The Detrimental Effects of Belief in Free Will

Richard Oerton is a lawyer and author. His legal career involved working in private practice, in legal publishing, at the Law Commission, in the Treasury, and as a consultant with Solicitors and Parliamentary Agents in Westminster, the political centre of the UK. He's been a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform for well over half a century and has agitated against capital punishment and for the legalisation of homosexual behaviour. In addition to legal textbooks, he is the author of two wonderful books on the topic of free will; The Nonsense of Free Will and The Cruelty of Free Will. Today we talk about why free will is both a false idea and a harmful one. We kept the conversation short and to the point and I've added 10 minutes of my own reflections at the end.