Reader's Digest: February 8, 2025

What’s a poor reviewer to do? Skimming the advance proofs of a well-promoted book by a noted expert, you discover that its reasoning is full of holes—or rather, is one cavernous hole, a Grand Canyon of fallacy, camouflaged by science and slick prose. To review the volume is to give it more publicity and so to risk expanding its influence; not to do so is to leave its argument unchecked. You must determine the letter evil.

It was thus with mixed emotions that I found, in the NYRB, a review by Jessica Riskin of Robert Sapolsky’s Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. Riskin is one of my favourite science writers, author of a string of stylish, punchy, quotable essays on genetics and evolution, the scientific method, machine intelligence, and more. Before she graduated to NY, she played the same role for LA. A particular highlight: her exasperated take on Steven Pinker: “With friends like these, the Enlightenment doesn’t need enemies.”

Riskin on Sapolsky—an occasion for correctiv…