TLDR: Free will doesn’t actually exist, how we shop + dress is biology, and here’s a dude that says there’s nothing you can do about it.
Unrelated: did you see the Laura Harrier interview in The Cut?
“Controversial opinion, but I feel like we need to go back to gatekeeping.
Everyone is sharing way too much information.”
Her point is about ritualised oversharing, the rising social stigma attached to being a non-transparent gatekeeper + our sense of entitlement to know where everyone found everything. I love a pendulum swing, and if this is one, it feels juicy.
Hello you,
This morning I was sitting IN A SUNBEAM (in London, in March, imagine) catching up on Substacks and was stopped in my tracks by two small lines from two big and very impressive essays:
“Consider who's shaping your decisions, what they might benefit from it.”
“Everywhere I look it seems like someone is selling me my authentic self.”
Ok see you in a bit, sunbeam. I’ll be over here riffling in the bookshelf looking for that thing I read.
Oh here it is.
One of the world's greatest living scientists of human behaviour said something in this book last year that caused an almighty kerfuffle. Sapolsky apparently held off from publishing this for ages because he didn’t want the internet to come for him.
Why? After 40 years of research he’s reached a conclusion that almost all our behaviour is beyond our conscious control. Just like sneezing, or our hearts beating.
“I’m really, really, really trying not to sound like a combative jerk in the book.”
(but)
“We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.”
WHAT THE ACTUAL WHAT NOW? This is very disturbing. Absolving us of responsibility for our actions (and our shopping hauls) feels catastrophic, no?
Or is this a deeply compassionate view of consumer culture that takes away guilt and shame for all that wanting and all that buying that just kind of happens when you live in a hyper-materialistic late-stage capitalist society?
Shopping is biology? Why tho?
We know we think differently - usually less clearly, less rationally - when we’re hungry, stressed, scared or tired.
We know our shopping behaviours and clothing choices are heavily influenced by who and what we’re exposed to, where we live, when we live.
We also know things like the circumstances of our childhoods shape our attitudes in adulthood.
So we can likely appreciate the argument that certain things might be somewhat beyond our control.
But does that mean we have no command over any of our choices?
What we fancy for lunch, what we’d like for our birthday, what we name our kids, how we do our make up? What we write, here, on Substack? It’s all preordained? That’s crazy.
Except no maybe it isn’t, says Sapolsky.
What we experience as a decision to pick up the pen, or buy the shoes, or flick the eyeliner, is apparently preceded by a very powerful jumble of conditioning.
He talks about how the students in his classes that tend to question things, raise their hands and take part in debates are statistically more likely to have grown up in an individualistic culture rather than a collective one.
He talks about an imaginary a group of friends that goes to a biopic movie about an inspiring activist. The next day one applies to join the Peace Corps. One is struck by the cinematography and signs up for a filmmaking course. The others are pissed off they didn't go to the Marvel film instead.
He says all those friends were conditioned to respond as they did, and none of them chose how that film would affect them.
Maybe one had a spike of adrenaline in their system because they were running late or had a near-miss with another car on the drive over. Maybe another was in a new relationship and feeling optimistic and idealistic, awash with love hormone oxytocin. All had different levels of dopamine and serotonin in their brains, different cultural backgrounds, different prejudices.
Bringing it back to shopping (phew): it’s easy to dismiss the folks that get caught in the revolving door of -cores and aesthetics. The Mob Wives, clean girls and Coastal Grandmas (sidebar: why, so often, that qualifier of wife, girl, grandma?). But those forces are strong.
Substack isn’t immune to the forces. See the flurry of pieces on TASTE a few weeks ago.
settled it, I think, with her Bourdieu-leveraging analysis (“Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier”). And crikey, if you haven’t read Tahirah’s Thoughts On Taste then you’re in for a treat.Or seemingly on PERFUME this week…(
called it)Really are we wearing, writing about, and thinking on, things because they just suddenly occur to us, and us alone? Or is everything connected and we are primed to pay attention to things that come into our field of vision?
What I’m interested in is how does the stuff get into our field of vision?
It’s the algorithm again. Of course we choose who we follow, what we search, which platforms we spend time on, when and how often.
But then there is the technology (and brands’ ad-buys) running alongside us.
“You may have had the uncanny experience of talking about an upcoming camping trip with a friend, only to find yourself served with ads for tents on social media later. Your phone didn't record your conversation, even if that's what it feels like. It's just that the collective record of your likes, clicks, searches and shares paints such a detailed picture of your preferences and decision-making patterns that algorithms can predict—often with unsettling accuracy—what you are going to do.” - LA Times interview with Sapolsky about his book, Nov 2023
Does everyone agree with Prof Sapolsky? Nope. His views are seen as deeply extreme. Hence his hesitancy to publish.
But do a lot of experts agree with some of it? Yep.
Other big voices in free will are neuroscientist Sam Harris, and philosopher/cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett. They differ, but seem to agree that while we are heavily, heavily influenced by our surroundings, we do still have the ability to make our own decisions, based on our own values and intentions, and take responsibility for them.
So we do choose. We do think for ourselves.
But living under the algo is making it way harder.
It does I think feel harder than ever to know your own mind and trust your own judgement when we’re exposed to and influenced by so much, by so many, for so long.
We’re not just dealing with peer pressure, or conformity, or assimilation, or keeping up with the Joneses, like we might have been in 1960s American suburbia or during a 1980s British childhood. And we’re not just dealing with groupthink, like happens around boardroom tables up and down the land.
Life under the algorithm (and surveillance capitalism) is a whole different thing.
All of these thinkers raise concerns about the state of individual autonomy and free will. Because our behaviours and choices are being shaped in a million subtle ways, affecting our sense of agency and trust in our own independent thought.
Well honestly I don’t know what to think.
What do you make of this?
I feel like my brain short-circuited about 100 words ago.
Feel sick, wanna get off. Who’s in charge here?
Thanks for reading/see you next time.
beth :)
Want to go a bit deeper?
Robert Sapolsky, Determined: Life Without Free Will
Sam Harris, Free Will
this was interesting, im definitely gonna chew on this for a while. thank you so much for the mention!
All so interesting. I always find this stuff disturbing, as someone who works in an industry, as you do, where you have to be deep in the algorithm and the spaces that 100% have an effect on what we think and do; and also as a mum where I don't want my kids anywhere near this until they are about 18, but there's no avoiding certain aspects, it applies even if they're allowed on bloody netflix. What I do find interesting is the anti-movements... e.g. if conditioning applies from when we are young, those who choose to push against it. It still means the conditioning has had an effect (e.g. my parents were cautious, didn't travel, not active - I'm the opposite on all counts, and always consciously fighting that cautiousness)..I wonder if the same can apply with the algorithm. The people who seek out different information sources from that which they're served...maybe that's where life becomes interesting again.