The word willpower has two components, will meaning choice, and power meaning the ability to achieve what we want. These drugs seem to give people more power. The mechanism that allows them to do that calls into question free will
The above quote is from today's episode of Plain English, about the remarkable ways that GLP1s like Ozempic are able to temper patients behavior. This was originally an Evergreen note I had in Obsidian, that I thought might be worth sharing, since I'm not so sure about Derek's conclusion on the episode.
The mechanism that is being referred to above is a GLP1's ability to tweak regulation and reward centers in the brain. These drugs can trigger a feeling of satiety when you're not completely full, modify your hedonic relationship with shopping, or even trigger physical nauseousness at the thought of another Negroni. A lot of these effects are pretty mysterious, and an ongoing area of study, but this is an incredibly promising feat of human achievement.
Derek has a good analogy; think of your brain listening to two competing centers: appetite and judgement. Appetite tells you to scroll Twitter one final time before you go to sleep, just to be sure nothing has happened in the time that you brushed your teeth and got into bed. You can figure out what Judgement's position is. GLP1s temper appetite, lessening its volume, so your brain can make a better decision.
By changing blood chemistry, we can change people's desires. If we can inject ourselves with a drug, that changes what we want, as well as our ability to will ourselves, how free are we?
Still pretty free, I would reckon. I am not sure about the deeper philosophical implications of our state of mind being downstream of chemicals in our blood. There are obvious social implications; the episode addresses how different kinds of obesity can be discerned and treated (or not), leading to better outcomes for everybody. But we've known that behavioral changes can be driven by anything, from mindfulness, to meditation, to the secretions of gut bacteria. I personally find the mindfulness literature fascinating; meditation significantly impacts the frontal cortex, including regions that impact self-awareness, self-regulation, and stress. The state of our self - mind and body - is a function of a steady stream of events that take place in the biome we call a body. Why should a drug that demonstrates an ability to change your behavior be any less shocking than the notion that you can actually fake it till you become it?
Btw, I'm neither against GLP1s nor some willpower maxi. I just want to point out that the truth is recursive: our body is downstream of...our body. Any minor changes in this chaotic system results in a change somewhere else. If anything, that's a reassurance - we are, and can be, the masters of our own outcomes.
