Robert Sapolsky was 14 when he decided there was no such thing as free will. It was late at night, and the realization came all at once: no God, no cosmic plan, no hidden hand steering the world—just biology and chance. “It was this big, empty, indifferent universe,” he remembers. For most teenagers, that kind of thought might fade by morning. For Sapolsky, it stuck.
Today, he’s a Stanford neuroscientist, primatologist, and Pulitzer-winning writer. His latest book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, pushes the claim further than most people dare. Free will, he argues, is an illusion. We don’t choose our choices. Every decision—whether to order coffee or commit a crime—unfolds from a mix of neurons firing, hormones surging, childhoods endured, cultures absorbed, and genes inherited.
He likes to give a simple example: judges ruling on parole. A famous study showed they handed out harsher sentences the longer it had been since they’d eaten. After lunch, parole chances jumped. By the next snack break, they cratered again. It wasn’t the evidence or the arguments—it was blood sugar. “Do not apply for a loan if your banker hasn’t had lunch,” Sapolsky says with a laugh.
But the laughter comes with an edge. If hunger can sway justice, what does that say about crime, punishment, or even morality? Sapolsky insists it means most of what we take for personal responsibility—our successes and failures, our virtues and vices—are products of luck. Poverty, trauma, depression, addiction: none of them are choices. Neither is being born with steady parents, a sturdy brain, and the money to afford therapy.
In a recent conversation on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk podcast, Tyson tried to probe the boundaries. Isn’t there at least some value in the feeling of choice? Sapolsky wouldn’t budge. “No,” he said flatly. The belief in free will, he argued, props up systems of blame and inequality. It tells us it’s okay to punish some people harshly and reward others lavishly—even though nobody chose the starting conditions of their lives.
If Sapolsky is right, the way we run society is upside down. Criminal justice would have to shift from punishment to prevention—protecting people from harm, yes, but without the moral condemnation. Education would stop congratulating winners and shaming strugglers, and instead focus on the uneven playing field everyone is born into. Even success stories would be seen differently. Getting into Harvard or making partner at a law firm would be less proof of grit than evidence of good fortune.
Sapolsky is the first to admit this view is hard to live by. “I’ve thought this way since I was 14,” he says, “but I can only act on it for a few seconds at a time. Someone cuts me off in traffic, and I think: what a jerk. Then I remind myself: they’re just biology, too.” He laughs at his own hypocrisy, but he also sees it as a microcosm of society’s struggle. Every generation, we’ve peeled back blame from conditions once seen as moral failures—epilepsy, schizophrenia, dyslexia, addiction. Each time, understanding has made us more humane.
The idea of a world without free will is both terrifying and liberating. Terrifying, because it strips away the stories we tell ourselves about virtue and choice. Liberating, because it could force us toward compassion, humility, and fairness. As Sapolsky puts it, “Freedom isn’t in choosing—it’s in understanding why you choose.”
And then, of course, comes the hardest part: living like that understanding matters.
