Only very few books make a profound impact on your life, this is one such thought-provoking book. In this book, neuroscientist Sam Harris explores how your decision-making model is fine-tuned by your genes, upbringing and life experience most of which you have no control over. Through a couple of experiments, he shows how the decision is actually made in your unconscious mind before you consciously make it. The basic idea is “we do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises.”
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Figure 1 — Free will Front Cover (Source)
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What it implies is that we cannot take credit for who we are today. If you are a law-abiding citizen today it is just because you are lucky. If you had identical genes, life experience, and identical brain in an identical state as a serial killer, you too will commit murders just like him. At the end of the day, we all are nothing more than biochemical puppets.
Though his hypothesis is highly controversial which needs further studies to back it up, this book makes you feel more empathetic towards others. All the grudges you have on people who wronged you, have no meaning, once you realize if you were in their shoes, you too would have acted in exactly the same way.
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