“No free will” implies that every decision in the realm of human consciousness is theoretically 100% predictable by an outside observing super-intelligence- like, say, “omniscient machine AI”, perhaps in conjunction with a human interpreter- given sufficient information on an individual actor. Given enough Big Data.

I don’t agree with that proposition. (Except, perhaps, as theological speculation. But that isn’t the nature of the claim, is it?)

If researchers into human behavior were to simply draw back a ways, and assert that “by the time [n] set of factors is accounted for, only a limited amount of latitude remains at the individual level to decide on an action, or course of action”, I could agree with that. I mean, sure, it’s the merest chance that anything exists at all. Hey, I’ve read Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything.

But the statement “there’s no such thing as free will” is an absolute, and in my opinion that’s an extravagant claim. Furthermore, I’m puzzled why anyone would insist on it as if it were a Postulate. It smacks of simple-minded predestinarianism to me. (I suppose one might refer to the assertion that “all behavior by all humans is entirely predictable” as the Corollary.)

It seems to me that a) adherents to that claim are cherry-picking a relative handful of hypothetical examples to suit their preferred conclusion, when the reality is that the realm of human decisions is too vast for anyone to cover anything like a full array of conjectural possibilities, either as actor or observer; b) those hypothetical considerations about the process of decision-making by human consciousnesses with individual self-awareness tend to stop well short of allowing any latitude- however miniscule (and the term “miniscule” in the sense I’m employing is a relative measure, not a constant)- for a final volitional act (which, I would conjecture, always involves a binary, 0/1 choice- although involuntary reactions may kick in after that choice is made); and c) there’s no allowance granted for the possibility of the random, the arbitrary, the whimsical…the Unpredictable.

In my readings, the current state of behavioral research- including the fields of “behavioral genetics” and “evolutionary biology”- is nowhere as sophisticated as their students and researchers imply. In particular, I note massive over-reliance on treating correlation as conclusively probative (rather than merely provocatively probable, or simply possibly indicative), while confusing correlation with causation. A situation often weighted or biased by clumsiness of verbal facility and/or a lack of imagination on the part of the researchers or readers about possible alternative explanations or confounding factors, in relation to the interpretation and conclusion portion of such studies. I respect metrical data, and find it immensely valuable for many purposes. In fact, my position on Big Data is that we currently don’t have nearly enough of it; if statistics were compiled with more precision and attention to multi-factoral nuance, researchers wouldn’t arrive at the premature conclusions that so often result from incomplete data sets. My most critical reservations about behavioral research regard the pitfalls of slipshod interpretation and premature conclusion, and its pretensions in that regard.

The wisest person in the room is not necessarily the one that comes up with a plausible Answer the fastest. Also, Answers depend on the Questions being asked. Who wants to know, and why? What is the purpose? What is the role played by Values?

All this is fine, but not especially interesting to a non-pedant (hello, engineer here). To me saying there is *no* free will is only relevant if you can actually determine exactly what happens next.

Otherwise while it’s great mental masturbation to think about the (admittedly much smaller than people realize) bounds of our decision space, in the end you’re still left with this ultra complex system we navigate probabilistically. I haven’t yet found a convincing reason here not to keep calling that ‘free will’ for all useful purposes. Okay, maybe apart from wanting to have an argument about it on the internet

As to the question of the existence of “free will”, can you give an example of evidence you would accept as proof that it does exist? It seems to me, that your argument boils down to the assertion that some notional thing called “the will” or “I” cannot make a decision, only a physical system can, and therefore, physical systems make all decisions. Then, since the only objective evidence for “the will” and “I” is the decisions they make, and you will not allow that they could possibly make decisions, they must not exist. Setting aside the question of how you might hope to convince “me” that “I” don’t exist, you have basically assumed what you claim to demonstrate.

The subjective evidence for “I”, at least, seems quite strong. It may be that my “free will” is a delusion, but whose delusion is it? DesCartes addressed this issue some time ago, fairly conclusively, I think. He no longer exists, by the way, but I believe he once did.

In any case, whether decisions are made by minds having free will, or brains controlled by the inexorable laws of physics, it seems evident that plenty of people, myself among them, have been dissuaded from various actions on the grounds, not that they were morally wrong, but that they were legally risky. Like, they can put you in jail for doing that! So, maybe we don’t have “free will”, but we sure as Hell act as if we do. Which, in turn, implies that the laws should be framed on the assumption that we do. Always supposing that the laws mandate behavior we find desirable. Does “desire” exist?

What is the dif between a scientist and a true scientist.

Is FBD cousin marriage? If so the trend in the Islamic World is that it is an outdated practice, virtually noone educated and under 30 does it anymore. I am not sure how long it would take for the abandonment of cousin marriage to impact IQ scores, maybe you have an idea?

We should also remember that most Muslims did not choose Islam, it was imposed through a military conquest. In fact most of the people in the Roman World (Syria, North Africa, etc.) actually chose Christianity, though it is true that Islam was not available as a choice at that time.

It is too early to tell what affect the internet and globalization will have on belief in the developing world. But Islam has already become very westernized and is virtually unrecognizable from it’s original form which seems to only be practiced by fringe groups like ISIS. The West will turn Muhammad into a hippie before they are through with him.

You are probably correct that people in the Islamic World are genetically predisposed to be more likely to believe in inaccurate, feel good ideologies. However I would not say that they are hardwired to believe in Islam in particular. i.e. The Maltese are genetically similar to Arabs and they are devout Catholics. In my opinion Islam is the most dangerous of all “false ideologies�, far more dangerous than other religions and far more dangerous that Leftist Blank Slatism. So the work that New Atheists do in trying to convert people out of Islam is more important than the work you do in trying to convert people out of Leftist Blank Slatism. You are ahead of your time and most of the world is not ready to accept the truth that you post. First dangerous ideologies such as Political Islam need to be abandoned, and I am more confident than you that this can be achieved. Already educated Muslims have turned the image of Muhammad from a ruthless warlord to a new age hippie that preached peace and tolerance. Western ideology always wins in the end.

Take a look at this!

http://www.eupedia.com/europe/genetic_maps_of_europe.shtml

Protestantism seems to correlate with fair hair, fair eyes and Germanic Y-DNA haplogroups

‘You don’t control your brain; your brain controls you’

Incorrect, you ARE your brain, there are not 2 different you’s

“People continue to become overweight”, “people continue to get high”, “people (mostly men) continue to cheat”
….yet all of a sudden “our brains are organic computers that generate outputs based on inputs. The threat of punishment if one breaks to law is one of these inputs that the brain weighs in making decisions”…so do incentives matter, or not? (and of course there are examples of people losing weight, people stopping smoking shit and men learning that being faithful to the right woman is its lifetime reward.

And of course people are determined by their genes and experience so procreation of killers (not self defense) and pedophiles needs to be prevented.

I can’t really accept this constantly defaulting to genes as an explanation for everything. I would pretty much consider myself a secular rationalist at this point. I guess I’d say agnostic more than atheist because I leave the possibility open. But I don’t have any strong conclusion one way or another on the existence of a god. However in my younger years I was a very strong believer. I truly believed in the idea that I was being constantly watched and judged by god. What changed my mind? Simply exposure to alternative viewpoints. Nothing more than that. It had nothing to do with biology.

Europe is much more atheist now than the USA. But there was a time in the not distant past that most Europeans were religious. Look at the great churches that dot the European continent. And we are to believe that the rise of atheism can be attributed to genes? No. It’s due to cultural evolution. Nobody is hardwired to believe in god. Drop any infant off on a desert island and never introduce religion to him and that kid will grow up an atheist.

Religion goes back to our very origins as humans and was most likely a way for man to try and explain natural phenomena he couldn’t explain since he was lacking in scientific knowledge. I can see why Vikings though the aurora borealis was the work of a pleased god. They could have no idea that they were simply looking at solar wind interacting with the Earth’s magnetosphere.

If intelligent people are more likely to be atheist, it’s only because they’re more likely to understand complex scientific principles and reasoning.

Jayman

I can’t remember if we’ve had this discussion before. If we have, please forgive the redundancy.

If a child of South Asian Hindus is adopted by North European Protestant Christians, isn’t she more likely to grow up Christian than Hindu? I agree that the child’s general level of piety might be genetic, but surely you can only join a religion you’re actually exposed to. (Religions need direct human transmission. No one in the western hemisphere became a Christian simply by opening their heart to God. Christians first had to arrive from Europe and explain what Christianity was.)

As well as the religiosity/scepticism variable, there’s also a conformity/nonconformity variable. In the past, many people will have been religious simply because they were conformists. Now conformism may actually make them atheists.

It seems that unbelief has grown in the West. Did it really grow, or is it simply that the stigma against admitting it declined? In other words, that the current figures simply reflect Western peoples long-term revealed opinions, now that duress has been removed?

Christopher Hitchens points out that Psalm 14 opens: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.� This shows that, even under bronze age Jewish theocracy, with every possible stigma against denying God, there were some who didn’t believe, and the Psalmist was aware of it.

Within Islam, there are some who don’t believe, but who feel unable to reveal their opinions. This may even be true of some Media Muslims in the West. One British Muslim I rather like is Sarfraz Manzoor. He doesn’t show any obvious signs of Islamic piety. It sometimes feels as if he retains the Muslim moniker simply because it makes him more marketable than if he was just another Brit of South Asian heritage.

It’s hard to know how many nominal Muslims don’t actually believe, but are dissimulating for the sake of a quiet life. One reason for the Charlie Hebdo massacre was probably to frighten such people back into the closet. There’s a pretty direct connection; that if people aren’t frightened of ridiculing Islam, people won’t be frightened of leaving Islam.

“While they may have deleted my comment out of some silly rule against self-promotion (which is a bullshit policy anyway)�
But Jayman, you only think this becuase you don’t have the innate, genetic distaste western Europeans have for self-promotion.

This is very interesting. For the last few years I have been coming to the conclusion that religion, as a part of most reasonably advanced cultures, is, at least, genetically supported, and that each racial group may, in fact, have wet-ware support for a particular style of religious experience (however, it is intriguing that various flavors of Christianity have made some inroads into East Asian groups and it would be interesting to find out what aspects of Christianity have been highlighted or whether there are just a subset of East Asians to who the Christian message appeals.)

I have also been coming to the conclusion that the modern myths function as a replacement for traditional religion, even among the more intelligent.

I am White (mostly) and officially Irreligious, growp up in Mexico, yet of the religions the one I can’t give up is Hinduism 🙂 it reasonates perfectly with my desire for rich stimulation (the idols and huge literature), Christianity after a while seems dull to me.

I think god pressured out of the requirements of in-group conformity, which is required for groups to be able to compete with other groups (love thy neighbour and slaughter thy stranger). Typically some leading figures would have done important things for the group and set the group rules and police them. Then these people die but the stories, lessons, rules are passed orally to the next generation than has never seen these people.If you keep that up a couple of generations the stories become more fanciful and the acts more unlikely to have been performed by a human being. So…these beings must have been supernatural, they are gods!. Later phases would strip these abstract beings more and more of their human flaws. Which is logical; if these abstractions are supernatural and to be worshiped they cannot have imperfections like we have or we will not hold them in such high regard. Conservative religious people are agents of group solidarity their individual thought is overruled in service of the group and as long as the religious group overlaps with the ethnic group (which often is the case) this is adaptive.

The religious mind is the hive mind.

Thank you for your response.

“Perceive� in this context: consciously experience.

“Yourself� (I didn’t use “yourself� in the part you quoted, but I take you to be asking what I meant by “I�): in this context: the self-aware entity which experiences the particular stream of consciousness that gave rise to this comment

“choose� in this context: to cause something to occur

We could spend a large amount of time and energy exploring what these ‘entail’. For purposes of my point, the main thing is that (the first two at least) entail the exact same thing in reference to free will as they entail in reference to rational inference. The third – ‘choice’ – is particular to free will, but its analogue in reference to rationality is to accept a proposition as being true (i.e. to form a belief).

Yes, the two (free will and rational inference) are not the same, but they have much more in common than you think.

“your subjective (read: naive) impressions become questionable upon closer examination�

Yes indeed they do. However the subjective is where each of us lives, and while facts are objective, our beliefs – even rigorously formed, evidence-based beliefs that can successfully be used to predict the outcome of any number of scenarios – are subjective. And to the extent that your (or any) argument invalidates the strong, natural subjective belief in free will that we experience, it also invalidates the strong, natural subjective belief in the validity of human inference that we experience. And you are gravely underestimating how much human rationality owes to that natural subjective perception; in fact, without it there is really not much cause, other than arbitrary ‘happy think’ to put any stock in it.

To start, the validity of human rationality is a ‘closed house’ in that it is the one thing in the universe that we cannot, even in theory, rationally verify, as a thing cannot verify itself. That could be the end too: once that point is understood, the grim reality – that all of our hard-won empirical, experimental and theoretical scientific knowledge rests on a foundation that is completely unverifiable, and which must just be trusted, completely and blindly – appears.

But it gets worse. If we step into the closed house, and try to use our rational faculties to provide support for their own validity, we are confronted with very strong evidence that the most impartial, empirical, rational beliefs we might form through painstaking care and examination of the world around us are, like all our beliefs, artifacts of the way our brains are structured at the current point in our evolution. Our trust in our reason, absent the claim of the subjective experience we have when we grasp a rational truth, ends up resting on this ‘just so’ story:

At just this particular point in the history of life on earth, with billions of years of evolution gone by, and (hopefully) billions of years to come, there has arisen a structure, the human brain, which can not only use the stimulus provided by the world around it to generate behaviors beneficial to survival and reproduction (which we would expect the mechanism of natural selection to do), but to generate objectively true beliefs about matters of not just immediate importance to survival or reproduction, but about black holes, and e^(i*Pi) = -1, and the orbit of Pluto – and yes, in the reductivity of all the events in the universe down to the interactions of quantum scale matter and energy packets. And – even worse – we have to believe this when there is also strong empirical evidence that these very brains, are subject to firm beliefs in all sorts of irrational hooey – demonstrably false beliefs that yet are evolutionarily beneficial enough to have been fixed into the psyche of a significant majority of our species.

To be clear, I believe that e^(i*Pi) = -1, and that Pluto will be right where our calculations say it will be this time next year, and that there is a huge black hole at the center of the galaxy we are in, and even in the reductivity of reality. I believe all these things because I really do trust the strong subjective claim that basic rational inference presents upon my consciousness. What I do not understand is, if you reject such strong subjective claims as they present themselves to your consciousness, on what do you base your beliefs in these things?

Finally thanks for the references, but I am familiar with both Sam Harris’s views on free will (which suffer from the same failure to recognize that human rationality sits in the same subjective space as free will does) and with split brain cases (which serve to throw into question validity of our rational faculties as much as they throw anything else into question). As to where free will comes from and how it fits into reductive reality, I do not know. But I do know that there is way too much mystery around our consciousness and how we form our beliefs (including, especially, our cold, empirically supported, rational beliefs) to get anywhere near a conclusion that there is no such thing as free will.

Thanks for enlightening my view. I appreciate the explanation and have amended my view. Post it for everyone to see bro, Im certain other people will find what you wrote useful. Thanks. Glad I know more now.

Above, you say to back up your claims with evidence but obviously this is just a place where you reign above everyone else and make the same rude comments you advise against. I’ve seen a lot of places like this (with a double standard) on the net which makes blogging completely useless itself.
I’m advocating determinism and the illusion of free will. We are automated and everything we’ve ever discovered concretely about the physical world has a cause. Quantum physics WILL prove to be the same way.
I’m a mechanic who diagnosis’ problems daily. I’m also a philosopher and sociologist. Misdiagnosis and delusion reek havoc on human endeavors everyday countless times.
Saying something is random (because we can’t detect a pattern or cause or predict it with accuracy) is the same thing as giving up on something that can’t be known yet by modern technology. Truthfully, saying something is random, is throwing your hands up and saying I don’t know. It’s the same poor logic that led to mysticism and religion which we should all know here is bogus.
Electrons do not show up where they want randomly just because we can’t find the answer or predict with certainty where they will be. That is just a misdiagnosis that we haven’t squared yet. The proof of this is that beyond any doubt, we know everything has a cause and is determined.
As I said before, either you are determinist and know that with further progress in the quantum studies, we will show how nothing is random or you are contradicting your own statements advocating determinism.
You can’t have it both ways. A correct phrase (if you wish to correct yourself instead of press on) is to say that, “currently, with our best equipment our data is trying to say that quantum processes are random and unpredictable, but this conclusion is contradictory and unreasonable so we’ll be eagerly awaiting for more to be revealed.”
Saying things are random is also saying “we don’t have the facts in yet, be cause we lack the ability to figure it out”
IF (and this will never happen) quantum processes are truly “random” then the only conclusion is that we do have a degree of free will. Obviously, we know that is bull crap so the only conclusion is that quantum processes to have causes, can be predicted and are anything but random.

How can you be a Harris fan, argue for Determinism and that free will is illusory but then turn around and say that random things make up the physical world?
I’m not the one who doesn’t know what he is talking about. You are the one who shouldn’t comment here because your view is hypocritical and contradictory.
Either everything is determined and automated or it is not. There is no middle ground. If our smallest parts aren’t determined then how can we be?
I’ll comment where ever I want too so shove it.

With respect to your blog and you. I hardly think you can definitive about that. Scientists routinely adjust theories and especially in a brand new field (quantum physics) where speculation fills every corner, finding out tomorrow that electrons do have a predictable course would make perfect since everything else in universe also has a predictable course.
In this case, yes you’re right, currently our scientists say that an ‘inherent randomness’ lays upon physics BUT, like I said before. The fat lady hasn’t sang by a long shot. The definition of random is meaningless like the word miracle. And also to my first point, there are way to many variables present to say that is random when we cant find a pattern. That’s bullshit bro. First of all, we still don’t know why gravity works or how to exploit electromagnetic force to the fullest. Forget about the strong and weak force. There are way to many uncertainties and unsolved for affecting agents to say that reality is at its core random. That literally sounds exactly like mystics saying bullshit like they can fly or have spoken with the creator of the universe. It is dramatic and immature conclusion that doesn’t make sense intuitively or rationally.
I think you and would agree on much and Im glad you read Sam Harris. It seems like we both agree that freewill is bullshit. I just happen to know that Im entirely automated in every way and so is the universe (whether I can prove it or not)
To say that its all truly random is like saying that the speed of light is 186,000 mps everywhere in our universe except for in Andromeda where it goes twice as fast. Either youre a determinist in every respect for the whole enchilada or you can start rethinking your freewill convictions. If what youre saying is true 200 years from now, then Id renounce any argument the no freewill exists. You cant have it both ways.
Its pretty ignorant to believe in randomness. Its simply impossible Jay. Have a good day.

I’m really flabbergasted about this idea popping up in so many people.

How can it be possible that this somehow amazes people or make them think they have discovered something new with this? of course conscious thoughts and feelings cannot be equated with ‘the self’. This is exactly the same fallacy that religious people commit with their believe in a separation between body and soul. The brain is like a computer, conscious thoughts and feelings are the results of its computations, the self is the brain and the self-brain is the thing not being physically coerced to will anything and therefore it is the thing having free will. There is no philosophical discussion there are no social political implications if you just start using definitions that actually make sense in reality. I mean you can just hang on to a definition of free will that requires some made up random generator look at reality and ´proof´ that you cannot find one and then claim free will does not exist because the universe is causal, but I can do the same with any made up word. It is a useless activity to engage in. The real debate on free will,,or the existence of running dolphins for that matter..is one of definition of concepts. You probably would claim walking dolphins do not exist and consider me insane for thinking otherwise. Yet I could easily distort the debate by pointing out that the Miami dolphins actually run a lot. Start out with definitions of ´freedom´ and ´will´ that actually make sense in reality or the whole discussion becomes rubbish.

I have a basic epistemic problem with this. If all we do is solely determined by “that particle which is our brain�, that includes all that we choose to believe, and that includes belief in the notion that our thoughts have anything to do with our physical brains. Let me unpack that a bit.

I subjectively perceive myself to have free will. As I type this I very strongly perceive myself to be choosing which letters to make up which words that I am choosing to have appear in this post.

I also subjectively perceive the statement: “If A = B and A =C, then B = C� to be true. I perceive these two things (that I am in control of what gets typed here, and that elementary rational inference is valid) on basically the same subjective level. The argument here against free will, like all rational argument, is necessarily assuming that rational inference is valid. I read the argument, and the same subjective events in my mind that cause me to believe ‘if A = B and A =C, then B = C’, cause me to be strongly persuaded by this powerful rational argument.

But when I turn around to discard my perception of my own free will as an irrational illusion, a very basic question arises: why should I trust my subjective impression that rational inference is valid over my subjective impression that I have free will? I can find no rational reason to do so. They are on the same level. If one is an illusion, then there is really no reason to suppose that the other is anything else but illusion. If the existence of free will really does pose an irreconcilable rational contradiction, then what cause to we have to discard our free will and retain our valid rational inferring ability and not vice versa? None that I can see. But of course if the validity of rational inference is an illusion, then it’s lights out for pretty much all human knowledge, including all the evidence and argument that might lead you to believe that your own basic subjective experiences of reality are invalid. In other words, this argument ultimately refutes itself, for it implies that A) the acceptance of any argument is caused – solely caused – by non-rational interactions between matter and energy packets; and B) that we have no reason to trust the strong basic subjective intuition that the inferences which support any argument are valid.

The conscious does exist but the “self” “me” “I” does not. This is what Sam Harris’ new book is about. Picture the conscious as a cylindrical mirror. Its always rolling and reflecting our emotions, thoughts and motives but those are just reflections on the mirror rolling in and leaving just as fast. they are illusory. They are NOT the mirror. The mirror is just the mirror when it’s not reflecting self, emotions, thoughts etc… This is what true meditation is, practicing “not reflecting” all that crap but to actually pay attention “free from thought” to conscious.
I hope this helps. I agree that this is all really about consciousness. Our lack of Free Will is just the most obvious observation in trying to meditate. I think its important and requires no idiotic presumptions about the universe being created or us having souls. We just need to practice paying attention to our conscious rather than being in religion. I’m atheist.

People keep saying quantum physics proves against determinism. THIS IS UNTRUE! Just because WE can’t predict where an electron will be doesn’t mean it’s impossible. In fact, seeing as everything else is predictable, it would be crazy to say that its all chaos on a small level. It isn’t, people are just vain and dramatic. We’re not yet technologically advanced enough and have only just barely stumbled upon quantum physics studies. Under unobtainable observation methods, we could watch and predict how everything happens in quantum physics. People just like dramatic words like “Chaos” “random” “unpredictable” because it all caters to mysticism and the stubborn place people love to be in which is “the unknowable.” These people are no different than religious people who dont want to know. Thats the difference between enjoying ignorance the way that scientists do (seeking to know more) and the way that mystics do (denying that anymore can be known) (they dont want to know and would rather say its unknowable—-bullshit!)
Columbus thought he was in India for at least a month or two! We study quantum physics for 50 years and everyone is suddenly an expert? LOL Everything has cause and effect. People fall for the same delusional tricks and petty psuedo scientific journalism every time!

The fact that we even have a word called discipline, begs the fact that we live in a Deterministic universe. That word would not exist. Many phrase, ideas, and institutions give our determinism away; like the phrase “I just couldn’t help myself.” Why did you think you ever could?
To someone still believing they have freewill I’d say consider two things; (both I’ve borrowed from Sam Harris) You have about as much control over the next thing you think as the next thing I write. Where does freedom fit into that? Also, are you free to do things that don’t occur to you to do? And if you “decide” upon two alternatives, to look back and say that you could have chosen differently is to simply state that “I would have “chosen” differently IF I had chosen differently.” Really, you had no choice at all. Only what can happen, will happen. I strongly believe that we’re ENTIRELY automated. Not only does our heredity and environment dictate us but the above lessons in consciousness that I mentioned seal our automation totally. Thoughts arise unannounced, uninvited and force us to do things before we even consider doing them. People who argue for Free will either can’t reliably understand the human condition or have some axe to grind that would dull if people knew they were automated.
My acceptance of my own automation has been exceedingly helpful in becoming sober after years of alcoholism. I have a peace of mind and an understanding of my brain that no religious zealot can enjoy free of delusion.
The funny part is that you can use determinism as a way around step 3 in recovery models. As an atheist and Sam Harris fanatic, this was important to me. I don’t have to foolishly try “giving my will and life over to the care of god” when I see I have no will anyway!

Hi JayMan, just discovered this gem of a blog by a comment you left on Dawkins’ Twitter. What a tremendous post!

As an agnostic theist, it has been a minor spiritual experience in and of itself reading your post and coming to the inspiring revelation that there exist atheists such as yourself who think critically about the neurological evolutionary factors at play in the formation and sustained belief of religion. I can’t even express how frequently and how strongly your insights took me by surprise as you examined the true nature of HBD-induced belief-lust and how New Atheism has grown to fill that hole as contentedly as theism grew to fill it in ages past.

Looking back, it’s clear to me that my only experience with atheists has been of the new atheist flavor, which impressed upon me the disheartening belief that atheists in general existed in a fog of low consciousness, unable to muster any respect or clarity surrounding the biological underpinnings of consciousness — and doing so from a comfortable armchair of unprecedentedly-high ego (which, of course, considering the fog and general lack of cognition, is completely undeserved). I honestly came to this post expecting to see the usual fog and general lack of critical thought, but boy, was I surprised!

You do yourself and the entire atheist community a tremendous service by sharing this kind of clarity and ego-death-induced wisdom. Of course, it’s clear that you’re more intelligent than most of the others that I’ve met, but I honestly think every man of lesser intellect — atheistic or not — could come to a massively-heightened level of understanding by undertaking the simple task of letting go of his own ego and embracing the beautiful world of truth that exists in open-mindedness.

I also find it interesting how so many of the comments here are written by users who are clearly of superior intellect. Great minds attract others, I suppose. Very happy to have stumbled on this little sanctuary of open, critical thought at 8am — it really made my morning 🙂 Well done to all involved.

Take care and do keep sharing your thoughts, Jay!
~Josh

I would explain it to “them” (the Ordinary) thusly: maybe we have a built-in mechanism that causes us as human beings to believe our actions are “free” – or as you’ve stated that “grappling with a decision” is evidence of free-will, or for that matter invoking willpower is an example of free will. The more interesting question is, why do we have such a mechanism? Why must we believe that our choices are, in fact, choices? Dogs and cats and other perfectly good mammals don’t have such a mechanism . . . or (yikes!) do they??!? Someone below speculated it had to do with procreation . . . perhaps we’d lose motivation to procreate if we didn’t think we had a lot of choice about it. Which is funny, since when it comes to rational choice, procreation is one of those things we often have the least rational control over.

Democritus said, roughly, that the cosmos is the product of chance and necessity. Insofar as present actions are the product of chance, that present action is not ultimately “free,” because it is accidental and accidents are the very opposite of free choice. Insofar as present actions are the product of necessity, the present action is not ultimately “free,” because it is wholly the product of a past process over which one has no control. To be “free” in this ultimate sense would require, at the least, the ability to go back into the past and change the processes which lead to the present action. Besides the impossibility of doing so, even this might not be enough, because the process leading to the actor’s journey into the past would be the product of the actor’s own past, which product is the product of chance and/or necessity. I am not even sure that God could be free in this sense.

But I’m not sure that the concept of “free” under examination here either (a) makes sense; or (b) bears much relationship to the ordinary uses of “free.” Take a typical situation where we use the word “free” in something like this context. Suppose one wishes to know whether a person had a “free choice” to spend his or her limited resources on a television set or a washer. Suppose that person chooses to purchase the washer. Now the sorts of cases in which people would tend to say that he or she does not are, e.g., someone compelled the person to purchase the washer, or the person could not function without the washer, or the person had to purchase the washer or bear the wrath of Social Services, etc. In all these cases, a claim by the actor that he or she did what she did because of the past state of the universe would rightly be considered frivolous. The issue is not whether the actor’s choice was ultimately constrained or not, but whether it was constrained in particular ways.

Suppose it is true that a person reacts to a given stimulus — making what we would call a “choice” — before he or she is even conscious of making that choice. Then suppose that the human mechanism that makes the choice “reports” the stimulus and the choice to the consciousness, which becomes conscious of having made the choice. Assuming that the conscious mind always tracks the choice which the human mechanism has already made, there is no problem is saying that the conscious mind has made a free choice. Processes which lead to the same outcome are functionally identical. If the human mechanism and the conscious mind always arrive at the same action, then the conscious mind’s “decision” is a necessary condition of that action. That is to say, if the conscious decision does not occur, neither does the action. What is important in the quotidian use of “free will” is not cause — it is necessitation. And in that sense, what we consciously will is willed freely.

Reblogged this on Philosophies of a Disenchanted Scholar and commented:
I wonder how this parenting malarkey fits in with r/K selection theory a la Anon. Conservative?

Jayman, what is your knowledge of RH negative blood type and what is your take on that phenomena – a different species of human perhaps?

“The transmission of misery or bliss in a family is entirely due to shared genes, just like most everything else.”

Interesting you should use the word “bliss”. Harvard just released its 75 year study on what makes men “happy” and the effects of parenting on happiness in old age comes up;

http://www.feelguide.com/2013/04/29/75-years-in-th-making-harvard-just-released-its-epic-study-on-what-men-require-to-live-a-happy-life/

“We are now at the point in our understanding where it is beyond dispute that all the interesting traits of human behavior, intelligence, and personality are heritable to some degree.”

Interesting is subjective. Some of the human behavioral traits he finds “interesting” I might not find so interesting, so such type of spin wording, although useful in propaganda, does not give weight to the argument. It would lead one to question, “So the traits he personally finds uninteresting have been found not be heritable?”

“The case for behavioral genetics is as solid as a rock. Yet certain people like to pretend as if this is a “speculativeâ€� affair, or deny that we have such evidence entirely.”

Its because of statements like the one I quoted above by Derb. Humans have known since ancient times that genes matter. Putting spin on studies and using misleading terminology to give the impression that there has been at least 1 peer reviewed scientific study that claimed 100% of everything about each human is 100% genetically determined is what gives us pause.

As far as your reply to Canadian Friend, bombastic statements such as, “The transmission of misery or bliss in a family is entirely due to shared genes, just like most everything else.”…. when you cite only two small studies in two countries only, also gives us pause. The word “entirely” is the bombastic part. We have absolutely no way of knowing that since our knowledge about genes itself is so limited and the field of genetic science is in its infancy stage right now, if not merely its embryonic stage.

Nobody has a problem with the concept of genes being deterministic to one degree or another. That you propose bombastically that its “entirely” is another matter.

Scale back the theatrics a bit.

Jumping to conclusions about race is not biology. It’s social “science” that cherry picks elements from biology, while selectively ignoring other factors that have a greater impact on behavior (economic conditions, history of the people/region, technology, theology, war, etc.). A group of people’s DNA does not just drastically change in a decade or two, but you can clearly see how politics, war, economics, and technology can make an entire community change for the better or take a turn for the worse, in a very short amount of time. This is obvious to 100% of people who aren’t racist.

“Here are various German sects (Mennonites and Amish), mostly confined to the Midlands:” Deutsch speaking Swiss. Swiss from Switzerland not German from Germany.

That reference to Quakers being the origin of the American type of nuclear family should have been Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley by Barry Levy

The Quaker map seems a bit questionable. There are essentially two Quaker religions, the pastoral and the silent-meeting. The latter are more widespread though perhaps less numerous, the former are limited to the Midwest (and a bunch of Kenyans they converted.) The pastoral, programmed or evangelical “Quakers” aren’t really considered proper Quakers by the predominant liberal, silent-meeting type. To give some idea of the depth of the split, in the ’20s the pastoral type were associated with the KKK, while the silent-meeting type had been leaders of the Underground Railroad.

The silent meeting Quakers are the ones that are associated with the major US cities and most of the Quaker schools. They are not noticeably Christian, indeed Jesus or the Bible are hardly ever mentioned, and it is considered gauche to bring them up. (Anyone may speak in the “silent” meetings.) Virtually all of them are converts (“convinced” Friends, rather than “birthright”); the sect had just about died out when the Vietnam War and the automatic conscientious objectorship that being a member of a meeting offered caused a huge influx of boomers. Today the silent-meeting Quakers are ultra-liberal clubs, defined mostly by extreme political correctness. They also have a remarkable uniformity of personality type. At Pendle Hill, a silent-meeting study center near Philadelphia, 17 of 19 people taking the Myers-Briggs were INFPs, a type found in about 2% of the general population. (The other two were an INTJ and an INTP).

The map gives the idea that Quakers are not so uncommon – in reality, there have been under three million practicing Quakers in the English-speaking world over the last 400 years, less than 80,000 silent-meeting Quakers in the world today. (There are at least twice as many Ashkenazi Jews today as there have been Quakers in history.)

They have had a disproportionate impact, however, being largely responsible for the first industrial revolution (iron made with coked coal instead of charcoal, railroads, iron rails, passenger rail, most early British mining, cast steel, iron ploughshares, interchangeable parts), as well as social innovations (schools for worker’s children, workhouses, commercial / small business banking, e.g. Barclay’s and Lloyds, fixed-price shops, the American type of nuclear family (see Albion’s Seed), abolitionism, anti-war activism) as well as a good deal of science (many early instrument makers, Quare, Tompion, funding of the Harrison chronometer, Dalton’s observationally-based atomic theory (when chemistry finally shed the last vestiges of alchemy), Young’s wave theory of light, the compound microscope, early pathology, antiseptics) and a few other odds and ends such as railway timetables, metal bridges, and milk chocolate. Arthur Eddington and Nobelist Joseph Taylor are the best-known Quaker physicists; Quakers were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946,1947 (to the Friends’ Service Committees, the only time the award went to religious organizations) and 1959.

They also played a great role in the development of the US, founding Pennsylvania, designing the Conestoga wagon, and giving rise to such icons as Annie Oakley, Betsy Ross, Daniel Boone, Dolly Madison, and James Dean.

Good parenting could be a general display of social status, of which every human interaction is loaded with. “Look, we can afford violin lessons for our children and have so much spare time that we can build a treehouse with them….”

1: Heritability measures the proportion of variation of a trait that is attributable to variation in genes, /at a particular time/. A secular environmental change can shift the entire distribution one direction or another, while leaving the relative impacts of genes and environment untouched. Height has always been highly heritable, but better nutrition has pushed up the average height by many inches over the centuries.

2: The crux of the Bell Curve’s argument is that the meritocracy is mostly endogamous – that is, high-status folks marry high status folks, a phenomenon called “assortative mating”. As for regression, you are indeed right that the children of two high status parents will regress somewhat in whatever traits made their parents exceptional. But here’s the thing: you only regress once! See Greg Cochran for why: http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/the-breeders-equation/

Exactly how endogamous the upper class becomes will make or break The Bell Curve’s predictions, but we already have significant evidence that it’s on the right track via Gregory Clark’s work on social mobility (or rather, the absence of it) through the ages.

>So far as I know, I have no six-foot ancestors. Where’s the heritability of height here?

There’s always exceptions 🙂

Nobody said 100% inherited. It is stated above:

“Behavioral genetics in a nutshell: heredity: 70-80%; shared environment: 0%; something(s) else: 20-30%.”

Even if there was more marriage among those in the lower class, the next generation, having inherited all the same traits, would be no different.

Am I the only one who sees a problem with that?

Every generation would be identical to the previous one if that statement were true.

But they are not.

If that quoted excerpt was true, in every generation there would be an identical percentage of the population – as there was in the previous generation – who would become drug addicts or violent criminals and an identical percentage of the population who would become law abiding well adjusted citizens…and we would still be in caves…

But we all know those percentages vary from generation to generations.

I am NOT saying we do not inherit most of the traits that makes us who we are, I am sure we do but I am saying that there has to be a certain amount of “plasticity” other wise nothing would ever change.

To say it is 100% inherited and that other factors account for ZERO % is a bit radical… for lack of a better word…

Exactly same experience with my family. My oldest son is a carbon copy of my (odd, contrary, fantasy oriented) personality, where my younger son is a lot like my wife (and her father), basically a born engineer. Having children can most definitely be a way to crystallize awareness of the power of genetics, but I don’t think it’s guaranteed by any means.

Congratulations on one of the best blogs in the world. To read you is heartening.

I am a historian and a philologist, but unlike 90 per cent of my peers am neither leftist nor resistant to the discoveries of genetics and psychometrics; indeed, I have lapped them up for decades, ever since my mother gave me H. J. Eysenck’s “Know Your Own I.Q.� over 50 years ago (I didn’t do too well, but then I was only about 10). Today, I am proud to call myself a friend of Helmuth Nyborg, who lives 15 miles from me. I hardly understand half of what he’s talking about, but a man so persecuted by the right-thinking cannot be wrong.

Two questions do keep occurring to me when I consider your well-established truths about personality and heritability:

1. How do you account for massive and rapid cultural change, if personality traits are largely heritable? How did large parts of the Western world go from respecting to despising the nuclear family in a few short years beginning in the 1960s? The authors of “The Great Disruption� inherited their personalities, right? Yet they turned on their parents, tradition, patriotism, moral and aesthetic standards, learning, and order. Western politicians used to defend their countries; now they are ashamed to do so. Where did those personality traits spring from?

2. Regression toward the mean should surely mean that, for example, parenting styles are far from fully heritable. Every generation will show a new mix. So the daughter of a feckless mother may turn out to be a model wife, no? What’s the role of regression in the story of heritable personality traits? This puzzles me too when I consider “The Bell Curve�‘s argument about an emerging meritocracy. Won’t the children of the smart meritocrats regress in intelligence? If they retain their parents’ status, won’t that be due as much to nepotism and monetary inheritance than to genes?

And a comment: my maternal ancestry is Danish-German-Swedish, my paternal Yankee to the nth degree (four Mayflower passengers), with possibly a bit of Irish thrown in sometime around 1840. Both my parents were smart, my father a professor of literature and my mother an independent writer. I have inherited, if that’s the word, my mother’s status, as my opinions make me unemployable in today’s academy. Here’s the comment: my mother was 5’2″, my father 5’8″, I am 6’0″. So far as I know, I have no six-foot ancestors. Where’s the heritability of height here?

WordPress.com / Gravatar.com credentials can be used.

It won’t BE calvin and hobbes, just in a similar art style. Watterson is whimsical and soft, which is great given the sharpness of his wit and the biting social commentary often featured therein. I like that mix: Soft cuddly looking characters saying things that make you think hard. Just like how having useless platitudes that everyone loves said by horrible monsters would have you maybe reconsider the meaning of those phrases. Capisce?

“The fact that parenting style makes no measurable contribution to the finished adult personality is perhaps the most counterintuitive result in the human sciences. ”

It’s only counterintuitive to people with fewer than two children.

My two daughters have *very* different personalities. Elder daughter has my personality in so many ways – she’s much more like me than her mother, while younger daughter is much more like her mother. They’ve had very similar life experiences, and if anything, the differences should have pushed younger daughter’s personality in ways she’s not exhibiting.

in thinking of how to present HBD truth and construct a narrative around it, I have to say the best bet would be to do it subtly. hit them over the head truth works for some (admittedly, myself) , but it gives an out to anyone invested in any other views to dismiss as racist science blah blah blah. just a thought

Excellent. Greater recognition is the result of your hard work and indefatigable spirit. Keep it up! Also, I’ve been trying to come up with ideas for illustrating a cartoon about the non effect of parenting. There’s just something about cartoon animals or people that opens up an idea to a wider audience. I’m thinking Calvin and Hobbes-ish in style. Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any thoughts on the matter, I would be happy to give you a writing credit on the strip if it comes to fruition.

Re: zero independent impact of family:

– Is this a recent phenomenon, caused, perhaps, by the general effect of increased standards of living and reductions in violence? Should we expect to see higher shared environment in poorer countries?

– If the above is true, then when it comes to mate choice, are we just executing old adaptions that made sense when family environment did matter independent of genes?

– If it’s false, and shared environment is similarly low in primitive societies, then are all the mate choice algorithms that are purportedly for figuring out who is a good potential parent, really just for figuring out who has the best genes (and conversely, signaling you’ll be a good parent is really about signaling genes)?

– Is the outrage over the idea that parenting doesn’t matter a local phenomenon, or is it the result of some kind of “ATTACK ALL THOSE WHO SAY I’M NOT A GOOD MATE” adaption?

“How you raise your kids has virtually no impact on how they turn out. That is, nurture appears to matter little in the end.”

“It’s rendered additionally more challenging with a little one who insists on demanding much of my time, a demand which I more than happily obliged.”

Here’s the beautiful contradiction: that just because it doesn’t make any difference to ‘outcomes’, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter to parents, nor does it mean it doesn’t matter to children. It is truly simply for the joy of family.

“My son will have his own rather interesting lineage to trace; for he is a part West African, part British (presumably English, and possibly Irish), part Chinese, and part Indian (subcontinent), part Yankee, part Quaker, part German, part Latvian tanned-skin blue-eyed male born in Maine. Oh the fun you’ll have. Do these interesting combinations contribute to our unique insights? Well, more on that in the future too.”

I couldn’t help it, but I thought of outbreeding depression.

Despite your long nitpickings in my opinion you fail at your attempt to refute the case for free will of Baumeister. That people have a brain made of stuff, organized in a certain way, which might even lead to predictable patterns of behavior does not in any way goes against the definition of free will being ‘making choices about what to do in the absence of external coercion’. Your genetic makeup and the brain-structure it leads to is not external coercion, it is what you are. If you are a psychopath by nature you and your genes are still responsible for your actions, not anybody else. ´Sorry dude, you were born evil and now you get the chair, though luck´.

´“Free will�, in any meaningful sense, would mean that behavior would be unpredictable, at least statistically, from physical laws and knowledge of the individual, including genetics.´ ~ jayman

To me this seems like you are looking for uncaused causation, for a mystical dice to be thrown every time somebody makes a decision (or some kind of substitute for a soul). This is clearly not possible in reality and therefore an irrational definition of the concept of free will specifically designed to fit with the conclusion it is supposed to support…or does it, how can I be responsible for my actions if my decisions have been caused by an internal improbability generator?, surely the next time I will act differently in the same circumstances and so will the next guy….then it would be more just to average out the responsibility between everybody else.

That’s a video about Libet experiment and free will.

Video Link
Unfortunately, there is no subtitle or text accompanying the video (english). I have not grasped everything they’ve said. If someone here can translate for me, that will be nice. thanks.

I doubt there is a probability space of possible outcomes at all. I rather think that notion is an artefact of probability theory. But even if that’s the case, there is nothing to say that this uncertainty would give the individual free will to make choices.

No, it remains up to you how you make each decision. There is a probable outcome, not a predestined one. But having a probable outcome is a sufficient condition to direct the broad course of your life.

But it can’t be up to you how to play your hand in a deterministic world. The idea of making a choice is an illusion when there is only one possible outcome.

The problem is that our brains are built to think in terms of us doing things, having goals etc – not circumstances having inevitable consequences. While determinism seems to be a fact, we can’t implement it in our lives or in society in any meaningful way. Which I’m guessing is what Luke Lea is getting at, that it’s fruitless to think in this manner, at least on certain issues. Although that would be to accept irrationality which has its own existential consequences.

“Since there is not much more to me-ness than that amalgamation of experiences” Actually there is. There’s how you respond to new experiences. Some people respond to a stressful event by ruminating on that event, they can’t let go of the stress, while others forget about it right away. The first person has more trouble dealing with the event after it happens but they are more likely to be prepared next time. This has to do with both how many receptors you have for a given hormone and the amount of processing your brain has dedicated to coping with it and it varies, a lot, between people. You don’t have control over the first one, but there is some interesting research (Richard J. Davidson’s work) that shows that the brain can be reconfigured to deal differently with things. The question Davidson doesn’t ask though is ‘should we?’

~S

The comment: “If culture is so successful, why don’t other species use it?”, which the author of this post seems to accept at face value, shows a blatant lack of understanding of (now relatively old) advances in studying social animals, including primates and birds. Other animals do use culture. Besides the studies of tool use, passed down through learning (which has not been replicated not just in primates, but in many species of birds, and some cepahlopods), a lot of recent work in ornithology has uncovered more and more sophisticated levels of social intelligence and cultural knowledge being passed down. For example, some social bird species are able to pass down knowledge of how to identify predators and threats, to birds who have never seen those predators. Some of the much earlier studies on chimpanzees found that disconnected populations living in the same area would pass down methods of locating, preparing, and eating various foods, and the separate groups would have this food culture persist through generations–in some cases ignoring the other viable food sources. It goes beyond just learned behavior, and often involves complex social structures. For example, many species have complex family structures that involve teaching the younger generation how to raise children by having them help raise the next generation, before they move off to form a family structure of their own. A lot of studies have examined what is happening in these processes and found that there is a lot of specific knowledge that is being passed on through these structures.

Over the past 30-or-so years we’ve consistently broken down many of the previous lines that were drawn distinguishing non-human animals from animals. Culture, i.e. knowledge passed down through generations, now lies within the category of things that have long been established to exist within numerous species.

The question that strikes in terms of taking this further is whether it is possible to draw new cards from the deck, either temporarily or permanently. It’s obviously possible to lose cards.

My thoughts on this are that you are dealt a hand of cards at birth. How well you play them is still up to you, noting that the cards you are dealt also determine how well you can play the cards you are dealt.

It’s a recursive system, it doesn’t take away from the capacity to make choices, but your capacity to make choices is set.

“I think the disconcerting nature of genetics playing an extremely determining role in peoples behaviour is less to do with “am I freeâ€� and more to do with “but then how can I control the people around me to make them act the way I want?!â€�”

Well done! I think you have gotten to the heart of the matter. If leftists can’t turn underclass NAMs into middle class Whites/Asians or create their utopias because nature won’t let them, they become hissing angry. Likewise, if tradcon types can’t turn gays straight, promiscuous heterosexuals into prudes, and fat people into thin people because of what is predetermined than the tradcons throw anti-nature tantrums.

Hi Jayman, You are still a young man. It will be interesting how your world view will change over the coming decades. My prediction: you will become less the empirical scientist/ philosopher on topics like “free will” and “determinism” and “atheism” (I assume you are an athest, correct me if I am wrong) and that you will become more of a pragmatist: the truth is what works. The truth of an idea lies in the influence it has on the world, especially the world of society, of other people. This was an evolution that Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin both went through, for instance. They were wise men, surely you will grant them that? Anyway, I may be wrong. This is just a guess.

On second thought though, I think the disconcerting nature of genetics playing an extremely determining role in peoples behaviour is less to do with “am I free” and more to do with “but then how can I control the people around me to make them act the way I want?!”

If determinism holds does that mean we could, with enough data and computing power, predict every single event that will ever occur?

Presumably not because randomness is still a factor and even tiny probabilities could throw any model way off course in the long run.

Anyway, I don’t get the whole free will debate. I make the choice to do X, I make it based on prior experiences and relationships (both genetic and personal). Since there is not much more to me-ness than that amalgamation of experiences I am not sure what else could feed into that? Even if you bring spirit into it (and I *am* kinda wired that way) – all that can add is another set of past events and relationships to the mix of experiences that make up the totality of the history of this “me”.

What else would there be? Completely arbitrary choices that somehow are defended on the basis of self expression? But they still have to come from somewhere or they are even less yours than if you were an automaton fulfilling your programming – at least the programming is *yours*.

You summed it up perfectly.

Reality has no ideology.

Quite the conundrum. Upton Sinclair said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The same can be said for one’s genetic predispositions. Some might have little to no emotional investment in the idea of a higher power, or free will. However those people likely have their own cognitive biases that are nigh to impossible for them to see. That’s the real trick. It’s one thing to value objectivity and another to fully practice it (which may be impossible as long as we are physical beings). That’s not to say that some world views aren’t closer to objectivity than others. The scientific method is the best we have so far and it works very very well, when correctly applied.

~S

You are delusional, they have high per capita, because they absorb the wealth created by high IQ races, once they become majority, they could NOT absorb anymore wealth and they will be in a stagnation of per capita

instead of cherry picking mildly anomalous results from a 33 year old early twin study, why not look at the cumulative body of twin study research – either from Bouchard & McGue’s side of the pond or Plomin’s – indeed, a nicely simplified & worded-to-be-nice-to-those-who’d-rather-not-see is Asbury & Plomin’s (2014) G is for Genes: The Impact of Genetics on Education & Achievement. cheers!

The conclusion ” don’t there a free will” is exactly those who Sisyphean said about ”general people conclusion”, myself include, if the semantic abstract symbology of FREE will, specially in the West is practically the same that liberty, as synonimous… ”We are slaves” (ooooooh, my world broken..):
If the supposed inexistence of free will theory is not mean ”we are slaves” (as Sisyphean said) what tha’ hell this text want prove???

things are polygenetic, rude dude. you think b/c there’s no “smoking gun individual gene” for much of anything, that therefore genes don’t matter – what a dufus! (variant spelling: doofus)

The essential problem here found in a word or expression FREE WILL. First, is necessary conceptualize specifically the adjective ”free” to this semantic context. All or most of abstract adjectives are very internally variable (always, as spectra). What the level of free the free will have or to be??
I agree with Jayman if we desire to search the objective and direct semantic relation between free and will, indeed depend to context (we are free compared than the forces of universe? compared than social mobility? compared than the politically correct?). Like i said above, when you do not have control of your own body or action, the role of genetics run free because don’t exist the marriage between desire and action, action happens when you to be consciously act, but there a degree of conscience. Dogs know that they have a uncontrolable desire to make sexual relations during the ”chronological procreation period”?
The drugs cause mutations (fixed or not, depend of constancy of self abuse) in a brain mechanisms to satisfaction or gratification. There a degrees of self control, self conscience and action (even when you to be seeing impulsive). Reflexive Thinking is not a free will but is a first component that can take away to (higher degree of) free will (this, is limited by your genes).
To say ”don’t have free will” is equally wrong than ”yes, have a total free will”.
The effect of stronger drugs is the same that the higher psychosis attack or somnambulism. When your body to do something who you don’t know. Excessive Alcohol also. You dancing in the table and do a streep tease in the last night and only these morning knowing the shame.

In the face of the unexpected and disappointing failures of GWA studies and previous molecular genetic research methods, Haworth and Plomin argued that the field should return its focus to quantitative genetic studies of families, twins, and adoptees, which have a “bright future.” Thus, they called for a retreat to previous kinship studies in light of the failures of molecular genetic research, never considering the possibility that the critics were right all along that the massive flaws and untenable theoretical assumptions of these methods explain these failures.

Plomin could not name any replicated gene findings in a 2011 publication, and continued to explain these negative results on the basis of “missing heritability.”35 According to Plomin, “The big question now in molecular genetics is how to identify the ‘missing’ heritability; the big question for non-shared environment is how to identify the ‘missing’ non-shared environment.” As critics have argued, both are “missing” because behavioral geneticists have mistakenly interpreted twin studies as providing unequivocal evidence in favor of genetics. Plomin and his colleagues continue to place total faith in twin research, and continue to ignore the implications of other evidence, which includes Plomin’s own carefully performed 1998 longitudinal adoption study that found a non-significant .01 personality test score correlation between birthparents and their 245 adopted-away biological offspring. According to Plomin and his colleagues, this birthparent-biological offspring correlation is “the most powerful adoption design for estimating genetic influence,” which “directly indexes genetic influence.”http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/genewatch/GeneWatchPage.aspx?pageId=384#endnotes

When a non-human individual faces with a hypotetically danger situation ”it” will use ALWAYS its same biological weapons. When a human faces with a hipotetically blablabla… ”he” will have more than one biological weapons, the key of success of human specie, individualized adaptive potentiality.
”No free will” could to be as ” immediate drug effect on a human behavior”, when happen the mismatch of thinking and action, when we are dreaming we do not have choice.

But aren’t you non-White in the same sense that you’re non-Black and non-Chinese?

Without hypodescent, sure.

Interesting word. Critical race theory is useful for something. You and Misdreavus are certainly better off joining what Steve Sailer calls “the flight from white”. Whitey is the cancer of human history, after all.

I suspect that, like David “Undercover Black Man� Mills, you can pass as white or as non-Black.

Probably not…

But then again:

Singer Rihanna says she was bullied at school – for being ‘white’. The raunchy star says she was taunted growing up on the Caribbean island of Barbados because she was fair-skinned. — Singer Rihanna says she was bullied at school – for being ‘white’.

dude, the ability to learn varies by individual – that variance is what selection acts upon (if selection is allowed to:) e.g., let’s take a learned ability, viz., reading. reading behaves as if it’s 70 or 80% inherited (monozygotics reared apart correlate higher than dizoygotics reared together, etc.) that’s crazy- how is a learned behavior heritable? because the brain structure that affects reading is inherited. do you think the brain is the only organ that is not subject to heritability? THAT would be crazy.

not a joke.

it seems very clear to me now that hbders don’t want to or can’t understand the truth.