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Determined

The Science of Life Without Free Will

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

One of the world’s greatest scientists of human behaviour, the bestselling author of Behave, shows that free will does not exist - and sets out the disturbing yet liberating implications of accepting this fact.

What if free will is an illusion? As Robert Sapolsky shows in this masterful account of the science of human behaviour, everything we think and do is caused by the luck of our biology and the influence of our environment, and ultimately both are beyond our control. In a world without free will, we must completely rethink what we mean by choice, responsibility, morality and justice. Sapolsky’s extraordinary book does exactly this, guiding us toward a profoundly fairer, more humane way of living together.

‘A joy to read. It's impossible to recommend this book too highly. Reading it could change your life’ LAURENCE REES

‘Outstanding for its breadth of research, the liveliness of the writing and the depth of humanity it conveys’ Wall Street Journal

‘Moving, absorbing, compassionate' OLIVER BURKEMAN, Observer

©2023 Robert M Sapolsky (P)2023 Penguin Audio Biological Sciences Biology Ethics & Morality Philosophy Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Science Society Thought-Provoking Health Human Brain Mental Health Morality

Critic reviews

[A] highly entertaining account of why … we should and must overcome the infuriating conspiracy of mind that insists we are the authors of our actions. Anyone who believes otherwise needs to read it (Philip Ball)
Wonderfully readable ... humorous and warm and humane (Justin Webb)
All stars
Most relevant
You can hear the lector saying „please see the accompanying pdf for footnote” every 5 seconds. Made me want to rip my brain out and destroyed the experience completely. Great book otherwise, huge fan.

It’s Sapolsky, you know it’s good.

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I really did want to listen to this book, but the phrase “Please see accompanying PDF for a footnote” started to make me doubt my own free will.

I had to return it.

Please see accompanying PDF for a footnote.

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Clear narrative and well referenced science. I hope this is the beginning of a new understanding of human behaviour.

A great read, opens the lid on human behaviour.

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"Determined", for me, implies fixed. Unchangeable, or unavoidable. This book didn't convince me that our choices are predetermined - but it did confirm my existing belief that there's an almost infinite number of variables that have a causal relationship on how we think and act. Cumulatively, these nudge us down an ever-narrowing decision tree, in which many of the decisions may well have already been made for us - by biology, society, culture, economics, physics, and more.

Sapolsky tries to push this argument to the extreme, largely to challenge the flimsy evidence for the notion of free will. He does this a lot in the first half the book - directly attacking the ideas of Daniel Dennett, among others in ways that are both entertaining and (mostly) convincing.

It's almost all interesting, deliberately provocative, and so pretty entertaining stuff - but ultimately felt at least a third longer than it needed to be. (I'm thinking here especially the lengthy sections on American attitudes to religion and the death penalty which didn't so much convince me that free will is a myth, as that Americans are really rather medieval in their thinking - especially around religion. But, of course, they can't really help that, can they?)

Narrator does a decent job - but the constant repetition of "Please see the accompanying PDF for a footnote" gets increasingly jarring the more frequently it occurs - especially when its constantly jolly tone jars with the subject matter, as when it appears directly after a quote from a poem about the Holocaust...

Provocative, if a little long

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This is an excellent and insightful book, written with Robert Sapolsky's characteristic humour and clear communication style. This builds on his prior book, Behave, which I also greatly enjoyed.

The book is read well, but the editors decided not to read the footnotes, instead opting to ask the narrator to say "please see the accompanying PDF for a footnote", which happens a lot as Sapolsky uses footnotes a great deal. I would have preferred the footnotes to be read out properly to have the proper flow of the book.

Another excellent Sapolsky book

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