Sam Harris
Sam Harris
@samharrisorg·844K subscribers·595 videos

We Really Don’t Have Free Will?: A Conversation with Robert M. Sapolsky (Episode #360)

Posted

March 27, 2024

Likes

53

Comments

9

Search the Record

Indexed

Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.

Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.

Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line

YouTube Description

as posted by the channel

Sam Harris speaks with Robert Sapolsky about the widespread belief in free will. They discuss the limits of intuition, the views of Dan Dennett, complexity and emergence, downward causation, abstraction, epigenetics, predictability, fatalism, Benjamin Libet, the primacy of luck, historical change in attitudes about free will, implications for ethics and criminal justice, the psychological satisfaction of punishing bad people, understanding evil, punishment and reward as tools, meritocracy, the consequences of physical beauty, the logic of reasoning, and other topics.

Robert M. Sapolsky is the author of several works of nonfiction, including A Primate’s Memoir, The Trouble with Testosterone, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and most recently, Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will. His book titled Behave was a New York Times bestseller and named a best book of the year by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.” He and his wife live in San Francisco.

March 27, 2024

SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all fulllength episodes of the podcast at

Subscribe to the YT channel

Follow Making Sense on Twitter

Follow Sam on Facebook

Follow Sam on Instagram

For more information about Sam Harris

Guests & Subjects Covered

We Really Don’t Have Free Will?Robert SapolskyDan DennettBenjamin LibetRobert M SapolskyDetermined A ScienceFree Will HisNew York Times

Sentinel Indexing in Progress

Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.

All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.