, that's great.

00:32:19.040 --> 00:32:20.560
And I like what you said there too.

00:32:20.750 --> 00:32:22.750
it's sort of a rabbit duck illusion.

00:32:22.830 --> 00:32:26.750
And if you've never the listeners haven't looked at the rabbit duck m uh illusion, you

00:32:26.750 --> 00:32:29.630
know, go take a look at it and it flips back and forth between a rabbit and duck.

00:32:29.710 --> 00:32:34.110
And I think free will is like that, where I think all of us at some point, when you start

00:32:34.110 --> 00:32:39.070
thinking about the Caruso point or the incompatibilist point, some part of us is sort of

00:32:39.070 --> 00:32:39.870
like, Yeah, I get that.

00:32:39.950 --> 00:32:40.430
That makes sense.

00:32:40.590 --> 00:32:45.390
Like if I if you think if you hear it, you're like, Yeah, no, like I'm mechanical, it

00:32:45.390 --> 00:32:46.190
doesn't make sense.

00:32:46.350 --> 00:32:47.630
How could I be free?

00:32:47.710 --> 00:32:48.030
Right?

00:32:48.110 --> 00:32:49.460
Like yeah, that's that's real.

00:32:49.540 --> 00:32:51.620
And like I think everybody feels that.

00:32:51.860 --> 00:32:57.460
But then you you can also think, well, but yeah, but everything I do is made possible by

00:32:57.460 --> 00:33:02.100
mechanical stuff, so it must not be incompatible, must be compatible, right?

00:33:02.180 --> 00:33:08.180
And I think and I think that ability to see both ways and it is part of the paradox

00:33:08.180 --> 00:33:09.140
of free will.

00:33:09.380 --> 00:33:15.170
And I think some people um uh lean more strongly towards one side

00:33:15.170 --> 00:33:15.730
versus the other.

00:33:15.810 --> 00:33:19.330
There's starting to be empirical work on this where people ask people, you know, do you

00:33:19.330 --> 00:33:24.850
think uh that uh that you know a mechanical view of the world is compatible with free will?

00:33:24.930 --> 00:33:25.570
What do you think?

00:33:25.810 --> 00:33:30.930
And actually, like if you experimental philosophers, when they ask people, most people are

00:33:31.940 --> 00:33:35.300
pretty compatibilist, which sort of surprises philosophers.

00:33:35.460 --> 00:33:38.820
And a lot of philosophers sort of think, well, people don't understand what we mean by free

00:33:38.820 --> 00:33:39.060
will.

00:33:39.220 --> 00:33:41.780
And if they actually understood what we meant by free will, they wouldn't be

00:33:42.100 --> 00:33:43.140
compatibilists.

00:33:43.540 --> 00:33:48.740
And there, and there's, you know, if you change circumstances, so like if people do

00:33:48.740 --> 00:33:54.500
something morally wrong, they'll they'll say the person had more free will

00:33:54.990 --> 00:33:56.030
um than not.

00:33:56.110 --> 00:33:59.470
So like it's colored by moral evaluation and things like that.

00:33:59.630 --> 00:34:01.470
But anyway, I don't I don't want to get too far into that.

00:34:01.550 --> 00:34:06.830
But basically, yeah, uh what you just described of you can sort of sort of see it both

00:34:06.830 --> 00:34:08.270
ways, but you land on one side.

00:34:08.430 --> 00:34:10.190
I think that's a very common thing.

00:34:10.430 --> 00:34:12.750
And that's part of the explanation.

00:34:12.830 --> 00:34:16.510
We will explain why that sort of you can see it both ways sort of thing.

00:34:16.980 --> 00:34:21.140
And I do think this account, which you know, we're gonna like stop in 10 minutes and we're

00:34:21.140 --> 00:34:25.300
gonna just kind of tease people for for the solution, but not not not really as a joke.

00:34:25.460 --> 00:34:30.180
But um but I think even the Caruso Dennett thing, I think this account explains what

00:34:30.180 --> 00:34:31.700
they're arguing about, actually.

00:34:31.860 --> 00:34:32.020
Yeah.

00:34:32.340 --> 00:34:32.580
Okay.

00:34:32.660 --> 00:34:34.180
So let's get into the meat of it.

00:34:34.340 --> 00:34:35.220
What are they arguing about?

00:34:35.380 --> 00:34:36.100
What is the account?

00:34:36.180 --> 00:34:36.820
What are you proposing?

00:34:37.220 --> 00:34:37.700
Sure, sure, sure.

00:34:37.780 --> 00:34:37.940
Okay.

00:34:38.020 --> 00:34:40.820
So let's start with let's start with a concrete example.

00:34:41.620 --> 00:34:46.260
So um and I sort of alluded to it already, but like like there's just certain things that

00:34:46.340 --> 00:34:50.990
like I can do as an agent, and then there's just certain things I can't, right?

00:34:51.310 --> 00:34:57.150
So, like a good example, I like using this example, is that um, you know, if I

00:34:57.150 --> 00:35:02.590
wanted to, I could start waking up earlier than I do currently, right?

00:35:02.910 --> 00:35:07.630
Like I could I could just like set my alarm earlier and I could start waking up earlier.

00:35:07.870 --> 00:35:10.110
Let's suppose that I broke a bone.

00:35:10.270 --> 00:35:16.260
Um okay now let's assume I'm already doing everything I possibly can in terms of like

00:35:16.260 --> 00:35:17.860
allowing it to heal.

00:35:18.420 --> 00:35:24.420
Um what I can't do unlike the wake up early thing is

00:35:24.420 --> 00:35:30.260
just sort of convince myself to heal my broken bone right like it's not in

00:35:30.260 --> 00:35:36.260
my purview or ken or whatever verb you want to use to um to actually like

00:35:36.420 --> 00:35:37.540
heal my broken bone.

00:35:37.620 --> 00:35:38.900
Like I can't do that.

00:35:39.190 --> 00:35:40.950
It's just going to be time, right?

00:35:41.270 --> 00:35:43.110
I can't convince myself to do it.

00:35:43.270 --> 00:35:44.390
You can't convince me.

00:35:44.550 --> 00:35:46.310
You could hold a gun to my head.

00:35:46.550 --> 00:35:49.990
It's not going to affect the healing of my broken bone.

00:35:50.230 --> 00:35:53.830
Unlike the waking up earlier in the morning, right?

00:35:54.070 --> 00:35:59.110
So I represent, I can uh I can choose to wake up earlier in the morning.

00:35:59.190 --> 00:36:01.590
If you held a gun to my head, I could wake up earlier in the morning.

00:36:01.670 --> 00:36:02.950
You wouldn't even have to do that.

00:36:03.190 --> 00:36:06.150
Um, so that that is a meaningful difference.

00:36:06.310 --> 00:36:10.860
That's an intuitive difference, But but that's a meaningful difference.

00:36:11.260 --> 00:36:11.500
Yeah.

00:36:11.580 --> 00:36:17.100
And certainly I I would add a very adaptively relevant difference that the mind should have

00:36:17.100 --> 00:36:17.820
evolved to make.

00:36:17.900 --> 00:36:20.540
It would be disastrous if you got that question wrong.

00:36:20.700 --> 00:36:25.260
If I tried to like cajole you into healing more quickly and punish you if you didn't heal

00:36:25.260 --> 00:36:28.060
fast enough, like that would be dis it would destroy our relationship.

00:36:28.140 --> 00:36:29.420
It would be absolutely disastrous for me.

00:36:29.580 --> 00:36:29.740
Correct.

00:36:29.900 --> 00:36:33.740
Uh on the other hand, if I thought that you couldn't control how early you you you woke up

00:36:33.740 --> 00:36:36.770
when you actually could, and I could incentivize you with rewards and punishment to change

00:36:36.770 --> 00:36:38.930
your behavior, and I miss that out, that would also be disastrous.

00:36:39.090 --> 00:36:41.250
So there are huge costs to getting this distinction wrong.

00:36:41.330 --> 00:36:45.570
This is of huge adaptive significance of detecting this difference, to use your

00:36:45.730 --> 00:36:46.210
terminology.

00:36:46.530 --> 00:36:47.090
That's right.

00:36:47.330 --> 00:36:49.650
And that's exactly right.

00:36:49.810 --> 00:36:54.770
It's it's sort of the more subtle version of it would be a disaster

00:36:55.730 --> 00:36:59.890
for an organism that couldn't fly to think it could, right?

00:37:00.130 --> 00:37:00.370
Yes.

00:37:00.530 --> 00:37:05.090
Um, or it just like part of organism design should be like, what can I do?

00:37:05.340 --> 00:37:08.940
What are the things, what are the outcomes that I can affect in the world?

00:37:09.180 --> 00:37:14.780
And whether it's within my body envelope or can I convince you to do that's a strong

00:37:14.780 --> 00:37:15.820
selection pressure.

00:37:15.980 --> 00:37:20.540
And if I get that wrong, that's a big cost, right?

00:37:20.780 --> 00:37:21.020
Yeah.

00:37:21.260 --> 00:37:24.300
So I think that's like at a deep level, that's what this is all about.

00:37:24.540 --> 00:37:29.420
So let's take the example of waking up in the broken bone and let's unpack it a little more

00:37:29.420 --> 00:37:32.060
carefully, okay, and be adaptationist about it.

00:37:32.220 --> 00:37:37.830
So We we started at a very sort of folk psychological, like I can convince

00:37:37.830 --> 00:37:39.030
myself, right?

00:37:39.430 --> 00:37:45.350
Let's make it a little more mechanisms described at more of a functional software level.

00:37:45.510 --> 00:37:45.830
Okay.

00:37:46.390 --> 00:37:51.190
So here's what, and this is also work I'm doing with my graduate student, Michael Oswald.

00:37:51.750 --> 00:37:53.830
Um, here's how we're thinking about it.

00:37:53.910 --> 00:37:59.830
So the intuitive idea with the waking up in the morning, the idea that I can sort of I can

00:37:59.830 --> 00:38:05.800
convince myself to do this, what that means is that there

00:38:06.120 --> 00:38:11.400
is one of the systems inside of us is is sort of

00:38:11.960 --> 00:38:16.840
representing it's almost like a meta representation it's sort of

00:38:16.840 --> 00:38:20.920
representing what outcomes in the world

00:38:23.050 --> 00:38:27.530
Vary depending upon settings inside the organism.

00:38:28.090 --> 00:38:30.010
Okay, I'll unpack that a little bit.

00:38:30.170 --> 00:38:36.090
So just concretely, if so, I have planning and

00:38:36.090 --> 00:38:41.690
motivational systems inside of me, the state of those planning and

00:38:41.690 --> 00:38:46.010
motivational systems, if they're in different states,

00:38:48.010 --> 00:38:52.020
will change whether or not I wake up early or not.

00:38:52.340 --> 00:38:52.740
Right?

00:38:53.220 --> 00:38:59.140
So if the planning and motivational systems are in one setting, I will get up

00:38:59.140 --> 00:38:59.940
at 4 a.m.

00:39:00.260 --> 00:39:03.940
If they're in another setting, I'll get up at 8 a.m.

00:39:05.220 --> 00:39:10.980
So what time I wake up in the morning depends on the state of systems within

00:39:10.980 --> 00:39:11.300
me.

00:39:12.980 --> 00:39:15.990
There's another more specifically in your in your brain.

00:39:16.550 --> 00:39:17.990
So with the bone, like that also determines the same thing.

00:39:18.230 --> 00:39:18.390
Exactly.

00:39:18.470 --> 00:39:18.870
No, no, no.

00:39:18.950 --> 00:39:19.750
That's a really good point.

00:39:19.830 --> 00:39:19.990
Yes.

00:39:20.390 --> 00:39:20.630
Yes.

00:39:21.110 --> 00:39:23.110
So I don't know.

00:39:23.670 --> 00:39:28.790
I still haven't thought through all of this, but the roughest way I can think about it is

00:39:28.790 --> 00:39:33.590
that there is a system that is representing

00:39:34.630 --> 00:39:40.150
can the planning and motivation systems within this body envelope.

00:39:41.360 --> 00:39:47.200
What outcomes can they affect, or which outcomes are affected by them?

00:39:48.720 --> 00:39:54.320
And so that system would say, Yes, waking up early in the morning

00:39:55.280 --> 00:39:57.920
is affected by those systems.

00:39:58.320 --> 00:39:58.960
Right.

00:39:59.440 --> 00:40:00.720
The state of those systems.

00:40:00.880 --> 00:40:02.400
Healing the broken bone, no.

00:40:02.480 --> 00:40:08.370
It doesn't matter if the the the state of those systems are we really want to

00:40:08.370 --> 00:40:13.250
to put it in like folk psychological terms, we really want to heal this broken bone.

00:40:13.570 --> 00:40:15.890
The bone's not gonna be any different.

00:40:16.370 --> 00:40:16.610
Right.

00:40:16.770 --> 00:40:16.930
Right.

00:40:17.090 --> 00:40:19.330
And so okay, so we can make it even more specific.

00:40:19.890 --> 00:40:25.570
So it's not so much that the decision depends on something inside you or that it depends on

00:40:25.570 --> 00:40:29.650
something inside your brain, as that it depends on something it depends on a very specific

00:40:29.650 --> 00:40:30.130
part of your brain.

00:40:30.530 --> 00:40:30.690
Correct.

00:40:30.930 --> 00:40:32.770
And in particular, the planning and motivational systems.

00:40:33.010 --> 00:40:38.080
Yeah, it might even I and I don't know if that's exactly right, But this is better than

00:40:38.080 --> 00:40:42.800
what the theory th this is a theory where there hasn't even been a theory.

00:40:43.120 --> 00:40:48.320
And what w as I will explain, or maybe I don't know, or in a paper if we don't get to it, I

00:40:48.320 --> 00:40:51.200
don't know if that's exactly right, but I think this is roughly right.

00:40:51.280 --> 00:40:51.600
Yes.

00:40:51.760 --> 00:40:52.000
Mm-hmm.

00:40:52.080 --> 00:40:52.240
Yeah.

00:40:52.560 --> 00:40:52.720
Okay.

00:40:52.880 --> 00:40:53.200
Interesting.

00:40:53.360 --> 00:40:58.320
It's almost like if I think you're free to do something, I see a lever sticking out of your

00:40:58.320 --> 00:41:01.440
head that's connected to your planning and motivational systems that I can pull.

00:41:01.760 --> 00:41:02.080
Exactly.

00:41:02.990 --> 00:41:05.310
And if you're not free, then there's no lever that I can pull.

00:41:05.470 --> 00:41:05.630
Yeah.

00:41:05.710 --> 00:41:09.150
And this is, I mean, just to go concrete, like another example of this would be something

00:41:09.150 --> 00:41:12.350
like, why do we think addiction or habit, right?

00:41:12.430 --> 00:41:18.270
So like free will, people have I mean I don't know people have this point,

00:41:18.510 --> 00:41:22.670
have the have these intuitions about different situations involve more or less free will.

00:41:22.910 --> 00:41:23.070
Yeah.

00:41:23.230 --> 00:41:24.750
And there's almost no theory of it.

00:41:24.900 --> 00:41:27.220
Like, this is one of the weird things about the debate.

00:41:27.380 --> 00:41:32.740
As much as like theorists do the debate, they often just invoke context that they appeal to

00:41:32.740 --> 00:41:37.700
intuition, but there's no theory of why that's an intuitive idea or why the situation has

00:41:37.700 --> 00:41:38.820
more or less free will.

00:41:39.060 --> 00:41:40.420
This is such a theory.

00:41:40.580 --> 00:41:46.550
So, for example, one idea is that um the maximum amount of free

00:41:46.550 --> 00:41:50.470
will, and I'm not gonna cite everybody who says all this, this just know that like um this

00:41:50.470 --> 00:41:51.590
is stuff other people have said.

00:41:51.750 --> 00:41:55.110
I'm just not gonna like include citations because this is a podcast, so you know.

00:41:55.190 --> 00:41:56.230
Uh but anyway.

00:41:56.390 --> 00:42:00.230
So, like an idea would be like if the you if you're facing a decision where you're really

00:42:00.230 --> 00:42:06.070
roughly indifferent about the choices, that's really a free will situation, right?

00:42:07.190 --> 00:42:10.060
And the idea is that well, why would people have that intuition?

00:42:10.140 --> 00:42:15.820
Well, it's because it's completely dependent on the settings of like the planning, um, uh

00:42:15.980 --> 00:42:17.420
the planning system, right?

00:42:17.660 --> 00:42:23.420
Because the um there's well, let's contrast that to

00:42:23.660 --> 00:42:27.660
the situation where you're addicted to nicotine, right?

00:42:28.380 --> 00:42:32.780
Um, so the situation where you're addicted to nicotine, or worse, like I don't know, um

00:42:34.370 --> 00:42:36.290
what did Kurt Cobain do?

00:42:36.450 --> 00:42:38.930
Um it wasn't cocaine.

00:42:39.250 --> 00:42:40.530
It was oh heroin or something?

00:42:40.610 --> 00:42:40.850
I don't know.

00:42:41.010 --> 00:42:42.850
Yeah, so let's say you're addicted to heroin, right?

00:42:43.010 --> 00:42:43.170
Yeah.

00:42:43.570 --> 00:42:49.490
Um uh the planning and motivation system, whatever those states are,

00:42:49.730 --> 00:42:50.050
right?

00:42:50.290 --> 00:42:55.380
It doesn't, it doesn't matter because there's some other system in your head that is

00:42:55.380 --> 00:43:00.740
overriding the planning and the planning or the goal planning and goal-based systems

00:43:00.820 --> 00:43:05.940
actually I think is probably more so I have a goal of like not taking my um

00:43:06.660 --> 00:43:12.420
um my heroin but there's another system that's just taking over right so it's it's it's a

00:43:12.420 --> 00:43:16.340
planning and means and reasoning yeah so how maybe that's a better way to put it yeah what

00:43:16.420 --> 00:43:21.860
means can I use to achieve this this end exactly um and uh that system of you know how can

00:43:21.860 --> 00:43:24.790
I achieve this goal what states of the world are going to affect this goal?

00:43:24.950 --> 00:43:27.670
That system is disconnected from the thing you're interested in.

00:43:27.750 --> 00:43:29.590
It's it's disconnected from the heroine behavior.

00:43:29.670 --> 00:43:33.030
It's disconnected from the bone healing or exactly that's yeah yeah that's the claim that

00:43:33.030 --> 00:43:33.990
we're not free to choose it.

00:43:34.230 --> 00:43:34.630
Exactly.

00:43:34.710 --> 00:43:40.390
And that's and so that's why there's the intuition that the means end system is

00:43:40.550 --> 00:43:45.750
fully operational in what I where I go to lunch today.

00:43:45.990 --> 00:43:51.420
Or if I have two indifferent choices in a experimental game and I'm like, well, yellow

00:43:51.420 --> 00:43:52.060
versus blue.

00:43:52.140 --> 00:43:52.460
I don't know.

00:43:52.540 --> 00:43:53.260
I'll choose blue.

00:43:53.340 --> 00:43:56.780
Like that's just means end or the the the choosing system, right?

00:43:56.860 --> 00:43:59.180
The system that just sort of it's fully operative.

00:43:59.340 --> 00:44:01.500
Whereas for the hero I wan I want to push back a bit.

00:44:01.580 --> 00:44:04.220
I don't I don't think that indifference really matters.

00:44:04.620 --> 00:44:05.100
I don't either.

00:44:05.260 --> 00:44:09.420
So I yeah but so I I I I have the intuition that even if I'm not indifferent, let's let's

00:44:09.420 --> 00:44:12.860
say I'm considering whether or not to to rob a bank.

00:44:13.020 --> 00:44:16.540
Like let's say I'm I'm low on on cash and I really need the money and and the thought

00:44:16.540 --> 00:44:19.190
occurs, oh I could just rob this this cash register.

00:44:20.310 --> 00:44:21.430
Is this hypothetical, David?

00:44:21.670 --> 00:44:23.030
Yeah, this is an autobiography, actually.

00:44:23.270 --> 00:44:25.110
Um we can we can edit this out later.

00:44:25.750 --> 00:44:30.150
So I'm um so you know, I I uh you know I happen to be, let's say I happen to be carrying a

00:44:30.150 --> 00:44:33.110
gun with me, and I see you know there's a cash register, there's lots of cash in it.

00:44:33.350 --> 00:44:35.830
I think you know, I could just I could just rob this cash register.

00:44:36.070 --> 00:44:37.990
And I think to myself, no, that would be terrible.

00:44:38.070 --> 00:44:39.430
That would make me a bad person.

00:44:39.910 --> 00:44:42.150
Um things could go terribly awry.

00:44:42.390 --> 00:44:45.030
There are better ways to make money than stealing it.

00:44:45.320 --> 00:44:46.520
bad David, don't do that.

00:44:46.600 --> 00:44:47.880
And let's say I'm not indifferent at all.

00:44:47.960 --> 00:44:52.440
Like it's I really have a clear moral revulsion at the thought, and I instantly reject it.

00:44:52.520 --> 00:44:52.680
Yeah.

00:44:52.840 --> 00:44:56.520
And I think that's a that's a really bad decision, and I continue living an upstanding

00:44:56.520 --> 00:44:56.680
life.

00:44:56.840 --> 00:44:57.160
Yeah.

00:44:57.480 --> 00:45:02.440
Even if I'm not indifferent at all, and the decision is clear that I should not rob the

00:45:02.440 --> 00:45:04.840
person, I still have the intuition that that was a free choice.

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:05.160
Yeah.

00:45:05.320 --> 00:45:06.920
You know, that that I freely made that decision.

00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:10.520
So it's not so even if I, you know, if I was indifferent, I was like torn between one thing

00:45:10.520 --> 00:45:15.170
or the other, I I it doesn't it doesn't seem like I would be that makes me more free.

00:45:15.250 --> 00:45:15.410
Yeah.

00:45:15.490 --> 00:45:17.650
You know, I I don't think it's the indifference itself.

00:45:17.730 --> 00:45:22.210
I think it's it's the it's the mere fact that you have the options available, not how much

00:45:22.210 --> 00:45:23.250
you weight either option.

00:45:23.570 --> 00:45:25.170
I I I actually agree with that.

00:45:25.330 --> 00:45:25.570
Yeah.

00:45:25.650 --> 00:45:30.690
I I I think that people have made the argument that it's even indifference is sort of the

00:45:30.770 --> 00:45:33.490
the maximum thing, but I I agree you don't really need that.

00:45:33.730 --> 00:45:39.700
And I I and just to make this concrete, um yeah, just to review though, that's the

00:45:39.700 --> 00:45:42.660
argument, is that it's the means end or goal-based system.

00:45:42.820 --> 00:45:45.540
I and again, I don't really know how to roughly characterize this.

00:45:45.700 --> 00:45:48.020
It's not, you know, but but yeah, that's the idea.

00:45:48.100 --> 00:45:54.100
Is why do we have the intuition that the heroin addict is less free than you

00:45:54.260 --> 00:45:55.940
not choosing to rob the bank?

00:45:56.100 --> 00:46:01.460
Or if you don't like the heroin example, you know, if you're um if you're really just in a

00:46:01.460 --> 00:46:07.230
habit, like let's say you um you you mean to tie your shoes in a new way but you're in just

00:46:07.230 --> 00:46:13.070
such of a habit that you to tie them the old way but you meant to tie them the the the new

00:46:13.070 --> 00:46:18.910
way right you you you would be less like um you kind of

00:46:18.910 --> 00:46:20.510
didn't do it on purpose but you did it anyway.

00:46:20.590 --> 00:46:21.790
Yeah it was sort of automatic.

00:46:21.870 --> 00:46:27.070
Yeah right and so that's that would be less free will like in in that context.

00:46:27.230 --> 00:46:30.030
Like it's just sort of you were on auto drive, quote unquote.

00:46:30.110 --> 00:46:34.440
You were on autopilot, you know like you were just sort of it was an automatic thing.

00:46:34.680 --> 00:46:37.720
Um that's less free will.

00:46:37.800 --> 00:46:43.320
And again, it's because there's this theory of what it is, what free will is, is this

00:46:43.320 --> 00:46:49.160
representation of sort of what's within this um the purview of this planning or

00:46:49.160 --> 00:46:52.440
means ends system or set of systems.

00:46:52.760 --> 00:46:53.080
Right.

00:46:53.320 --> 00:46:56.520
And it's sort of the the rewardability and punishability.

00:46:56.760 --> 00:47:01.290
Like if if you know, if you you tied your shoes, you know, just out of habit and you you

00:47:01.290 --> 00:47:06.010
can't really control it, then no matter what I promise to reward you with or punish you

00:47:06.010 --> 00:47:08.330
with, if you do or don't tie your shoes, it's not gonna change you.

00:47:08.410 --> 00:47:12.490
Exactly or it's gonna have little effect on you because you're just so uh ingrained to be

00:47:12.490 --> 00:47:12.810
doing this.

00:47:13.050 --> 00:47:13.290
Exactly.

00:47:13.450 --> 00:47:17.930
And so it if for me, it it tells me this is the type of thing that I can reward or punish

00:47:18.220 --> 00:47:18.780
and change.

00:47:18.940 --> 00:47:21.820
And this is the type of thing that I shouldn't bother trying to reward or punish.

00:47:22.060 --> 00:47:22.380
Exactly.

00:47:22.460 --> 00:47:23.980
And that we we have a term for that.

00:47:24.060 --> 00:47:28.700
It might be a bad term, but we call it the efficacy of intentional intervention.

00:47:28.780 --> 00:47:34.700
Where sort of it's the idea that um the and again, the the the precise thing is what

00:47:34.700 --> 00:47:39.580
we've already said, but the the the kind of intuitive idea is that you're treating the

00:47:39.580 --> 00:47:43.020
person intentionally, like you're just giving them your convince.

00:47:43.180 --> 00:47:47.790
If I want to change your behavior, David, I'm treating you like a person saying, Look, I

00:47:47.790 --> 00:47:51.870
want to convince you, I want to incentivize you or disincentive, like convince you, give

00:47:51.870 --> 00:47:54.350
you reasons why you should or shouldn't do something.

00:47:54.670 --> 00:47:58.430
If that's effective, yeah, then you have free will.

00:47:58.510 --> 00:48:00.270
But if it's not, then you don't.

00:48:00.510 --> 00:48:06.190
So I might be able to convince you to choose red over green, but maybe not to not take

00:48:06.190 --> 00:48:06.990
heroin.

00:48:07.230 --> 00:48:10.350
And yeah, and that's the difference between free will and not.

00:48:10.430 --> 00:48:15.520
So basically, what free will is, is the efficacy of intentional intervention for third

00:48:15.520 --> 00:48:15.920
parties.

00:48:16.000 --> 00:48:19.200
So it's that I can convince you.

00:48:19.600 --> 00:48:24.800
Um, but more importantly and primarily, it's also first person.

00:48:25.120 --> 00:48:28.000
It's this: is it can I convince myself?

00:48:28.160 --> 00:48:29.760
Can I force myself to do something?

00:48:29.920 --> 00:48:33.280
Can I convince myself to not take heroin?

00:48:33.520 --> 00:48:33.840
Right.

00:48:34.240 --> 00:48:40.160
And if the answer is no, like no matter what my planning or means-ends

00:48:40.320 --> 00:48:46.130
reasoning delivers, I'm still taking heroin, then that means I don't have free will.

00:48:46.290 --> 00:48:51.810
There's sort of no way I can convince myself, even and so that that confuses me.

00:48:51.970 --> 00:48:55.010
So what does it even mean to convince myself?

00:48:55.410 --> 00:48:56.930
Yes, and that's an intentional language thing.

00:48:57.010 --> 00:49:00.770
And then I think it goes back to then we can make it a functional level claim where it's a

00:49:00.770 --> 00:49:06.050
representation of no matter the states of the means and planning

00:49:07.020 --> 00:49:08.300
or the goal-based system.

00:49:08.460 --> 00:49:13.900
So we can say, look, even if the goal-based system says stop taking heroin, and even if the

00:49:13.900 --> 00:49:19.580
means and planning is all we're gonna stop taking heroin, and that doesn't work, and that

00:49:19.580 --> 00:49:24.700
system registers we're still taking heroin, then then it's then that's it.

00:49:24.860 --> 00:49:27.340
So that's the it's yeah, that's interesting.

00:49:27.420 --> 00:49:30.890
It's almost like um counterfactual reasoning.

00:49:31.050 --> 00:49:35.850
For the self, for the for the first person, it's like uh can reasoning about the potential

00:49:35.850 --> 00:49:38.490
implications or consequences of this change my behavior?

00:49:38.970 --> 00:49:42.410
If so, I should think through all the different downstream consequences and that's going to

00:49:42.410 --> 00:49:42.970
change my behavior.

00:49:43.450 --> 00:49:47.290
But if entertaining all the downstream consequences is going to be useless, then it's just

00:49:47.290 --> 00:49:50.010
a waste of energy for me to entertain those consequences because not going to do anything.

00:49:50.090 --> 00:49:51.050
It's not going to shape my behavior.

00:49:51.290 --> 00:49:54.010
And so that's a useful distinction to make at the first person level.

00:49:54.410 --> 00:49:58.170
Where is it worth it for me to entertain all the implications and to consider all the

00:49:58.170 --> 00:50:03.360
effects of of one uh decision versus another, or should I just not even entertain them and

00:50:03.360 --> 00:50:05.120
just, you know, do whatever I was gonna do anyway.

00:50:05.280 --> 00:50:07.040
That's and that should save me a lot of time.

00:50:07.120 --> 00:50:12.000
Like if if if no matter what I think about or um what my reasoning process is like, it's

00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:15.520
not gonna change my decision one way or the other, then it's pointless for me to entertain

00:50:15.520 --> 00:50:16.720
all these different factors.

00:50:16.800 --> 00:50:16.960
Yeah.

00:50:17.120 --> 00:50:17.360
Right.

00:50:17.520 --> 00:50:20.960
And so it's useful for the the individual as well to not waste time going, you know,

00:50:21.120 --> 00:50:23.040
entertaining all these fanciful scenarios.

00:50:23.360 --> 00:50:24.560
Uh and and so that's interesting.

00:50:24.640 --> 00:50:24.960
I like that.

00:50:25.040 --> 00:50:28.090
So um Yeah, and counterfactual is the first thing that's a good thing.

00:50:29.370 --> 00:50:29.530
Yeah.

00:50:29.690 --> 00:50:30.890
Well, go ahead and then I'll yeah.

00:50:31.210 --> 00:50:34.890
So like at the third person level, it's more about like what can I do to reward or punish

00:50:34.890 --> 00:50:35.290
this person?

00:50:35.450 --> 00:50:38.170
Uh if there if the answer is nothing, then the person isn't free.

00:50:38.330 --> 00:50:42.250
At the first person level, it's what can I think about, or what consequences or

00:50:42.250 --> 00:50:44.890
implications can I consider to change my behavior.

00:50:45.050 --> 00:50:45.130
Yeah.

00:50:45.370 --> 00:50:49.050
Uh and if the answer is nothing, then I at the first person level don't have free will.

00:50:49.290 --> 00:50:49.450
Yeah.

00:50:49.530 --> 00:50:53.690
And this is why and again, there's no there's no there had been no theory about this.

00:50:53.930 --> 00:50:58.740
But in the literature, one of the the definitions people landed on for free will is reasons

00:50:58.900 --> 00:51:00.020
responsiveness.

00:51:00.580 --> 00:51:00.820
Okay.

00:51:01.220 --> 00:51:03.780
And that is that is a result.

00:51:04.180 --> 00:51:05.380
Like that's all people talk about.

00:51:05.460 --> 00:51:09.140
Like if a person has reasons for what they're doing and they're responsive to reasons, then

00:51:09.140 --> 00:51:09.780
they have free will.

00:51:09.860 --> 00:51:11.860
But if they're not, then they don't.

00:51:12.100 --> 00:51:12.420
Yeah.

00:51:12.580 --> 00:51:12.820
Right.

00:51:12.900 --> 00:51:16.340
So like in a and I think a good example would be something like let's say you have like

00:51:16.340 --> 00:51:18.420
strong political convictions, right?

00:51:18.900 --> 00:51:23.990
Now, from the third person perspective, like you, I might not be able to convince you that

00:51:24.150 --> 00:51:26.630
to change your political convictions, right?

00:51:27.110 --> 00:51:30.790
But you should be able to convince yourself at least of your political convictions, right?

00:51:30.870 --> 00:51:36.470
Like if the reasons why you support a political party, right, are such that

00:51:36.710 --> 00:51:42.630
uh you know what they are, and those reasons no longer hold, and you still

00:51:42.630 --> 00:51:48.580
can't help but support the political party, then the political party has implanted a chip

00:51:48.580 --> 00:51:49.140
in your head, right?

00:51:49.220 --> 00:51:52.340
Like if you're like the reason why I support this party is because I think it's good for my

00:51:52.340 --> 00:51:52.660
family.

00:51:52.820 --> 00:51:55.780
And then you learn information of like it's not good for my family.

00:51:56.020 --> 00:52:00.740
And if you if that's really the reason why you support them, then you should be able to

00:52:00.820 --> 00:52:02.100
like not support them anymore, right?

00:52:02.180 --> 00:52:03.380
Like if that's the correct reason.

00:52:03.540 --> 00:52:07.380
This again, this is this theory is an intentional level, but it's reasons responsiveness,

00:52:07.540 --> 00:52:13.470
which is that um, and And so I think what we have just been describing earlier explains why

00:52:13.470 --> 00:52:18.350
reasons responsiveness was a definition of free will people came up with.

00:52:19.630 --> 00:52:25.630
It's interesting that uh uh being able to say switch

00:52:25.630 --> 00:52:29.710
political parties if I'm persuaded that the other policies are are gonna make the country

00:52:29.710 --> 00:52:35.080
better, it seems to me like that might be a good strategy for me personally, but it also

00:52:35.080 --> 00:52:36.520
makes me look like a bad ally.

00:52:36.760 --> 00:52:42.680
Like if I can capriciously change parties at the slightest whiff of an argument that

00:52:42.680 --> 00:52:45.880
maybe my party is wrong, then I'm a bad ally.

00:52:46.040 --> 00:52:47.240
I'm a bad political ally.

00:52:47.640 --> 00:52:51.720
Whereas if nothing is going to get me to change to the other side, then I'm a really loyal

00:52:51.720 --> 00:52:52.120
ally.

00:52:52.390 --> 00:52:56.550
And so it's almost like you want to uh destroy your free will to signal that you're a good

00:52:56.550 --> 00:52:59.510
ally and you're never gonna in the same way that you might want to signal that for a

00:52:59.670 --> 00:53:00.790
romantic relationship.

00:53:00.950 --> 00:53:05.350
Like if there's no way that I could ever even possibly consider uh someone else other than

00:53:05.350 --> 00:53:08.310
you, uh then that makes me a really good, committed romantic partner.

00:53:08.390 --> 00:53:08.550
Yeah.

00:53:08.710 --> 00:53:08.870
Right.

00:53:09.030 --> 00:53:13.030
And so and there are some cases where we might want to burn our bridges and signal that we

00:53:13.030 --> 00:53:17.110
don't have free will, uh to to signal that we're gonna be a good romantic partner, a good

00:53:17.110 --> 00:53:18.550
ally, uh whatever.

00:53:18.840 --> 00:53:19.000
Yeah.

00:53:19.160 --> 00:53:23.080
No, I think certain religions sort of have that metaphor of like there's a thing in you

00:53:23.080 --> 00:53:28.040
that's like constant separate from, and it's either like the bad part of you or it's God or

00:53:28.040 --> 00:53:28.520
whatever.

00:53:28.680 --> 00:53:34.600
But this idea sort of that um yeah, and you're getting into the other part of this,

00:53:34.840 --> 00:53:38.600
which is this is not a neutral thing.

00:53:39.240 --> 00:53:44.920
So what we've been talking about is ways to intervene upon the world.

00:53:45.230 --> 00:53:48.750
So it's ways to change my future behavior with respect to myself.

00:53:48.910 --> 00:53:54.430
So what is it that um if I if if the settings within my

00:53:54.750 --> 00:53:58.830
planning and reason based or whatever, however I want to talk about it, systems are in

00:53:58.830 --> 00:54:03.630
different states, then these are different outcomes that are all within my purview, right?

00:54:04.430 --> 00:54:10.120
And so for example, like maybe I haven't I haven't gone through the um the systems

00:54:10.200 --> 00:54:12.280
haven't gone through their operations yet.

00:54:12.360 --> 00:54:17.720
So it would be reasonable for me to say, well, you know, 10 minutes from now I can do a

00:54:17.720 --> 00:54:22.440
number of different things because those systems haven't calculated what they're gonna do

00:54:22.440 --> 00:54:23.160
10 minutes from now.

00:54:23.320 --> 00:54:26.200
So it'd be very reasonable and meaningful for me to say that.

00:54:26.680 --> 00:54:30.910
It's also then what are the things I can do to convince you of to do, right?

00:54:30.990 --> 00:54:32.990
Can I change the state of those systems?

00:54:33.230 --> 00:54:35.950
Is it is it something I can effectively intervene upon?

00:54:36.110 --> 00:54:39.150
It's getting back to the wake up in the morning versus the broken bone.

00:54:39.390 --> 00:54:43.950
An organism should not be value neutral with respect to this.

00:54:44.270 --> 00:54:49.550
And this is where compatibilism or incompatibilism in the problem of free will comes in the

00:54:49.550 --> 00:54:49.870
first place.

00:54:50.030 --> 00:54:55.420
So what you have is you have a bunch of people who are saying, look,

00:54:56.620 --> 00:55:02.540
up until we started doing philosophy, you had this idea that you were free to do

00:55:02.540 --> 00:55:04.860
certain things, like wake up early in the morning.

00:55:05.100 --> 00:55:08.620
You already knew you weren't free to like heal your broken bone, but whatever.

00:55:08.940 --> 00:55:11.980
But even the stuff you were free about, guess what?

00:55:12.460 --> 00:55:17.580
That stuff, if you look under the hood, is all mechanical.

00:55:19.890 --> 00:55:25.650
And for an organism that cares about not being

00:55:25.650 --> 00:55:31.410
manipulated by others, that's a problem.

00:55:31.570 --> 00:55:37.090
And I think the concern about manipulation is central to the problem of free will.

00:55:37.810 --> 00:55:43.010
And it's there everywhere in the literature, but it's not really talked about explicitly.

00:55:43.170 --> 00:55:48.530
And it's exactly what would fall out from what we've just talked about, which is,

00:55:49.900 --> 00:55:55.500
For example, if David, your decision making, your goals and outcomes,

00:55:55.740 --> 00:56:01.500
I could sort of poke on or predict ahead of time or influence directly without trying to

00:56:01.500 --> 00:56:07.340
convince you, that would be an enormous boon to me, and it would be a horrible problem for

00:56:07.340 --> 00:56:07.500
you.

00:56:07.660 --> 00:56:09.980
So think about like a tell and poker, right?

00:56:10.220 --> 00:56:10.380
Yeah.

00:56:10.620 --> 00:56:16.310
So if every time you were about to make a decision, I could anticipate your decision

00:56:16.310 --> 00:56:20.630
ahead of time because I could see, like you just always, I don't know, tugged your ear.

00:56:21.110 --> 00:56:26.070
Um then, and you don't know that that's true of you, um, and you feel like you're still

00:56:26.070 --> 00:56:30.230
making a decision, but I already know what you're gonna do, I can use that to my strategic

00:56:30.230 --> 00:56:30.870
advantage.

00:56:31.030 --> 00:56:36.790
If I know how you make a decision, like the extreme version and philosophers rely on this,

00:56:37.040 --> 00:56:41.200
If I know how your brain makes a decision, then I can go into your brain and I can poke on

00:56:41.200 --> 00:56:42.640
the right place at the right time.

00:56:42.800 --> 00:56:44.880
You think you've made a decision, but guess what?

00:56:45.200 --> 00:56:47.920
I influenced your decision for you.

00:56:48.320 --> 00:56:52.640
I should that's something in the in the social strategy.

00:56:52.800 --> 00:56:54.320
Is that a word stra strategy?

00:56:54.640 --> 00:56:55.280
I believe George W.

00:56:55.360 --> 00:56:55.920
Bush called it.

00:56:56.240 --> 00:56:56.480
Exactly.

00:56:56.560 --> 00:56:58.720
Yeah, no, it's like a it's like it's a joke word.

00:56:58.800 --> 00:56:58.960
Yeah.

00:56:59.040 --> 00:57:02.880
Um perfectly cromulent for all the Simpsons uh listeners or watchers.

00:57:03.040 --> 00:57:07.830
Um That strategic concern,

00:57:09.350 --> 00:57:15.350
even at a very evolved prosaic level of like tells and poker, or sort of like every

00:57:15.350 --> 00:57:18.310
time, I don't I don't know, like you could just think of a mundane example, like not

00:57:18.310 --> 00:57:19.110
neuroscience, right?

00:57:19.190 --> 00:57:25.060
But just like a prosaic example, like every time you get upset because you you don't

00:57:25.060 --> 00:57:28.820
get uh when you hunt and you miss something, you get angry, you know, and I can just

00:57:28.820 --> 00:57:30.500
predict that ahead or something like that.

00:57:30.740 --> 00:57:36.420
There's always strategic advantage to understanding or being able to manipulate somebody

00:57:36.420 --> 00:57:41.780
below the level of an intentional intervention, below the level of

00:57:42.340 --> 00:57:46.630
goals and means and systems.

00:57:47.510 --> 00:57:49.110
So this should not be neutral.

00:57:49.190 --> 00:57:54.630
And the idea is that a large part of what the like if an alien came and was like, what is

00:57:54.630 --> 00:57:56.950
this free will debate about?

00:57:57.110 --> 00:57:58.550
What is this concern?

00:57:59.350 --> 00:58:04.550
One one thing sort of baked in from the beginning is this concern that

00:58:05.510 --> 00:58:09.510
if we are mechanical, we don't have freedom.

00:58:09.910 --> 00:58:14.390
And what that means is that if there's a way to know how

00:58:15.760 --> 00:58:21.440
I'm free in a mechanical fashion, it

00:58:21.440 --> 00:58:25.200
means that somebody could poke on it or manipulate it.

00:58:25.440 --> 00:58:27.760
And that should be a concern for me.

00:58:29.920 --> 00:58:30.640
Interesting.

00:58:30.800 --> 00:58:36.750
So is it is the fear that I'm going to out fox you, say in poker,

00:58:36.830 --> 00:58:40.430
like if I know what you're gonna do then I can predict then I can exploit you in some way?

00:58:40.670 --> 00:58:46.510
Or is it the fear that if it's mechanical uh then I can manipulate uh

00:58:46.750 --> 00:58:50.190
the mechanical aspects of it in some way? 'Cause those seem different.

00:58:50.270 --> 00:58:54.350
Is it is it merely that the the fear of being out foxed or is it the fear of of someone,

00:58:54.510 --> 00:58:59.950
say an evil neuroscientist changing the the neurons in my brain uh to make me do something

00:59:00.030 --> 00:59:00.510
or is it both?

00:59:00.750 --> 00:59:01.550
I think it's both.

00:59:01.870 --> 00:59:02.030
Okay.

00:59:02.270 --> 00:59:03.390
Yeah, I think it's both.

00:59:03.470 --> 00:59:03.630
Yeah.

00:59:04.040 --> 00:59:04.360
Interesting.

00:59:04.520 --> 00:59:04.600
Yeah.

00:59:04.840 --> 00:59:05.000
Yeah.

00:59:05.080 --> 00:59:11.080
No, I I think the the point about the fear of being outfoxed or predicted, I

00:59:11.080 --> 00:59:13.240
think, is a really insightful one.

00:59:13.480 --> 00:59:18.440
We often like kind of take pride about being unpredictable or doing things that other

00:59:18.440 --> 00:59:22.920
people didn't anticipate, being unique, not conforming, or mindlessly conforming.

00:59:23.000 --> 00:59:26.280
Like we almost kind of feel embarrassed if we behave in a way that's too predictable.

00:59:26.680 --> 00:59:31.320
Like you know, uh if all of my political views can be predicted and advanced based on the

00:59:31.320 --> 00:59:33.470
uh Democratic Party's political platform.

00:59:33.550 --> 00:59:34.350
That's kind of embarrassing.

00:59:34.590 --> 00:59:37.470
It means that like I don't think for myself like you can just easily predict everything I'm

00:59:37.470 --> 00:59:37.790
gonna say.

00:59:37.950 --> 00:59:39.710
Like you know all the talking points I'm gonna go down.

00:59:39.790 --> 00:59:41.950
Like I I I'm kind of like embarrassed about that sometimes.

00:59:42.030 --> 00:59:42.190
Yeah.

00:59:42.350 --> 00:59:46.030
And we're often kind of ashamed or embarrassed about being too predictable.

00:59:46.190 --> 00:59:50.510
Because it it's it it elicits this fear that we can be easily exploited or manipulated if

00:59:50.510 --> 00:59:53.710
if people can just see through to the underlying mechanics of everything we do.

00:59:53.790 --> 00:59:58.100
And I think this fear is often elicited by evolutionary psychology itself.

00:59:58.260 --> 00:59:58.420
Yeah.

00:59:58.580 --> 01:00:02.420
Like when we start to get into the underlying mechanics of our decision making and start

01:00:02.420 --> 01:00:06.900
trying to actually predict how we're gonna do or predict what we're gonna do or like which

01:00:06.900 --> 01:00:10.820
mates we're gonna be attracted to in you know which you know uh which stage of the

01:00:10.820 --> 01:00:13.700
menstrual cycle or you know which life stage or whatever.

01:00:13.780 --> 01:00:16.660
We can, you know, based on like their facial symmetry or whatever, we can predict all these

01:00:16.660 --> 01:00:16.820
things.

01:00:16.900 --> 01:00:17.940
That's kind of uncomfortable.

01:00:18.020 --> 01:00:18.100
Yeah.

01:00:18.340 --> 01:00:22.020
It suggests that that that someone could manipulate us or exploit us.

01:00:22.260 --> 01:00:28.090
Uh so do you think so I it's interesting, it it it almost explains why people uh

01:00:28.490 --> 01:00:30.810
are uncomfortable by evolutionary psychology.

01:00:31.610 --> 01:00:35.850
Um so you know, Stephen Pinker in his book The Blank Slate goes through all the reasons why

01:00:35.850 --> 01:00:39.450
people are uncomfortable with this idea of an evolved human nature.

01:00:39.610 --> 01:00:41.850
Uh and one of them is the fear of determinism.

01:00:41.930 --> 01:00:43.210
He has a whole chapter on this.

01:00:43.450 --> 01:00:47.610
Um that if we understand all the mechanics, the nuts and bolts of you know our brains and

01:00:47.610 --> 01:00:51.610
who we are as animals, uh that there's something uncomfy and scary about that.

01:00:51.770 --> 01:00:51.930
Yeah.

01:00:52.090 --> 01:00:57.980
Uh and I think what you're saying uh explains why we're so uncomfortable about

01:00:57.980 --> 01:00:58.140
that.

01:00:58.540 --> 01:00:59.340
Do you do you buy that?

01:00:59.500 --> 01:00:59.900
Yeah, yeah.

01:00:59.980 --> 01:01:04.300
And it actually, but I mean, one of the things, and we might cut, I mean, so Michael Osfeld

01:01:04.380 --> 01:01:10.300
and I, we have an empirical project plan because we believe that there's this idea

01:01:10.300 --> 01:01:13.180
that people are incompatibilists or compatibilists about free will.

01:01:13.340 --> 01:01:18.300
And we actually think that there's a more precise way to carve people up as into individual

01:01:18.300 --> 01:01:20.380
differences, and it might even be stable.

01:01:20.670 --> 01:01:26.350
And we think that it's actually related to this issue of um uh

01:01:26.670 --> 01:01:28.590
when do people have free will?

01:01:28.750 --> 01:01:33.390
Um, and we we we almost use the metaphor of like when do they get off the station on like

01:01:33.470 --> 01:01:34.990
or when do they get off the train?

01:01:35.070 --> 01:01:36.990
Um and there's three different stops.

01:01:37.310 --> 01:01:42.030
One is there's a group of people who the fact that the

01:01:42.030 --> 01:01:47.000
manipulatability, the knowledge itself, even in principle,

01:01:47.480 --> 01:01:51.160
exists, means that there's no free will, right?

01:01:51.560 --> 01:01:57.400
So these would be people I suspect who are very vigilant about manipulation or

01:01:57.400 --> 01:01:58.280
manipulatability.

01:01:58.360 --> 01:02:02.760
And so there's just certain people who I think, I think like what it is is there, I don't

01:02:02.760 --> 01:02:06.360
know, there's a probably lots of ways to get to this individual difference.

01:02:06.520 --> 01:02:11.880
But there's some people who have the conviction that even if in principle

01:02:12.670 --> 01:02:16.990
people could be manipulated, even if we don't have the knowledge yet, even if we don't have

01:02:16.990 --> 01:02:17.390
the means.

01:02:17.470 --> 01:02:23.470
The fact that it's in principle possible means there's no means we need to be worried

01:02:23.470 --> 01:02:24.350
about manipulation.

01:02:24.510 --> 01:02:29.950
So that some some that is one that's so that gets you're getting off the free will

01:02:30.190 --> 01:02:31.550
train early.

01:02:31.630 --> 01:02:32.830
That's step one.

01:02:33.180 --> 01:02:33.740
Yeah.

01:02:34.060 --> 01:02:39.980
Step two is um you get off the free will train

01:02:40.300 --> 01:02:45.660
not when um it's just in principle possible, but when

01:02:45.900 --> 01:02:49.180
something um specifically is known, right?

01:02:49.340 --> 01:02:55.310
So it might be that like you know something about um the so you do learn

01:02:55.390 --> 01:02:59.470
like people actually know something about this particular thing or maybe there's even like

01:02:59.470 --> 01:03:04.830
technology available to manipulate that and then some people like have this idea that then

01:03:05.150 --> 01:03:10.590
um then we don't have free will at least for this particular thing um

01:03:11.550 --> 01:03:17.480
those people um well uh I'm gonna skip that

01:03:17.480 --> 01:03:19.960
because there's another part to it, but I'm gonna it's gonna be too complicated.

01:03:20.120 --> 01:03:25.480
There's a third stop, which I think I am, and I suspect you are too, and I think most

01:03:25.480 --> 01:03:30.200
evolutionary psychologists are, which is the third stop, which is in your stay on the free

01:03:30.360 --> 01:03:31.640
will train longest.

01:03:31.880 --> 01:03:36.360
And this is just because in principle something's knowable,

01:03:37.830 --> 01:03:40.070
it doesn't mean that you don't have free will.

01:03:40.950 --> 01:03:45.750
And even if we know a lot about the system and how it works, it doesn't mean we don't have

01:03:45.750 --> 01:03:46.550
free will.

01:03:46.790 --> 01:03:52.630
But if we know how the system works, and in this particular case,

01:03:52.710 --> 01:03:58.550
a bunch of neuroscientists actually intervened against somebody's knowledge or will

01:03:58.710 --> 01:04:01.030
in this case, then the question is: do they have free will?

01:04:01.110 --> 01:04:02.140
Well, no, right?

01:04:02.300 --> 01:04:02.380
Yeah.

01:04:02.780 --> 01:04:03.980
They were manipulated.

01:04:04.300 --> 01:04:10.220
So it's sort of like the three stops are sort of is manipulation in principle um

01:04:10.540 --> 01:04:14.540
possible, in practice possible, or did it happen?

01:04:14.860 --> 01:04:20.220
And I think most compatibilists get off at stop three.

01:04:20.620 --> 01:04:25.020
And it's because you say, look, free will is just compatible.

01:04:25.180 --> 01:04:27.740
So like you know how the system works.

01:04:28.090 --> 01:04:28.410
Yeah.

01:04:28.570 --> 01:04:33.610
But unless you manipulate the system, you have free will.

01:04:34.010 --> 01:04:34.410
Yes.

01:04:34.650 --> 01:04:40.490
And so I think most compatibilism is an expression of getting off at step

01:04:40.490 --> 01:04:41.050
three.

01:04:41.210 --> 01:04:46.170
And that's actually like the evolved, the the the evolved concern is that are you being

01:04:46.170 --> 01:04:46.810
manipulated?

01:04:46.970 --> 01:04:47.290
Right.

01:04:47.530 --> 01:04:47.770
Right.

01:04:47.930 --> 01:04:51.000
And here manip manipulation is a really precise definition.

01:04:51.080 --> 01:04:56.440
So if I threaten you with a punishment or entice you with the promise of a reward, that's

01:04:56.440 --> 01:05:00.440
not manipulation in your sense, because I'm speaking directly to your means and reasoning

01:05:00.680 --> 01:05:02.040
planning systems, right?

01:05:02.120 --> 01:05:05.720
And if I change your behavior by offering those rewards or threatening those punishments

01:05:05.800 --> 01:05:08.680
and you change your behavior, you freely made that choice and you were affected by the

01:05:08.680 --> 01:05:09.960
incentives that I were giving you.

01:05:10.200 --> 01:05:13.990
But if I bypass that and I don't offer you anything, or if I don't threaten you with

01:05:13.990 --> 01:05:18.950
anything, and I just slip you a pill or you know sneak into your bedroom at night and you

01:05:18.950 --> 01:05:24.310
know give you uh do some brain surgery on you, then I've manipulated you in the sense that

01:05:24.310 --> 01:05:28.390
that is that is scarier uh because uh you're not getting anything out of it.

01:05:28.550 --> 01:05:34.230
I'm just contorting you to my desires, um, and you're not getting anything out of the deal.

01:05:34.310 --> 01:05:38.040
Whereas if I offer to pay you money and I give you the money, like we're mutually

01:05:38.040 --> 01:05:39.000
benefiting in that case.

01:05:39.160 --> 01:05:43.320
But if I'm just slipping you a pill uh without your knowledge, then you're not benefiting.

01:05:43.640 --> 01:05:44.760
It's purely in my interest.

01:05:44.840 --> 01:05:49.880
It's exploitation, uh in the sense that we discussed in our our our previous uh episode uh

01:05:49.960 --> 01:05:50.920
with Hannes.

01:05:51.080 --> 01:05:55.560
Um so uh do you buy that that way of thinking I do.

01:05:55.720 --> 01:05:57.800
I think the system you're exactly right.

01:05:57.880 --> 01:06:02.360
I think the system is smarter than that though, in the following sense of if if I hold a

01:06:02.360 --> 01:06:03.400
gun to your head.

01:06:04.330 --> 01:06:07.450
um, that is still a cost-benefit calculation.

01:06:07.690 --> 01:06:10.730
And I think most people would say, like, you're you don't have free will.

01:06:10.810 --> 01:06:15.050
And I think that's because ultimately this is still about interventionism, like it's causal

01:06:15.050 --> 01:06:19.690
interventionism, which is just a jargony way of saying that all of these systems are for

01:06:19.690 --> 01:06:21.850
intervening upon the world and changing the world.

01:06:22.090 --> 01:06:26.760
So in the case of holding a gun to your head, What's the most effective intervention?

01:06:26.840 --> 01:06:29.720
It's not saying, David, you don't need to worry about your head, you don't need to care

01:06:29.720 --> 01:06:30.280
about your head.

01:06:30.440 --> 01:06:32.440
It would be to like remove the gun, right?

01:06:32.680 --> 01:06:32.840
Yeah.

01:06:33.080 --> 01:06:37.880
So in that sense, that's why we think it's about the efficacy of intentional intervention.

01:06:38.120 --> 01:06:43.480
In that case, it's that the most effective intervention isn't um

01:06:43.960 --> 01:06:49.880
uh convincing you to not worry about the gun, it's to just remove

01:06:49.880 --> 01:06:51.000
the gun, right?

01:06:51.320 --> 01:06:51.720
Right.

01:06:51.960 --> 01:06:56.730
Um, but uh so every so it's a little bit more of a continuum.

01:06:56.810 --> 01:06:59.450
This sort of complicates this this a little bit, yeah.

01:06:59.610 --> 01:07:04.810
Um, in the sense of, and and I think this is why people have this intuition that the

01:07:04.810 --> 01:07:10.010
indifferent choice is the maximum free will, because to the extent that you feel compelled,

01:07:10.090 --> 01:07:15.370
like, oh man, I really have to get this birthday gift for my or Christmas gift or Hanukkah

01:07:15.370 --> 01:07:20.220
gift or whatever for my kid, it's because like the ambient culture has convinced my child

01:07:20.220 --> 01:07:24.300
that it's like a thing, you know, like I'm not making that decision, but I feel compelled

01:07:24.300 --> 01:07:26.060
by the cost benefit structure of the world.

01:07:26.220 --> 01:07:27.900
It's not sort of up to me, you know?

01:07:28.060 --> 01:07:31.660
And I think like I'm not free to just choose whatever gift I would want for my kid.

01:07:31.740 --> 01:07:31.900
Yeah.

01:07:31.980 --> 01:07:36.940
And I think it does, I think it I think it's still it's still consistent with the

01:07:36.940 --> 01:07:42.300
underlying thing, which is like to the extent it is up to the means and system,

01:07:43.020 --> 01:07:43.340
yeah.

01:07:43.660 --> 01:07:49.650
Sort of it imbuing its own sort of costs and benefits or like I mean this is

01:07:49.650 --> 01:07:51.090
where the mismatch will get in.

01:07:51.170 --> 01:07:56.610
Um but basically to the extent that the valuation is

01:07:57.570 --> 01:08:03.250
internal or endogenous and not exogenous um to the planning and

01:08:03.250 --> 01:08:07.810
motivation or goal-based systems or the means and systems, I think it's more free will.

01:08:08.130 --> 01:08:09.810
So um okay yeah.

01:08:09.970 --> 01:08:15.580
So I think you're right broadly speaking, but I think it's even more subtle, such that the

01:08:15.580 --> 01:08:20.220
cost-benefit thing, like if somebody is holding your family hostage, yeah, and that made

01:08:20.220 --> 01:08:25.820
you rob a bank, you would have less free will than a situation in which you just decided it

01:08:25.820 --> 01:08:27.980
was be in your interest to rob the bank.

01:08:28.220 --> 01:08:28.540
Right.

01:08:29.020 --> 01:08:31.980
But it's still a cost-benefit calculation on your part.

01:08:32.570 --> 01:08:32.810
Right.

01:08:33.450 --> 01:08:38.810
Maybe the way to think about it is that there are some situations that are so extreme in

01:08:38.810 --> 01:08:42.970
their valuation that they bypass the means-end reasoning system altogether.

01:08:43.210 --> 01:08:47.210
Like if your survival is at stake, then your fight or flight system kicks in.

01:08:47.290 --> 01:08:50.170
You're just going to do whatever you need to get out of that situation and survive.

01:08:50.410 --> 01:08:55.450
And means end reasoning, um, except for the narrow goal of of surviving, is just going to

01:08:55.450 --> 01:08:56.010
be irrelevant.

01:08:56.090 --> 01:08:56.250
Yeah.

01:08:56.650 --> 01:09:01.450
And so it's sort of analogous to slipping you a pill, uh, you know, uh, because um, you

01:09:01.450 --> 01:09:05.280
know, thinking about the implications of getting your head blown off is just not going to

01:09:05.280 --> 01:09:06.240
shape your behavior in any way.

01:09:06.480 --> 01:09:06.720
That's right.

01:09:07.040 --> 01:09:09.360
That's just a it's just a non-negotiable thing.

01:09:09.680 --> 01:09:12.000
Like you have no choice but to get out of that situation.

01:09:12.240 --> 01:09:12.400
Yeah.

01:09:12.480 --> 01:09:12.560
Right.

01:09:12.880 --> 01:09:17.120
And this is also why, I mean, one of the reasons why I think the free will debate has been

01:09:17.120 --> 01:09:22.480
so difficult is that if you start to unpack it, there are some strong,

01:09:22.640 --> 01:09:27.040
straightforward answers, and we can get to them about is free will real or what is it?

01:09:27.360 --> 01:09:33.270
But one uh one part of the questions that have all been lumped together is a value

01:09:33.270 --> 01:09:34.070
judgment.

01:09:34.310 --> 01:09:35.590
Like it's a value judgment.

01:09:35.670 --> 01:09:40.950
So there's no fact in the matter, which is what's the efficacy of intentional interventions

01:09:41.030 --> 01:09:41.910
or should you care?

01:09:42.070 --> 01:09:47.110
So for example, uh, let's say somebody's holding a gun to your head, right?

01:09:47.190 --> 01:09:47.590
Yeah.

01:09:47.830 --> 01:09:53.030
Maybe what they're asking you to do is so terrible that you shouldn't care about your head.

01:09:53.190 --> 01:09:58.310
And if somebody has that evaluation, then they would argue you do have free will.

01:09:58.520 --> 01:09:58.920
Yes.

01:09:59.240 --> 01:10:04.120
Because they're actually saying no, this is a situation where actually it should be up to

01:10:04.120 --> 01:10:09.800
David's means and valuation systems to to choose a different

01:10:09.800 --> 01:10:10.440
outcome.

01:10:10.840 --> 01:10:16.280
And so so there's actually no fact of the matter about whether or not it's because it's

01:10:16.440 --> 01:10:22.200
there's there's strategic reasons why people might say or argue

01:10:22.360 --> 01:10:27.530
like, you know, the the this you it should be up to the state of your planning and

01:10:27.530 --> 01:10:30.170
goal-based systems, and other people would say it's not.

01:10:30.650 --> 01:10:36.410
And so this is this is especially why um there's a one of the findings in the

01:10:36.410 --> 01:10:41.770
literature is that when you detect somebody has imposed a cost, like they've robbed a bank,

01:10:41.850 --> 01:10:47.370
they've done something morally bad, automatically there's sort of more free will.

01:10:47.900 --> 01:10:48.220
Yeah.

01:10:48.380 --> 01:10:53.740
And the idea is that that would be what you would expect from like an error management

01:10:53.740 --> 01:10:59.660
perspective, from the sense of David, if you've done something wrong to the community or

01:10:59.660 --> 01:11:05.660
to me, I want to make sure that it's not a result of your planning means and

01:11:05.660 --> 01:11:06.220
systems.

01:11:06.700 --> 01:11:12.220
So I'm going to err on the side of attributing it to those to make sure that it's not.

01:11:12.570 --> 01:11:15.850
If you tell me something like, well, somebody was holding a gun to my head, then it'd be

01:11:15.850 --> 01:11:16.730
like, oh, okay, cool.

01:11:16.810 --> 01:11:19.210
And let's get the guy who was holding the gun to your head, right?

01:11:19.450 --> 01:11:19.770
Right.

01:11:20.490 --> 01:11:22.970
But um, but that's the general idea.

01:11:23.050 --> 01:11:28.890
And this explains why um that there's if you just hold everything

01:11:28.890 --> 01:11:34.890
constant, when there's a negative, morally bad outcome, people ascribe more free

01:11:34.890 --> 01:11:36.330
will to that outcome.

01:11:36.620 --> 01:11:42.140
This explains why that would be because there's a bias in the evolved system to sort of

01:11:42.140 --> 01:11:48.060
target whether or not this was originating out of the thing in the

01:11:48.060 --> 01:11:50.620
organism that I can change in principle.

01:11:51.260 --> 01:11:51.660
Yeah.

01:11:51.900 --> 01:11:56.540
I want to get your thought on an idea that occurred to me a few minutes ago, on a on a

01:11:56.540 --> 01:11:59.590
possible direction you could take this line of work.

01:12:00.070 --> 01:12:05.270
So there are certain strategic situations where being predicted or out foxed by your

01:12:05.270 --> 01:12:06.390
opponent is gonna be really bad for you.

01:12:06.630 --> 01:12:10.950
So if you're playing rock, paper, scissors, it it's really bad for me if you can anticipate

01:12:11.030 --> 01:12:12.230
uh what move I'm gonna make.

01:12:12.310 --> 01:12:12.390
Yeah.

01:12:12.470 --> 01:12:12.550
Right?

01:12:12.710 --> 01:12:14.710
Because then you can take advantage of that and win the game.

01:12:14.870 --> 01:12:15.190
Right?

01:12:15.350 --> 01:12:19.270
But if we're playing a coordination game, let's say we're communicating, and it really

01:12:19.270 --> 01:12:23.140
benefits you to predict uh in advance, you know, what I'm gonna say or what I what I'm

01:12:23.140 --> 01:12:26.660
gonna intend when I say something, because that's gonna allow us to uh communicate more

01:12:26.660 --> 01:12:27.060
effectively.

01:12:27.140 --> 01:12:30.500
If we're working together as a team, it it really benefits me for you to be able to predict

01:12:30.500 --> 01:12:30.980
what I'm gonna do.

01:12:31.060 --> 01:12:34.340
If you predict that I'm gonna pass you the ball in a basketball game, then that's gonna

01:12:34.340 --> 01:12:36.020
help you catch the ball and it's gonna help us win the game.

01:12:36.420 --> 01:12:39.220
And so there are certain strategic situations where being predictable is bad.

01:12:39.460 --> 01:12:42.340
And there are certain strategic situations where being predictable is good.

01:12:42.570 --> 01:12:47.930
And so you might expect this to be a relevant variable that's affecting people's free will

01:12:48.170 --> 01:12:49.210
uh uh intuitions.

01:12:49.290 --> 01:12:49.450
Yeah.

01:12:49.770 --> 01:12:54.570
Such that in situations where uh it's more of a rock, paper, scissors situation, they're

01:12:54.570 --> 01:12:58.410
gonna be more threatened and scared of the possibility that we're just predictable meat

01:12:58.410 --> 01:12:58.810
sacks.

01:12:58.890 --> 01:12:59.130
Yeah.

01:12:59.290 --> 01:12:59.530
Right.

01:12:59.690 --> 01:13:03.370
But if we're in a coordination teamwork situation, the fact that we're predictable meat

01:13:03.370 --> 01:13:04.570
sacks isn't gonna be as threatening.

01:13:04.730 --> 01:13:04.890
Yeah.

01:13:04.970 --> 01:13:05.700
Yeah, I like that a lot.

01:13:05.860 --> 01:13:07.700
So is that is what is that is that prediction you might make.

01:13:08.100 --> 01:13:08.340
I love that.

01:13:08.420 --> 01:13:08.900
Yeah, that's great.

01:13:09.300 --> 01:13:11.940
I also this also that's fantastic, and I love that.

01:13:12.020 --> 01:13:13.380
And that's not something we'd thought about.

01:13:13.460 --> 01:13:14.100
We should do that.

01:13:14.260 --> 01:13:19.060
Um this also explains like every time we're talking and there's like four things to talk

01:13:19.060 --> 01:13:19.300
about.

01:13:19.460 --> 01:13:24.340
Um this thing about predictability also explains what has been a huge mystery since the

01:13:24.340 --> 01:13:29.850
beginning of the free will debate, which is that people have focused on

01:13:29.850 --> 01:13:33.370
determinism, predictability as the problem.

01:13:34.090 --> 01:13:39.530
And so even the first person, Epicurius, he was he basically came up with this idea of like

01:13:39.530 --> 01:13:44.490
quantum sur swerve, as people sort of c jokingly kind of talk about it, which is the idea

01:13:44.490 --> 01:13:50.330
that somewhere in the microscopic or you know really small level, there's

01:13:50.330 --> 01:13:51.690
some indeterminism.

01:13:51.940 --> 01:13:56.580
It's like randomness or it's like quantum indeterminacy or something.

01:13:57.140 --> 01:14:00.420
And that is preventing the predictability.

01:14:00.500 --> 01:14:02.340
Or like that, that's they don't even say that.

01:14:02.660 --> 01:14:06.980
I mean, maybe they do, but it's often somehow that's saving you free will.

01:14:07.060 --> 01:14:09.060
That's keeping free will alive.

01:14:10.500 --> 01:14:16.210
And people have that intuition, but again, there's no theory of why would quantum

01:14:16.210 --> 01:14:18.290
indeterminism for free will?

01:14:18.530 --> 01:14:24.130
In fact, people have made the observation that why are these people even

01:14:24.130 --> 01:14:24.850
arguing this?

01:14:24.930 --> 01:14:26.450
Because it doesn't buy you free will.

01:14:26.610 --> 01:14:30.930
A random number generator, if I have a random number generator in my computer, which I do,

01:14:31.090 --> 01:14:33.090
nobody thinks my computer has free will.

01:14:33.410 --> 01:14:33.570
Right.

01:14:33.970 --> 01:14:35.090
So here's what I think is going on.

01:14:35.490 --> 01:14:37.010
This is an idea that just occurred to me.

01:14:37.170 --> 01:14:42.200
Um, what if the quantum indeterminacy thing it buys you free will from the third person.

01:14:42.520 --> 01:14:42.760
Exactly.

01:14:43.400 --> 01:14:43.880
That's right, exactly.

01:14:44.040 --> 01:14:46.200
Because that's exactly but not the first person perspective.

01:14:46.280 --> 01:14:46.440
Yeah.

01:14:46.680 --> 01:14:51.640
So if if people if people's actions are, you know, unpredictable, then I'm less capable of

01:14:51.640 --> 01:14:55.960
exploiting them or you know manipulating their their neurons or whatever.

01:14:56.200 --> 01:15:02.070
But um i if we live in a quantum indeterminate world, then it no longer benefits me

01:15:02.070 --> 01:15:06.630
to ponder the implications and the consequences of my actions because the it was my actions

01:15:06.630 --> 01:15:10.710
were already determined by the random quantum die rolls, right?

01:15:10.950 --> 01:15:12.470
I yeah, I think I understand what you're saying.

01:15:12.550 --> 01:15:17.190
I mean, I think uh from my the way I think about it is that that's an expression, that is

01:15:17.190 --> 01:15:22.230
the correct expression of the concern about predictability, but that it's all about

01:15:22.230 --> 01:15:27.360
microscopic stuff as sort of confabulation, where it's just like evolved organisms are sort

01:15:27.360 --> 01:15:32.640
of like if I'm predictable, like a talent poker, yeah, then that's a problem.

01:15:33.040 --> 01:15:33.360
Yeah.

01:15:33.600 --> 01:15:37.760
And like even for the first person, like if you already know what I'm gonna do and I know

01:15:37.920 --> 01:15:42.800
my system inside of me knows I haven't even run through the calculation, then you know,

01:15:42.960 --> 01:15:46.560
fuck, like I'm in trouble because you already know what I'm gonna do.

01:15:46.810 --> 01:15:47.050
Yeah.

01:15:47.210 --> 01:15:52.650
So I don't if it's bad if I'm predictable to you and and it's bad if if uh um

01:15:53.290 --> 01:15:57.290
uh and it's and it's a concern to you if I can predict you, right?

01:15:57.450 --> 01:16:03.290
Like so predictability just generally on the victim end is a bad

01:16:03.290 --> 01:16:04.090
thing, right?

01:16:04.330 --> 01:16:04.650
Right.

01:16:04.890 --> 01:16:06.330
So so that's what I think.

01:16:06.490 --> 01:16:10.970
So I think all in in so this has literally been like from the beginning people are talking

01:16:10.970 --> 01:16:12.330
about indeterminism.

01:16:12.960 --> 01:16:18.240
And people are like, well, why are we even talking about indeterminism or determinism at

01:16:18.240 --> 01:16:18.400
all?

01:16:18.640 --> 01:16:21.680
Because indeterminism doesn't get you free will.

01:16:21.840 --> 01:16:27.360
And the argument is that this theory explains this evolutionary account explains why it's

01:16:27.360 --> 01:16:31.840
coming up all in free will, because it's actually the evolved system is concerned about

01:16:32.160 --> 01:16:37.990
predictability and the scientific content about quantum states and blah, blah, blah,

01:16:38.150 --> 01:16:43.190
is all just confabulation running off of the system that's just worried about being

01:16:43.190 --> 01:16:44.150
predictable.

01:16:44.950 --> 01:16:46.390
That's fascinating.

01:16:46.630 --> 01:16:50.230
Um we haven't gotten to mismatch yet, but yeah, the mismatch.

01:16:50.310 --> 01:16:51.030
I was just gonna bring that up.

01:16:51.190 --> 01:16:51.350
Okay.

01:16:51.510 --> 01:16:51.670
Okay.

01:16:51.910 --> 01:16:55.670
So let me start with uh um um uh analogy.

01:16:57.120 --> 01:17:01.440
Okay, so let's say there's a fish.

01:17:01.600 --> 01:17:01.920
Okay.

01:17:02.320 --> 01:17:07.840
And a fish that um it has an evolved design such that in its

01:17:07.840 --> 01:17:11.440
gills is an oxygen detector.

01:17:12.400 --> 01:17:18.350
And when that oxygen detector doesn't get oxygen, it triggers

01:17:18.350 --> 01:17:20.430
a suffocation response that it's suffocating.

01:17:20.510 --> 01:17:22.430
It wriggles, it's like in distress, right?

01:17:22.590 --> 01:17:22.910
Okay.

01:17:24.030 --> 01:17:28.270
So let's say that we take this fish that has this evolved design.

01:17:28.350 --> 01:17:34.190
And let's say we're sort of weird, um, sadistic or just whatever researchers,

01:17:34.270 --> 01:17:39.870
and we take this fish and we inject oxygen into its bloodstream

01:17:40.190 --> 01:17:44.040
just downstream from its gills.

01:17:44.200 --> 01:17:49.720
So the gills are not getting oxygen, but we're injecting oxygen or oxygen

01:17:49.960 --> 01:17:53.320
blood into the fish right after the gills.

01:17:53.480 --> 01:17:53.800
Okay.

01:17:54.840 --> 01:17:57.080
I will explain why I'm gonna get into this in a second.

01:17:57.160 --> 01:17:57.400
Okay.

01:17:57.560 --> 01:17:59.560
So um, why am I talking about this?

01:18:00.120 --> 01:18:04.920
So the fish is fine, the fish is not suffocating, okay?

01:18:05.160 --> 01:18:05.720
Right.

01:18:06.120 --> 01:18:12.010
But its evolved psychology is triggering its it's having a suffocation

01:18:12.010 --> 01:18:12.650
response.

01:18:12.890 --> 01:18:13.050
Right.

01:18:13.450 --> 01:18:15.370
Fish is in distress, right?

01:18:15.690 --> 01:18:16.010
Okay.

01:18:16.490 --> 01:18:20.010
And um, but it's actually completely fine.

01:18:20.810 --> 01:18:25.850
It would be like if I put an electrode in the pain regions of your brain and turned on the

01:18:25.850 --> 01:18:26.170
electrode.

01:18:26.250 --> 01:18:29.690
You're you're not actually in pain, your body is not actually uh being damaged, but you

01:18:29.690 --> 01:18:30.170
think that you are.

01:18:30.410 --> 01:18:31.130
Exactly, exactly.

01:18:31.450 --> 01:18:33.130
So now so now I can ask you the question.

01:18:33.290 --> 01:18:36.730
So, what we've done as experimenters is we've violated

01:18:39.520 --> 01:18:45.280
The way that the world worked up until the we took the we we changed the

01:18:45.280 --> 01:18:46.640
state of the world for the fish.

01:18:46.800 --> 01:18:51.840
We've dissociated the cue and the concern, right?

01:18:52.000 --> 01:18:54.240
The situation from the response to it.

01:18:54.400 --> 01:18:59.440
So in the fish's natural ecology, when the gills lacked oxygen, that meant the fish was

01:18:59.440 --> 01:19:01.280
going to be in distress and might die.

01:19:01.440 --> 01:19:03.200
And that's why it has that response.

01:19:03.440 --> 01:19:07.430
We have teased those two apart in an evolutionarily novel way.

01:19:07.590 --> 01:19:13.430
It's an evolutionary mismatch where we're keeping the fish alive, the reason for the

01:19:13.430 --> 01:19:19.110
distress response we've addressed, but yet the fish is still registering the

01:19:19.110 --> 01:19:20.790
suffocation response.

01:19:22.070 --> 01:19:26.550
So now you could have a debate about: is the fish suffocating?

01:19:27.980 --> 01:19:30.460
Now there's this good sense in which it is.

01:19:30.700 --> 01:19:33.500
It is having the experience of suffocating.

01:19:33.660 --> 01:19:38.300
It might be if we if we grant what it would be like for us, it would be it would be

01:19:38.300 --> 01:19:39.260
torture, right?

01:19:39.420 --> 01:19:39.580
Right.

01:19:39.740 --> 01:19:40.860
The fish is in distress.

01:19:40.940 --> 01:19:43.020
It feels like it's suffocating.

01:19:43.900 --> 01:19:46.700
But there's another sense in which it's not suffocating.

01:19:46.940 --> 01:19:51.020
Because the reason why it's having that experience and the reason why that system even

01:19:51.020 --> 01:19:56.950
exists is for a particular outcome in the world, and we're not letting that outcome happen.

01:19:57.190 --> 01:19:59.670
Whoops, we as sorry, I knocked over my bottle here.

01:19:59.830 --> 01:20:05.190
We as scientists have dissociated the normal

01:20:05.430 --> 01:20:09.110
conflation of the two, of the cue and the situation.

01:20:09.190 --> 01:20:10.550
We've teased them apart.

01:20:10.710 --> 01:20:11.030
Okay.

01:20:11.990 --> 01:20:16.630
So you could have a meaningless debate, or maybe, I mean, if if you just ask, is the fish

01:20:16.630 --> 01:20:17.270
suffocating?

01:20:17.590 --> 01:20:23.340
Period, then you could just have an endless debate when in fact what

01:20:23.340 --> 01:20:29.340
you're debating is do you mean is it having the experience based on the evolve input, or

01:20:29.340 --> 01:20:30.940
is it in fact possible?

01:20:31.260 --> 01:20:31.580
Right?

01:20:31.820 --> 01:20:33.180
Yeah, okay.

01:20:33.580 --> 01:20:37.740
That that I that whole metaphor now applies to free will.

01:20:37.980 --> 01:20:38.860
Okay, okay.

01:20:39.180 --> 01:20:43.900
So now instead of suffocation, the concern is manipulation, right?

01:20:45.340 --> 01:20:51.230
And the idea is that we did not evolve in a world where we know about how

01:20:51.230 --> 01:20:52.190
the mind works.

01:20:52.430 --> 01:20:58.110
We evolved in a world where there's like tells in poker, where there's sort of habits or

01:20:58.110 --> 01:21:03.470
things that we can sort of influence one another or be influenced by one another.

01:21:03.630 --> 01:21:08.430
We did not, our brands did not evolve in a world where we could know with mechanistic

01:21:08.430 --> 01:21:10.430
detail how we work.

01:21:11.150 --> 01:21:11.470
Okay.

01:21:11.870 --> 01:21:14.270
That is an evolutionary novelty.

01:21:15.390 --> 01:21:15.710
Okay.

01:21:16.400 --> 01:21:21.920
So now the idea is that we have this evolved system that's concerned with

01:21:22.880 --> 01:21:28.320
when the things that I think I'm free to do are knowable,

01:21:28.640 --> 01:21:29.760
it's a problem.

01:21:30.400 --> 01:21:30.720
Right?

01:21:30.960 --> 01:21:31.440
Yeah.

01:21:31.760 --> 01:21:37.280
And that concern in an evolutionary environment where there's no reductionistic science is

01:21:37.280 --> 01:21:38.690
meaningful and useful.

01:21:38.850 --> 01:21:39.170
Yeah.

01:21:39.330 --> 01:21:45.250
It means that, oh boy, all of a sudden I'm letting David know before I want to let him know

01:21:45.410 --> 01:21:46.610
what I'm going to do.

01:21:46.850 --> 01:21:52.850
It means that David somehow knows something about me that allows him to manipulate

01:21:52.850 --> 01:21:55.170
me in a way that I'm not even aware of.

01:21:55.490 --> 01:21:56.130
Right.

01:21:56.850 --> 01:22:02.290
Those kinds of macroscopic, probably pretty minor, but still substantial for

01:22:02.290 --> 01:22:05.970
fitness things are really, really important.

01:22:06.980 --> 01:22:12.260
And that's the reasonable concern of the am I being manipulated?

01:22:12.340 --> 01:22:14.340
Is manipulation possible concern?

01:22:16.580 --> 01:22:22.020
Now we have this evolutionary novelty where either in

01:22:22.020 --> 01:22:27.460
principle or in practice, and maybe not actually, but we know

01:22:27.460 --> 01:22:32.900
enough now to poke on and manipulate

01:22:33.150 --> 01:22:34.030
everything.

01:22:34.350 --> 01:22:38.430
And if you don't, and if you don't think that's true now, which I don't yet, in principle,

01:22:38.510 --> 01:22:42.350
like, you know, if you know, if science progresses, we might at some point.

01:22:42.670 --> 01:22:46.110
Um, or let's just stipulate that that will happen.

01:22:46.590 --> 01:22:49.950
Then this gets back to like, where do you get off the train, right?

01:22:50.110 --> 01:22:52.830
You know, in principle, like when do you think it's a concern?

01:22:52.990 --> 01:22:54.030
When are you worried about it?

01:22:54.190 --> 01:22:57.950
And the idea is that we are sort of like the floundering fish.

01:22:58.030 --> 01:23:03.780
And this is where the 42 answer comes in, which is that the claim, and we can start

01:23:03.780 --> 01:23:06.580
wrapping up all the dangling pieces now.

01:23:06.660 --> 01:23:10.820
The claim is that free will, when people talk about does free will exist, yes or no?

01:23:11.300 --> 01:23:14.020
It's a little bit like arguing as the fish suffocating.

01:23:14.260 --> 01:23:19.140
There's a real sense in which free will exists, in the sense of it is a psychological

01:23:19.140 --> 01:23:23.940
representation of can I get up earlier in the morning?

01:23:24.590 --> 01:23:27.070
That is a coherent, reasonable thing.

01:23:27.230 --> 01:23:27.550
Yeah.

01:23:27.710 --> 01:23:27.950
Yeah.

01:23:28.110 --> 01:23:29.710
It's different than healing the broken bone.

01:23:29.790 --> 01:23:35.550
And in that respect, I don't agree with like Sam Harris or um uh

01:23:35.630 --> 01:23:38.510
um my I keep blanking on Greg Crusoe, yeah.

01:23:38.670 --> 01:23:41.550
Well, Greg Crusoe, but also um Robert Spolsky.

01:23:41.710 --> 01:23:42.590
Yeah, Robert Spolsky.

01:23:42.830 --> 01:23:47.660
I don't agree with them where you know Sam Harris is like particularly egregious where

01:23:47.660 --> 01:23:50.860
he'll just say like it's not even coherent, like, come on, grow up kids, you know.

01:23:51.100 --> 01:23:53.340
And and I don't I don't agree with that.

01:23:53.580 --> 01:23:59.500
So so I do think free will is real in the sense of it's an evolved

01:23:59.500 --> 01:24:05.260
representation talking about a coherent thing, you know, is it up to the

01:24:05.260 --> 01:24:08.300
state of these planning or means-end systems?

01:24:08.940 --> 01:24:14.330
Um, but there is another sense in which then if you take this

01:24:14.330 --> 01:24:20.170
evolutionary novelty of knowing everything that we know, then the question

01:24:20.170 --> 01:24:23.770
becomes, well, what do you mean by free will?

01:24:23.930 --> 01:24:27.610
Is free will or is is manipulation in principle possible?

01:24:27.690 --> 01:24:30.650
And if that's what you mean by it, you get off the train early, right?

01:24:30.780 --> 01:24:31.980
And you say there's no free will.

01:24:32.060 --> 01:24:34.460
So that's Sam Harris or Robert Spolski.

01:24:34.860 --> 01:24:39.900
Then there's some people who sort of say, well, um, maybe not in principle, but like maybe

01:24:39.900 --> 01:24:45.420
once we know exactly how a system works, uh, we have um, you know, we have the

01:24:45.420 --> 01:24:47.100
technology, I get off there.

01:24:47.260 --> 01:24:49.660
And those people would be sort of incompatibilists.

01:24:49.740 --> 01:24:54.700
So when the when you know more about how a system works, then you say, Oh, we don't have

01:24:54.700 --> 01:24:55.740
free will for that anymore.

01:24:55.900 --> 01:24:56.860
That's done, you know.

01:24:57.020 --> 01:25:01.850
So, like if I knew how let's just pretend like there was a system that was like the

01:25:01.850 --> 01:25:06.410
decision-making system in your head, and scientists like announce we know everything about

01:25:06.410 --> 01:25:08.250
how the decision-making system works.

01:25:08.410 --> 01:25:13.210
There would be a class of people who are like, Well, that means we don't have free will

01:25:13.210 --> 01:25:13.770
anymore, right?

01:25:13.930 --> 01:25:18.650
Even though nobody poked on it, just knowing enough about it is enough for those people to

01:25:18.810 --> 01:25:20.170
then be concerned, right?

01:25:20.810 --> 01:25:24.090
And then there's and then there's like people like me who are like, Well, no, we still have

01:25:24.090 --> 01:25:25.370
free will, we're I'm compatible.

01:25:25.450 --> 01:25:28.010
Let's I it's a levels of analysis thing, right?

01:25:28.170 --> 01:25:32.820
Where you can describe the software, but it doesn't make the intentional level phenomenon

01:25:32.820 --> 01:25:33.460
any less real.

01:25:33.620 --> 01:25:36.900
So that's the software that makes it possible to make a decision.

01:25:36.980 --> 01:25:38.020
There's no problem there.

01:25:38.180 --> 01:25:43.860
However, if a neuroscientist poked on the software, then I would be saying, well, yeah, no,

01:25:43.940 --> 01:25:47.380
that person didn't have free will in that situation because that's a neuroscientist poked

01:25:47.380 --> 01:25:47.700
on their software.

01:25:47.860 --> 01:25:51.860
So that's getting off at the last station, station three, when like it's manipulation in

01:25:51.860 --> 01:25:52.260
practice.

01:25:52.420 --> 01:25:54.420
And I think everybody would get off then.

01:25:54.820 --> 01:25:58.810
So those are all about the concern about manipulation.

01:25:58.970 --> 01:26:02.890
Then it's just this question of like, how quickly do you get off the train?

01:26:03.130 --> 01:26:07.610
But the thing is, is that that's the evolved concern of the psychology.

01:26:07.930 --> 01:26:13.850
And because we never evolved in a world to have this much knowledge, there's just

01:26:13.850 --> 01:26:18.970
this individual difference along this continuum of like, how soon do you get worried about

01:26:18.970 --> 01:26:19.530
manipulation?

01:26:19.610 --> 01:26:24.250
Is it when it's in principle, when it's uh more concretely in principle or actually

01:26:24.250 --> 01:26:24.890
happening?

01:26:25.140 --> 01:26:31.060
And so that's the that's the sort of evolutionary mismatch piece where there's a sense

01:26:31.060 --> 01:26:37.060
in which people who say we don't have free will are right because they're

01:26:37.060 --> 01:26:43.060
sort of they're sort of saying look our evolved psychology is concerned about

01:26:43.060 --> 01:26:43.860
manipulation.

01:26:44.020 --> 01:26:45.460
And is manipulation possible?

01:26:45.620 --> 01:26:46.100
Yeah.

01:26:46.430 --> 01:26:47.070
Right.

01:26:47.550 --> 01:26:50.910
But it's again, there's like no facts of the matter about it.

01:26:51.070 --> 01:26:53.630
It's sort of like, is this fish suffocating?

01:26:53.950 --> 01:26:56.830
There's a sense in which it is, in a sense in which it isn't.

01:26:56.990 --> 01:27:01.630
And there's a sense in which free will is real, in the sense of I currently enjoy free

01:27:01.630 --> 01:27:01.870
will.

01:27:01.950 --> 01:27:04.670
It's in a coherent evolved representation.

01:27:05.310 --> 01:27:10.750
And then, however, if you get off the train right away, there's a sense in which you're

01:27:10.750 --> 01:27:10.910
right.

01:27:10.990 --> 01:27:12.920
Like in principle, I could be manipulated.

01:27:13.000 --> 01:27:14.600
And if that's what you mean by it, then you're right.

01:27:14.680 --> 01:27:15.000
I don't.

01:27:15.160 --> 01:27:16.360
So we can both be right.

01:27:16.440 --> 01:27:18.840
We're just talking about different things, right?

01:27:19.640 --> 01:27:25.640
Um, and if you get off the train later, then we most we might both say we both

01:27:25.800 --> 01:27:31.800
I have free will because nobody has been poking on my um my systems, you know, unless we

01:27:31.800 --> 01:27:32.840
find out otherwise.

01:27:33.080 --> 01:27:38.840
So the basic idea is that there's actually been a bunch of different issues all

01:27:39.110 --> 01:27:40.870
smooshed together.

01:27:41.110 --> 01:27:47.110
And the idea is that if you tease these all apart, so you tease apart, are you

01:27:47.110 --> 01:27:52.630
talking about an evolved representation that is distinguishing between like the difference

01:27:52.630 --> 01:27:55.510
between getting up in the mur morning or breaking a bone?

01:27:55.670 --> 01:27:58.310
Then yes, free will is real, right?

01:27:58.950 --> 01:28:04.620
It's also then the free will representation itself is for the range of circumstances that

01:28:04.620 --> 01:28:05.660
we evolve to deal with.

01:28:05.740 --> 01:28:07.980
Like, is somebody are you currently manipulating me?

01:28:08.060 --> 01:28:08.780
I don't think so.

01:28:08.940 --> 01:28:11.100
You know, like I have free will, right?

01:28:11.580 --> 01:28:11.900
Yeah.

01:28:12.060 --> 01:28:17.740
Um, so that so this is why I think the evolutionary mismatch is really important

01:28:18.220 --> 01:28:24.140
because there's a sense in which you can say free will is real, because you know, the

01:28:24.140 --> 01:28:29.470
fish is uh floundering, like it's if it's experiencing, it's

01:28:29.470 --> 01:28:30.590
suffocating.

01:28:30.830 --> 01:28:35.790
Um, but there's another sense in which like you could manipulate my behavior, or maybe you

01:28:35.870 --> 01:28:36.510
you have.

01:28:36.990 --> 01:28:40.830
Um, and and that's a sense in which you don't have free will.

01:28:42.270 --> 01:28:47.960
I I wonder if the relevant uh individual difference variable

01:28:47.960 --> 01:28:53.480
that's shaping these intuitions is the sense of ownership and how expansive that sense of

01:28:53.480 --> 01:28:54.840
ownership is.

01:28:55.080 --> 01:28:58.360
So on the one hand, you could or the sense of self, let's say.

01:28:58.520 --> 01:29:01.240
So on the one hand, you could have a very narrow conception of self where it's just the

01:29:01.240 --> 01:29:03.560
conscious me that makes decisions.

01:29:03.720 --> 01:29:08.600
And the stuff that's unconscious, my genes, you know, my habits that I acquired as a child,

01:29:08.680 --> 01:29:09.320
that's not me.

01:29:09.480 --> 01:29:12.120
Just the me that's conscious right now making decisions, that's that's the only thing

01:29:12.120 --> 01:29:12.520
that's me.

01:29:13.160 --> 01:29:15.930
Or you could take a more expansive definition of self and say it's all me.

01:29:16.090 --> 01:29:20.730
My genes, my upbringing, my habits, what's going on at the unconscious level, that's all

01:29:20.730 --> 01:29:20.890
me.

01:29:20.970 --> 01:29:21.610
Yeah.

01:29:21.930 --> 01:29:27.850
And so for some people, when when you explain to them that uh unconscious forces or genetic

01:29:27.850 --> 01:29:33.370
forces or childhood forces are shaping your decisions, that reads to them, that reads to

01:29:33.370 --> 01:29:35.370
their evolved mind as I'm being manipulated.

01:29:35.450 --> 01:29:35.610
Yeah.

01:29:35.770 --> 01:29:38.970
I'm being manipulated by something that is not me, that is alien.

01:29:39.210 --> 01:29:40.970
These genes that I have, they're not me.

01:29:41.340 --> 01:29:44.380
These unconscious motivations and drives, they're not me.

01:29:44.460 --> 01:29:44.700
Right?

01:29:44.860 --> 01:29:46.620
These habits that I've acquired, they're not me.

01:29:46.860 --> 01:29:47.100
That's right.

01:29:47.340 --> 01:29:51.100
Uh, and so they register that as manipulation and that I don't have free will.

01:29:51.180 --> 01:29:56.460
I've it's directly analogous to I've been uh manipulated by an evil neuroscientist who did

01:29:56.460 --> 01:29:58.380
uh brain surgery on me without my consent.

01:29:58.620 --> 01:30:03.500
Except it's not the neuroscientist, it's evolution or it's uh the unconscious parts of the

01:30:03.500 --> 01:30:04.140
brain or whatever.

01:30:04.300 --> 01:30:09.740
And so maybe the relevant distinction is do I view evolution in genes and unconscious brain

01:30:09.740 --> 01:30:10.380
processes?

01:30:10.570 --> 01:30:15.610
do I view that stuff as the type of thing that could manipulate me as something that's

01:30:15.610 --> 01:30:16.970
outside of me or external to me?

01:30:17.050 --> 01:30:17.210
Yeah.

01:30:17.370 --> 01:30:19.370
Or do I view it as me, as a part of me?

01:30:19.450 --> 01:30:19.530
Yeah.

01:30:19.690 --> 01:30:21.770
In which case it's not manipulation, it's just me making a decision.

01:30:22.010 --> 01:30:26.010
It's funny you say that because how I got into this was from modularity, because the

01:30:26.010 --> 01:30:30.650
modularity argument was what Fodor meant by module was the stuff that wasn't me.

01:30:30.890 --> 01:30:31.130
Yeah.

01:30:31.370 --> 01:30:35.050
So he was drawing a line around and he was making an argument that, like, hey, if you think

01:30:35.050 --> 01:30:37.610
it's all the homunculus or you inside your head, guess what?

01:30:37.690 --> 01:30:38.250
You're wrong.

01:30:38.410 --> 01:30:42.760
There's like stuff on the periphery like perception where you can't go in and control.

01:30:42.920 --> 01:30:47.160
You can't go in and change the fact that you see a visual illusion, even if you know

01:30:47.160 --> 01:30:50.600
explicitly that the lines are the same length or whatever.

01:30:50.680 --> 01:30:51.160
Yeah.

01:30:51.400 --> 01:30:53.560
Um you can't control it.

01:30:53.800 --> 01:30:57.880
And so that was actually my foray into free will because I was like, look, we just went

01:30:57.880 --> 01:30:59.720
through this whole modular with me with any words.

01:30:59.880 --> 01:31:05.000
Like we went through this whole thing where what the modularity debate was about was about

01:31:05.240 --> 01:31:09.410
like this levels of analysis confusion where like fodder was uh operating at this

01:31:09.410 --> 01:31:13.010
intentional level where there's like the you and then the stuff that isn't you.

01:31:13.170 --> 01:31:13.890
Exactly what you're saying.

01:31:14.050 --> 01:31:18.210
And then people were just drawing the lines of like evolution is not you.

01:31:18.290 --> 01:31:22.130
It's like the thing that causes you to want to eat sh you know sugar when you don't want

01:31:22.130 --> 01:31:22.690
to, right?

01:31:22.850 --> 01:31:23.010
Yes.

01:31:23.330 --> 01:31:26.690
And or it's you it makes you want to sleep with the person even though you don't think you

01:31:26.690 --> 01:31:27.170
should, right?

01:31:27.360 --> 01:31:29.680
Like it's the poking on the homiculus stuff.

01:31:29.840 --> 01:31:30.080
Right.

01:31:30.240 --> 01:31:33.360
And that's the way a lot of popularization understands it.

01:31:33.520 --> 01:31:37.920
And then there was another version, which was the quote unquote sophisticated version,

01:31:38.000 --> 01:31:42.800
which I am part of, which is sort of understanding evolution at the functional level, which

01:31:42.800 --> 01:31:46.480
is just like everything you do, like the decision making or whatever, it's all just

01:31:46.480 --> 01:31:46.880
software.

01:31:46.960 --> 01:31:48.720
And we just do the evolved software.

01:31:48.880 --> 01:31:53.040
And so it's not a you versus your mechanism, it's just mechanisms all the way down.

01:31:53.290 --> 01:31:57.690
And so this was the argument was that there's a levels of analysis confusion where people

01:31:57.690 --> 01:32:03.370
were operating at the intentional level, like Fodor, invoking a you, defining mechanisms as

01:32:03.370 --> 01:32:04.330
opposed to the you.

01:32:04.810 --> 01:32:07.450
And that's not what evolutionary psychologists meant at all.

01:32:07.530 --> 01:32:10.490
They were operating at a lower level at the level of mechanisms.

01:32:10.810 --> 01:32:14.970
And that, and then I so we did that for modularity and said, like, that's why people are

01:32:14.970 --> 01:32:16.810
having this back and forth debate.

01:32:17.020 --> 01:32:20.460
Um, it's just people missing each other and at what level they're just talking about

01:32:20.460 --> 01:32:21.100
modules.

01:32:21.340 --> 01:32:23.820
Fodor meant module meaning not you.

01:32:24.060 --> 01:32:28.060
And a lot of people meant foot module is not you, but of psych, most evolutionary

01:32:28.060 --> 01:32:33.980
psychologists or adaptationists meant just modules are just bits of uh functions

01:32:33.980 --> 01:32:36.860
at the functional level, at the software level.

01:32:36.940 --> 01:32:40.700
It has nothing to do with the stuff that's independent of you one way or another.

01:32:40.940 --> 01:32:43.980
They're using the same word to operate at two different levels.

01:32:44.140 --> 01:32:49.590
That was the argument, the modularity paper, And the idea was sort of that I looked over at

01:32:49.590 --> 01:32:52.150
free will and was like, well, this looks very similar.

01:32:52.310 --> 01:32:55.750
Like, I like I'm I just went through this whole thing with modularity.

01:32:55.830 --> 01:33:01.350
And look, people are talking about free will as being incompatible with mechanisms.

01:33:01.510 --> 01:33:04.150
Some people are, and some people aren't.

01:33:04.390 --> 01:33:08.150
So maybe it's that people who are incompatibilists are like voter.

01:33:08.230 --> 01:33:10.150
They're operating at the intentional level.

01:33:10.310 --> 01:33:15.270
They're sort of saying, look, there's me and my mechanisms, and I'm free, but my mechanisms

01:33:15.270 --> 01:33:15.670
aren't.

01:33:15.910 --> 01:33:17.860
So I'm an incompatibilist, you know.

01:33:18.020 --> 01:33:21.940
But then if there's other people who are sort of like, well, yeah, you are made up of

01:33:21.940 --> 01:33:22.420
mechanisms.

01:33:22.500 --> 01:33:24.740
It's sort of like the evolutionary psychologists.

01:33:24.900 --> 01:33:27.060
So those are the compatibilists, right?

01:33:27.220 --> 01:33:33.140
And so that's how I got into the whole debate was realizing that that it at that this

01:33:33.140 --> 01:33:38.740
level, this deeper structural level, it was a very similar confusion, a levels of analysis

01:33:38.820 --> 01:33:39.780
confusion.

01:33:40.990 --> 01:33:41.390
Yeah.

01:33:41.550 --> 01:33:46.030
I Yeah, but that was before then I got into the mismatch stuff and the figuring that out.

01:33:46.110 --> 01:33:47.870
But that's that was the beginning of me getting into it.

01:33:48.030 --> 01:33:49.230
So you're exactly right.

01:33:49.390 --> 01:33:50.030
Yeah.

01:33:50.910 --> 01:33:51.550
Yeah.

01:33:52.750 --> 01:33:58.350
It it almost strikes me that the mismatch aspect is not the

01:33:58.590 --> 01:34:01.710
unprecedented level of manipulability.

01:34:02.110 --> 01:34:08.110
Manipulability, um, but the uh lack of clarity about what the

01:34:08.350 --> 01:34:14.260
self is and the unprecedented insight into aspects of ourself that are uh

01:34:14.420 --> 01:34:15.780
not currently conscious.

01:34:16.020 --> 01:34:16.580
Yeah.

01:34:16.900 --> 01:34:18.500
Um Yeah, that's a good point.

01:34:18.660 --> 01:34:24.180
Yeah, we're no yeah, we did not evolve for that level of uh yeah, that's a really good way

01:34:24.180 --> 01:34:24.740
to think about it.

01:34:24.820 --> 01:34:25.860
Yeah, that's true.

01:34:26.340 --> 01:34:26.580
Right.

01:34:26.740 --> 01:34:31.460
Like uh w you know, what to call the self or like how expansive or narrow, that that wasn't

01:34:31.460 --> 01:34:35.730
really a a relevant uh uh d distinction that you know would have been selection pressures

01:34:35.730 --> 01:34:38.050
to make sure we get that conceptualization right.

01:34:38.450 --> 01:34:39.570
And so we're free to vary.

01:34:39.650 --> 01:34:43.330
Some some have a an expansive definition of self, some have a narrow definition of self.

01:34:43.570 --> 01:34:47.890
And um and and the mechanism in some sense is up operating correctly.

01:34:47.970 --> 01:34:52.450
Like it's it's designed to detect threats to the self or manipulate and uh manipulative

01:34:52.610 --> 01:34:54.930
attempts to e exploit the self.

01:34:55.170 --> 01:34:57.330
Um and it just depends on how you think of the self.

01:34:57.730 --> 01:35:01.920
You know, if you if you think of the self as as the narrow conscious you at at this time,

01:35:02.080 --> 01:35:05.760
then you really are being manipulated by your unconscious forces and by your genes and by

01:35:05.760 --> 01:35:06.320
your upbringing.

01:35:07.040 --> 01:35:10.560
But but if you view the self expansively, then you're not being manipulated by those things

01:35:10.640 --> 01:35:12.480
because those things are you.

01:35:12.720 --> 01:35:17.040
And so we evolved to detect, you know, uh m potential manipulation.

01:35:17.600 --> 01:35:23.510
And um if neuroscientists really did um uh fully unravel everything going on in the brain

01:35:23.670 --> 01:35:27.910
and could manipulate us by you know giving us pills or or brain surgery or planting

01:35:28.070 --> 01:35:29.750
electrode in our brains or whatever.

01:35:29.910 --> 01:35:33.190
If they could do all those things, that really would be a legitimate case of manipulation

01:35:33.190 --> 01:35:35.110
that we would have good reason to worry about.

01:35:35.270 --> 01:35:36.310
And that wouldn't be mismatched.

01:35:36.390 --> 01:35:37.190
That would be a rational.

01:35:38.470 --> 01:35:38.710
That's right.

01:35:38.790 --> 01:35:40.070
That's getting off at step three.

01:35:40.150 --> 01:35:43.110
Yeah, that's right, where everybody lines up that that's not free will.

01:35:43.270 --> 01:35:43.590
That's right.

01:35:43.910 --> 01:35:43.990
Right.

01:35:44.150 --> 01:35:49.780
But the people who get off at staff step one, um they're already being manipulated by the

01:35:49.780 --> 01:35:54.100
evil neuroscientist in the form of their unconscious mind, in the form of their genes, in

01:35:54.100 --> 01:35:55.700
the form of their childhood.

01:35:56.020 --> 01:35:57.700
Like the evil neuroscientist is already in them.

01:35:57.940 --> 01:35:58.980
And it's already manipulating.

01:35:59.300 --> 01:35:59.620
Yeah, exactly.

01:35:59.860 --> 01:35:59.940
Right?

01:36:00.100 --> 01:36:00.260
Yeah.

01:36:00.420 --> 01:36:00.580
Exactly.

01:36:00.820 --> 01:36:04.660
And so the the difference is just, you know, what are we calling the evil neuroscientist

01:36:04.820 --> 01:36:06.420
and what are we not calling the evil neuroscientists?

01:36:06.820 --> 01:36:06.980
Yeah.

01:36:07.220 --> 01:36:09.700
And and so this is the answer to what is free will.

01:36:09.780 --> 01:36:15.630
It's that you don't you this is why the answer is 42, where the whole

01:36:15.630 --> 01:36:21.310
question assumed that the answer wouldn't be uh it's a representation of an

01:36:21.310 --> 01:36:22.990
evolved organism, right?

01:36:23.310 --> 01:36:23.470
Yeah.

01:36:23.710 --> 01:36:26.590
And the uh and the idea is it is, and that's the answer.

01:36:26.990 --> 01:36:32.990
And then once you understand that that's the answer, then the question of in a particular

01:36:32.990 --> 01:36:34.990
case, is this an instance of free will?

01:36:35.070 --> 01:36:40.620
You can understand why there could be different individuals coming to

01:36:40.620 --> 01:36:41.820
different answers.

01:36:42.060 --> 01:36:46.860
So the level of invariance, as we talked about in earlier podcast, to the answer, what is

01:36:46.860 --> 01:36:50.060
free will, is not what people imagined it to be.

01:36:50.140 --> 01:36:51.580
This is why 42 is apt.

01:36:51.820 --> 01:36:56.300
It's not, it's not a perspective independent definition.

01:36:56.460 --> 01:37:01.260
It's not an evolved system independent definition out in the world.

01:37:01.500 --> 01:37:06.780
It's it's a representation of an ad from caused by an adaptation and

01:37:07.370 --> 01:37:12.890
depending on different things about that organism.

01:37:13.210 --> 01:37:18.970
And because of this evolutionary mismatch, the same content in the world will

01:37:18.970 --> 01:37:24.170
arrive at different conclusions about whether or not free will exists or not, or holds in

01:37:24.170 --> 01:37:25.450
this case or not.

01:37:25.850 --> 01:37:31.460
So it changes the enterprise from deciding what out in the

01:37:31.460 --> 01:37:36.660
world counts as free will, to understanding why and the psychology of

01:37:36.820 --> 01:37:41.860
different evolved critters are arriving at different conclusions.

01:37:42.020 --> 01:37:47.620
And the thing that is predictable and deterministic is the software that we're

01:37:47.620 --> 01:37:50.340
characterizing in our answer of what free will is.

01:37:50.580 --> 01:37:55.590
So we have a theory, it's almost like a meta-theory of everything we've been talking about

01:37:55.750 --> 01:37:58.710
is this is what the scientific study of free will is.

01:37:58.870 --> 01:38:04.390
There's all this labé stuff about um, like this classic study where the question is:

01:38:04.630 --> 01:38:09.910
is there um neurocognitive signature of making a decision before you experiencing making

01:38:09.910 --> 01:38:10.710
your decision?

01:38:11.190 --> 01:38:14.980
And this account says that that's not the study of free will at all.

01:38:15.780 --> 01:38:20.660
That's that's the expression of the concern of the free will system, looking at the how the

01:38:20.660 --> 01:38:26.180
neurocognitive systems of decision making, which won't tell you that that labé stuff will

01:38:26.180 --> 01:38:27.300
not tell us anything.

01:38:27.460 --> 01:38:29.060
It won't settle the matter at all.

01:38:29.220 --> 01:38:29.380
Yes.

01:38:29.620 --> 01:38:34.900
And in fact, what the neurocognitive study of free will is, is the

01:38:34.900 --> 01:38:40.500
neurocognitive study of a system that is representing, for example, the difference between

01:38:40.500 --> 01:38:43.790
getting up early in the morning and healing a broken bone.

01:38:43.870 --> 01:38:49.310
That's concerned about manipulation and deciding whether or not these circumstances count

01:38:49.470 --> 01:38:53.630
as this system should be concerned about the possibility of manipulation.

01:38:53.870 --> 01:38:58.750
So this suggests a completely different way to study free will and a completely different

01:38:58.750 --> 01:39:00.910
way to understand what free will is.

01:39:01.390 --> 01:39:01.630
Yeah.

01:39:01.790 --> 01:39:05.740
No, with the labet stuff, like it it fits what I was saying earlier.

01:39:05.900 --> 01:39:10.460
So if if the neurosignature of making a decision happens before you're consciously aware of

01:39:10.460 --> 01:39:13.020
making that decision, you can interpret that in one of two ways.

01:39:13.420 --> 01:39:16.860
In one way, the neurosignature is this alien force that's manipulating you.

01:39:17.020 --> 01:39:20.460
You're categorizing this as a case of manipulation, in which case I don't have free will.

01:39:21.500 --> 01:39:24.220
Another way to see it is no, that neurosignature is a part of me.

01:39:24.300 --> 01:39:25.580
That's just the way I make decisions.

01:39:25.820 --> 01:39:27.100
It's not manipulating me, it is me.

01:39:27.180 --> 01:39:27.260
Yeah.

01:39:27.420 --> 01:39:27.580
Right.

01:39:28.490 --> 01:39:33.290
And so it it depends on how narrowly or expansively you you your definition of of the self

01:39:33.530 --> 01:39:33.690
is.

01:39:34.010 --> 01:39:34.170
Yeah.

01:39:34.250 --> 01:39:35.770
And where you get off on the train.

01:39:35.930 --> 01:39:38.330
I I like what you're saying, and another way to put it is where you get off on the train,

01:39:38.410 --> 01:39:40.570
and that's why it's not going to settle it for anybody.

01:39:40.810 --> 01:39:41.050
Yeah.

01:39:41.290 --> 01:39:41.610
Yeah.

01:39:41.850 --> 01:39:42.170
Cool.

01:39:42.410 --> 01:39:46.250
So um how how how are you approaching uh testing these ideas empirically?

01:39:46.570 --> 01:39:47.690
That's another thing I was curious about.

01:39:47.930 --> 01:39:48.250
Yeah, yeah.

01:39:48.410 --> 01:39:51.770
I mean, so one is we're testing this individual difference thing of like where do you get

01:39:51.770 --> 01:39:52.890
off the train, which I really love.

01:39:53.130 --> 01:39:53.290
Okay.

01:39:53.370 --> 01:39:53.530
Yeah.

01:39:53.610 --> 01:39:55.450
Um and that's something we're gonna see.

01:39:55.610 --> 01:40:01.480
And we've already um you can sort of you can kind of predict where

01:40:01.480 --> 01:40:02.840
people are gonna get off the train.

01:40:02.920 --> 01:40:03.960
It seems to be pretty stable.

01:40:04.040 --> 01:40:08.120
I mean, I don't want to speak too strongly about it, but we're that's one aspect is just

01:40:08.120 --> 01:40:14.120
sort of giving people, um asking people, giving people scenarios and saying, is there free

01:40:14.120 --> 01:40:14.760
will or not?

01:40:15.000 --> 01:40:21.000
And then, you know, and then looking at, for example, are people who get off at step one,

01:40:21.270 --> 01:40:24.950
are they more likely to confuse levels of analysis, for example, right?

01:40:25.190 --> 01:40:29.110
Um, you know, and but that's one thing is you can just document that difference.

01:40:29.190 --> 01:40:35.190
And I think uh in the context of the existing literature, I think, and

01:40:35.270 --> 01:40:37.830
and this is not part of the theory, this is just my own personal thinking.

01:40:37.990 --> 01:40:43.830
I suspect that the compatibilist incompatibilist distinction is conflating those

01:40:43.830 --> 01:40:47.180
three different, more stable individual differences.

01:40:47.260 --> 01:40:51.900
And I think that in in analogously like what you were saying about like, you know, people's

01:40:51.900 --> 01:40:56.060
training on as to whether or not your genes are part of you or not, and if you lump that in

01:40:56.060 --> 01:41:01.820
or not, these things should all better explain compatibilism or incompatibilism or moving

01:41:01.820 --> 01:41:02.860
people around in that way.

01:41:02.940 --> 01:41:03.340
Right.

01:41:03.500 --> 01:41:05.100
Um so that's one element.

01:41:05.180 --> 01:41:10.130
The other thing is just sort of looking at um is just testing this idea that the efficacy

01:41:10.130 --> 01:41:15.250
of intentional intervention, like the question of like is does free will track um the

01:41:15.250 --> 01:41:19.330
extent to which you believe you could sort of force yourself or convince yourself to do

01:41:19.330 --> 01:41:20.210
something, right?

01:41:20.450 --> 01:41:20.610
Yeah.

01:41:20.770 --> 01:41:26.690
Um and is that um is that um something too um that that's a prediction,

01:41:26.770 --> 01:41:27.330
um, right?

01:41:27.410 --> 01:41:31.280
That that that's so you're looking at the deg the degree to which people say that this

01:41:31.280 --> 01:41:33.280
person has free will and seeing if that correlates to the same thing.

01:41:33.360 --> 01:41:33.760
Yeah, or first.

01:41:34.720 --> 01:41:34.880
Yeah.

01:41:35.120 --> 01:41:36.800
Or for so you do are you doing third and first person?

01:41:37.120 --> 01:41:38.160
Yeah, first and type of person.

01:41:38.400 --> 01:41:39.120
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:41:39.360 --> 01:41:39.600
Cool.

01:41:39.760 --> 01:41:40.960
Um so that's one part.

01:41:41.040 --> 01:41:44.480
So basically it would be like, could you convince yourself to do something in this

01:41:44.480 --> 01:41:45.040
situation?

01:41:45.200 --> 01:41:48.800
And then at a later point, it's like, Do you have free will in this situation?

01:41:48.960 --> 01:41:52.000
And those two should sort of track each other, but it shouldn't track other things, like

01:41:52.080 --> 01:41:53.530
how desirable would it be?

01:41:53.770 --> 01:41:59.050
Um, the other thing we're doing too, and this is the other kind of funny part of thinking

01:41:59.210 --> 01:42:05.050
taking this evolutionary step back, is determinism has always been brought up for

01:42:05.050 --> 01:42:07.690
reasons we talked about, like predictability or manipulation.

01:42:07.930 --> 01:42:12.810
But one thing people haven't really realized is that, like, for example, like superhero

01:42:12.810 --> 01:42:17.740
movies Have just as much to do with free will as

01:42:17.820 --> 01:42:19.820
neuroscientists implanting a brain.

01:42:20.380 --> 01:42:25.340
Super superhuman or yeah, superhuman abilities or like the ability to like read minds.

01:42:25.580 --> 01:42:26.940
People love that, right?

01:42:27.020 --> 01:42:30.060
You're like, that's sign me up, hook it to my veins, right?

01:42:30.220 --> 01:42:30.860
Yeah.

01:42:31.180 --> 01:42:35.340
And it that's a case of instinct blindness, where in fact that's more determinism in the

01:42:35.340 --> 01:42:35.820
world, right?

01:42:35.900 --> 01:42:40.380
Like you've you've injected a new deterministic relationship that didn't exist before.

01:42:40.540 --> 01:42:42.620
But David, you can now read my mind.

01:42:42.990 --> 01:42:46.750
And if and if I tell you you can do that, you love that, right?

01:42:46.910 --> 01:42:49.310
And I hate it because for me it's manipulation.

01:42:49.470 --> 01:42:52.430
But if you're my friend or my partner, I might get more.

01:42:52.510 --> 01:42:57.070
And so that's a whole other part where we're actually teasing apart what had been

01:42:57.070 --> 01:43:02.750
conflated, which is determinism where you're the victim of it, where you're the

01:43:02.750 --> 01:43:08.590
patient as opposed to the agent of determinism, and then manipulating social distance.

01:43:08.750 --> 01:43:14.280
So this is the other thing where the literature, because it's been so in implicitly

01:43:14.280 --> 01:43:20.280
focused on the concern about manipulation, that it didn't take it didn't take a

01:43:20.280 --> 01:43:23.560
step back and think, well, what does determinism mean?

01:43:23.800 --> 01:43:28.520
Um, and what happens when you inject new determinism into the world or new deterministic

01:43:28.520 --> 01:43:29.160
relationships?

01:43:29.320 --> 01:43:33.000
There's a whole category that people should not only not mind but love.

01:43:33.470 --> 01:43:37.470
Um, maybe they won't admit to it, but like, could you just, you know, would it be great for

01:43:37.470 --> 01:43:39.070
you to just like fly anywhere you wanted?

01:43:39.150 --> 01:43:39.950
That'd be awesome, right?

01:43:40.030 --> 01:43:42.110
Like, so yeah, people fantasize about that.

01:43:42.190 --> 01:43:48.190
There's a whole uh genre of fiction that's about the acquisition of new deterministic

01:43:48.190 --> 01:43:50.030
relationships that didn't exist before.

01:43:50.190 --> 01:43:53.230
Like I can make fire come out of my arms when I want to.

01:43:53.390 --> 01:43:55.870
It would be bad if it was like uncontrollable, right?

01:43:55.950 --> 01:43:57.630
Like I would burn my family.

01:43:57.790 --> 01:43:59.150
That would be horrible, right?

01:43:59.310 --> 01:44:05.240
So like um, but like having new things under your control is awesome

01:44:05.240 --> 01:44:07.000
for an evolved organism, right?

01:44:07.480 --> 01:44:09.720
This is also the psychology of free will.

01:44:09.880 --> 01:44:14.200
So the psychology of free will doesn't just become like worrying about neuroscientists

01:44:14.200 --> 01:44:15.080
poking on your brain.

01:44:15.160 --> 01:44:21.160
It also becomes the psychology of power and capability.

01:44:21.640 --> 01:44:26.200
And we're getting into this idea of sort of the representation of what's possible.

01:44:26.950 --> 01:44:32.950
And there's that's a whole new interesting area that's that's getting into what we started

01:44:32.950 --> 01:44:38.790
with, which is sort of like if you took a fox and a bird and you mixed up their

01:44:38.790 --> 01:44:43.590
planning systems, they would do very poorly because the bird can fly, but the fox can't,

01:44:43.670 --> 01:44:44.070
you know.

01:44:44.310 --> 01:44:48.950
So if like the the the bird's like, oh, there's a berry across the canyon, you know, I'm

01:44:48.950 --> 01:44:49.830
just gonna go over that way.

01:44:49.910 --> 01:44:52.070
And if it was in the fox, the fox would die, right?

01:44:52.230 --> 01:44:53.510
Because the fox can't fly.

01:44:53.720 --> 01:44:58.760
So, like the ability to represent what you can do and really like it when you can do new

01:44:58.760 --> 01:45:02.280
stuff you thought you couldn't do, that's awesome, right?

01:45:02.440 --> 01:45:02.600
Yeah.

01:45:02.760 --> 01:45:07.080
And so, like the representation of what you can do, and it's not trivial because it

01:45:07.080 --> 01:45:07.480
changes.

01:45:07.560 --> 01:45:10.040
Cause like when you're a baby, you can't do very much.

01:45:10.280 --> 01:45:12.280
Sometimes you get injured, sometimes you get sick.

01:45:12.440 --> 01:45:13.960
Day to day, it changes.

01:45:14.200 --> 01:45:16.680
Some things you can do because other people can help you.

01:45:16.840 --> 01:45:19.560
So it's not even intrinsic within your body envelope.

01:45:19.770 --> 01:45:22.490
you can be hindered, you can, you know, like you'd be tired.

01:45:22.650 --> 01:45:27.370
So, like, I think the free will thing is also a part of a much larger set of adaptations

01:45:27.370 --> 01:45:33.370
for sort of representing what's possible and constantly monitoring that, and also then

01:45:33.370 --> 01:45:39.210
assigning valuation to have I increased what I'm able to do or have I decreased it, you

01:45:39.210 --> 01:45:41.130
know, and that shouldn't be value neutral.

01:45:41.210 --> 01:45:45.930
Like I should love it when I can do something I thought I couldn't, or if I use you do

01:45:45.930 --> 01:45:47.930
something and I'm like, oh, maybe I can do that too.

01:45:48.010 --> 01:45:50.640
You know, like maybe I can catch 20 fish too.

01:45:50.880 --> 01:45:55.200
A lot of advertising literally is like, here's a thing you can do that you thought you

01:45:55.200 --> 01:45:55.680
couldn't do.

01:45:55.760 --> 01:45:57.600
You know, like we should be very attracted to this.

01:45:57.680 --> 01:46:02.240
Like that's a huge swath of advertising is either showing somebody doing something that you

01:46:02.240 --> 01:46:05.200
think you want to do, like, oh my gosh, that person did a backflip.

01:46:05.280 --> 01:46:06.400
Maybe I should drink a Red Bull.

01:46:06.640 --> 01:46:11.680
Or, you know, like the the like, have you ever I I for I gave a talk on this and I looked

01:46:11.680 --> 01:46:15.600
up old um it was like an ATT commercial where it was like, have you ever driven across

01:46:15.680 --> 01:46:16.960
country without looking at a map?

01:46:17.130 --> 01:46:17.530
you will.

01:46:17.690 --> 01:46:21.930
And it was like and it was just showing like a really like crappy, like eight bit, you

01:46:21.930 --> 01:46:23.610
know, um GPS, you know.

01:46:23.690 --> 01:46:26.890
And it was like sent a fax from the beach, you will, you know.

01:46:26.970 --> 01:46:32.570
And so humans just love we're we're just artifact using monkeys, you know, we're just like,

01:46:32.810 --> 01:46:37.290
give me a new tool, that's awesome, you know, and a a lot of advertising is that.

01:46:37.370 --> 01:46:39.440
And I think that's part of free will too.

01:46:39.920 --> 01:46:40.160
Hmm.

01:46:40.320 --> 01:46:40.560
Yeah.

01:46:40.640 --> 01:46:42.240
It's also meta advertising.

01:46:42.320 --> 01:46:46.800
So if I'm trying to advertise to you my ability to advertise your product, I'm gonna want

01:46:46.800 --> 01:46:52.160
to appeal to all the the priming research and saying I can subliminally make people buy

01:46:52.160 --> 01:46:54.640
your soda or whatever, and that's gonna make you hire me.

01:46:54.720 --> 01:46:54.800
Yeah.

01:46:54.960 --> 01:46:59.840
So I wanna inflate the power I have to manipulate people against their their will or or

01:46:59.840 --> 01:47:03.280
beyond their consciousness, because that makes me a more attractive advertiser for you.

01:47:03.440 --> 01:47:05.680
Like I have tremendous powers over the human mind.

01:47:05.840 --> 01:47:07.680
Hire me to advertise your soda.

01:47:07.950 --> 01:47:10.750
Um, the same thing applies, I think, to social scientists.

01:47:10.830 --> 01:47:10.910
Yeah.

01:47:11.070 --> 01:47:15.630
Uh it's uh it's attractive or neuroscientists, it's attractive to say that, yeah, if the

01:47:15.630 --> 01:47:19.470
more knowledge we gain in this area, the more we will have magical powers to just like

01:47:19.470 --> 01:47:21.870
manipulate people or perform Jedi mind tricks on them.

01:47:22.110 --> 01:47:22.270
Exactly.

01:47:22.510 --> 01:47:22.990
Fund my research.

01:47:23.230 --> 01:47:24.670
Yeah, no, we talked about that early on.

01:47:24.750 --> 01:47:30.190
Yeah, yeah, just the selective regime, uh, the institutional selection pressure selects for

01:47:30.190 --> 01:47:35.300
a version of psychology that says we are the special knowledge holders and sort of the

01:47:35.300 --> 01:47:39.700
guardians of the flame of the real engine of decision making.

01:47:39.940 --> 01:47:45.060
And corporation, if you want us to channel it towards your uh lucrative means, let us know

01:47:45.140 --> 01:47:46.020
and we'll help you out.

01:47:46.180 --> 01:47:46.420
Yeah.

01:47:46.820 --> 01:47:46.980
Yeah.

01:47:47.060 --> 01:47:50.820
Or political campaign are if you want us to help you know get votes for your candidate and

01:47:50.820 --> 01:47:53.300
hire us the psychologists who know how to do Jedi mind tricks.

01:47:54.740 --> 01:47:58.660
I think it explains why the unconscious priming stuff was so attractive and compelling to

01:47:58.660 --> 01:47:58.980
the field.

01:47:59.220 --> 01:48:01.060
Why we went down this dumb rabbit hole.

01:48:01.470 --> 01:48:05.550
You know, it's like it's really, it's a really enticing and exciting idea that you could

01:48:05.550 --> 01:48:09.870
get you could manipulate someone's judgments by like making them hold a warm cup of coffee.

01:48:10.030 --> 01:48:15.150
You know, no, if you if you if you basically snip out, if you if you consider like this

01:48:15.150 --> 01:48:20.990
issue of what's under people's control and not, and that issue and

01:48:20.990 --> 01:48:26.990
scientists dealing with that, almost all public discourse about psychology is about that.

01:48:27.150 --> 01:48:29.000
And it's because of this psychology.

01:48:29.080 --> 01:48:32.520
Like I would argue that's an expression of this, of this psychology.

01:48:32.680 --> 01:48:36.840
I mean, it's almost, it's almost like too narrow to call it about free will, right?

01:48:36.920 --> 01:48:41.320
It's sort of like where, where, where I started from, but it's this much bigger set of

01:48:41.320 --> 01:48:46.840
adaptations about control and freedom and autonomy and um

01:48:47.310 --> 01:48:52.670
and manipulation and coercion that there should be super strong selection pressures on.

01:48:52.910 --> 01:48:58.750
And it's a good example of like there's still really low-hanging fruit in adaptationism or

01:48:58.750 --> 01:48:59.950
evolutionary psychology.

01:49:00.110 --> 01:49:03.950
Like, not only is there a lot of stuff to study that isn't just mating, I mean, of course,

01:49:04.030 --> 01:49:07.950
even within mating, as we talk about, like it's overemphasizing sex differences, is like

01:49:08.110 --> 01:49:13.630
the the evolved psychology of like what's possible, like how do I represent what I can do?

01:49:14.940 --> 01:49:16.380
I don't think there's any work on that.

01:49:16.460 --> 01:49:20.700
You know, like the evolved psychology of have I been manipulated or how autonomous am I?

01:49:20.860 --> 01:49:21.900
How does that represent it?

01:49:21.980 --> 01:49:23.180
Like, there's not really much work on that.

01:49:23.260 --> 01:49:25.180
I mean, Chris von Ruden alluded to that.

01:49:25.340 --> 01:49:28.460
Um, you know, that that's an important, like, the sense of autonomy.

01:49:28.540 --> 01:49:34.220
And, you know, people who are in egalitarian societies really value, you know, not

01:49:34.220 --> 01:49:35.980
feeling like they're indebted to people.

01:49:36.140 --> 01:49:37.580
But that's about as far as we've gotten.

01:49:37.740 --> 01:49:41.770
Like, there's not task analyses of these things, there's not, you know, experimental work

01:49:41.850 --> 01:49:42.730
as far as I know.

01:49:42.890 --> 01:49:44.810
So there's just a ton to do.

01:49:44.970 --> 01:49:47.290
But that's free will in two hours.

01:49:47.690 --> 01:49:48.010
Yeah.

01:49:48.170 --> 01:49:49.770
I think I mean we we covered a lot.

01:49:49.850 --> 01:49:51.290
I mean, is there anything we didn't cover?

01:49:52.570 --> 01:49:58.490
Yeah, no, I feel like um, I mean, I I mean, I think there's a lot to sort of, I

01:49:58.490 --> 01:50:02.570
mean, there's so much philosophy about this, and you could kind of go through and sort of

01:50:02.570 --> 01:50:06.970
like, you know, we talked about like reasons responsiveness is like one definition.

01:50:07.130 --> 01:50:12.680
You can kind of go through what I like about this project is nobody

01:50:12.680 --> 01:50:16.920
ends up getting looking super stupid or super smart.

01:50:17.320 --> 01:50:22.040
It's sort of like every position in the free will debate, even like Sam Harris, who frankly

01:50:22.120 --> 01:50:26.920
I'm like annoyed with because he's just so like confident about free will is incoherent.

01:50:27.000 --> 01:50:28.680
Like there's a sense in which he's right, right.

01:50:28.760 --> 01:50:33.830
But like even though, like, you know, I but I think he's like kind of um too strong about

01:50:33.830 --> 01:50:34.070
it.

01:50:34.150 --> 01:50:39.270
Um, but uh but there's a sense in which he's right, and even even incompatibilists or

01:50:39.270 --> 01:50:44.310
compatibilists, sorry, would often still be like evoking like or appealing to like a

01:50:44.310 --> 01:50:48.870
self-like kind of going back up to the intentional level when talking about free will, and

01:50:48.870 --> 01:50:53.720
even like the Dennett and Caruso thing, like as much as Dennett kind of originated like the

01:50:53.720 --> 01:50:58.120
levels of analysis idea, you know, he had the design stance, the intentional stance, the

01:50:58.200 --> 01:50:59.880
the physical stance.

01:51:00.040 --> 01:51:04.200
The Caruso and Dennett book, to just wrap that up, like really what that whole book is

01:51:04.200 --> 01:51:06.680
arguing is the efficacy of different kinds of intervention.

01:51:06.760 --> 01:51:09.400
Like Caruso is like, we shouldn't do an intentional intervention.

01:51:09.480 --> 01:51:12.360
We should just change circumstances or the system.

01:51:12.520 --> 01:51:17.080
Like, not we shouldn't, we shouldn't intervene upon the means-ends psychology of the

01:51:17.080 --> 01:51:17.320
person.

01:51:17.480 --> 01:51:18.910
That's like archaic, right?

01:51:19.070 --> 01:51:19.150
Yeah.

01:51:19.310 --> 01:51:20.750
And Dennett is saying we should.

01:51:20.910 --> 01:51:21.710
That's the whole book.

01:51:21.790 --> 01:51:22.750
You don't even need to read the book.

01:51:23.070 --> 01:51:24.910
Like that's that's actually what the whole debate is about.

01:51:25.150 --> 01:51:28.430
But but I think you can see that once you have this framework, right?

01:51:28.590 --> 01:51:31.070
Um, but that's what they were debating.

01:51:31.230 --> 01:51:34.670
Um uh so like yeah, that that's another thing.

01:51:34.750 --> 01:51:40.750
Like my the the thing I'm saying now to sum up is you can go back through the debate armed

01:51:40.750 --> 01:51:46.430
with this adaptationist approach, and you can basically see the the value

01:51:46.540 --> 01:51:52.540
and the perspective that is correct within a delineated scope, that in every area

01:51:52.540 --> 01:51:57.740
of the argument, you can see in what sense the libertarians are correct, which is that if

01:51:57.740 --> 01:51:59.420
you're deterministic, you're not free.

01:51:59.500 --> 01:52:00.940
There's a sense in which that's true.

01:52:01.100 --> 01:52:05.580
Like I can we can understand now why any human would think that and say that.

01:52:05.740 --> 01:52:08.940
We can also understand that a sense in which it's not true, right?

01:52:09.260 --> 01:52:09.900
Um, yeah.

01:52:10.170 --> 01:52:15.130
So I like that about this project that, like a lot of adaptationism, it doesn't wade into

01:52:15.130 --> 01:52:20.010
the muck and mire of the debate, but it takes a step back and it's like, you're all kind of

01:52:20.010 --> 01:52:21.450
right, you're all kind of wrong.

01:52:21.610 --> 01:52:26.330
Let's think about this just from a different perspective, and we can understand the value

01:52:26.330 --> 01:52:29.210
and the reason why everybody is saying what they're saying.

01:52:29.370 --> 01:52:31.290
And it all fits into a bigger picture.

01:52:31.450 --> 01:52:37.300
And like the thing I really like is that all of the arguments, there's a theory now of why

01:52:37.300 --> 01:52:39.300
those arguments are being put forward.

01:52:39.540 --> 01:52:44.500
Why are philosophers talking about the possibility of neuroscientists manipulating people?

01:52:44.660 --> 01:52:47.300
There's no theory for why they're doing that.

01:52:47.460 --> 01:52:48.900
They just do it in their books.

01:52:49.140 --> 01:52:50.420
This is a theory of that.

01:52:50.580 --> 01:52:52.580
Why are we talking about quantum serve?

01:52:52.660 --> 01:52:53.620
There's no theory of that.

01:52:53.770 --> 01:52:57.290
There's even theorizing about why it doesn't work, and it's a mystery.

01:52:57.450 --> 01:52:58.890
Well, this is a theory of that.

01:52:59.050 --> 01:53:04.650
So I like that this provides a meta theory explaining and contextualizing all the arguments

01:53:04.650 --> 01:53:06.570
into a coherent whole.

01:53:08.090 --> 01:53:13.930
It almost suggests to me that all the philosophical debate about whether or not we

01:53:13.930 --> 01:53:18.890
have free will is kind of pointless and futile, and we should stop arguing about it.

01:53:19.130 --> 01:53:21.290
Would you go so far as to make that claim?

01:53:21.930 --> 01:53:25.540
Um yes and no.

01:53:25.780 --> 01:53:31.060
No, in the following sense, I don't think me, the lazy adaptationist, could have arrived at

01:53:31.060 --> 01:53:33.060
this without all that work people doing.

01:53:33.220 --> 01:53:38.740
Like people worked really hard to interrogate their own intuitions and make

01:53:38.740 --> 01:53:40.180
conceptual distinctions.

01:53:40.340 --> 01:53:45.140
That then I can sort of in an armchair way say, I mean, uh it was hard work on my part too,

01:53:45.220 --> 01:53:48.900
but like to just sort of be like, What's the adaptationism of all of this argument?

01:53:49.350 --> 01:53:54.790
without all that hard work, like really hard work and very smart people, you couldn't do

01:53:54.790 --> 01:53:55.030
that.

01:53:55.190 --> 01:53:57.350
So in that sense, I don't think it was inevitable.

01:53:57.430 --> 01:53:59.430
Or like I don't think it was a waste of time at all.

01:53:59.590 --> 01:54:00.390
Um right.

01:54:00.630 --> 01:54:02.230
But do you think it's a waste of time moving forward?

01:54:02.710 --> 01:54:03.830
We continue to debate the question.

01:54:04.070 --> 01:54:04.150
Yeah.

01:54:04.390 --> 01:54:04.950
Yeah, exactly.

01:54:05.030 --> 01:54:05.590
Yeah, exactly.

01:54:05.670 --> 01:54:07.190
I mean, I think this changes.

01:54:07.430 --> 01:54:09.990
I do think like this might be wrong.

01:54:10.230 --> 01:54:11.910
I don't think we have a clear idea.

01:54:11.990 --> 01:54:15.350
Like we even you and I were hemming and hawing about like, is it a goal system?

01:54:15.430 --> 01:54:16.150
Is it a means-end?

01:54:16.390 --> 01:54:16.950
Like, I don't know.

01:54:17.110 --> 01:54:21.240
Maybe I don't like that's you know, I've only gotten so far in this, and other people

01:54:21.240 --> 01:54:24.440
should step in and we'll be publishing papers presenting these ideas.

01:54:24.600 --> 01:54:27.400
But like, so this is not the last word, this is the beginning.

01:54:27.560 --> 01:54:33.400
But I do think this is an example of adaptationism fundamentally changing the trajectory of

01:54:33.400 --> 01:54:34.440
a research program.

01:54:34.600 --> 01:54:40.520
And I do think the study of free will should be really different than it has been since

01:54:40.520 --> 01:54:42.360
Epicureus till now.

01:54:43.560 --> 01:54:44.120
Yeah.

01:54:44.350 --> 01:54:50.110
I mean, would you go so far as to say that um adaptationism should play this kind of role

01:54:50.110 --> 01:54:54.830
in all philosophical debates, that we should ultimately try to understand uh what

01:54:54.830 --> 01:54:58.350
adaptations and byproducts are leading to the intuitions that we have in these

01:54:58.350 --> 01:54:59.150
philosophical debates.

01:54:59.230 --> 01:55:04.270
And once we understand that, in some important way the debate will uh uh dissolve or

01:55:04.270 --> 01:55:04.750
resolve.

01:55:05.150 --> 01:55:09.760
Yeah, or be transformed into a different uh uh understanding.

01:55:09.920 --> 01:55:10.320
That's right.

01:55:10.480 --> 01:55:13.520
I it's a different way to think about what philosophy has been doing.

01:55:13.600 --> 01:55:19.600
And that I think a lot of philosophers would represent or recognize or

01:55:19.600 --> 01:55:23.520
even embrace, even if they were not coming from an annotationist perspective perspective,

01:55:23.600 --> 01:55:29.120
which is again understanding that what I'm doing as a philosopher is a readout of this

01:55:29.120 --> 01:55:30.560
evolved being.

01:55:30.880 --> 01:55:36.320
And all I can do is sort of document as best I can one

01:55:36.320 --> 01:55:42.070
coherent way or perspective from this perspective, and then others can

01:55:42.070 --> 01:55:46.550
sort of stitch those all together into a more scientific account, like we're doing here for

01:55:46.550 --> 01:55:47.270
free will.

01:55:47.510 --> 01:55:53.270
So, um, so yeah, no, I think I think this should always be an enterprise, and I do think

01:55:53.270 --> 01:55:58.790
it will uh adaptationism will I think completely transform the way we think about

01:55:58.790 --> 01:56:04.760
philosophy, and it will make um what philosophy is, I don't think

01:56:04.760 --> 01:56:07.480
it'll stop doing it'll it won't stop philosophy at all.

01:56:07.640 --> 01:56:13.080
I think it'll actually invigorate it in the sense of it contextualizes what that enterprise

01:56:13.080 --> 01:56:13.400
is.

01:56:13.880 --> 01:56:15.720
Um so yeah.

01:56:16.200 --> 01:56:22.200
Yeah, it's almost like um philosophy is really just psychology, that but it's but it thinks

01:56:22.200 --> 01:56:23.000
it's physics.

01:56:23.960 --> 01:56:26.680
Yeah, like it thinks it's like it's delving into the nature of reality.

01:56:26.760 --> 01:56:29.490
No, it's just delving into your own evolved intuitions as an ape, right?

01:56:29.570 --> 01:56:32.610
And just mapping out all the different intuitive responses you have to different fanciful

01:56:32.610 --> 01:56:33.010
scenarios.

01:56:33.090 --> 01:56:35.810
You're not actually getting into reality, you're just getting into the way the human mind

01:56:35.810 --> 01:56:35.890
works.

01:56:36.050 --> 01:56:39.250
And but I And once we realize that, like it will help us understand how reality works

01:56:39.330 --> 01:56:42.770
because then we can f you know figure out like which of our intuitions we should actually

01:56:42.770 --> 01:56:46.530
trust and which which of them actually make sense and cohere with our best picture of

01:56:46.530 --> 01:56:48.450
empirical reality and so forth.

01:56:48.610 --> 01:56:52.120
So I think you're right that it it should uh invigorate philosophy.

01:56:52.360 --> 01:56:56.280
Yeah, no, and I think that is that point I think was already made by philosophers even

01:56:56.280 --> 01:56:57.320
before Darwin, right?

01:56:57.560 --> 01:57:03.560
Like so, I think I think this is just sort of validating or making concrete what d adding

01:57:03.560 --> 01:57:08.520
Darwinianism or adaptationism specifically into this

01:57:08.520 --> 01:57:09.640
enterprise.

01:57:09.880 --> 01:57:11.000
And yeah, I don't know.

01:57:11.080 --> 01:57:16.600
I mean, like the the intersection of adaptationism and like philosophy, uh it's not

01:57:16.600 --> 01:57:18.840
something that I thought I would do.

01:57:19.000 --> 01:57:24.250
Um, but I guess I'm doing it, but like I it it hasn't I mean we're about to write these

01:57:24.250 --> 01:57:27.610
papers, we're submitting these papers, we've been trying to publish these papers.

01:57:27.850 --> 01:57:32.010
Um it should happen and apparently I'm one of the people doing it.

01:57:32.170 --> 01:57:37.850
You know, Michael and I, um and me and other people hopefully but um but yeah no I mean

01:57:37.930 --> 01:57:42.570
it's it's a it's a new exciting connection between evolution and

01:57:44.460 --> 01:57:45.820
other ways of thinking.

01:57:45.900 --> 01:57:46.220
Yeah.

01:57:46.620 --> 01:57:47.580
Yeah, no, I agree.

01:57:47.660 --> 01:57:49.180
I think it's incredibly valuable.

01:57:49.260 --> 01:57:50.860
Um, it has inspired me personally.

01:57:50.940 --> 01:57:55.260
Like um your your work on this has inspired me to do the same thing with the debate over

01:57:55.260 --> 01:57:55.660
consciousness.

01:57:55.900 --> 01:57:56.220
Oh, awesome.

01:57:56.460 --> 01:58:02.300
I think the debate about consciousness can be um uh uh transformed uh in a similar way by

01:58:02.300 --> 01:58:06.780
taking an adapt adaptationist analysis to you know what the underlying conceptual machinery

01:58:06.780 --> 01:58:10.250
is, what is causing us to be so confused about this debate.

01:58:10.330 --> 01:58:14.010
And as soon as we understand that, the debate about consciousness and how our consciousness

01:58:14.090 --> 01:58:17.850
and what animals are conscious, that it will will be uh utterly transformed once we

01:58:17.850 --> 01:58:21.930
understand the intuitions that are giving rise to this and what it what it means to an

01:58:21.930 --> 01:58:24.810
evolved organism for something to be conscious versus not.

01:58:24.890 --> 01:58:28.650
Um and so I'm I'm maybe we'll do a future episode on consciousness, but um Yeah, I was

01:58:28.650 --> 01:58:30.810
gonna say we have two minutes, you're sure you can do it two minutes.

01:58:31.130 --> 01:58:31.690
Yeah.

01:58:33.280 --> 01:58:34.320
We'll save it for another episode.

01:58:35.440 --> 01:58:37.600
That'll be your teaser for future future episodes.

01:58:38.000 --> 01:58:38.160
Exactly.

01:58:38.240 --> 01:58:38.640
That sounds great.

01:58:38.720 --> 01:58:39.680
But David, this was great.

01:58:48.880 --> 01:58:54.640
I think what it is, there in in behaviorism, there was this thing of when when pigeons or

01:58:54.640 --> 01:58:59.650
rats would get conditioned to um many, many, many, many, many lever presses before they

01:58:59.650 --> 01:59:00.770
would get a reward.

01:59:01.010 --> 01:59:05.250
And then they got a reward, they would sort of be reluctant to push the start pushing the

01:59:05.250 --> 01:59:06.930
lever because they knew it was a lot of work.

01:59:07.090 --> 01:59:10.930
And I think that's me with free will, because it's sort of like it's a long exposition.

01:59:11.010 --> 01:59:15.730
Like we spent two hours and like it's not, you know, like alliance tracking.

01:59:15.810 --> 01:59:18.530
It's like, yeah, cooperation competition, track cues, everything.

01:59:18.770 --> 01:59:21.250
I could do, I could do a I could do an elevator pitch.

01:59:21.490 --> 01:59:27.340
And and and maybe, you know, I will say, like, to the to an adaptationist credit, like I

01:59:27.340 --> 01:59:31.660
think this is really changes the way I think about this and I think it will change the

01:59:31.660 --> 01:59:32.380
science of it.

01:59:32.620 --> 01:59:36.460
And it's cool you can do it in two hours, but it's still like a couple it's still it's not

01:59:36.540 --> 01:59:37.660
it's not a one minute thing.

01:59:37.740 --> 01:59:38.060
Yeah.

01:59:38.140 --> 01:59:38.380
Yeah.

01:59:38.620 --> 01:59:38.940
Yeah.

01:59:39.100 --> 01:59:44.300
I often f experience that frustration a lot myself when people ask me about like my work or

01:59:44.300 --> 01:59:46.860
like what I'm writing about, what my paper's about, or what my theory of humor is.

01:59:46.940 --> 01:59:48.810
I'm like, gosh, do you have two hours?

01:59:49.210 --> 01:59:52.250
And the one minute version, I'm like embarrassed because I'm like, yeah, I'm doing free

01:59:52.250 --> 01:59:52.410
will.

01:59:52.490 --> 01:59:53.530
And it's like, oh God.

01:59:53.610 --> 01:59:58.330
Cause like, you know, then there's just a lot of the shoddy, or like, you know, it's just

01:59:58.330 --> 01:59:59.050
so derivative.

01:59:59.130 --> 02:00:04.730
It's the easiest thing to it's like free will is the canonical, like

02:00:05.210 --> 02:00:09.850
self-important, but sort of paper thin analysis, right?

02:00:10.170 --> 02:00:10.810
Yeah.

02:00:11.160 --> 02:00:12.120
Anyway, yeah.

02:00:12.200 --> 02:00:13.000
But thank you, David.

02:00:13.080 --> 02:00:18.120
This was it was nice to um get it off my chest and uh and think through this aloud.

02:00:18.200 --> 02:00:23.960
And I really like the idea um of sort of the mismatch, especially being like sort of where

02:00:24.120 --> 02:00:26.760
the you and the mechanisms and the variability is.

02:00:26.920 --> 02:00:31.320
That's that's a really nice uh new idea um as a result of this conversation.

02:00:31.400 --> 02:00:32.440
So so thank you.

02:00:33.230 --> 02:00:34.030
No, you're welcome.

02:00:34.110 --> 02:00:39.150
Thank thank you for um enlightening me on a on a topic that um I I didn't know much about.

02:00:39.310 --> 02:00:44.750
I mean I was interested philosophically in the debate, uh uh um and uh you helped um

02:00:45.630 --> 02:00:49.630
inform the philosophical debate in a in a really profound way.

02:00:49.790 --> 02:00:53.150
Um and I j I just find this the topic uh intrinsically interesting.

02:00:53.420 --> 02:00:54.860
Um so yeah, I I had a great time.

02:00:55.180 --> 02:00:55.660
Yeah, thanks.

02:00:55.740 --> 02:00:58.540
And I I have no idea what the answer is, whether you have it or not.

02:00:58.620 --> 02:00:59.740
It's it depends.

02:01:00.460 --> 02:01:01.980
It's the Clark Ferrett answer.

02:01:02.140 --> 02:01:02.460
It depends.

02:01:02.860 --> 02:01:03.900
The correct answer is who cares.

02:01:04.780 --> 02:01:05.340
No, that's right.

02:01:05.420 --> 02:01:05.740
Exactly.

02:01:05.820 --> 02:01:07.020
Yeah, that's that's that's right.

02:01:07.100 --> 02:01:08.780
Yeah, that's and that's a good that's a good answer.

02:01:09.100 --> 02:01:11.100
Or there's there's no right answer is is the is the right answer.

02:01:11.260 --> 02:01:13.100
Or there's a couple answers and yeah.

02:01:13.500 --> 02:01:16.140
Yeah, depending on the question situation you're in, or yeah.

02:01:16.460 --> 02:01:16.700
Exactly.

02:01:17.100 --> 02:01:17.260
Okay.

02:01:17.420 --> 02:01:17.580
All right.

02:01:17.660 --> 02:01:19.180
Well good David, thank you so much.

02:01:19.510 --> 02:01:19.830
Yep.

02:01:19.990 --> 02:01:20.390
Thanks, man.

02:01:20.790 --> 02:01:20.950
Okay.

02:01:21.430 --> 02:01:22.070
Bye.

02:01:24.710 --> 02:01:30.630
Well, David, I am uh pretty tired from talking about free will

02:01:30.710 --> 02:01:32.950
because I was the guest this this episode.

02:01:33.270 --> 02:01:34.070
That's true.

02:01:34.230 --> 02:01:40.230
Um, and you as the listener, um if you're still listening, you made the free

02:01:40.230 --> 02:01:41.670
choice to continue listening.

02:01:41.830 --> 02:01:43.350
We didn't hold a gun to your head.

02:01:43.510 --> 02:01:47.500
Something about this must have uh drawn you to the topic.

02:01:47.820 --> 02:01:53.180
So uh if you made the free choice to continue listening, I would suggest uh intervening

02:01:53.180 --> 02:01:58.620
intentionally on your psychology and getting you to make the free choice to uh recommend

02:01:58.620 --> 02:02:04.380
us, talk about us on social media, visit us on Patreon, uh say a kind word, uh

02:02:04.540 --> 02:02:08.410
or two email us with ideas for topics or questions.

02:02:08.650 --> 02:02:10.650
Anything else people can do, Dave, or did I cover it all?

02:02:11.050 --> 02:02:16.330
Um to just uh refer to some previous bits, they could also send you either a fanny pack or

02:02:16.330 --> 02:02:17.610
either of us French fries.

02:02:18.170 --> 02:02:18.810
That's right.

02:02:18.970 --> 02:02:22.090
Uh ideally uh french fries inside the fanny pack.

02:02:22.410 --> 02:02:24.810
It's a pretty good vessel uh for for french fries.

02:02:25.050 --> 02:02:27.370
I like to eat my french fries out of my fanny pack.

02:02:27.770 --> 02:02:32.570
It's a great image to spend the rest of your week with before until the next episode.

02:02:34.380 --> 02:02:34.780
All right.

02:02:35.420 --> 02:02:35.660
Great.

02:02:35.740 --> 02:02:36.860
Uh it's fun to laugh.

02:02:36.940 --> 02:02:37.900
It feels good to laugh.

02:02:37.980 --> 02:02:38.140
Okay.

02:02:38.220 --> 02:02:39.500
Thank you everybody for listening.

02:02:39.580 --> 02:02:41.660
Um and have a nice week.

02:02:41.980 --> 02:02:42.620
Yep.