Michael: A fascinating study looked at over a thousand parole board decisions and tried to find what best predicted a judge's ruling. It wasn't the crime, the remorse, or the prisoner's record. It was how long it had been since the judge's last meal. Kevin: You're kidding. A 65% chance of parole if you catch the judge right after lunch, and close to a zero percent chance if they're hungry? My entire future could depend on someone else's blood sugar? Michael: That's the terrifying and fascinating question at the heart of our book today: Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will by the brilliant Robert M. Sapolsky. And this isn't just a philosopher in an armchair. Sapolsky is a top neuroscientist and primatologist at Stanford, a MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient, who's spent decades living with and studying wild baboons in Kenya to understand the biological roots of our behavior. He comes at this as a hardcore biologist. Kevin: Okay, so he's arguing we're all just biological puppets, and he's got the receipts. Where does he even start to build a case that massive?

Michael: He starts just one second before you make a choice. He leans heavily on a famous series of experiments from the 1980s by a neuroscientist named Benjamin Libet. In the lab, people were told to flick their wrist whenever they felt the urge. The discovery was that the brain shows a burst of activity—a 'readiness potential'—to initiate the movement about half a second before the person reported consciously deciding to do it. Kevin: Hold on. That's a simple finger twitch in a lab. It feels like a huge leap to say that applies to a major life decision, like who to marry or what career to pursue. That’s the classic criticism, right? Michael: It is, and Sapolsky's answer is what makes the book so compelling. He says that moment in the lab is just the very last turtle. His whole argument is that it's "turtles all the way down." What caused that readiness potential in your brain? Well, the sensory cues in the room, the hormone levels in your bloodstream from that morning. Kevin: Okay, and what caused those hormone levels? Michael: The stressful event you had yesterday, or the great night's sleep you got. And what shaped your response to stress? Your childhood. And what shaped your childhood? Your genes, the culture your parents were raised in, the kind of society your ancestors built centuries ago. It's a seamless, unbroken chain of causality. There's no point where a magical, independent 'you' steps in and makes a decision free from all that came before. Kevin: Wow. So when he says we're the sum of our biology and environment, he means it literally. There's no gap for 'us' to exist in. Michael: Exactly. He has this powerful line that's really the core of the book: "we are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment." Kevin: That's a heavy thought. It basically erases the idea of a 'self' that's in the driver's seat. I’m just watching the movie of my life unfold.

Michael: Precisely. And because that idea is so profoundly unsettling, people have spent centuries looking for escape hatches. They're searching for a ghost in the machine, some little spark of freedom that determinism can't touch. A huge part of Determined is Sapolsky methodically visiting each of these supposed hiding places and boarding them up. Kevin: I’m intrigued. What are these supposed get-out-of-jail-free cards for determinism? Michael: Well, the first big one is chaos theory. People hear about the 'butterfly effect'—a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and sets off a tornado in Texas—and they think, "Aha! The world is unpredictable, therefore I have free will!" Kevin: Right, it feels like it introduces a level of possibility. Michael: But Sapolsky clarifies that this is a huge misunderstanding. A chaotic system is still 100% deterministic. Every step follows from the last. Unpredictable does not mean uncaused. Just because you can't predict the weather a month from now doesn't mean the laws of physics took a coffee break. Kevin: That makes sense. The second one must be the big one from physics, right? Quantum mechanics? Michael: You got it. Quantum indeterminacy. This is the idea that at the tiniest subatomic level, things are genuinely random. Particles pop in and out of existence. Some thinkers argue this randomness "bubbles up" and gives our neurons the freedom to make a choice. Kevin: And Sapolsky's take? Michael: He's brutal on this point. First, he says there's almost no evidence that these tiny quantum effects can actually bubble up and affect something as large and complex as a neuron firing. The brain is a warm, wet, noisy place that likely smooths out all that quantum weirdness. But his more important point is this: even if it did, that just makes your decisions random. Kevin: Oh, that's a great point. I don't want my choice of who to marry to be based on a random particle fluctuation. I want it to be my choice, based on my values and feelings. Michael: Exactly! Free will isn't the same as rolling dice in your head. A random action isn't a free action. So that escape hatch is a bust. The last one is the most popular among philosophers: emergence. Kevin: Okay, what's that? Michael: It's the idea that new properties can 'emerge' from complex systems. A single water molecule isn't wet, but put enough of them together, and you get wetness. The argument is that free will or consciousness emerges from the billions of interacting neurons, even if no single neuron is free. Kevin: That sounds plausible. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Michael: It does, but Sapolsky argues an emergent property can't magically defy the rules of its components. A wave is an emergent property of water, but a wave can't decide to be dry or to flow uphill. It's still constrained by the physics of H2O molecules. In the same way, he argues, an emergent 'will' can't be free from the deterministic biology of the neurons that create it.

Kevin: Okay, my head is officially spinning. If he's right, and there's no free will and no escape hatches, what's the point? This is the part that gets really controversial, right? Critics worry that if people believe this, they'll just run amok. It could lead to total nihilism. Michael: This is the most important, and most humane, part of the book. Sapolsky confronts this fear head-on. He says our entire justice system is built on concepts of blame, retribution, and deservingness. But if our actions are determined, then punishing someone for a crime is as logical as punishing a car for having faulty brakes or punishing someone for having a seizure. Kevin: But we can't just let dangerous people walk free. What's the alternative? Michael: This is his radical proposal. He suggests we adopt a "quarantine model," based on public health. If someone has a highly contagious, dangerous disease like Ebola, we quarantine them. We don't do it because we hate them or think they're morally evil. We do it to protect the public. And crucially, we use the least restrictive means necessary for the shortest time possible. Kevin: So you’re saying for a dangerous criminal, the goal isn't revenge, it's public safety. Michael: Exactly. For some, that might mean life in a secure facility. For others, it might mean therapy, medication, or job training. The focus shifts from retribution to risk assessment and prevention. He points to Norway's response to the horrific massacre by Anders Breivik. They gave him the maximum sentence, 21 years, but his prison is designed to be humane, to rehabilitate. They're focused on upholding their own humanity, not on satisfying a thirst for vengeance. Kevin: That's a profound shift in thinking. It moves the conversation from 'you deserve this punishment' to 'you are currently dangerous, and we need to protect society, but we still see you as a human whose behavior was caused by a long chain of events.' It's about fixing the problem, not just enjoying the punishment.

Michael: And that is the ultimate, and most challenging, takeaway from Determined. Sapolsky argues that letting go of the illusion of free will doesn't have to lead to chaos. It should, if we're brave enough, lead to a more just and compassionate world. It forces us to look at the ugly, difficult-to-fix causes of behavior—things like poverty, childhood trauma, brain injuries, and bad genetic luck—instead of just taking the easy route of blaming the individual. Kevin: It's a tough pill to swallow, but the logic is incredibly powerful. It makes you question everything, from how we praise a CEO for their success to how we condemn someone for their failures. You start to see that the person who 'succeeded' and the person who 'failed' might just be the products of a different kind of biological and environmental lottery. Michael: And Sapolsky leaves us with a profound moral conclusion that follows from all this. He writes, and I think this is worth quoting, "There is no justifiable 'deserve.' The only possible moral conclusion is that you are no more entitled to have your needs and desires met than is any other human. That there is no human who is less worthy than you to have their well-being considered." It's a call for radical empathy. Kevin: It really makes you think... if you truly believed this, how would it change the way you look at the person who cuts you off in traffic, or even the way you look at your own achievements? It's a huge mental shift. Michael: A huge shift indeed. We'd love to hear what you all think. Does this idea liberate you or does it terrify you? Let us know what you think on our social channels. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.