Here is a thought experiment for you. How much praise do you deserve for the good things that have happened in your life? And how much blame do you deserve for the bad? As a scientist who specializes in social genomics — the study of how the interplay of genetics and social environments influences our lives — I argue that much of what happens to us in life is really a matter of luck.
Many types of luck affect our lives: who our parents are; when and where we are born; whether the tornado that passed through our hometown hit our house or not. All of these types of luck are beyond our control. And yet, they shape who we are and what happens to us throughout our lives.
One fundamental example of luck is the set of genes we get from our parents. Everyone starts with a random combination of their parents’ genes that are fixed at conception and remain unchanged from that day forward. In other words, we get our start in life through a genetic lottery in which many outcomes are possible, but only one materializes.
The results of this lottery have a big effect on your life. But they don’t control everything. The relationship between our genes and the shape of our lives is far more complicated than that.
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Our results reliably show that genes seem to influence all of these outcomes. And yet, there is no single gene that makes a person smart, or start a business, or reach for a bottle of wine the moment they get a chance to do so. My team’s research tells us that the real story is more complex and subtle than anyone would have thought just a few years ago.
It turns out that most outcomes are influenced by thousands of genetic variants, each of which has only a tiny effect by itself. But adding up all these tiny effects begins to explain a substantial part of the differences among the people we observed. We call some of these differences — such as whether people go to college or are willing to take risks — genetically complex traits because they are linked to a large number of genes and because the biological function of those genes is often still unknown.
The book is divided into two sections. The first half explains why free will cannot possibly exist and the second half explains the many ways we and the world would be a lot better off losing our faith in the illusion of free will. And points out the many ways we already have over the past few centuries..
First Half….
In short, in very short, the basic point is that, no matter what, there is never a situation where “we” are the uncaused cause of our choices, decisions, or behaviors. This is a deterministic universe and there is always a previous state, many unknown previous causes and “you” are never, at any level, consciously in control of any of it. Start with any “choice” and consider an endless list of things that took place one second before, a minute before, a day, a week, a month, a year before…during your childhood, in your mother’s womb and on and on even before you were even born….things that took place that you didn’t choose, that you had no control over whatsoever that contributed to “you” making that choice. I say “you” because “you” don’t really exist, as Sapolsky explains, “…..all we are is the history of our biology, over which we had no control, and its interaction with environments, over which we also had no control, creating who we are in the moment.” Or as the great philosopher Popeye the Sailor Man said “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam!” Sapolsky would add “…at any given point in time.”
“Free-willers” will tease “I had no choice but to read this book!” Wrong. “You” had a choice, “you” formed an intent… “you” made a decision, “you” developed an opinion, (very important note: you don’t change your mind, your mind is changed) but none of it was FREE. Free of the unknown, unconscious influences and constraints of countless things like genetics, epigenetics, hormones, life experiences….all of which you had no control over. Including…..luck.
Second Half……
Overall, the entire book demonstrates how “you”, the person you have been and now are, was a total crap shoot. The result of millions of crapshoots, actually. Philosopher Galen Strawson coined the phrase “Luck swallows everything.” and luck, pure dumb luck, plays a very big role in this book.
Without any doubt, it is a big reason, a HUGE reason, so many people fight FOR the existence of free will and against the premise of this book, because if what you are, both the good and the bad, wasn’t in your control, it was all just a matter of luck. Successful people really, really hate this part! This means they don’t get to take credit for everything good about themselves, all their talents, achievements, their striking good looks… it’s telling them “You were just born lucky!” That goes over big!
But then, telling an obese person that has struggled with their weight their entire life, mercilessly shamed and blamed, “Hey, you’re not a weak-willed, lazy, shameless glutton. It wasn’t your choice, it’s not your fault after all! Science just discovered you have more of a specific hormone, Leptin, and you have more hormone receptors… or, the bacteria in your gut is partially controlling your appetite and cravings and that is what keeps you ever-hungry.” that, is life-changing.
This is what the second half of the book is about: unjustified, baseless shame and blame causing endless pain and suffering ….as well as a world where undue credit, ego, pride, undue respect and reward make it all a lot worse. All based upon the erroneous belief that we have free will and therefore deserve our circumstances and are morally responsible for our actions. It’s about how while life, the world, may never be more fair, by acknowledging the reality and reimagining our world based on that instead, it can, at the least, be a lot more humane.
Throughout the book, Sapolsky presents the scientific evidence against us having free will that has been piling up exponentially in recent years and gives many examples of human behaviors once thought to be matters of free choice now widely acknowledged to be out of anyone’s control. At this point, AT BEST, the only statement any “compatibilist” could possibly make is “Yes, we do have free will …..except for all the many, many, many ways we must acknowledge we demonstrably don’t.”
That said, Sapolsky takes it even further and explains in great detail why the chances of even that being correct are slim to none. His conclusion, based on decades of research, we have no free will at all….none. Personally, I agree. (For those of you who may care.)
I feel that a paradigm shift is coming…. fast… and the debates and discussions have entered a period of “Free Will Of The Gaps” argumentation much like its “God Of The Gaps” counterpart, with its ever-shrinking gaps, over the last few centuries.
This is not to say that monogamy - even happy, fulfilled monogamy - is impossible, because, in fact, it is altogether within the realm of human possibility. But since it is not natural, it is not easy. Similarly, this is not to say that monogamy isn't desirable, because there is very little connection, if any, between what is natural or easy and what is good.
"I Guess It's Just My Luck, Dude!" - Call That Nigga Suga Buga #Bitch!
Two physicists and an economist recently teamed up to formally model the role of random chance in lifetime success. They created a mathematical model which tracked people over 40 years (all simulated). The people in their model were given differing amounts of talent (defined as the ability to successfully exploit lucky opportunities) and exposed to differing amounts of lucky and unlucky events throughout their (simulated) 40-year career. In the end, although talent had been normally distributed across their population, only a few people ended up being hugely successful. And those people? They weren’t the most talented—they were the ones who had the most lucky breaks. Talent did matter, since people had to have some talent in order to make the most of the opportunities presented to them. But people with little talent and a lot of lucky breaks tended to be much more successful than those who were highly talented but had fewer lucky breaks. And a lot of bad luck could bring down even the most talented people.
Luck, good or bad, builds on itself. Imagine two actresses who both audition for a recurring role on a TV show. They are equally good and neither has prior experience. In the end, the director flips a coin to pick between them. Due to the luck of a coin, one of them is awarded the role, the other one is not. The next time they both go to an audition they again perform equally well, but one of them has this recurring role on her resume. The actress with the prior role lands the job—after all, she has more experience. The next time those two actresses go up against each other, they do not perform equally well. The actress with two jobs under her belt has more practice and starts to outperform the other actress. And so, based on the flip of a coin, one star is born and the other one vanishes into obscurity. Termed “The Matthew Effect,” this phenomenon is named after a parable in the Gospel of Matthew in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
What the Matthew Effect means for us is that an early win can set people up for a lifetime of success, whereas early failures can be hard to come back from. At an extreme, adverse experiences in childhood (abuse, extreme poverty, neglect) can lead to life-long impairments. The more adversity children face, the more likely they are to be developmentally delayed, and to have physical and mental health problems into adulthood (heart disease, depression, diabetes, among others). Children who are lucky enough to be removed from these situations early in life (before age 2) are more likely to catch up with normal development than those who are placed in responsive environments later in life. Of course, random chance is not the only factor that matters—even in adverse environments some children manage tp thrive, prompting very interesting research on resiliency. But, unfortunately, those children are the exception, not the rule. And research suggests that even the children who struggle the worst in an adverse environment could succeed, and even thrive, if given the right opportunity.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-you-and-me/201803/how-luck-shapes-your-relationship-part-2
Here is a thought experiment for you. How much praise do you deserve for the good things that have happened in your life? And how much blame do you deserve for the bad? As a scientist who specializes in social genomics — the study of how the interplay of genetics and social environments influences our lives — I argue that much of what happens to us in life is really a matter of luck.
Many types of luck affect our lives: who our parents are; when and where we are born; whether the tornado that passed through our hometown hit our house or not. All of these types of luck are beyond our control. And yet, they shape who we are and what happens to us throughout our lives.
My long experience studying how life outcomes are affected by the random results of our individual genetic lottery makes me feel humbled by the good things that have happened to me. It also makes me skeptical when others claim that they “deserve” something or when they blame bad fortune on the person unlucky enough to be its victim. Instead, I find that modesty and sympathy for others are the most natural responses to the lessons that modern genetics continues to teach us.
The neuroticism dimension measures how anxious or relaxed someone is, and Wiseman found that the lucky ones were half as anxious as the unlucky ones — that is, “because lucky people tend to be more relaxed than most, they are more likely to notice chance opportunities, even when they are not expecting them.” In one experiment, Wiseman had volunteers count the number of photographs in a newspaper. Lucky subjects were more likely to notice on page two the half-page ad with the message in large bold type: STOP COUNTING—THERE ARE 43 PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS NEWSPAPER.
Wiseman discovered that lucky people also score significantly higher in openness than unlucky people do. “Lucky people are open to new experiences in their lives … They don’t tend to be bound by convention and they like the notion of unpredictability,” he notes. As such, lucky people travel more, encounter novel prospects and welcome unique opportunities.
Some guys have all the luck: Is randomness more important for reproductive success than the possession of "good" traits?
