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I don't care who they are, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku, Andrew Huberman or Robert Sapolsky (especially him), I always take what they say with a grain of sa

I don't care who they are, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku, Andrew Huberman or Robert Sapolsky (especially him), I always take what they say with a grain of salt because the lure of the almight dollar corrupts their objectivity and why not? There's nothing wrong with making a buck and the general public needs to have information that is at least grounded in reality. If it's enertaining too they'll pay attention and learn something, which they didn't do in high school.

kylecazar 2y ago
Why especially Sapolsky? Is he selling something (other than his book) that I'm unaware of? I get why you mention the others. AFAIK he's just a biology professor convinced that we don't have free will.
- labrador 2y ago
  Because I watched him progress from a respected professor at Stanford to a self-promoter who sits on Twitter looking for mentions of his name, not that there's anything wrong with that. It's a personal experience for me, so it may not be generally true. I found his lecture on depression in the mid 2010's and it helped me a lot. By 2023, I mentioned on Twitter that I didn't buy his idea that we didn't have free will and a minute later he liked my tweet. I hope he's making good money with his no free will idea. He's out there promoting it enough.
  - cooper_ganglia 2y ago
    He couldn’t help but like your tweet, he had no free will.
  - alecst 2y ago
    I was terrified when you lumped Sapolsky in with those other guys, but if this is the worst you’ve got then I’m breathing out a sigh of relief.
    - labrador 2y ago
      Good! I like him. I'm an American capitalist so I'm not going to critisize a guy for making a buck.
  - dotsam 2y ago
    What makes you think his promotion of the book was particulary motivated by making money rather than any other reason an author might promote their book?
    - labrador 2y ago
      He is either a) extremely passionate about the idea that we have no free will b) loves the paychecks that arrive after appearing on podcasts and selling books c) is compelled to do all these things because he has no free will edit: formating, code blocks don't work anymore?
      - dotsam 2y ago
        Does this come down to the fact that you don't like the topic of his book? As you have said elsewhere that you're not going to criticize someone for wanting to make money.
        labrador 2y ago
        Hacker News put a delay on my response to you because it thought we were arguing so I responded to user afpx. Yes, you're right. I vehemently disagree with him.
      - kiba 2y ago
        I agree with him on the notion that we have no 'free will' to speak of. In the end, we are just physical beings that must operate according to cause and effect, whether we are 'compelled' or not. Sound depressing, but that gives us incredible freedom to investigate causes of human misery and correct them.
  - afpx 2y ago
    His book “Behave” seemed to be well done. He cites everything he claims (I’ve only looked at a few of them, but they seemed like legit studies). I haven’t followed much of his free will argument but it makes sense he’d go down that path because the premise of Behave is that our actions are just the result of many physical processes. One thing that keeps me open-minded about free will is that, yeah my actions may be the result of natural processes, but I also have the ability to reflect upon those actions so that my responses change the next time. But, then again I would probably defend the idea of free will even irrationally. In my opinion even if I don’t have free will I still have to live like I do. Edit: I just googled Behave citations and one of the first things to pop up was someone claiming he has bad sources. But, I didn’t investigate that person’s claims either. So, be skeptical I guess.
    - labrador 2y ago
      I am not a religious person but I experience the Universe as a consciousness that pervades the entirety and contains all the intelligence required for it's operation. I agree with Erwin Schrodinger that "“The total number of minds in the universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings” and I call that singular consciousness God. Our brain does produce consciousness but tunes into it. So you can see why I might vehmently disagree with people like Saplosky who attemt to reduce us to mere machines. How depressing, which is ironic, since Saplosky's Stanford lecture on depression really started me on the road out of my depression.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        Does it really matter if there are many minds or one? That just shifts the question to whether this "universe mind" is fundamentally mechanistic or not.
        labrador 2y ago
        I'm confused by your question. I'm hearing it like "does it matter if there are many gravity wells or just gravity?" because I believe science will once day find consciousness is the 5th fundamental force, perhaps the one the ties the other four together
  - nojvek 2y ago
    The topic about free will is similar to debating “are we in a simulation?” In a perfect simulation, there is absolutely no way to escape it. A simulation is essentially like a virtual machine running some opcodes. There is absolutely no way to escape it unless the programmer is shit at implementing the opcodes with buffer overflows. If we cannot computationally reduce, we have no option than to let the simulation play out. So far our universe is not computationally reducible. I.e we cannot compute where subatomic particles will be faster than letting them actually play out. Whether we have free will or not doesn’t matter. If we cannot computationally reduce, person B cannot compute ahead what person A will do with absolute certainty. To compute the future, we need to simulate every subatomic particle in universe faster than the the natural speed of universe with fewer particles. That itself is impossible. We can approximate, yes! But not absolute certainty. So we have no free will because universe is deterministic. But we also have free will because we need a universe sized computer to know what will happen and the only way to do that is to let the universe play it out. We cannot do that faster than the universe if we are inside the universe. We are in a simulation. But it does not matter because it makes no difference if we are in a simulation or not. God exists, but God also doesn’t exist. If God is non-interfering then it absolutely doesn’t matter.
mikrl 2y ago
>Michio Kaku I read one of his books when I was a teenager and it’s probably why I chose to do physics. However, I follow a very outspoken and accomplished IBM quantum information leader on LinkedIn and she has had harsh words on his recent comments on QIP and just his later career in general. Not sure if many contemporary practitioners take him seriously anymore.
- DavidVoid 2y ago
  Angela Collier (a theoretical physicist) is also pretty harsh on him [1]. The main critique of him is that he happily keeps talking authoritatively and confidently about scientific topics that he has very little knowledge about (e.g., quantum computing). [1] https://youtu.be/wBBnfu8N_J0?t=2339 https://youtu.be/wBBnfu8N_J0?t=2339

kylecazar 2y ago

Why especially Sapolsky? Is he selling something (other than his book) that I'm unaware of? I get why you mention the others. AFAIK he's just a biology professor convinced that we don't have free will.

labrador 2y ago
Because I watched him progress from a respected professor at Stanford to a self-promoter who sits on Twitter looking for mentions of his name, not that there's anything wrong with that. It's a personal experience for me, so it may not be generally true. I found his lecture on depression in the mid 2010's and it helped me a lot. By 2023, I mentioned on Twitter that I didn't buy his idea that we didn't have free will and a minute later he liked my tweet. I hope he's making good money with his no free will idea. He's out there promoting it enough.
- cooper_ganglia 2y ago
  He couldn’t help but like your tweet, he had no free will.
- alecst 2y ago
  I was terrified when you lumped Sapolsky in with those other guys, but if this is the worst you’ve got then I’m breathing out a sigh of relief.
  - labrador 2y ago
    Good! I like him. I'm an American capitalist so I'm not going to critisize a guy for making a buck.
- dotsam 2y ago
  What makes you think his promotion of the book was particulary motivated by making money rather than any other reason an author might promote their book?
  - labrador 2y ago
    He is either a) extremely passionate about the idea that we have no free will b) loves the paychecks that arrive after appearing on podcasts and selling books c) is compelled to do all these things because he has no free will edit: formating, code blocks don't work anymore?
    - dotsam 2y ago
      Does this come down to the fact that you don't like the topic of his book? As you have said elsewhere that you're not going to criticize someone for wanting to make money.
      - labrador 2y ago
        Hacker News put a delay on my response to you because it thought we were arguing so I responded to user afpx. Yes, you're right. I vehemently disagree with him.
    - kiba 2y ago
      I agree with him on the notion that we have no 'free will' to speak of. In the end, we are just physical beings that must operate according to cause and effect, whether we are 'compelled' or not. Sound depressing, but that gives us incredible freedom to investigate causes of human misery and correct them.
- afpx 2y ago
  His book “Behave” seemed to be well done. He cites everything he claims (I’ve only looked at a few of them, but they seemed like legit studies). I haven’t followed much of his free will argument but it makes sense he’d go down that path because the premise of Behave is that our actions are just the result of many physical processes. One thing that keeps me open-minded about free will is that, yeah my actions may be the result of natural processes, but I also have the ability to reflect upon those actions so that my responses change the next time. But, then again I would probably defend the idea of free will even irrationally. In my opinion even if I don’t have free will I still have to live like I do. Edit: I just googled Behave citations and one of the first things to pop up was someone claiming he has bad sources. But, I didn’t investigate that person’s claims either. So, be skeptical I guess.
  - labrador 2y ago
    I am not a religious person but I experience the Universe as a consciousness that pervades the entirety and contains all the intelligence required for it's operation. I agree with Erwin Schrodinger that "“The total number of minds in the universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings” and I call that singular consciousness God. Our brain does produce consciousness but tunes into it. So you can see why I might vehmently disagree with people like Saplosky who attemt to reduce us to mere machines. How depressing, which is ironic, since Saplosky's Stanford lecture on depression really started me on the road out of my depression.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      Does it really matter if there are many minds or one? That just shifts the question to whether this "universe mind" is fundamentally mechanistic or not.
      - labrador 2y ago
        I'm confused by your question. I'm hearing it like "does it matter if there are many gravity wells or just gravity?" because I believe science will once day find consciousness is the 5th fundamental force, perhaps the one the ties the other four together
- nojvek 2y ago
  The topic about free will is similar to debating “are we in a simulation?” In a perfect simulation, there is absolutely no way to escape it. A simulation is essentially like a virtual machine running some opcodes. There is absolutely no way to escape it unless the programmer is shit at implementing the opcodes with buffer overflows. If we cannot computationally reduce, we have no option than to let the simulation play out. So far our universe is not computationally reducible. I.e we cannot compute where subatomic particles will be faster than letting them actually play out. Whether we have free will or not doesn’t matter. If we cannot computationally reduce, person B cannot compute ahead what person A will do with absolute certainty. To compute the future, we need to simulate every subatomic particle in universe faster than the the natural speed of universe with fewer particles. That itself is impossible. We can approximate, yes! But not absolute certainty. So we have no free will because universe is deterministic. But we also have free will because we need a universe sized computer to know what will happen and the only way to do that is to let the universe play it out. We cannot do that faster than the universe if we are inside the universe. We are in a simulation. But it does not matter because it makes no difference if we are in a simulation or not. God exists, but God also doesn’t exist. If God is non-interfering then it absolutely doesn’t matter.

mikrl 2y ago

>Michio Kaku I read one of his books when I was a teenager and it’s probably why I chose to do physics. However, I follow a very outspoken and accomplished IBM quantum information leader on LinkedIn and she has had harsh words on his recent comments on QIP and just his later career in general. Not sure if many contemporary practitioners take him seriously anymore.

DavidVoid 2y ago
Angela Collier (a theoretical physicist) is also pretty harsh on him [1]. The main critique of him is that he happily keeps talking authoritatively and confidently about scientific topics that he has very little knowledge about (e.g., quantum computing). [1] https://youtu.be/wBBnfu8N_J0?t=2339 https://youtu.be/wBBnfu8N_J0?t=2339