Very well written and condescending! I hope you’re well and have learned the power of choice in 2023.

Chris mentioned that the word “you” is used alot. That is probably one of the reasons the article it is so popular. Because Katie’s writing exploits our intrinsic egotism. (This article Was #1 on my google search for “geodesic stay in motion Newton”. rather than say, something on XXX.LANL.GOV or similar physics sites. Impressive! ) I was surprised that it was/is a feel-good self help ‘puff piece’ and not particularly scientific. But Katie did write a good article, and I should give her credit where it is due. I shouldn’t have been surprised that it had high pagerank, all evidence supports the idea that clickbait is super-effective, specially if it is has corporate linkage upstream, as I suspect is happening here. (I could be wrong, though.) The author and her gorgeous K9 (or gorgeous author and her K9 depending on who you ask) really have the practical aspects of life figured out, it seems. Working for Nike, she gets a cut of their (possibly child-slave-labor borne) profits. As a fashion model, she gets validated in terms of physical beauty, which is a huge part of what it means to be a happy woman in this day and age. She also has a background in studying humans and philosophy-both (in particular philosophy) oft disregarded topic that really compliments rather than competes with hard science. In my mind, a lack of nuances in philosophy is why human civilization is so lopsided and problematic. Part of that is that there are no real agreed upon standards for social sciences.. which could be because in a way they are actually “harder to study” than the hard sciences because of the noisy data and possibly fundamental principles. (Recently I read that between 0.005% to 0.014% of men are transgender, for instance. HUGE error bars; roughly 33%! Contrast that with the age of the universe, or its average temperature (13.4 +/- 0.3 bil years, 2.7 +/- 0.2) degrees Kelvin respectively.)

In any case, I found a few of Katie’s claims contentious, namely
“As a conscious being, you can choose…” and
“you have the ultimate say in what happens in your life. You have the capability to do anything you want, and you should”…

I really wish you (Kate) were correct about these ideas! 🙂 But as it turns out non-obviously, “not so much.” Choice and control are popular myths that have been largely disproven by modern neuroscience. While we *feel* like we have agency and choices as to how to behave given our inputs at any given time, this actually is just a function of not having a decent understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Google “free will neuroscience” if you are interested in the topic. (summarizing poorly; fMRIs + computers know what your choices or decisions will be before you yourself actually make a decision, effectively simulating how your mechanistic brain will act in given scenarios. Sure, you behave in manner A rather than B. But you didn’t have much say.

Your behavior is 100% governed by the laws of chemistry. You don’t get to pick among different possible actions or desires/emotions- although it does feel like we do have a choice. The chemical reaction that we call “life” on this planet is complex enough to support subjectivity and Qualia. However, the subjective nature of your experience and your perception of contingency in this universe are in the class of “useful illusions” or “gifts of evolution.” The word “if” doesn’t mean that the future has yet to be written, it merely means we have no clue what is going to happen. I can say “if the Earth falls into the sun tomorrow” or “if I stub my toe on the way to the kitchen” – and though I can assign different probabilities of each to occur. But the clockwork nature of our universe has already determined the outcome on both my trajectory as well as our planets. [the caveat of quantum uncertainty “averages out”, and is not a good argument against philosophical determinism, as some philosophers of bygone eras attempted to argue.)

I can’t get down on Katie for writing the article, though. Remember; she had no choice in the matter.

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