Don't See a Judge Before Lunch

Daniel Kahneman’s bestseller “Thinking, Fast and Slow” analyzes the way we process information, and shows how much of our thinking is outside our conscious control. One example he gives is a study of judges in Israel that revealed that 65 percent of requests for parole were granted after meals, dropping steadily to zero until just before the judges’ “next feeding.”

We think we have free will, we think we choose our actions freely. So how do you explain the judges’ actions? Judges are trained to put aside their personal prejudices and biases, and yet they clearly can’t overcome the most basic cognitive biases of all, those rooted in our physiology.

Dr. Kahneman’s book is only one of a stream of new books that question the basis of our belief in free will. For a review of some of these books, see “The Amygdala Made Me Do It,” by James Atlas. Atlas summarizes:

These books possess a unifying theme: The choices we make in day-to-day life are prompted by impulses lodged deep within the nervous system. Not only are we not masters of our fate; we are captives of biological determinism. Once we enter the portals of the strange neuronal world known as the brain, we discover that — to put the matter plainly — we have no idea what we’re doing.