Episode 4: Our Misunderstanding of Free Will - We Have Much Less, and More, Control Than We Think

Join former mayor, municipal manager, professor, and consultant Alex Torpey in the fourth episode of Rethinking.

In this episode, we will explore the concepts of self, free will, and consciousness to help better understand the common denominator of nearly every issue we face today – a fundamental misunderstanding of how our minds work and what leads us to think, believe, and take actions in the way we do. Explore how some millennia old ideas have warped how we govern, and what modern science has started to show us about our own minds and why this is so important to rethinking how we govern.

This is part one of two. After we identify the false assumptions about how we form ideas, have beliefs, and take actions, in the next episode, we will look at how those false assumptions lead to, and currently operate, today’s governance systems and world.

Additional Resources

• Dr. Robert Saplosky, providing an excellent overview filled with very good examples that further flesh out some topics on free will, evolution, and origins and mechanisms of our behavior: https://youtu.be/2bnSY4L3V8s
• Annaka Harris on Consciousness – YouTube: https://youtu.be/vqP5ukwyfp0
• “You don’t have free will, but don’t worry” by Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder – Short overview of the arguments against free will existing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU_e3jh_FY&list=WL&index=2

Select additional resources: 

• David Foster Wallace keynote talk at Kenyon College: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI
• Consciousness further resources 
  • Nour Foundation Panel: https://youtu.be/1KHTbmaKhAM
  • Consciousness, Psychedelics, and Panpsychism | Andrés Gómez Emilsson | Waking Cosmos https://youtu.be/2CV-LUrlC7k
  • Philiop Goff on Panspychism: https://youtu.be/AlCEGigrzPY
  • Galileo’s Error: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43069288-galileo-s-error
  • Thomas Nagle: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-minds/201202/what-is-it-be-bat
  • David Chalmers on various types of consciousness theories PDF: http://www.consc.net/papers/panpsychism.pdf
• Free will further resources 
  • Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU_e3jh_FY&list=WL&index=2
  • Sam Harris and Dan Dennett debate free will: https://youtu.be/sueFi0F8ynE
  • Sam Harris (who has a number of great talks/publications on this topic, with lots of helpful simplified thought experiments, a few of which I reference) Free will: https://youtu.be/pCofmZlC72g
  • Panel on free will from the World Science Festival: https://youtu.be/uIXGxRZk3G4
• Evolutionary biology further resources
  •  7 1/2 lessons about the brain: Lisa Feldman Barrett: https://www.newscientist.com/term/quantum-physics/
  • Stanford University Course (Sapolsky) on Evolutionary Biology: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D
• Parasites: 
  • Overview of some of the types of parasites that change behaviors: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00572/full
• Quantum physics: 
  • https://www.newscientist.com/term/quantum-physics
• Moral/physical cleanliness studies
  • https://www.nature.com/articles/srep10471
  • https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/239314/Schnall,%20Benton%20&%20Harvey%20(2008).pdf?sequence=1
  • Hand Washing Induces a Clean Slate Effect in Moral Judgments: A Pupillometry and Eye-Tracking Study: https://search.proquest.com/sciencejournals/docview/1899560781/E765B90FEE6C4468PQ/3?accountid=13793
  • Washing the guilt away: effects of personal versus vicarious cleansing on guilty feelings and prosocial behavior: https://search.proquest.com/sciencejournals/docview/2292181443/E765B90FEE6C4468PQ/4?accountid=13793
  • Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/313/5792/1451.abstract
• Mary the elephant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_(elephant)
• Split brain studies
  • Brief overview of split brain phenomena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsM1IQ9d2pw
  • Original study: https://educationalgames.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/split-brain/background.html
  • Confabulation specifically: 
    • Snap Judgements, Split Brains, and Strange Lies: Sam Brinson: https://www.sambrinson.com/snap-judgements-split-brains-strange-lies/
    • Understanding Confabulation: An Introduction for Criminal Justice and Mental Health Professionals: https://online.csp.edu/blog/forensic-scholars-today/understanding-confabulation/
    • Confabulation – Views from Neuroscience, Psychiatry, Psychology and Philosophy: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Confabulation/OLhfl0bvhY0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA173&printsec=frontcover
  • One Head, Two Brains – The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/split-brain-research-sperry-gazzaniga/399290/
• Eye Scanning
  • https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Visual_Scanning_Technique
• Pattern recognition
  • An overview from Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/patternicity-finding-meaningful-patterns/
  • Key and Peele skit: https://youtu.be/naleynXS7yo
• Bias in decision making
  • Dan Ariely: Are we in Control of our Decisions? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X68dm92HVI And Predictably Irrational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfcro5iM5vw
  • Barry Schwartz: The Paradox of Choice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM
• Unconscious decision making: 
  • Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain: Nature Nueroscience https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18408715/
  • Investigating the Awareness of Remembering: Perspectives on Psychological science: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26158944/
  • Reading and doing arithmetic nonconsciously: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: https://www.pnas.org/content/109/48/19614
• Emotions
  • Stoicism 
    • Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiM9YcE0LT4
    • The practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37886498-the-practicing-stoic
  • You aren’t at the mercy of your emotions — your brain creates them | Lisa Feldman Barrett at TED https://youtu.be/0gks6ceq4eQ
• Brian plasticity/resiliency 
  •  Brief overview on Brain resiliency/plasticity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWIagHUqD8A
• Financial cognitive biases about percentages 
  • See Dan Ariely links 
• Other:
  • Yuval Noah Harrari: Sapiens, and Homo Deus
  • Robin Hanson: The Elephant in the Brain