 And then when students are here, you should put donuts or candy on the table. Yes, probably. There's a guy named Ganon who has free chips and like right here and he has like a full on tent above his thing. And I'm like, that's smart. That's smart. He always has people coming up. Again, project, let's chat. Personal hobby, just have to talk about whatever anyone wants to talk about for five minutes. Sounds like you're cool with it. He's good. I'm Ty, nice to meet you. Eric Green. Eric Green, we are actually pretty good friends for the cameras. And I've been to your house a couple of times, you've got a brilliant family. Thank you. What do you want to talk about? Well, I want to talk about what we both want to talk about. Free will. Free will? Free will is a happy topic. Yes. Okay. Free will, what about free will are we talking about? I'm convinced it's an illusion. That there's no such thing as free will. Right. You don't mind if we talk about it for five minutes? Sounds good. If we go over, that's totally fine, but I'm not here to waste your time. Anyway, so free will doesn't exist. What do you mean by free will and how confident are you that it doesn't exist? Probably good to define. Are you able as a human to make any decision on your own of your own free will? Or is it deterministic? You have free will in that definition. Would you mind redefining it? Sure. Sure. Are you able to? What is free will? If you look at, you have two buttons, a red and a green. I got a red and a green button. Free will would be the ability to choose which button to push. Okay. Just to decide. The ability to choose is free will? Yeah. Do we have the ability to choose? Right. Do we have the ability? I think we have an illusion that we have the ability, but we don't have the ability. The only reason I would pick button, what I say green and blue, the only reason I would pick green is because of some neuron that's firing that is making me think, Oh, let me push the green, or I might even go, Oh, I don't want to push the green because I just had green salsa on my tacos today, so I'm going to push the blue. Can I throw something at you? I want to get a better idea of what you mean by free will. Are you saying free will is, in a sense, as you're calling it, Being able to spontaneously come to a choice or make a decision that's not influenced with anything in your past or background or upbringing or anything like that? Okay. Is that fair? Yeah. Okay. In the event that I agree with you, in the event that we can both agree that everything that we choose is based on something that's happened to our past or some biochemical process that we may not even be aware of, Is there a possibility that that thing may not actually be free will? We can both agree to call something free will, but it may not actually be free will. Could there potentially be something else that is actually free will that might actually exist? I suppose if you believe in a soul, that would be the best explanation, I think. I could throw out another popular concept of free will. Sure. If I were to sit at this table and talk to you and have a good time with you like I am right now, That's me exercising my will to speak with you. Yeah. Now, two things could happen. One, you know, we can have her finish her talk and I can get up and walk away exercising my free will. Right. Or someone who's like sitting by who likes Apple stock. I don't know. Some crazy guy who invests in Apple. An uninnovated company of the year, right? Right. Just decides to pick me up and drag me away from the table. In both cases, I leave the table. Right. But in one case, my free will has clearly been violated. Right. And here I think we're just using a term. This is a different term. Yeah. Like my ability to exercise my will is being act on by an external force. Yeah. And it's no longer a free will. Yeah. That's a very different conversation. It's a very different thing. I think where I would frame this is if we could roll time back to before either this guy pulled you off the table or you decided to leave out of your own volition. Yeah. My statement would be it doesn't matter if you roll it back in time. The same thing's always going to happen. Sure. Like a VHS tape? Yeah. Like everything's already been pre-recorded? Well, I hesitate to say pre-recorded. Or how do I put it? It's very hard due to the machinations of the machine that is reality. Right. For anything that is unprescribed or non-naturalistic to occur spontaneously or randomly. Or truly randomly. Okay. I'm not sure if that's free will, but I can also agree with you that probably something like that may not exist. Yeah. But I'm not sure if that has any relationship to the free will. Is there a possibility of that? I mean that might be free will, but I'm not convinced yet. Yeah. I'm convinced 100% that that is free will. Like what would you say is your confidence level on that actually being free will? Maybe that's the better discussion. Yeah. I think we're bouncing around a little bit. Rephrase what you're thinking. I'm wondering what actually, how confident are you that the thing that is a spontaneous choice is in fact free will? Like we can agree, even if we agreed and call that free will, like how would you say that's a necessary and sufficient definition for free will? For calling what free will? The spontaneous choice. Yeah. I guess I'm saying that spontaneous choice seems like it's a free will. Okay. But it's really just biology. Okay. Right? Yeah. I think people call that free will and it makes sense to call it free will because you have agency. Sure. You know, the worst, I think the doomsday version of telling everybody in the world we don't have free will is that everyone's just going to, well, who cares? I mean get a gun out and just go shoot people. It doesn't matter. Okay. I don't have free will and blah, blah, blah. But really that's not what it is. It's just understanding our biology I think is important and if we could find out that you actually don't actually make these choices in your mind. These choices are actually being made for you by your biology. Sure. It's still you. You know, you have agency and it's still you and it's still be a good person. Okay. Don't, you know, go shoot people. I think in terms of science it's so much more important to understand what it means then to pretend that we have this thing called free will. Okay. And to blame it because, and forgive me if I'm going. No, no, no. I think this is totally fine. I think we've come to the agreement that there's no such thing as a spontaneous choice. Things seem to be based on everything and I'm fine with you. Yeah. I think as far as whether or not that exists, I think we're both in agreement that it doesn't. Okay. And I'm fine with that. Yeah. I think there's pretty good, there's a reasonable amount. It sounds like you're absolute. It's also sound like. I mean, it's one of those things where I don't see any science. Same here. For it. Yeah. I don't think it's been demonstrated yet. Yeah. You alluded to it. If someone, you know, if someone pointed out, you know, somewhere in science like, oh, this thing. Right. We can't see it with our microscope right now. But I found it detecting this. I think some people even have studied free won't. Free won't? Yeah. That's interesting. If you hook up a MRI or fMRI to the brain and you ask someone to push button A or button B. Yeah. You know, there are. Yeah. There's patterns in place before. Before you even admit that you've made your decision. Yeah. The brain already knows what it's going to do. Brain's really, really cool. Yeah. And it's a fascinating thing. And I'm agree. I think we're on agreement. Yeah. I think we also have a reasonable amount of evidence to come to that conclusion as well. I'm just saying also, and I think you're on par with me. If it was a popular alternative definition for free will that seemed to point to something that might actually exist. We'd be able to say, okay, well, this definition of free will exists. Yeah. But this definition doesn't seem to have any basis for it. So. Yeah. Conversation as far as that is good. Yeah. Mind if I push it to a different weird area? Oh, yeah. Are people under the definition where we live in a deterministic universe still culpable for bad things that they do? Yes. And I think that's where a lot of the importance is in this topic is, yeah, if somebody murders someone just because their biology did it and they didn't do it, doesn't mean we shouldn't lock them up, right? You know, you still have responsibility. Okay. And I think the importance there is the way we treat other people is influencing other people. So, you know, if we never locked people up for doing bad things, people are more likely to do bad things because there's no disincentive for it. Okay. So you don't have that free will, but you're still influenced by things outside. Is there anything that I could have done that was based on my environment that I'm not responsible for if it would hurt another person or impaired the good, the well-being of another person? Could I ever be forced into a situation where I do something that harms someone well-being but the fault is the environment that I'm in and not necessarily me as an Asian? Yeah, I think mental illness. Oh, okay. And I think, and I'm a neuroscientist here, but it's my understanding that some very, very bad people have, it's been discovered that scanning their brains has found tumors and different things that have caused behaviors. Sure. I forget the guy's name that actually donated his body and his suicide letter. Oh, yeah, he shot a lot of people. I know who you were talking about. We'll have to edit this back and insert in what that is and make it look like we've sent it. I'll put a little picture there. Max, I don't want to promote the guy, but yeah. It was a criminal who did some terrible things, but he donated his body to science to see what was wrong with his mind. Yeah, because he knew. He knew he was not making these decisions and it turned out they found a whopping tumor and it was pushing on that part of the brain that scientists had determined it. This makes sense. This is understandable. I did it. So in that case, yeah, I mean, should you lock someone up if they were still alive after they did it? Yes, but if we know enough about biology and we can go in there and pull that tumor out, I mean, are we curing them? Are we taking a part of their body away and they're no longer them? Are we removing the external force that's causing them not to be able to act freely? Yes. It sounds like this is a blend of the two that I was discussing. That's interesting. And calling it an external force is kind of weird when it's in your body. Well, I mean, like... Well, you're right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an unneeded, you know, people. Well, maybe. I mean, we might learn so much about the brain eventually that we can, you know, remove parts of the brain to create people that are more docile or, you know... So this is purely for fun. It's a bit of a tangent. But I'm thinking, like, is it possible that the concepts of free will that we brought up, one where it's a spontaneous choice, the other one where it's a violation of, like, or a susceptible target to a violation through external forces, is there a middle ground there where free will may actually exist like a combination of the two? And if that's the case, since we could both agree that you could... If I violate my free will by, like, having someone dragging me out of here, that's something that might actually exist. Whereas with the spontaneous choice doesn't exist whatsoever. Like, I can agree that it's always based on something. It seems like an ideal. If it's something that's actually in the middle, could it have an aspect to it that actually doesn't exist? And does that seem like that could be a possibility? You know, I hate to rule anything out, but, you know, I don't see any evidence for that. Like, the guy who was shooting and he had the tumor that was growing in, like, I feel like there's something that's violating my free will. I can't really explain it. I would make my body to science. They find it. There's this giant tumor in his brain that's, like, affecting his decision-making processes, his chemical balances. That's an external force that's acting on his free will. We might be onto something here. Maybe some more study off to the fact. But, like, there could be grounds for saying, as much as we had said before, like, yes, everything that you make a choice is deterministic on your brain chemistry. But if there's an external force in your brain chemistry, that's also a violation of something. Sure. But it gets weird, though, because we are talking about the brain. They were born with that brain. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, then it just gets down to what is morally good to do to someone's brain. And I think in his case, it sounds like it would have improved his quality of life. And certainly the quality of life of the people he ended. So, yeah. But I see that on the far left. Sure, sure, sure. Where you were talking about the spectrum. Yeah, it's like a spectrum. Yeah. But I don't see something in the middle that's not known. I guess you're saying not known in the sense we don't know of it. We don't know about it, yeah. And that could be. Yeah. But we could be, like, getting closer to something. Yeah. But I think admitting, and a lot of people have trouble admitting that free will is illusion, because, you know, I've talked to artists before that, you know, people that are very passionate, artistic people, and they're like, no, there's no way I have free will. Right. I mean, I can draw. Sure. Yeah, unfortunately, I think your brain chemistry is doing all that. And then, you know, you were going to paint that, regardless of what you think you thought before you were about to start. But I think the more we, the more comfortable we are admitting. Okay. That it's, that it is an illusion. The more science can go that direction to discover. Can we now get one more cool thing? Okay. Yeah. We've got 10, 11 moments or so. You had mentioned, I think there's a concept of self that you want to talk about with you. Yeah. Because it sounded like, as you said, like the painter, the painter says, hey, I painted a lot of things and your response was something I came to. Well, that's not you painting it. That's your brain chemistry. Right. Who's the your? Who's the, hang on, let me, David is, I'm just going to respond to him and tell him. He thought we were at the algorithm. I'm going to tell him. The person you're talking to is not the immersion property of brain chemistry. Who is that your? So that's, now we're talking about self and talking about, of course, I don't really go down consciousness and all that. But yeah, I think that's a whole another. Okay. Okay. But the self, yeah, it's interesting. I think, you know, I think it's something we kind of create or invent to kind of group together all of these pieces. Who's the we? Yeah. It's something that we construct. But like, what is doing the construction? Right. I think consciousness really is the, the, the, the bit of, you know, consciousness is that they're, I forget who says it, but there's something like it to be. You know, there's something like it to be me. That's consciousness. Something like it to be me. There's something like it to be me. Okay. It's like, if you had my consciousness. Yes. You woke up. You would think you were me. Right. There is, that is, and I think that's just a collaboration of all of this, all of the biology inside of you. And then we, you know, as humans and as humans with, with language, I think we've created kind of like this person sitting in a chair with, you know, looking behind the eyes, kind of controlling things. Sure. And that's really just. It's like a way for us to make a pattern to explain the phenomenon of our existence. Yes. Just a person in a chair. Yeah. Like someone behind our eyeballs exploring the world. Right. Like that must be us because nothing else kind of really makes sense. It's how we, like we look at a car, there's a person inside driving it. Right. Look at a plane, someone driving it. Yeah. It's very analogous to. Yeah. It's easy to interpret. Yeah. Right. So I think in itself, it's certainly an interesting. But is that accurate? Like couldn't we just say, no, you actually are your body. Like. Yeah. But. And your brain's a part of your body. Where is the, where's the you? Where's the you? Yeah. Where do you put it? So like, you know, would you have an issue if someone said like, well, if you cut off my arm, I can still have the same concept. So I must not be in my arm. Okay. I like that. People have lost their legs. Sure. Still have that. People lost the lower half of the bodies. Yeah. People had like parts in the paralyzed, still had it. Mm-hmm. But when you mess with the brain. Yeah. That's when you start to affect the person specifically. You can mess with the heart. You could definitely mess with the heart, but you could replace the heart. Sure. Take it out, put it in a fake heart. Dick Cheney. Yeah. You know, vice president cyborg of the, of the century. True. Still kicking around. Okay. And we've lost, I think, enough body parts from that mess with that. Yeah. You'll affect the person as they see themselves and how they express themselves to other people. So if we took that brain. I would say at least we're definitely the major function of our central nervous system located in our cranium. Sure. But that still, does that make it to you? I would, wouldn't you say there's a pretty good evidence for that? I mean, it's the closest thing you can get, but I mean, I suppose if you. Like if I chunked out a huge part of your brain and kept everything else intact. Yeah. There's no more you in there anymore. Right. Right? I mean, there's no more activity, but you still have the brain physically. It needs to be like, it's an, I would say it's an emergent property of an intact brain to an extent. If you put that brain in someone else's body, say we could. Oh, that'd be cool. Can't wait for that day. Are you, are you still you? Yeah, that's, there's, that's the body ludonarrative. Right, yeah. There's some great science books for that. And I suppose in some ways, if you cut off the arm and got it replaced. Bio, what do you call it? Augmentation. Yeah. You know, you, you, you replace someone's arm. Then, I mean, yeah, there's still you, but boy, they're going to have a different life. Sure. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. They're still, they're still them. They use it, they use it in the brain somewhere. Yeah, I think so. I'm not sure where. And of course that's where you get in. You start taking pieces of the brain out. Yes. Are you taking away parts of the you? So this is fascinating. Anything have ever told you about split brain patients? I think we need to talk about this. Guy. Yeah. To stop seizures with, there's like a little band that connects both hands together. Cuts them. Yeah. Yeah. And then all of a sudden you have these two independent sections of the brain. Right. That start at the same place, but quickly diverge to completely different personalities. Right. Different needs, different wants. And they express themselves differently because they. But there's a consolidation that occurs too. So. Weird. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's a process where they start split brain and then they end up wrecking the cell again. Hi. They actually help each other reason out things. This is like, so they'll cover up one eye which only one brain can see out of. And they'll be like, show them a hammer and they'll tell that side of the brain, draw what you see in front of you. And one side doesn't see it. And they're like, I can't draw anything. But the hand's drawing a hammer because the other brain can see it. And they're like, why'd you draw a hammer? And so now both brains have to work with each other. They have different choices too. If they're dressing themselves, one will reach for a button-up shirt and the other one goes for the graphic t-shirt. It's fascinating. And it's, in that sense, like if you believe in a soul, like how many souls does that person have? Like a split brain patient? Is that two different souls? Right. They've had questions. They've asked a split brain patient, do you believe in God? Thumbs up? No, I don't. Like, it's been like, do you love your wife? Yes, I love my wife very much. Of course. How dare you ask me that question? The verbal and the, yeah. Like once that has a sense of humor, the other side's very serious about the love. So very interesting. So in the context of our conversation, does that mean that there are two us? Does it? In that person? Yeah. But does that mean we have two us in all of us? Yeah. They're merged together. Well, it's a really fascinating thing. I can't wait to learn more about the brain. I like this. Yeah. Well, hey. Wasn't that great? Just lovely to meet you. Lovely to meet you too. That's cool. You guys covered Ghost in the Shell, you covered the easiest paradox, you covered the ordinated part and the self. Yeah. I think I more or less agree with you on the fact that Spondane shows you don't exist. And your base is foreign to lifestyle. I don't have enough evidence to support it. And you weren't absolute. So I'm like, great. Is there anything else? We had to agree. That's done. We already figured out. Here's some alternative ideas of free will. What do you think about those? I never thought about free will, definition of a spectrum before. And I think I learned a lot from that conversation. Because now it feels like it may not just be one or the other. There could be something or a merged thing in between. Another whole argument to it is instead of being...