Doubt and Statistics – Lesson 27

[Speaker B] Rabbi, can I ask one more thing? Yes. If, say, most of humanity, by default, freely gave up—gave up free choice—and thought like a herd, like sheep that think the way the whole herd thinks. There are a few who think differently, or think a little differently, or think more differently, but the default of most of humanity is to do what everyone does in an almost genuinely deterministic way. So if that’s what happens, then in fact you see that most of the population really are sheep. Here and there you have sparks of people who think for themselves.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good. I’ll answer on two levels. First, even the decision to go with the herd is a decision. He could have decided otherwise; he decided to go with the herd.

[Speaker B] Definitely, but that’s a choice you make once, and then you’re already a sheep.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So still, the result is the result of choice-based behavior, and in the end he chooses to go with the herd. That’s the first point. Second point: even if you’re right, which is why I was careful earlier, I was precise earlier and said—the herd picture, that big statistical picture, does not necessarily mean that the world is deterministic. It could also be behavior that comes from free will and still, on the collective level, look like that. What you’re saying is that it could also be otherwise. Right. Obviously, in a world where everyone is duplicated, then once you determine the behavior, everyone will do what you determine. That’s trivial, that’s obvious. I didn’t claim that can’t happen. What I claimed is that it’s not necessary. Because even in a world where every individual has free choice, the big picture could still look quite similar. And that’s the important point. I didn’t claim it’s always like that. I didn’t bring proof that there is free will. I said that this thing is not proof against free will. It could be that even in a world of free choice the big picture would look like this. Obviously in a deterministic world it would look like this; that hardly needs saying, it’s obvious. All I wanted to claim is that it’s not necessary; it could also happen in a world of free choice. So the point is, this collective picture—we all have a very strong tendency to let it mislead us, because we have some feeling that if that’s how it is, then these are marionettes. And that’s why, by the way, the enormous outrage against social-media algorithms—much of it, in my opinion, comes from this. People basically feel that these guys in Silicon Valley—or even the algorithm itself, forget the guys, they already wrote the algorithm and went home, now we’re talking about the algorithm itself—basically control our minds and we become its slaves. But that’s not true. It doesn’t control anyone’s mind. It sets circumstances such that each one of us, when he chooses freely, it may be—not that it’s not true, but it may be untrue, yes?—each one of us who chooses freely, still, collectively it will look like that. None of us is mentally controlled by a Facebook algorithm. That’s an incorrect way of looking at it. Facebook’s algorithm determines our collective behavior. Each one of us has free choice. Now I’ll add two more things, two reservations. Obviously, say Facebook applies some weight so that if I’m in an ordinary state and there’s a product in front of me, then let’s say there’s a fifty percent chance I’ll buy it and a fifty percent chance I won’t, just for the sake of discussion. Now Facebook applies its weights and that turns into sixty percent. Okay? Now then obviously I still have free choice. On the collective level there will be sixty percent who buy and not fifty percent who buy. But something also happens on the individual level. I too, although I have free choice, the side of yes-buying becomes stronger or more attractive for me. Meaning, the likelihood that I’ll buy also increases as an individual. It’s only because of that that on the collective level there are more buyers. On the collective level there are more buyers because something is also happening on the individual plane. On the individual plane, the weights among which I maneuver—and I can overcome any of them, even ninety percent I can overcome, it’ll just be harder for me—but it is definitely an influence that also affects the individual person. When Facebook activates its algorithm, then it will already be harder for me not to buy. I have free choice, I can still overcome it and not buy, but it’ll be harder. And therefore on the collective level there really will be more buyers. So the picture I described earlier is not a complete picture. It’s not true that they control only the collective behavior. Control over collective behavior begins with some different shaping of the circumstances in which the individual operates, and then as a result a change is created on the collective level. But what is true is what I said earlier: that still, on the individual level, we have free choice. And free choice does not mean always choosing between fifty percent and another fifty percent. Even between eighty-twenty, that is free choice. Harder, but it’s in my hands. I can decide to make the effort and go with the twenty percent, with the twenty-percent option and not the eighty percent. That’s why I call such a situation a situation of free choice. Free choice does not mean absolute freedom; rather it means that you are not compelled to do what you do. It’s in your hands. Sometimes it will be very hard for you, fine—like I said earlier about the thief, that if he comes from a difficult home and he’s in financial distress and so on, it’s very hard for him not to steal. But still, if he could have withstood it, then he bears criminal responsibility, so he’ll be judged and found guilty. As for the arguments concerning punishment, they’ll discuss that afterward already—here there are mitigating circumstances. But the responsibility exists, and that’s what I call free choice. Free choice does not mean a choice without influences, a choice in a vacuum. No, we operate within circumstances that press on us and dictate things and do various things to us, and therefore sometimes it may be harder for us to choose one way and sometimes it will be easier. Circumstances affect us, and among other things circumstances shaped by algorithms, but still we have free choice in the sense that the circumstances do not dictate what we do, they only influence what we do. Yes.

[Speaker D] Something interesting happens: specifically in a society with supposedly free choice, the law of large numbers will work more than, say, in a dictatorial society where basically there is one person.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That was my next point. Meaning, up to here that was the first point, that there is indeed an effect on the level of the individual person. But another point—look, regarding—let’s go back to the die, yes? That’s the example I always give for the law of large numbers, or a coin. Let’s talk about a coin. I toss a coin. If the coin is fair, then the odds are fifty-fifty on every toss. And of course on each toss I can’t know what will come out. It’s free, either heads or tails. But if you toss it a million times, then I know that half a million will be heads, half a million will be tails, plus or minus a little. But the larger the number of tosses, the more I converge on the a priori probability, yes, the prior probability, which is fifty percent in the case of a fair coin. Now let’s say someone wants to intervene and change the collective behavior of the tosses. So here, yes, what I described earlier. But I’m not going to talk now about human beings but about a coin. But as far as I’m concerned the coin models a human being for the sake of discussion. What is he supposed to do? He is supposed to create an unfair coin. To distribute its weight in such a way that there is a greater chance it will fall on heads than on tails. Say there is seventy percent for heads and thirty percent for tails. Okay, suppose he succeeds in making the coin that way. Now, on every coin toss, it can still come out heads and it can still come out tails. In that sense each toss is free. It’s deterministic of course, it’s only a parable, but each toss is free in the sense that either of the two results can come out. But clearly, on the collective level, seventy percent of the tosses will fall on heads and thirty percent on tails. And I’ll say more than that: even in the individual toss, it’s true that heads can come out and tails can come out, but there is a seventy percent chance of heads and thirty percent of tails. Meaning, it’s harder for tails to come out even in the individual toss. Same thing as with human beings. But now one more important point. You need something else for the law of large numbers—maybe I forgot and mentioned this too—for the law of large numbers to work, you need independence between the cases, between the trials. When I toss a coin a million times, or toss a million coins, it doesn’t matter right now, each trial has to be independent of the others. If there is dependence between the trials, the law of large numbers won’t work. Let’s say I have a fair coin. So the law of large numbers says that fifty percent of the time it will fall heads and fifty percent tails. If I do a great many tosses, in principle it should come out half heads half tails. But that’s all on the assumption that each toss is independent of all the other tosses. Each time it’s a new game. But if there is dependence between the tosses—for example, once my hand throws the coin this way, and then I get attached to that direction, so I keep sending it more or less in that direction, a little this way a little that way but more or less—then there is dependence between the tosses. And once there is dependence between the tosses, no one is promising you it will come out fifty-fifty. And therefore, surprisingly or ironically, precisely when there is independence between the tosses, that is exactly when you can predict the result in advance. Which is strange. I would have expected that if there is dependence between the tosses, then I have more control over the result, I can dictate it and there is dependence between the tosses, so basically everything will go in a similar direction and then I’ll be able to predict what will happen. But if there is independence and every toss can produce any result I want, then you can’t say anything about what will come out. That’s what I would have expected; if you asked me offhand that’s probably what I would have answered. It turns out reality is the opposite. If there is dependence between the tosses, it’s much harder to predict what will come out. You can, by the way, but the distribution is different; it won’t come out fifty-fifty. But if I know the nature of the dependence, then I can also say something about what will come out. But if there is independence between the tosses, I’ll tell you exactly what will come out: fifty-fifty if you do many tosses. Meaning, precisely when the tosses are not dependent on one another, and in each toss either one of the two possibilities can occur, precisely then I can say with absolute precision what the collective, global result will be. It is precisely the freedom of the individual case that determines the collectivity of the global phenomenon, the large phenomenon. It is precisely because each individual functions independently of other individuals and has free choice. Now I return from coins to human beings. Precisely because each human being has free choice and there is no dependence between one person and another, precisely then I can tell you what the collective outcome will be. If there is dependence between people, it may be that the trend will be more effective because people will drag one another along, but I won’t be able to predict what will come out. The ability to predict what will come out exists precisely when there is independence. And that reinforces even more what I said earlier: the fact that I see a rigid collective conduct that has statistics, that can be predicted in advance, and so on—I said earlier it does not necessarily mean that the picture is deterministic. It can also happen in a situation where every individual has free choice. Or every coin has a completely random toss. Now I, in light of what I’ve just explained, am going one step further. Not only can it happen even when that person has free choice, but it will happen mainly when that person has free choice. Because if there is dependence between human beings, then even if Facebook tilts seventy percent this way and thirty percent that way, if there is one person who chooses in the direction of the thirty percent because he is stronger than the others, more determined, with more backbone, he will drag other people after him if there is dependence. And then in the end the result won’t be seventy-thirty. Maybe it will even be fifty-fifty. Meaning, where there is dependence, you won’t be able to control the result in the same way. You can control the result absolutely precisely when each individual is completely free. When we have absolute freedom, control over us is absolute. That almost sounds like—not almost, it sounds like a logical contradiction. But that’s how it works. It’s a statistical fact. And that reinforces the point even more, and that’s also what I said to my son; when I spoke with my son then, I said to him, listen, not only is it possible that people choose freely, but the fact that you can predict in advance what will happen means they choose freely. Because the fact that the law of large numbers works probably means there is independence. Now regarding Facebook, by the way, that’s not exact. Meaning, because it doesn’t know how to predict what will happen, but of course it can steer them in directions. And when there is dependence sometimes it will work better. Sometimes not, but sometimes it will work better. If enough people go in the direction of the seventy percent, then even people who otherwise would have gone with the thirty percent will be dragged along and will also do the seventy percent, and then it will come out eighty or ninety percent and not seventy. So the advertisement will be more effective. But predict what will happen—you won’t be able to.

[Speaker D] Influence—you can,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] predict—you can’t.

[Speaker D] Facebook’s advantage is that there is dependence to one side, meaning the side that wants, say, to spread something or be influenced by something—the level of dependence it creates, the effect it creates on the environment, is greater than the side that is in part passive, so to speak. As if he can’t not share—what does he do with it? Say a person gets information, he shares it, tells it to his friend, something like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sharing can arouse antagonism in me and it can arouse sympathy in me.

[Speaker D] It’s not certain that it will go to the same place you’re going.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sharing can take you somewhere else.

[Speaker D] Right, but sometimes the two sides are indifference versus engagement, and there the impact is already strong.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not pretending here to analyze all the possible situations. What I am trying to do is point to an interesting phenomenon. This interesting phenomenon says that the ability to predict what will happen increases—or exists precisely when each one of us has free choice. What happens when there are influences? Okay, it can go in many directions. I didn’t mention all of them; I mentioned some. It’s certainly plausible there are other directions too; that’s not important to me. I’m not trying to give you the picture of all the options. Rather, I’m trying to draw your attention to this fact, which is very unintuitive. And then my son comes and says, for them it’s obvious, they laugh, human beings for them are an anthill. They play with them as they wish: I turn one knob, you send the people here; turn another knob, you send them there. So obviously all people are just marionettes. Not true. Meaning, there is something here that is—meaning if before I said it’s not necessary, now I’m already saying it’s almost necessary that it isn’t so. Which of course still isn’t true. If it’s complete determinism, then obviously this will work perfectly. But if it isn’t complete determinism, then precisely total independence will give you the ability to predict well what will happen. So that’s regarding the picture of statistical regularity in human behavior. Now let’s go a little more into an explanation of how this thing works. Here there is the outline that has probably already penetrated to some of you, maybe from reading or hearing me, because I’ve said this more than once and I’ve written it. I’ll describe it briefly because I think it lies at the root of all these phenomena I’m talking about. When we talk about free choice, very often there is, say, when you see for example—you find the gene responsible for violence, okay? If researchers isolate some gene that characterizes violent people, then this is perceived by them and by many others as proof that we don’t have free choice, that the world is deterministic, because your upbringing controls you, your genetics control you, whatever. Environment—nature or nurture—but both of those things control you in some way. But obviously you can never really predict what a person will do even if you have his full genome. All these predictions, or all the correlations they find, are statistical correlations. Meaning, people with such a gene will tend more to behave violently in certain situations than people without this gene. But you can’t say: you have this gene, therefore you will be violent in this situation. Never. Why? Exactly because of that same phenomenon I talked about before: genetics are a kind of weights that can pull me this way, push me that way, but I still can decide what to do with these genetic weights, to act against my genetics. I can. I have the violence gene, but I’ll decide to overcome it and not be violent. That can happen. In the meantime, courts do not exempt a person who was violent even if it is shown that he has the violence gene. Why? Because it’s clear that the violence gene only pushes him to behave violently, but he still could have stood firm and resisted and not been violent. In arguments about punishment they can of course take that into account, but as for responsibility itself, the responsibility exists. That’s what I said earlier. What I basically want to say is that all these influences we talk about—a person born in a religious home usually becomes religious; a person born in a secular home becomes secular—again, broadly speaking, there are broad correlations. A person who has this gene behaves like this, a person who has that gene behaves like that. There are already genes supposedly responsible for faith / belief, stinginess, violence, kindness, whatever you want, you name it. Some of these things are nonsense, some of them are indeed findings people found, but usually the talk about them is exaggerated. But yes, there are such correlations, that’s obvious. The notion that a person who believes in free choice is therefore supposed to predict that genes will have no influence at all on behavior—that is a mistaken notion. A person who believes that human beings have free choice also accepts the findings of genetics. He accepts that genes affect me. He only claims that genes do not determine what we do; they only influence it. I keep coming back to the same conclusion, to the same claim, like the Holy One, blessed be He, with the Egyptians. And therefore if you take a million people with this gene and a million people without this gene, then you’ll discover that in the first million there will be more violent people than in the second million. That’s true. But regarding no specific individual will you be able to point and say: he will behave violently in this situation because he has this gene. That’s not true; that will not happen. But what you will be able to say is that there is a greater chance that he will behave violently. That is true even regarding an individual person. He can overcome it, and there is a greater chance. And therefore when there are many people, the law of large numbers says that the percentage of people who behave that way will follow the probability for the individual person. Yes, that’s the law of large numbers. The probabilities you determine regarding an individual person or an individual coin toss will determine the percentage of results that match that outcome. It will follow the a priori probability distribution. What this actually means is that when we look at a human being in a libertarian picture, in a picture where he has free choice and not in a deterministic picture, then I describe it by way of a parable of some topographical layout. Think of some topographical layout of mountains and valleys and saddles and plains and things like that, hills and so on, different heights, different slopes, yes, some topographical layout. Now if you take a small ball and place it somewhere, the layout can tell you where the ball will end up, right? The layout determines where the ball goes. You can do the calculation and know where the ball will end up, and at what speed too, and everything. Same thing with a stream of water: if you pour water somewhere, it will tell you where it will flow. The layout determines it. If there’s an uphill and a downhill, water goes down, it can’t go up. In quantum theory there is some tiny chance that yes, but never mind; in classical mechanics, no. Okay? So that’s the topographical layout. The determinist’s claim is that a human being is basically a little ball. There is a topographical layout within which he acts; that topographical layout is the collection of circumstances, dictated by genetics, environment, education, upbringing, friends, influences, media, whatever you want. All the influences on human beings, whatever you want, gather them all, draw some topographical map. That map basically says that in every situation the person is in, in which directions he is drawn and from which directions he is repelled. Suppose I’m standing at a certain point on the map. If there is a mountain in this direction, then it will be hard for me to go up there, yes, so I—if I were a little ball—I would not go up there. If there is a valley in that direction, then I would probably roll there; that’s what happens to a little ball. And wherever you place the little ball, the terrain will tell you where it rolls, where it ends up. What happens with human beings? What happens with human beings is that if you place them somewhere on this layout, and here there is a mountain and here there is a valley, it will be harder for the person to climb the mountain than to go into the valley. That is true for human beings just as for little balls: human beings are physical creatures; to climb a mountain you need to expend energy; no human being is exempt from that. The difference between a person and a little ball is that a person can decide to invest that energy and still climb. Even though there is a mountain in this direction and a valley in the other direction, the person can decide: fine, but I want that challenge or that difficulty, and I decide to climb and not roll downward. Now of course this topographical contour is a parable. When I’m in a situation and somebody punched me or provokes me, now for me that is like being at some point on the topographical map. If I went through a certain education and I have such-and-such genes, then my tendency to punch him back might be seventy percent, twenty percent, ten percent, ninety percent, I don’t know—depending on the circumstances that influence me. So the topographical layout basically says like this: in this direction—which is the direction of throwing a punch—I have a valley. It is very easy for me to go in this direction, to punch him back. In the direction of not punching him, there is a mountain. It’s very hard for me to restrain myself and not punch him back, yes? I’m now explaining the parable. And therefore if I’m standing at such a junction—a junction where someone provoked me—and my circumstances are the given circumstances, there is around me some topographical layout that describes the prices I will pay, or the difficulty or ease, for every step I might take. I describe it in the parable by way of a wadi or a mountain or a hill, a steep slope, a gentle slope, a saddle, whatever. Okay, the important point is that even someone who believes in free choice does not deny that we act within a topographical layout. On this point I agree completely with the determinist. The determinist thinks I operate within a topographical layout and, like a little ball, the topographical layout basically determines what I will do. The libertarian does not deny the existence of a topographical layout; he only claims that a person acting within this topographical contour is not a little ball. There is a topographical contour, and the topographical contour tries to pull me there and not let me go there. The difference is that I am not a little ball. It wants not to let me, but I can overcome it and go anyway. And sometimes “go” is by passive omission, yes—it means not hitting back—it doesn’t matter, okay, or positive action, not important. But this parable of the topographical layout shows that the influences on human beings—genetics, environment, education, everything—are certainly agreed to even by the libertarian. They are not the property of the determinist. Therefore all those who show statistical studies in psychology about how this affects that, and genetics and so on, and see in this an indication of determinism, are mistaken. The libertarian also agrees that there are influences on us, and upbringing influences us, and genetics influence us—completely clear. The difference between the libertarian and the determinist is only the question whether the contour influences the person or determines what the person will do. The determinist says the contour determines what you will do, like a little ball. The libertarian says the contour influences what you will do but does not determine it. You can decide to go—yes, to accumulate potential energy and lose other energy—you can decide to do that as a human being and not as a little ball. Okay? And therefore the point is that if I’m at a certain point on this topographical layout, and now one has to predict what I will do, then of course if I were—if I had to predict what a person would do, and suppose I had the whole of this topographical layout in my hands, suppose the whole mental map of this person were spread out before me like a garment, yes, I know everything, with absolute psychological knowledge, just for the sake of discussion, yes—then clearly… if I had to bet, I would bet that he would go to the valley and not to the mountain. Notice, for example, his values can also be part of the topographical layout. Meaning, if the mountain is doing something good, yes, and it’s hard for you to do something good, but you have a strong urge to do good because you were educated that one should be a good person, then in the direction of doing that good deed there simply won’t be a mountain, because your education too is supposed to be built into this topographical map. It includes everything. All right? For the sake of my parable. So when a person stands there and they ask me, tell me, what will he do, I will usually give a prediction that he will go in the direction of the valley, not climb the mountain, right? That’s the higher probability. But of course I may be wrong and he may decide to climb the mountain, because he has free choice. What happens if I place a million people there in the same situation? Each time someone else, and I repeat the experiment all the time. So if, say, the chance of climbing the mountain is twenty percent and eighty percent that I slide into the valley or roll into the valley, then if there are a million people there, although each has free choice, eighty percent of them will go to the valley and twenty percent of them will climb the mountain. Meaning, what happens with a million people? I will use the topographical map and tell you exactly what will happen. And if you take enough people so that the law of large numbers works, then my prediction will be a good prediction. But regarding an individual person, I have no way to predict deterministically. If I had to bet, I would bet that he would go to the valley and not climb the mountain, because that’s the higher probability, but there is never certainty. And so the fascinating phenomenon is that even though every person has free choice, if you give me this topographical layout, I can still give an excellent prediction of what will happen with a million people in the same situation. Not only despite the fact that each one has free choice, but because each one has free choice and there is independence among them, I can give a prediction of what will happen there. I’m simply summarizing what I’ve said until now through this parable of the topographical map. And this basically means that if I do psychological research on human behavior, I too as a libertarian understand that this will probably work. I will be able to find statistical regularities in human behavior even though I’m a libertarian and I think there is free choice—perhaps precisely because of free choice, statistics will work there too. And if I find a connection between frustration and aggression, the libertarian too will agree that there is a connection between frustration and aggression. He will only claim that it is a connection that expresses influence, not determination. It’s not that you can say with certainty what a person will do; you can say almost with certainty what will happen with a million people. That yes, but not about an individual person. Now here there is an important point when we think about psychology. Look, people often discuss whether psychology is a science. Popper, as is well known, said no—at least psychoanalysis, yes, he said no. Fine, nobody really claims psychoanalysis is a science, that’s trivial, but there are many arguments. I also wrote a column about this on the website, and my claim there was that one can speak of statistical psychological laws and see that as a scientific claim that can be subjected to a test of falsification or confirmation. If you have a law that establishes some connection between a gene and behavior, say for the sake of discussion—take a thousand people with this gene, a thousand people without it, test them, put them in the same situation and see what happens with these thousand and what happens with those thousand. And the psychological law is supposed to predict what will happen there, and therefore there are laws in psychology in principle. Often we don’t know them exactly and there are many exceptions, but there are statistical laws in psychology. That’s true. But that does not mean psychology proves that human beings behave deterministically. Absolutely not. More than that: if I had—after all, when you ask psychologists, okay, so why if there are laws in psychology and if it is a science, then why doesn’t it work for the individual person? Why can’t you tell me what each individual person will do? Many psychologists will tell you, and philosophers will tell you, because it’s very complex. I disagree. It’s not because of complexity. I claim you won’t be able to say it even if the whole map with all its complexities is in your hands. Everything is before you, the entire topographical map of the person standing before you, spread out before you like a garment. You have ultimate psychological knowledge, you are the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. You know everything—about the person, about psychology, about everything. Even the Holy One, blessed be He, will not be able to predict with certainty what this person will do. He can predict what a large group of people will do, because He truly has the full psychological map. We don’t, and therefore even in prediction about many people we won’t always succeed. But that is only a difference in how much knowledge we have, how much ability we have to understand the human soul. The Holy One, blessed be He, has absolute ability. But to the extent that you understand the soul, that only tells you what the topographical map is within which this person operates. But once there is a topographical map, the person still has free choice to decide whether to climb the mountain or roll into the valley. And no one can predict that, because it is not determined by the topographical map. On the contrary, it is influenced by the topographical map, but in the final analysis that decision is an independent decision. And you decide whether to climb the mountain or go down into the valley. Therefore, even if we were to finish all psychological research and all psychological knowledge were in our hands, and let’s say there are absolute psychological laws and I know them all, so complexity is no longer relevant—I already know all the complexities, everything, there is no problem, I deal with all the complexities, I have a supercomputer that knows how to do all these calculations to the end—even then I will not be able to predict what an individual person will do in a given situation. I can bet, but I cannot predict. Why? Because after all that topographical map, he still has free choice. And therefore the problem of psychology—why it cannot deal with… Psychology is a science on the level of the behaviors of collectives. Same thing with social psychology. I’m not talking about a collective in the sense that it acts as a collective, but about a set of many people in a given situation, each one separately. I’m not talking now about collective action. That’s social psychology. I’m talking not about social psychology; I’m talking about the psychology of an individual person. Fine? The psychology of an individual person—but when I talk about many human beings in a given situation and each one separately, each one separately arrives at that situation and reacts as he reacts. This is not a collective of people; it is a collection of many individuals. And now I ask what will happen there—as a psychologist, in principle I know how to predict it. And if I don’t know, then more research is needed, but I’ll know. But what an individual person will do—even if I finish all the research and everything is in my hands—I will not be able to predict. And I won’t be able to predict not because of complexity—as I said, suppose I even solved the complexity—but because the map does not dictate the result; it only influences the result. And what dictates the result in the end is the choice, what you decide to do with the map within which you operate. And that is your free decision. But what is very striking here is that in large groups of people, statistics will still work. The map will determine what the picture looks like across a large group of trials or human beings. That yes—that exists also for behaviors of human beings exercising free choice, which is surprising. But it’s a fact: psychology can work in large groups. With individual human beings I am very skeptical about psychology in general. Not even as a science—it doesn’t need to be a science—but in general I have rather limited trust in the effect of psychology on a person. Or in the effect of its discipline on a person. Every person influences another person. But the question is how far the discipline here really gives you tools for improvement. I don’t know; I’m pretty skeptical about that. But on the level of the human collective, on the level of many people, I do think that the laws of psychology teach us a lot about human nature—where “human” means the human species, not the specific person standing before me. In that sense psychology can be a science. When you come to apply it to an individual person, it becomes technology, not science. Because when you try to take the laws of science and apply them to a particular case—like repairing a car according to the laws of mechanics—that already becomes technology. Now with a car it makes no difference, because the laws of physics always work; they are not statistical laws. So in every car, in principle, it will work, and if not, then you simply missed something. Human beings are not cars. There is no technology for the science of psychology—there is no technology. Physics has technology, chemistry has technology, biology has technology. Psychology has no technology. The treatment of a person, of a therapist treating an individual person, should not be seen as a technological application of his scientific knowledge. That’s what I want to say. Okay? It isn’t—because otherwise it should have worked on every person, or at least unless you missed something and it’s too complex, but in principle, if you had the full knowledge, it should have worked on every person. And it doesn’t; it won’t work on every person even if you have the full knowledge. That’s my claim at least. And that does not contradict the fact that at the level of general laws it does work. There are laws of psychology; there is something to learn in psychology. And it can also be tested in the lab, experiments can be done, and these are scientific claims in principle—just on the collective statistical level. It’s like saying: I have a scientific claim that the Egyptians, in such a situation, enslaved the Jewish people. Regarding each Egyptian individually, I don’t know what he’ll do. He may do it, he may not do it. But I can tell you that if there are a million Egyptians, there will be quite a few among them who enslave the Jewish people. That I can tell you. And therefore on the scientific level you can say it; on the technological level, no. Okay? That is basically the meaning of statistics for human behavior.

[Speaker B] Rabbi? Yes. If the Rabbi included in the topographical map also the person’s scale of values, also the things he believes he ought to do?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll be more precise.

[Speaker B] Also the things…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, let me sharpen it a bit.

[Speaker B] Also the things he feels he ought to do—then what is left for free choice?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let me sharpen that for a moment. I’m not putting into the map the values that I choose. I’m putting into the map the values to which I’m already committed. I can still choose to go with other values, or not to go with my own values. But the things that already exist within me are also part of the map, even if I myself chose them and created them. If at the moment they exist and they affect me, then as far as I’m concerned they’re part of the map. But I can still say—as I’ve said more than once—that I don’t choose what is good and what is bad. What is good and what is bad is given. I choose whether to be good or to be bad. And therefore what is good and what is bad is part of the map. My choice whether to go with the good or to go with the bad is really the place of free choice. I spoke about Ilon—yes, what’s his name—Ari Ilon. Ari Ilon with the rabbinic person and the sovereign person; whoever has read it knows, I’ve spoken about this a lot. So there I’m really talking about this mistake. He, Ari Ilon, talks about making a distinction between the rabbinic person and the sovereign person. The rabbinic person is the religious Jew, and the sovereign person is the secular person. And he glorifies the secular person because he is sovereign, he chooses his own values, unlike the rabbinic person, for whom they basically dictate what is good and what is bad and what the values are and what is forbidden and what is permitted. Now, that’s just a categorical nonsense. He’s mistaken at the conceptual level. I’m not even getting yet into the value dispute or the factual dispute. There too I don’t agree with him, but he’s conceptually wrong. Because no person chooses what is good and what is bad, not even a secular person. No secular person chooses that murder is good; he too knows that murder is bad. He chooses to murder despite the fact that it’s bad. Good and bad are given; you don’t choose them. No more than the religious person chooses his religious good and evil. There’s no difference in that basic sense. The only difference is that you didn’t choose to be committed to religious good and evil, only to moral good and evil. But from the standpoint of the logic, the values themselves are not something you choose. You choose whether to respond to them or be committed to them. Right now I’m talking about moral values. There are more subtle things, like capitalism and socialism. There a person really does choose whether to be a capitalist or a socialist. But there he’s really choosing what seems good in his eyes; he’s not choosing whether to be good or bad. The picture I described earlier is a picture that has gray areas. In principle, then, you need to understand that when I said that values are part of the map, I meant those values that already exist within me and are data from my standpoint, and therefore they also affect me. And now I have to decide what to do with all this, including my values, and decide what I’m going to do with it. And that’s the place where free choice comes in.

[Speaker B] So according to the Rabbi’s approach, for example, Socrates’ view won’t work, it won’t hold? In the sense that if you’re convinced of something, you don’t do what you don’t want, and you do what you believe is good—you do good for sure?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the question of weakness of will. I do—yes—I assume, of course, that there are situations of weakness of will. I’m not going to get into that here, but yes, on the website, if anyone wants, you can see there two columns on the issue of weakness of will. I do think there are situations of weakness of will, and a person does not… But that really is already a discussion that goes beyond the framework of this series. Just one last sentence I want to add: this phenomenon of collective behavior, which is very deterministic even though at the individual level there is non-deterministic behavior, also exists in quantum theory. Did I mention this? I don’t even remember anymore. In quantum theory, why is it that in systems, in large bodies, we don’t see quantum phenomena? Why do quantum phenomena exist only at the level of the electron? After all, what is a large body? It’s a great many electrons. So what? Then why is every electron affected by quantum theory, but large bodies move according to Newtonian mechanics? No ball passes through the wall, even though electrons can pass through the wall. Why? It’s the law of large numbers; it’s exactly the same phenomenon. That is, each such particle behaves in a non-deterministic, random way, with one set of statistics or another. But since a ball is a collection of a great many particles, then the law of large numbers basically says that the ball will behave in the way we predict in advance, in a deterministic way. Which is really that it will follow the average of each little particle taken separately. Each little particle by itself won’t necessarily follow its own average; it’ll go here, it’ll go there. But if you take many particles, the behavior of the whole, of the collective of particles, is really the behavior expected in advance, the a priori probability, the average or the expectation. Okay? And therefore the transition from quantum mechanics to classical mechanics is also an example of the phenomenon I talked about today: that very many cases, each one of which by itself is not deterministic, can create a collective that behaves in a completely deterministic way, so that I can predict what will happen there, and everything is as it should be, everything happens the way we know from our everyday lives. It’s exactly the same phenomenon. And so this point is very confusing, but one has to notice: it’s true. And in a great many places we fall into mistakes because we don’t notice this point. The law of large numbers is a cornerstone both in statistics and in our worldview. And it’s the basis of a great many mistakes we make in looking at the world. Yes, like the mistake of seeing the world through the window of Facebook. That causes someone to think that everyone is deterministic—that’s the same mistake. It isn’t true. Okay. We’ll stop here. Any questions or comments?

[Speaker E] Please, yes. If possible—sorry that I’m going back over things that I think you already explained—but to ask: in hindsight, after the law of large numbers, when we saw that seventy percent go this way and thirty percent that way, can’t one say that those who acted in the way that we knew in advance would make up such-and-such a percentage—that this means determinism really does work, but there’s just a different threshold for each and every person? There’s one person who is weak, so obviously he crossed into the category of those we expected in advance. But also those who were more…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll say it again: you can say that if you’re a determinist. Because what you’re really saying is that the person’s choice too is predetermined. If he’s weak, he’ll go down into the valley; if he’s strong, he’ll climb the mountain. And I claim—I’m a libertarian, not a determinist—and therefore I claim that this isn’t true. I have no proof that it isn’t true. It’s not that I’m claiming you’re wrong; I’m only claiming that what I can prove is that you are not necessarily right. Meaning, even if you’re a libertarian, conduct of this kind does not contradict libertarianism. It doesn’t force me to be a determinist.

[Speaker E] Yes, yes, I accept that one hundred percent, I accept that one hundred percent. I’m only asking whether one could also see things in such a way, that it’s only a matter of… everything is a matter of price. But then not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but again—then there really is no responsibility on the Egyptians who were wicked. That’s the Raavad’s difficulty. Because basically, everything is predetermined. I don’t care whether it comes out sixty-forty. But the sixty-forty distribution is also deterministic. It’s just that the stronger sixty percent won’t enslave Israel, and the weaker forty percent will enslave Israel. So the fact that the prediction is not a deterministic prediction but a statistical prediction does not mean there is no determinism here. Obviously the deterministic interpretation can definitely exist here too. That’s clear. I’m only arguing that it isn’t necessary. Okay?

[Speaker F] Rabbi, is the law of large numbers a kind of answer to the question of divine foreknowledge and free choice, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, not as though… why? Why yes? How would you explain—how would you explain that a person has free choice and nevertheless the Holy One, blessed be He, can predict in advance what he will do through the law of large numbers? There are no large numbers here; there is one individual person with one individual act. That’s exactly the difference between chapter 5 and chapter 6. Okay? Another question?

[Speaker G] Yes. At the beginning of the lesson, when you mentioned foreknowledge and free choice at the collective level, you distinguished between two things: that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows what a particular person or a certain society will do, versus His intervening in a particular way Himself. I think you wrote this in the trilogy too. I just didn’t understand the difference between the two situations. It sounds the same. If He knows that something will happen, as opposed to intervening, He also knows it will happen. It’s still knowledge in both cases.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s completely different. Let’s just put it in the simplest possible way. There can be an action that someone else does—I don’t touch it—but I know what will happen there because I understand the processes. Why is that the same thing? Is knowing something the same as causing something?

[Speaker H] For a human being, no, but in the case of the Holy One, blessed be He.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why, in the case of the Holy One, blessed be He, is it the same thing? He knows—the Egyptians have free choice, but He knows what they will do. But that doesn’t mean He causes what they do. It doesn’t have to be so, I’m saying. Not all knowledge is the result of involvement. Obviously when there is involvement, then I also know, because if I’m doing it then I know what will happen. But not all knowledge involves intervention. Every intervention includes knowledge too, but not all knowledge involves intervention. Anyone else?

[Speaker B] Rabbi, Rabbi, this paradox still isn’t clear to me—that it comes out that precisely according to someone who holds by weakness of will and believes in Socrates’ method, that you do what you want, then precisely there it comes out that you have no choice at all. Because basically, if I lay out as a map the scale of values and what you believe in, then you’ll definitely do that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly the difference between chapter 5 and chapter 6. Okay? You’re pulling me back into the issue of weakness of will; it’s hard for me here to lay out the map because it’s a somewhat complicated topic.

[Speaker B] But just on the point of how this works out—the paradox that specifically someone with strength of will comes out with a meaningless will because in essence he’s compelled.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But on that point—that’s the point of weakness of will—it’s not just one specific point; it’s the whole issue of weakness of will. Look on my website; I have two columns there about it.

[Speaker B] No, no, I read them. But I’m saying, the bottom line that supposedly according to Socrates there is no free choice—that’s surprising. He talks about the good, all his dialogues are about the good, and in general the good is forced on you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say that according to Socrates there is no free choice; I don’t know what Socrates said about that. What I’m saying is that the fact that I have weak will basically means that sometimes I do things even though I don’t want to do them. But the fact that I do them is a result of free choice. Therefore I bear responsibility for what I did; it wasn’t caused.

[Speaker B] Now if you disagree—wait—now if…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you disagree with that and you claim that when I don’t do what I want it’s simply because I was weak, then in other words it wasn’t really I who decided not to do it, but rather it was dictated to me. So that means I have no free choice. But precisely situations of weakness of will reflect free choice.

[Speaker B] Right, that’s what’s hard for me, because then it turns out that someone with strength of will has no free choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He has free choice about what to want.

[Speaker B] But once he’s convinced that he has to do X—he’s convinced that he has to take care of his pleasures, that this is the supreme value in his eyes—he’s sure that that’s how it should be and that this is the good that should be done.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He had a choice about which values to champion. But given the values, he has no choice about what to do.

[Speaker B] Meaning the stage of choice would be at the stage of determining values, sort of at the stage of Torah study, as it were.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, exactly. Yes. But in determining values, I’m saying again, that’s something that in a certain sense is very limited, because all in all a person usually does not choose what is good and what is bad. What is good and what is bad are given to us. I choose whether to do it. For example, communism and socialism—or capitalism—there it is true. There I really choose not only whether to fulfill my value, but also what my value is. But it can be translated—it requires some analysis, maybe it’s worth a column, I think. It requires some analysis, because the choice between communism and socialism is really a combination of values plus factual analysis. And the question of what exactly one is choosing when one decides to be a capitalist or a communist is not a simple one. Okay, but that’s not for here.

[Speaker I] Rabbi, but in the context of weakness of will, what the Rabbi said earlier—that the distribution of large publics, for example, is derived from the topographical map—doesn’t that imply that most people choose not to choose? Because I would expect, unlike for example coin tosses, that if most people were choosing and did not have weakness of will, then the topographical map would have no value at all even in determining…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That brings me back again to weakness of will, because what I argued there is that when a person does something bad—bad in his own eyes, I mean, meaning he does something that he himself thinks is not right to do—it’s usually not because he chose to do it, but because he chose not to choose, but rather to be dragged along. If you adopt that assumption, which I agree with, then you’re right.

[Speaker I] And then that basically means that when, say, the Holy One, blessed be He, decrees concerning the Egyptians, He’s basically saying that He is, as it were, determining that most of them will choose not to choose.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because in a large public, in most cases, a great many people choose not to choose—that’s again statistics.

[Speaker I] Yes, only here the moral charge makes it harder to punish them for that, as the Rabbi said in the column. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Anyone else? Thank you very much. Okay, Sabbath peace, goodbye. Thank you very much, thank you very much.