Do we have a choice?

We think we decide our own fate and that we deserve praise for success or punishment for failure. But what if it's all just an illusion? What if all human action is completely determined by what we have inherited, what we have experienced, and the environment in which we grew up? In his provocative and brilliantly written book, neuroscientist and author of the bestseller Behave (2017), Robert M. Sapolsky draws on the latest scientific findings about the brain, consciousness, emotions, genetics, and quantum physics to refute, step by step, the belief that our mind exists outside of biology. Sapolsky gradually discusses the main arguments of the proponents of free will and shows that there is no room for randomness in the sequence of events leading to any of our decisions. But his thesis is not a call to fatalism—quite the opposite. In a world without free will, however, it is necessary to rethink our current approach to choice, responsibility, morality, and justice from the ground up. Thanks to this, we can better understand who we are—and why we act the way we do.