Free Will

by Sam Harris

October 5, 2020 — October 8, 2020

Los Angeles, CA

This is another short book by Sam Harris, except he’s asking more questions and providing his own arguments for those questions. The beginning is gruesome, it starts with a very detailed disgusting crime story, but that’s a perfect way to start the subject of free will; because most of the time free will is debated when it comes to a person committing a crime, with a statement coming out that it was out of control. This usually leads to arguments and controversy but discussing the ethics in dealing with these situations is for another time. Rather, what stood out to me the most is that I realized how anyone thinks they’re in control of their lives, isn’t.

The illusion of free will is itself an illusion. Our mind works randomly, steering us towards decisions that can be made on the spot that we did not plan or intend on, while we can make an effort to resist some aspects or actions, but we cannot determine what actually happens (else the future would be set). Think about pain or thoughts that arise in your head, you do not create pain or generate these thoughts (not ideas) in your head, they simply just appeared. You did not choose for them to appear, they simply did. This is why you don’t have free will because you did not choose to think or feel in the ways you experience them.

Choices, efforts, intentions, and reasoning influence our behavior, they’re all most of a chain of causes that precede conscious awareness and we have no ultimate control over them. You did not choose to choose what you choose. You did not build your mind, in moments where you seem to be building it (like changing or improving yourself, acquiring knowledge, or perfecting a skill), the tools are your disposal are those that you inherited from moments past.