Determined

Another killer by Sapolsky, a follow-up to Behave. This book, as the title says, is on figuring out if free will really exists. Sapolsky strongly leans towards its absence, with abundant scientific justifications on why he believes that. This book is much more than just talking about whether free will exists or not, it brings together some really exciting topics that seem disjointed, but come together like a puzzle - neuroscience, chaos theory, emergence, and (why not) quantum mechanics and the indetermanacy that it brings along. A strong takeaway for me was the “turtles all the way” perspective in almost any physical phenomenon. There is almost always a reason behind an occurance. He doesn’t just leave you with his opinion of “there’s no free will”. In fact, he elegantly tackles the inevitable follow-up thought - “If there’s no free will, society would go amok. There will be no need for a justice/incarceration system. Anyone can do anything and no one will be held accountable.” I’m not going to spoil everything for you here - but I’ll strong recommend reading his book if thoughts like these intrigue you :)