Joe Rogan - Does Free Will Exist?

Why do you think the way you think and why are you gonna say the next thing you're gonna say? And is it how much of it is biological? How much of it is your life experience? How much of it is it information that's dancing in your head? How much of it is you interacting with me the last thing that I've said to you? Yeah, so I had I was on the same Harris's podcast We had a long conversation about this because he is very anti free will and I think that it's I disagree with him But I don't care. I think it's kind of boring to be honest. Do you think it's boring? I think it's boring because here's why I think it's boring because there's two questions One question is how does the world work? The other question is what words should be attached to how the world works and the first one is interesting Yeah, I'm one is kind of boring. I see what you're saying I said I agree on how the world works, right? But I am what philosophers call a compatibilist when it comes to free will which which is I don't think that I have some ways of thinking my way into Overcoming the laws of physics right like I'm made of atoms made of Particles that obey the laws of physics if I talk about myself As a large collection of atoms and particles obeying the laws of physics then clearly there's no free will There's just the solution to the equations and sometimes the wave function branches and there's now two of me But that's whatever it is. There's no spark of consciousness that lets me overcome what the equation say is gonna happen But guess what that's not a fruitful way to go through your life in terms of talking about human beings when you Meet somebody for the first time and you say like, you know, what do you do? Who are you? They don't give you a list of their atoms and say what every atom is doing and say let you let go ahead and solve Schrodinger's Equation to figure out what's gonna happen next right you tell a story you say like you're a person You know you grew up in a certain place. You have a certain job stuff like that you dramatically Condense the information about who you are into a few salient points and among those salient points are I am a person who thinks and makes decisions Every person in the world no matter how anti-free will they are talks about people as if they make decisions And the reason they do is because that's how people are that's the best way to talk about people It's not like just a compromise like if you don't know The atoms and molecules in somebody's body and you're not infinitely computationally powerful so you can predict the future Then it's correct to talk about people as agents who make decisions. We call that free will I call that free will most philosophers Call it free will if you don't want to call it free will be my guest. I don't really know it doesn't really matter I agree with what you're saying. I think that makes a lot of sense and I think that really simplifies a very complex issue I When I looked at it, and I have had this conversation with Sam as well I totally see his point and I think he makes a hundred percent sense There's no arguing with it. I really think it's it's very rational that approach, but I also think that it's very much like What we're talking about earlier that it's not necessarily just a one or zero that it's a combination of these things free will There has to there is some mechanism that chooses to do one thing versus another there is some Computation there's calculation. There's debate. There's discussion. There's a thing inside of you Whatever it is whatever that process is that's causing you to I mean how many times have people stayed up all night Going over and over and over a certain idea trying to find a rational conclusion. Oh, yeah all the time What is that right? What is that is that this is will is that is yeah? This is where the it actually becomes interesting to talk about the vocabulary we use right because it becomes very very hard To know where to attach the word I or you when you're talking about this like you we tend to say I made a decision Okay, that's fine, right? I decided to have this can of pure caffeine that you put in front of me and drink it I could have decided otherwise so that that's the question like does it make sense to say I could have decided otherwise and If you define yourself as the following list of atoms and particles in a certain configuration Then no then the laws of physics said that that was gonna happen, but I don't know what all that is That's not a useful way of talking So there's a whole nother way of talking that says I'm a person and I kind of like coffee But I already had a cup this morning, and you know there's a chance There's a probability like you say that I would drink this and a probability that I would not and those are completely compatible Although they're different the only way you get into trouble is if you mix up Those two different ways of talking if you say like I chose to have the coffee because my atoms were in a following configuration Or something like that right that's like talking about us as humans and then switching vocabulary He's talking about us as atoms, and that's where you get in trouble Yeah, it's a weird reductionist take on what it means to be a person that thinks yeah Yeah, I think you know if if you say like there's no free will in your atoms Then I'm with you. I'm on board, but no one in the world goes through life that way right for good reason And they never will it's not gonna happen. Yeah well He and you could break that all the way down to creativity right like what when someone sits down and write something Like where's all that coming from yeah? So I think again there's a term in ism as well There is an interesting question about you know how much we will ultimately be able to unpack and understand about that right right now the brain is kind of just a mystery box to us and There's so much. We don't know about how people make decisions how they remember things how they Come up with new ideas So so where it matters is how we treat people right like the obvious case is? responsibility blame like if if you think that a person makes choices Then you can assign responsibility to them for making the choices they made yes That's what we do in the world if someone chooses to rob a bank We choose to put them in jail right yes And someone someone could come along and say no one ever does this but someone could come along and say well They're just a bunch of atoms obeying laws of physics. How can you blame them right? It would be dopey That doesn't make any sense right, but what if? You were minority report right what if you could like put someone in an MRI in a brain scanner and say yeah? You know what tomorrow. They're gonna rob a bank Do you arrest them is that is that enough right the fact that their brain was hooked up to? Violate the law in the future is that enough to assign personal responsibility to them for that or do you or do you do the Opposite and say well it's gonna happen no matter what we can't really blame them well And also if you do catch this thought process is before the actual action takes place Is it impossible to correct that thought process with education? Or some sort of awareness training or something where you could shift the consciousness and all abruptly? sort of Disassemble determinism at its most problematic point yeah, so there's there's a whole kind of interesting Set of ideas that are very popular among philosophers right now, which is the question of moral luck So if you're driving down the street, and you're buzzed you're drunk, right? Maybe you get home fine. Maybe someone jumps in front of your car, and you run them over because you don't have the Agility or the reflexes because you're drunk right so you're the same person you went home You're drunk, and you're driving home right, but depending on the outside world you ran someone over and killed them where you didn't But in the world we blame the person who ran somebody over we punish them much more severely than the person who got home Safely right that's not their responsibility. They sort of got unlucky there in the world So should we blame people who you know had the chance of doing it? No one knows the answer to these questions these are these are tricky things like we're not very good We human beings at the thinking about these probabilistic counterfactual questions Yeah, that's a good one that is yeah hmm Yeah, what who are you then? Yeah, are you lucky? Oh? Yeah, right? I mean so much of what happens to us in life we don't get responsibility for sure I mean we're interfacing with randomness every time we step out the door. That's right, but Can you treat people that way consistently it's hard right? It's tricky. I'm not giving the answer cuz I don't know I mean, I think that right yeah, this is this is tricky stuff We're certainly not like if you lived in a world where you thought that what happened in the world was preordained That there was all the great playing out as a master plan or at the very least that there was some sort of Karmic influence that made good things happen to good people bad things happen to bad people then the world makes more sense right Yeah, I don't believe any of that stuff But at least then the world seems if if there's something random you can attach a reason why it happened There seems to be something to karma in that when you do good things you make people feel better They feel about you better And then they interface with you in a more positive way and that sort of like has this Outgoing effect that's not karma. That's just a smart thing to do yeah I think no I think that you're right that we and maybe this is just sort of a Western post-enlightenment way of thinking we tend to sort of think about immediate consequences for our actions Yeah for better for worse and in the real world sort of generally trying to be good can often pay back in good ways That's but the comp the woo-woo thing is that we're putting out this good energy and the good energy is coming back to us And it's a fun way to look at things. Yeah, although there's no evidence it points to it Yeah, exactly like if I'm in a yoga class and my yoga instructor is talking about different energy flowing through different chakras or whatever Like it doesn't mean like as long as it makes me you know do that There's a little there's a little but I'm not gonna speak up let's put it that way right of course You're not gonna stop this class you're teaching bullshit I would rather have that then you know you know if people want to come up with excuse to be a good person That's okay. It's funny that yoga class is always the base It's always where people go to talk about like where woo comes from yeah, yeah It's there because I've had you know you I mean if you've done yoga You know like there's a whole spectrum right like there's teachers who are basically just physical therapists And then there are people who are complete crazy hippies. Oh, yeah, you know you have to Think the right thoughts you know yeah, it's but people are always searching for some understanding of really complex issues and Behavior is a very complex issue sure behavior And how you feel like like whether you feel good Whether you feel spiritually enriched whether you feel positive about humanity like all these things are like which always trying to manipulate these states whether it's through meditation Mindfulness training trying to figure out a way to positively interface You know it's true And it goes back to where he started talking about YouTube comments because like I said I do react badly to bed to stupid YouTube. Well. You're a human being well I'm a human being but I think and I think that the internet does Magnify some of our bad Tendencies right and I think that you know among these and so I totally include myself as a bad actor here in the sense That it's just so easy to be sarcastic and put people down and yes You know disagree in sort of dismissive ways, and I don't think that's good I would like to live in a world where people including myself Even when we disagree with people even when we disagree with people who are stupid And we're not trying to engage them or improve their lives Just you know get on with our own lives rather than trying to have a snarky comeback like I get that There's a purpose to snark and sarcasm and whatever But it weighs you down right like yeah This is why people complain about Twitter and social media like it's so much Psychic energy just gets sapped by reading all these complaints on either side There's no you know political bias right like whatever your feelings are someone else is making you feel down on the internet somewhere