The joy of punishment is tough for even free will deniers to give up

At long last, I've almost finished reading Robert Sapolsky's book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. Just have the final chapter to go. 

The next to last chapter, "The Joy of Punishment," was both interesting and disturbing. Sapolsky uses history and psychological research to examine how and why we humans find so much satisfaction when a person is punished for something they've done.

He goes into grisly detail about the "drawing and quartering" of Robert-Francois Damiens, who in 1757 stabbed King Louis XV of France with what was essentially a penknife, creating only a superficial wound. 

Nonetheless, Damiens was executed in a public square before a massive crowd that cheered as he was subjected to some horrendous tortures that I won't describe, to avoid bad dreams for anyone reading this.

Much more recently, Sapolsky describes the execution of Timothy McVeigh in 2001, after he killed 168 people and injured 853 after exploding a massive bomb at a federal building in Oklahoma City. This time there was no public execution, just death by lethal injection, which went smoothly.

So we've made some progress in not blatantly celebrating the punishment of a fellow human being. Sapolsky takes comfort in this, since if free will is an illusion, retribution for a crime makes no sense -- only rehabilitation and protecting society from additional criminal acts does.

But Sapolsky is appealingly honest about how difficult it is for even him to give up the joy of punishment. Here's how that chapter ends.

The theme of the second half of this book is this: We've done it before. Over and over, in various domains, we've shown that we can subtract out a belief that actions are freely, willfully chosen, as we've become more knowledgeable, more reflective, more modern.

And the roof has not caved in; society can function without our believing that people with epilepsy are in cahoots with Satan and that mothers of people with schizophrenia caused the disease by hating their child.

But it will be hugely difficult to continue this arc, so much so that I've spent a lot of the last five years procrastinating over this book because it seemed like a waste of time. And because I am endlessly reminded about how far I personally have to go.

As I noted, I've worked with public defenders on various murder trials, teaching juries about the circumstances that produce brains that make horrible decisions. 

I was once asked if I would take on that role working on the case of a White supremacist who, a month after attempting to burn down a mosque, had invaded a synagogue and used an assault rifle to shoot four people, killing one.

"Whoa," I thought, "WTF, I'm supposed to help out with this?"

Members of my family died in Hitler's camps. When I was a kid, our synagogue was arsoned; my father, an architect, rebuilt it, and I had to spend hours holding one end of a tape measure for him amid the scorched acrid ruins while he railed on in a near-altered state about the history of anti-Semitism.

When my wife directed a production of Cabaret, with me assisting, I had to actively force myself to touch the swastika armbands when distributing costumes. Given all that, I'm supposed to help out with this trial?

I said yes -- if I believed any of this shit I've been spouting, I had to. And then I subtly proved to myself how far I still had to go.

On these trials I've worked on, the lawyer has often asked me if I wanted to meet with the defendant, and I've instantly said no -- I would have to admit during my testimony to having done that, and it would compromise my credibility as a teaching witness impartially discussing the brain.

But this time, before I knew it, it was I who asked these attorneys if I could meet with the defendant. Was this because I wanted to figure out what epigenetic changes had occurred in his amygdala, what version of the MAO-beta gene he possessed? Because I wanted to understand his personal case of turtles all the way down? No, I wanted to see close up what the face of evil looked like.

Perhaps when done with the writing, I should read this book.

It will be hard. But we've done it before.

Comments

[um]

having a given "stand point" were one stands and from where one has a [restricted] view, a "view-point", it is impossible to change, whatever thoughts and feelings are related to that point.

One might try to suppress it, but that will certainly fail and cause probably more missery.

If one changes that stand- view point for another and if in that place the feelings do not belong, it is impossible to have them.

The change from one point to another is not within the reach of many ... as history books and consultation rooms of psychiatrist, priests etc make clear.

So the writer can write about determinism, lack of free will but he does not believe what he writes and his actions are the proof thereof.

After all we are MADE to believe that we have at least free will and that we have "knowledge" of "good and bad" we are dualistic and live in such world ..unless one dies in that world.

[Sant64]

"So we've made some progress in not blatantly celebrating the punishment of a fellow human being. Sapolsky takes comfort in this, since if free will is an illusion, retribution for a crime makes no sense -- only rehabilitation and protecting society from additional criminal acts does."

As I suspected and predicted, at the heart of the no-free willies' philosophy is an extreme liberal bias against a society of laws.

Criminal penalties "make no sense." California embraced this nonsense and passed a law where anyone can shoplift under $1000 and get off scot-free. The result? Stores now have to lock up everything from toothpaste to dental floss, gangs of thieves terrorize shopping malls. Lots of stores just give up and close down, and take their business to a friendlier state.

And then there are the Soros-funded DAs who subscribe to this philosophy, countermanding existing laws and statutes to let criminals serve little to no jail time.

The citizens and the police in affected areas have low morale. People don't even bother reporting crimes, the the police don't even bother arresting criminals.

And more criminals on the street means more innocent people getting killed.

But who cares about all that if you're white and live in a rich white neighborhood. The message of no free will needs to be carried to the inner cities. Someone needs to talk sense to the innocent people in these cities and let them know they need to stop complaining about crime -- the criminals robbing and murdering them have no free will, and are thus blameless, and what they need is not "retribution" ie jail, but love and understanding.

My sarcasm aside, once again the author of this blog argues in the manner of extreme oversimplification. Studies do show that increased incarceration doesn't necessarily add up to a decrease in crime. But that apparent fact is world's away from the notion that locking a criminal up is just mindless "retribution," and that society would be better served if the jails were emptied and everyone just got counseling.

[Hi]

Every human has their own personal storehouse of guilt. It makes us feel better when we can transfer our own guilt to someone who has seemingly committed even worse crimes. And that’s why we are almost addicted to the persecution of the “baddies”. It gives us opportunity to transfer our own guilt and project error on the world outside of us.

This inevitably leads to the cycle of more suffering, punishment, guilt, and self loathing.

Very sad.

The only remedy is radical forgiveness and love.

An empty mind is a peaceful mind indeed.

[Sant64]

If criminals can't help but be criminals because they have zero free will, then prison is not the answer!

That argument has a familiar ring to it. Where have I heard it before?

Ah, I heard it from HG Wells, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Alexander Graham Bell. They were all robust supporters of eugenics.

The premise of Sapolsky's hard determinist argument is no different from that of the hardline social Darwinists of the 1930s. Inferior people can't help themselves, so it would be cruel to punish them, so the most sensible course is to weed them out.

Actually, the arguments are not quite the same. The Social Darwinists are actually more rational and moral than the Sapolskyites.

Why? Because the Sapolskyities hold that separating the criminals from society is just an exercise of the "joy of punishment." No, these retrograde humans have to be talked to, reasoned with, shown empathy, and above all given freedom to be among us. How dare anyone put these innocents behind bars! They can't help themselves. They have no free will! Their criminal acts are merely an accident of the Godless universe. So give them talk therapy. Give them drugs, money, housing, and the Sam Harris app. This will make them solid citizens.

Some will object that this project of benign tolerance is merely an unproven theory, and thus unsound. They forget that we are in the age of progressive theory. Progressive theory always works even when it produces apparent failure. As Kirpal said, time factor is a necessity.

And so, disregarding the obvious, we must open the prisons, we must abolish gas-powered vehicles, we must outlaw gas-powered stoves, we must give our children the option to employ drugs and surgery to change their gender, we must dispense with our racist national borders, we must weaponize our law enforcement to make sure democracy does what we want it to, we must abolish the 1st and 2nd Amendments, More to come.

But above all, we need to honor our fellow no-free-will meat monkeys who drew the short straw of life and, of no fault of their own, took to a career of theft and violence. These are not criminals; nay, they are victims. It is we who deserve disapprobation for putting these innocent folk in prisons, purely out of our wanton, sadistic, joy of punishment.

[Spence Tepper]

You could say that determinism is a form of justification for bad behavior. Just like the divine right of kings.Or the enslavement of the untouchables.

Free will is the actual hope for rehabilitation, and how we use it determines whether we grow our freedom or become more addicted and enslaved to things and other people.

It is this amazing awakening to the fact that within ourselves in this moment right now, we are entirely free, and our enslavement is only the product of our attachment and ignorance. Understanding this, hope for our own emancipation arises. And along with it, joy.

We are confronted, then with a choice we are entirely free to make. The choice of what to believe. The choice we make determines our actions and the result of those actions determines whether we are emancipated, in stages, from our own imprisonment, or further chained down.

The greatest happiness comes from this journey, when we see real progress, and is far superior to the temporary satisfaction of any addiction, even the addiction to do harm to others, even harm to their sacred beliefs.