I read a sample of Robert M. Sapolsky’s new book Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will on Amazon, and I really don’t see why some people find it “revolutionary”. I find it full of half-baked contradictory claims that don’t hold water even under quick superficial scrutiny like this.

Brains don’t generate behaviors. They #produce motor responses to sensory stimuli that an outside observer then interprets as the behavior of the observed individual in their immediate environment. The observer can also stick electrodes in the brain of the individual and then correlate the observed behavior with the measurements performed on some of the neurons and then conclude that those firings have caused the behavior. However, even if it was possible to replicate the exact sequence of the observed firings of all the neurons, the observed behavior would be different if the “response” of the environment was also not exactly the same as during the measurement.

Determinism alone doesn’t “cause” anything even if there are no such things as “causeless causes”. The current #state of the system is obviously determined by its previous state and the current sensory inputs, so there are at least two separate “determinisms” in play here all the time, and, as an individual existing in its particular environment, I have at least some #control over the unfolding of both, my biology (eating, drinking coffee), and my environment (writing this nonsense)😉.