Dopa-Money, Bite-Sized (21/25: Free will isn't possible, but freedom is: always do the right thing

Transcript: Because none of us truly gets there the most confident of us are generally the greatest fools and the happiest are often the greatest sadists truth and love are Socratic requiring the humility to listen to others but also the audacity to tell others they're misguided truth and love are basic human virtues to have faith in but they cannot be fully realized blindly they require an always evolving reflective equilibrium between principle and practice to do the right thing your motives must be pure and your eyes must be sharp and you need to talk to each other and always evolve the internal and external are not mutually exclusive you'll never see achieve or own exactly what it the right stuff is even when you do perfect surgery your outcomes will be varied due to factors outside your control ranging from biology to chance to societal disease that continues to grip the patient that said your patients deserve nothing less than the very best fight against their disease because your tools are highly technical you must embody perfectionism however admit that such demands have great personal and family cost and make time and space for yourself and them no data will ever prove that life is worth living or that good things exist nothingness is the origin and destination of our material world but not the prescription for our existence which is now post-material electric fleeting the answer to meaningless uncertain and dark world is not to retreat but to re-engage it with a better version of yourself stop looking at the world through the lens of fault and fix even if patient behavior causes most disease it's not their fault it is a societal disease look at the world as an opportunity to grow and heal look at the brain's anatomy and physiology but also recognize where it came from what regulates it and where it's going that's you no different from your patient except you may not be in control after all even if there is no free will and we are simply circuits set in motion by billions of external forces and only existing for a flicker in time much like billiards on a pool table thinking they're changing their little world but in reality knocked by something bigger and destined to stop the fact that we can see light and feel warmth gives us faith in our ability and need to share truth and love objectively for all its missteps the world has become a better place the past several hundred years there's good reason to have faith in ourselves don't leave or catastrophize: be the solution.



I am not speaking on behalf of my employer or profession.