I've been thinking about Robert Sapolsky's view that we don't have free will because of our biology. Human decisions and actions are the result of a complex chain of causality involving genes, hormones, neural circuits, and environmental influences. Every behavior can theoretically be traced back to prior causes, leaving no room for autonomous, independent free will.

Do I have control over the causes, that is, can I influence my genes, my hormones, my neural circuits, and my environmental influences? Of these four factors, we can surely control three:

  1. Hormones: there's testosterone, thyroid medication, corticol modifiers, estrogen regulators, etc.
  2. Neural circuits: I can treat irrational fear by progressive exposure. I can train my attention through meditation. I can regulate myself through exercise.
  3. Environmental influences: I understand some people's will is interlocked with their environment. They can't leave their job because they need to sustain their family. They can't move away from an abusive partner because they are economically dependent on them, and so on. But in most circumstances this is the best we can do. We can't design ourselves, but we can design our environments, and the degree of freedom we have is directly correlated with our capacity to design our environment.

Perhaps it's my training as a designer which makes me focus on this particular point, we can't change the people who use our products, we can only adapt the products for the people. In a similar way, we can't change ourselves, but we can change the environment so that it changes us.

Suppose you want to lose weight. You can either declare yourself a victim of your biology or change whatever you can change:

  1. You inject Ozempic (control your hormones).
  2. You regulate your stress which was leading to compulsive eating (neural circuits).
  3. You buy a bike and start using it for short trips (environmental influences).

I suppose Sapolsky's argument here is that this will for losing weight can be traced back to hormonal desire for status and sex. It's turtles all the way down. I think one must demonstrate their own free will in ways which can only appear to be crazy to others. Do things that make no sense. Put a large amount of money in the hand of a drunkard who is sleeping on the street. Take the lollipop out of the mouth of a child and put it in yours. I don't know, all you have to do is demonstrate to yourself that you can will things which make no biological sense. You are not a deterministic biological robot.

Why do I sit down to write these things? Dr. Sapolsky, please explain this to me, for I do not understand myself.