If Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky are to be believed, our wills are merely the result of what came before. Everything has a prior cause and our actions are inextricably linked to what preceded it and that which preceded that is also governed by what came before and so on until the beginning of time.

Do our choices matter? Paradoxically, yes it still does since our choices also affects what will follow.

This is not to be mistaken for fatalism or an excuse to not make choices, which you will soon realize is in itself a choice.

Why point this out then? Well, Sapolsky seems to be suggesting that giving this idea some thought might lead us to a more humane way of dealing with each other. If your actions do not come from you alone then maybe we can be more forgiving of others when we are "wronged".

The implications are huge and far reaching. The justice system will have to be reconfigured. No one is suggesting we let harmful people free but that perhaps removing

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I am coming to realize that my behaviors as a young child resembled that of cats in ways too numerous to call coincidence.

It is not simply that I was aloof, or even that I hated the idea of needing to work with other people for anything. It is that I would routinely hide in closets, hide under tables, crawl under beds, make little caverns out of the fold-out foam seat portions of the cheap couches and hide in those, hide under blankets --

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An amusing and informative book about Science and the people behind discoveries

If there were one popular science book I would recommend, currently I need go no further than this one.

Not only is it (as has been discussed above), an almost complete history of science, it's an charmingly honest tour of the people and personalities behind scientific discovery, an honest and open look at how science and scientists work (and sometimes, quite frankly, how sometimes those people fail

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