We should be more receptive to paradigm-shifting ideas

Do we really have free will? Our brains are not wired to accept radical thoughts easily but we must try

- BIJU DOMINIC

What is the most paradigm-shifting idea you have encountered? What idea forced you to relook at all that you believed until then, and subsequently shifted your thinking?

Much new information is now being developed every day. So, it is not surprising that many of us would frequently encounter new ideas. Some of them might be contrarian to our existing beliefs. These occasional encounters with new and varied ideas are a good sign. It shows that we are not stagnant in our learning journey. But a bigger question follows. How comfortable are we in absorbing these new ideas we bump into?

A few months ago, the book Determined: Life Without Free Will by Stanford University neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky was published. Like fellow neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran's The Tell-Tale Brain (2010), it establishes the fact that human behavior is not the outcome of a conscious decision-making process in its lead-up. To quote Sapolsky: "[Behavior] is indeed a mess, a subject involving brain chemistry, hormones, sensory cues, prenatal environment, early experience, genes, both biological and cultural evolution, and ecological pressures, among other things."

The core idea of Sapolsky's book is that human behavior is created by biology, over which one has no control, interacting with an environment over which one has no control either.

In other words, there is no free will. It is just an illusion. The book also examines what society might look like if we were to recognize that free will does not exist.