So, it seems that William James was giving a lecture about the nature of life and the universe. Afterward, an old woman came up and said, “Professor James, you have it all wrong.” To which James asked, “How so, madam?” “Things aren’t at all like you said,” she replied. “The world is on the back of a gigantic turtle.” “Hmm.” said James, bemused. “That may be so, but where does that turtle stand?” “On the back of another turtle,” she answered. “But madam,” said James indulgently, “where does that turtle stand?” To which the old woman responded triumphantly: “It’s no use, Professor James. It’s turtles all the way down!”[* — *location: 79* ^ref-13879 --- All of these are circumstances where we recognize that sometimes, biology can impinge on our behavior. This is essentially a nice humane agenda that endorses society’s general views about agency and personal responsibility but reminds you to make exceptions for edge cases: judges should consider mitigating factors in criminals’ upbringing during sentencing; juvenile murderers shouldn’t be executed; the teacher handing out gold stars to the kids who are soaring in learning to read should do something special too for that kid with dyslexia; college admissions officers should consider more than just SAT cutoffs for applicants who have overcome unique challenges. — *location: 134* ^ref-15694 --- Here would be some of the logical implications of that being the case: That there can be no such thing as blame, and that punishment as retribution is indefensible—sure, keep dangerous people from damaging others, but do so as straightforwardly and nonjudgmentally as keeping a car with faulty brakes off the road. — *location: 142* ^ref-34098 >Does the author hope he can change my mind from argument? Probably unfair, he had no choice but to write this! --- people believe in free will when it matters — *location: 153* ^ref-34321 >I believe in free will because it is expedient. Why waste time reading this book if free will didnt exist? Why indeed. --- haven’t believed in free will since adolescence, and it’s been a moral imperative for me to view humans without judgment or the belief that anyone deserves anything special, to live without a capacity for hatred or entitlement. — *location: 207* ^ref-11613 --- Again, my goal isn’t to convince you that there’s no free will; it will suffice if you merely conclude that there’s so much less free will than you thought that you have to change your thinking about some truly important things. — *location: 250* ^ref-3894 >Maybe it is just strange to anthropomorphize human behaviour in the absenceof free will --- Laplace, the eighteenth-/nineteenth-century French polymath (it’s also required that you call him a polymath, as he contributed to mathematics, physics, engineering, astronomy, and philosophy). Laplace provided the canonical claim for all of determinism: If you had a superhuman who knew the location of every particle in the universe at this moment, they’d be able to accurately predict every moment in the future. Moreover, if this superhuman (eventually termed “Laplace’s demon”) could re-create the exact location of every particle at any point in the past, it would lead to a present identical to our current one. The past and future of the universe are already determined. — *location: 300* ^ref-60905 ---