Status Updates From Determined: A Science of Li...

In Sapolsky's framework, both trajectories are the result of an unfathomably complex biological and environmental lottery that began long before either person was born.
When you look at the Harvard graduate and the garbage man through a deterministic lens, you stop attributing their outcomes to mystical internal forces like "pure grit" or "poor choices."

When you strip away free will, traditional praise and blame take a massive hit because the idea of "moral desert"—the notion that someone deserves credit or punishment because they could have done otherwise—collapses.

If a person is brilliant, creative, or deeply kind, Sapolsky would argue they just won a massive lottery: a fortuitous mix of intrauterine environment, prefrontal cortex wiring, supportive upbringing, and stable neurochemistry. They didn't author their own machinery any more than the lilac authored its petals.