You have free will.

Stanford University wants you to think the opposite.

I am taking the holiday weekend off, going to ride some nice MTB trails at high altitude above Lake Tahoe. Please enjoy your weekend and do something fun outdoors.

This article has been contributed by my correspondent from the San Francisco Bay Area.

There is No Room for Free Will – World According to Stanford

While reading Stanford Magazine, I noticed the cover article with the inspiring headline, ‘There’s No Room for Free Will.’ Today, we’ll cover why this may explain everything wrong with today’s political left and how it has led to the catastrophe that is San Francisco.

What is Free Will?

Free Will is not a radical right-wing concept that was developed in America to piss off liberals.  The idea has a long intellectual and philosophical history.  The concept of free will has been a central topic in philosophy, theology, and the human sciences for millennia. The idea of free will deals with the extent to which individuals have control over their actions and decisions.  This concept has deep implications for ethics, justice, and personal responsibility.  And specifically, it is the implications of free will in regard to personal responsibility, that tend to piss off modern liberals.

Ancient Philosophy: The concept of free will began to take shape in ancient philosophy. The Greeks discussed fate (moira) and necessity (ananke) but also introduced the notion of human agency and moral responsibility. Plato (c. 428–348 BCE) hinted at the idea of free will in his discussions on the soul's capacity to make choices.  In other words, at least 2,500 years ago, humans had figured out the crazy idea that we can make choices, and those choices have consequences.

Stoicism and Epicureanism: Stoic philosophers like Epictetus (c. 50–135 CE) acknowledged the determinism of the cosmos but argued for the individual's capacity to assent to or reject external events, suggesting a kind of psychological freedom. Epicurus (341–270 BCE) introduced the concept of 'atomic swerve' (clinamen), suggesting that atoms occasionally swerve unpredictably, which was used to argue for the randomness that is necessary for free will. This acknowledges that there are external circumstances that affect our lives, but we still have the psychological capacity to decide how we react to them and what actions we take. 

Enlightenment and Modern Philosophy: The Enlightenment saw a flourishing debate around free will, with philosophers like Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) arguing for the necessity of free will for moral responsibility. Kant posited that free will is a postulate of practical reason, essential for the moral law's application. More specifically, Kant’s perspective has significant implications for a well-functioning society.  This is where we start angering the modern liberal left, whose animating theory explains that all outcomes are purely a function of social constructs.  Let’s look at the three cornerstone implications of free will from Kant’s perspective.

• Moral Responsibility: Individuals are morally accountable for their actions only if they are free to choose them. Without free will, the concept of moral duty would be meaningless because people would not be capable of acting out of a sense of duty.

• Justice and Punishment: The justice system presupposes free will in holding individuals accountable for their actions. For Kant, the fairness of punishment hinges on the idea that the individual freely chooses to commit a wrongful act.

• Moral Improvement: The possibility of moral growth and self-improvement relies on the capacity to make free choices. Individuals can strive to align their actions more closely with morality, a process that assumes the ability to choose differently.

Nietzsche Starts Undermining Free Will and Morality.  Nietzsche (1844-1900) is best known for believing that morality is relative and there is no absolute truth. Nietzsche's critique of morality extends into his views on free will, suggesting our decisions are influenced more by unconscious drives and social conditions than by an autonomous self. He argues that the concept of free will is a construct used to assign responsibility and guilt within a moral framework, which he sees as artificial.  In other words, morality only exists to control us, and we should break that control.  That has led to many other bad thinking and has supported many bad policies.

Why Might Acknowledging Free Will Undermine the Left?

The Left holds a strong skepticism towards the notion of autonomy and free will. Broadly, the left believes that social, economic, cultural, and racial environments determine behavior and outcomes. As a result, we need a larger government and more laws in order to restructure all aspects of society to flatten outcomes.  When we rob a store and pop the clerk, it is because our race or social standing held us back and not because we chose to do something immoral and criminal.  

Robbing the Store and Killing the Clerk Because Society…

This can also be extended to newer morally questionable phenomena as recent academic writings on pedophilia being acceptable.  If we have no free will, there is no morality.  If there is no morality, everything is acceptable, and we can empty the prisons and protect pedophiles. Interestingly, this has also gotten embedded into Google’s latest release of its AI Model Gemini, which defends pedophiles.

But we digress and need to return to another West Coast beacon of leftism – namely Stanford…

What Does Stanford’s Foremost Free Will Researcher Have to Say?

While ‘old-school’ humans like Kant were pursuing the ‘truth,’ newer Stanford intellectuals wanted to roll the clock back to pre-BCE or at least to Nietzsche’s amoral world.  Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery, has written a new book called ‘Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.’ 

The book has a similar-sounding title to Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America’ and shares the same general idea.  Essentially, our environments, and not us, determine what we do.

The core idea in Sapolsky’s book is ‘that none of us should face retribution for our actions—or be unduly celebrated for our heroics—because we are not responsible for what we do.’

Sapolsky argues that free will is an illusion and that our actions are determined by a lifetime of factors, including genetics, environment, and past experiences. ​Sapolsky's belief in the absence of free will is rooted in his own personal experiences and a lifelong interest in the topic, dating back to his undergraduate years at Harvard. ​One may wonder what kind of MK-Ultra event happened to him to get his bearings so distorted.  Fortunately, the episode is described in detail in the Stanford Alumni Magazine article.

For Sapolsky, the answer has seemed obvious since he was 13. He’d grown up in an Orthodox Jewish home, complete with two refrigerators and two kitchen sinks to keep kosher. But his own religious beliefs came crashing down after he read biblical commentary on a passage in Leviticus that restricts a disabled man from the priesthood. Sapolsky wore leg braces for part of his childhood, and this stricture sent him searching for an explanation from a rabbi, who answered by analogy: Much like you wouldn’t sacrifice a lamb with a blemish on its lip, you wouldn’t present God with a priest likewise blemished. The answer struck Sapolsky as unfathomably unfair, precipitating a crisis in his young mind. “One night at 2 o’clock, I suddenly woke up and said, ‘Oh, I get it. There’s no such thing as God,’ and then I paused a few seconds, and I said, ‘and there’s no free will,’ and I paused, and I said, ‘and this is a vast, indifferent, empty universe,’” he says. “And suddenly everything fell into place.”

In other words, he got pissed off at God because of a mean Rabbi.  In his mind, he responded by killing God and, while he was at it, decided to kill free will and, a bit later on in his career, he also killed the concept of morality.

In his book, Sapolsky argues that our decisions are influenced by a multitude of factors, including hormones, brain receptors, emotional state, sleep patterns, brain development, stress levels, genetics, and cultural background. ​He believes that shifting away from retribution and punishment towards medical and psychological treatment and prevention is a more effective approach to addressing harmful behavior.

Sapolsky has testified as a witness in murder trials, explaining to juries that individuals with traumatic life experiences cannot be judged by the same standards of premeditation and intent as others. ​ Fortunately, in 11 out of 13 cases, the jury has disregarded his ridiculous claims.

The summary of the book on Amazon makes fantastical claims: ‘Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world.’  This is clearly not true, as we will explore in the next section on San Francisco.

How Does This Explain the Decline of San Francisco?

The upside of the story of San Francisco is that everyone finally agrees that the city has imploded.  Much of the blame can be placed on the concept that there is no free will.

Map of Homeless Encampments in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco

Current View On Larkin in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco

For the past decade, all government policy in San Francisco has centered around the concept of social justice, which preaches that all human outcomes are the function of race and the environment.  As a result, the policies are directed at compensating for the effects of race and environment while placing no responsibility on individuals for their behavior or outcomes.  This, of course, leads to an environment where no personal accountability is expected, and chaos ensues.  In examining these tangible consequences in San Francisco, we can clearly demonstrate that Sapolsky is wrong.

Crime Increase Dramatically When Punishments are Removed

The policy decision to not prosecute shoplifting of goods valued at less than $950 in San Francisco, and more broadly in California, stems from the passage of Proposition 47 in 2014. Proposition 47, formally known as the "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act." The Act reclassified certain offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. This reclassification included shoplifting, where the value of the stolen property does not exceed $950.  Even though most stores in San Francisco stopped reporting shoplifting to the police, the official rate for shoplifting increased by 40% between 2012 and 2022.  In reality, the rates have exploded to a degree that over half of all retail stores in San Francisco have had to close as they cannot operate profitability in an environment where the product walks out the door every day.

Group of Women Running out of CVS without Paying (Corner of Van Ness Avenue and Jackson Street)

The core tenant of the Act was that shoplifting was a crime of necessity and people should not be punished for it.  After the passage of the Act, criminal gangs moved in to recruit people to steal large volumes of products to resell them on the Internet.  Clearly, the Act created a high incentive to commit crimes as there were no repercussions.  People of free will reacted and went on a crime spree because they could.

Homelessness Explodes as Living on the Streets Is Supported

San Francisco has always had a marginal homeless problem.  However, it had not previously been catastrophic.  Legal frameworks in San Francisco, influenced by the Martin v. Boise decision by the 9th Circuit Court, stipulated that cities cannot prosecute homeless individuals for sleeping on the streets if there is insufficient shelter available.  Additionally, homeless individuals cannot be prevented from sitting, lying, or sleeping on public property, and property owned by homeless individuals strewn along the streets cannot be touched.  Essentially, in this framework, the responsibility for securing housing was shifted from the individual to the state.  And if that housing was not provided, a homeless person could stake a claim to public property in the center of a city that once had attracted tourists from all over the world.  By removing personal responsibility, homelessness skyrocketed.  If there are no repercussions for sleeping in the streets and using drugs, there will be more people doing it.

Drug Use Skyrockets as Free Crack Pipes Are Handed Out

San Francisco's approach to drug use emphasizes harm reduction over prevention and treatment. Specifically, the harm reduction programs have included handing out needles and crack pipes and encouraging the use of drugs in a group setting.  Additionally, there have been efforts to decriminalize and destigmatize drug use. It is not shocking that this has not worked.

The Role of Free Will in Shaping Policies

The assumption that individuals lack free will can influence policy in ways that catastrophically perpetuate the problems they aim to solve. Policies that overemphasize the deterministic nature of human behavior risk neglecting the importance of personal responsibility and the potential for change. If we want normality to return to San Francisco, we must recognize the importance of free will, morality, and personal responsibility.

Art for today: Walking, watercolor, 9x12 in. Available art here.