> First of all, if you have no free will, then it doesn't matter how you live, or want to live, or try to live, because you aren't in control. Right off the bat

> First of all, if you have no free will, then it doesn't matter how you live, or want to live, or try to live, because you aren't in control. Right off the bat we can stop reading. But more than that, this suggests that you can decide how you live, despite not having free will. So what's the point of free will? Practically speaking there must be no point, so there's no point to this book. I don't get your argument. Of course you can decide how you live, despite there being no free will. It's just the confluence of genetic + environmental factors and life experiences that went into shaping you which determines your decision (and whether or not you ever get to make a decision in the first place). The point Sapolsky is making is not that we can't make choices. It's that each of us makes choices within constraints we never set ourselves, and those constraints determine our choices. And this is important to realize because society is currently structured in a way that assumes we are mostly free agents who bear the ultimate responsibility (whether that results in punishment or reward) for our actions, when that's actually mostly not the case.