I choose to ignore personal responsibility.

I am a scientist. Speaking in very broad terms, I study how the brain influences behavior and vice versa. It's a branch of psychology typically called 'behavioral neuroscience.' The goal of psychology is to be able to describe, explain, predict, and control behavior. Surely some would argue, but to be able to make cause and effect statements about the behavior of an organism we have to assume that behavior has a natural cause and is not the result of the 'free will' which resides mysteriously tucked away somewhere deep inside all of us. Yes, I said 'us.' If we are going to pursue a science of human behavior, we cannot explain behavior as the result of free will. This is a hard pill to swallow, even for those of us who are studying it. We don't chose anything. Someone might say, "what made you study the brain, surely it was your choice." No, it wasn't. I didn't choose to study the brain. There had to have been an utterly complex arrangment of factors and circumstances that led me here. Behavior is so complex that I think the notion of free will is simply a cloaked way of saying "it's too hard to understand it." Free will is the lazy way out. Strict determinism throws notions of morality and personal responsibility out the window. Is this not dangerous? Take the actions of a serial killer. If they didn't choose to kill 30 people, then how can they be punished for it? My answer is simple, it's true that they didn't choose to do it, but they need to removed from society to protect others.

The buzz lately in the poker world has been about a couple of ultra successful teenage poker players got busted cheating in tournaments. As these events transpired some bloggers have noted that these kids are not taking responsibility for their own actions. As if it would be all better if ZeeJustin said, "you know what, my fault, I did it just because I chose to do it." To me that's a lazy way of thinking. To truly understand why this happened we need to discover the circumstances. What reinforcement was he getting from cheating? What maintained this behavior. Money, more money, recognition. Q: Why aren't we all cheating then, you might ask??? We all like winning money; certainly a main reason why we play poker. A: circumstances. we don't cheat at poker because at some point along the way we were taught or told not to. I got caught cheating in 9th grade physical science class (oh, the irony). Being a naive little turd, I though I could take a test in front of the teacher with a 3 foot long cheat sheet. He caught me after about 15 seconds, berated me in front of class, and gave me an F for the test. 0/185 pts. This test was worth about 35 percent of total grade and I had to bust my ass to get D- in the class. The sense of gratification I got from that D- was worth way more than any of the classes I breezed my way through and got A's. I bet alot of you have had similar experiences. That's why you and I don't cheat at poker. These experiences didn't endow in us some sense of personal responsibilty. That's not what I would call it. I don't cheat because when Mr. Holm berated me in front of class I felt like the biggest dink in the world. Simply put, it was aversive. And organsims avoid repeating things that are aversive. We are hard fucking wired to do so.