Where do I start with this? 

I disagree is a good place to start I guess. I don’t disagree with free will being a myth, more so how that was attempted to be proven. Sometimes we can get worn down by the pure length of a book and extended out examples to prove the point. Plenty of authors use this style of making a point at the beginning of the chapter and bludgeon you to death with supportive research, personal anecdotes, stories to support the message, and disputing counterpoints. The pragmatist in me cannot get past that most books can be summarized into a one-pager with 10 bullet points. 

It’s good and bad to be willing to subject yourself to a lengthy discussion on a clearly biased topic. Bias coming from author trying to prove a point that is inherently obvious. Part of my issue is that every point was riddled with personal anecdotes and opinions on the counterpoints against free will. Its hard to disassociate agenda when there are personal politics, religious, and ethics satire used when discussing a topic. 

Here’s the brief synopsis of this book: free will is a myth because we are biologically hard-wired to decisions. We live with illusion of its up to us. It’s not that I disagree with that sentiment, it’s just the parts that used to support made it less compelling of an argument. For instance, Sapolsky discussed free will in relation to punishment. The central theme is that horrific acts on humans did not deter people from making bad decisions so what is the point? Witch hunts and false indictments have wrongfully convicted people over and over reinforcing this notion that punishment is futile towards correcting behavior. Not bad thoughts, but think to yourself if you are at a stop light and there is no cop around or street cameras, do you make a hard stop? Sapolosky cited several horrific reactions to crime, which in hindsight felt somewhat manipulative writing. How can you argue against someone being ripped apart by horses for attempting to assassinate the evil king of France when the person was knowingly mentally ill? 

The second point is that this is extremely similar to Charles Murray’s Bell Curve. If you are not familiar with Bell Curve, it has become somewhat of a controversial book and serves as a right-wing or libertarian citation resource for public service programs that do not work. The central theme of both books is that free will or overcoming social inertia is statistically improbable. Murray’s case is that the law of averages states that most people stay close to where they start and the programs that look to circumvent end up making it worse. Sapolsky’s case is centered around us at a biological level do have conscious control of thoughts and therefore actions and we should focus there on social constraints. Eventually we default to the hardwired biological decision processes we were born with.

You could argue that the Murray – Sapolsky reach is a stretch. However, I found myself having a similar reaction when reading both. I hate the idea that we have to resign to what we are and there is no changing that. One area that drove me nuts was Sapolsky’s usage of people with leptin resistance being at a disadvantage towards limiting obesity. Leptin resistance is not the reason why people are overweight, it is the decisions we make when we are resistant to leptin that cause us to be overweight. People with leptin resistance bad decisions are compounded which creates more of a necessity to make better choices. 

Living with the idea of free will is a fools errand no one is disputing that. Creating an environment that fosters better decisions is the only way to circumvent that reality. Getting rid of indulgent foods from your pantry improves your odds of not eating those foods. Setting an alarm to get to up to go to the gym improves your odds of going to the gym. My point is that you will eat caloric foods when available and not work out when it is inconvenient. Human nature is wildly predictable and creating safeguards to prevent that is paramount to success. 

To be fair, this was book was not a behavior change book. So me saying I have the solution to lacking free will was not a cheap shot but a framing to coaches that will read this. Coaching is hard, people are messy. We live in the space to support people who cannot or will not. Cannot is easy. Will not is hard. Your job is to get people that are desperate for help with being more consistent and being their ally towards change. If you feel like everything is futile, you are potentially abandoning  people that need you. If the person with the biological free will to make good choices will not help, who will?