Freedom-as-authorship is a mirage; freedom-as-capacity is real. If “free will” means being the ultimate, uncaused author of your choices, that collapses under causation and physics. No one selects their genes, early environment, or the moment-to-moment arisings of thought. If “free will” means you can act from your own reasons, reflect, learn, and change in response to evidence and incentives, then you have meaningful freedom every day.

Does free will presumes the idea that I am separate from the universe? #asknostr

I am the architect of my own destruction. And yet all the signals and instructions came from my environment.

If you inject nostriches with testosterone, they will all of a sudden madly zap a lot more. If you inject a bunch of Buddhist monks with testosterone, they will madly run around doing a lot more random acts of kindness. Fact. View quoted note →

“Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control.” The illusion of free will: You can’t control what thought will come next. You only witness it? True or nah? #asknostr

A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings. You are a biochemical puppet. You are not making the choice, you are the choice. You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do. You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm. Sam Harris