In 2012, Sam Harris lectured at Cal Tech and led a demonstration he believed proves that we do not have free will. Although, his demonstration proves the opposite – that free will exists, and our minds and lives are simply the result of how we freely choose to program ourselves.

First, he claims that the brain determines what you’re going to do before you become consciously aware that you want to do that thing. However, he’s basing this on the fact that in certain studies, parts of the brain light up before a person becomes conscious of their decision. But seeing parts of the brain light up doesn’t indicate a specific decision. These studies did not predict what the person chose based on their brain activity. The fact that our neurology fires before we make a conscious decision says nothing about the specifics of that decision being made before we become aware of it. Even while seeing a participant’s brain light up, researchers had no clue what decision was made. Who is to say the neural activity is simply firing up the brain in preparation for making a decision? One cannot assume the brain lighting up means the decision has already been made.

Next, Harris tells the audience to choose any city they want. He states that this will be the “freest decision they’ve ever made in their lives,” and that they can “choose from every city in the world” and he’s simply asking the audience to “pick one.”

His statements are misleading from the start. But when everyone has picked a city, he then says everyone picked the wrong city because there are plenty of cities that never occurred to them to pick, which he claims demonstrates that free will does not exist.

This is not a demonstration of the absence of free will. Not being able to think of a city you’ve never heard of is not caused by the absence of free will. It’s actually an incredibly powerful demonstration of the consequences of not exercising free will.

Not being able to think of a city you’ve never heard of or one that never came to mind that you know exists demonstrates that your options in life are limited based on what you have chosen to do with your free will. Your options are limited based on what you have chosen to study, learn, and pursue in life. In other words, the inability to recall every city you’ve ever heard of, and the inability to think of all the cities you’ve never heard of, simply demonstrates that a person has exercised their free will to NOT study and memorize the names of all the cities in the world.

The truth is that we all have the free will to study every city in the world, but where each person chooses to put their attention is where their awareness and experience will be limited.

Sam Harris is confused, and he may be intentionally altering the definition of free will to prove his point.

Free will is not the ability to have unrestricted access to manmade data without having studied that information. At best, Harris merely demonstrates that most people are not well-read or well-studied in the area of worldwide cities.

Harris could have run the same demonstration by asking everyone to think of an organ in the body, and then claim the fact that nobody thought of the interstitium means free will doesn’t exist.

Instead, Harris proved what happens when people do not exercise free will – they become limited. But you always have the option to exercise your free will to attain knowledge, personal growth, and anything else you desire.

You have the free will to allow your neural pathways to die.

You have the free will to continue to engage and reinforce your existing neural pathways.

You have the free will to expand your awareness and create new neural pathways.

You have the free will to sit on the couch and do nothing with your life.

The fact that an audience full of people have never chosen to study every city in the world is perhaps the best demonstration of, and argument for the existence of free will and how most people aren’t interested in the topic of worldwide cities.

They all chose not to learn the names of every city in the world or retain the names of cities they’ve heard of in passing. They also chose not to reinforce the neural pathways related to the cities they’ve heard of, but didn’t think to consider during this exercise. This is a perfect demonstration of free will because every single person in that audience could have, at some point in their lives, chosen to study all the cities in the world.

However, again, free will has nothing to do with a person’s ability to recall or memorize information. Even if every single person in that audience dedicated their lives to memorizing the names of every city in the world, it’s unlikely that any would be able to memorize and recall all of them at will.

They would, at best, only recall the names of the cities that are fresh in their mind from recent study or discussion.

And that’s exactly how free will works.

We are always free to choose anything in our lives. And wherever we place our attention is what will be present in our minds and lives.

Choose wisely.