1. You think you’re thinking, but you’re mostly remembering

Your thoughts are just loops that your nervous system finds familiar. You’re not making decisions, you are repeating emotional echos. Unless you interrupt the loop, your future is your past in disguise.

The brain is optimized for efficiency, so instead of inventing new responses all the time, it serves up the same patterns that worked before. This is useful for survival, but dangerous if you’re stuck in unhelpful loops — worry, resentment, procrastination. Unless you consciously disrupt these cycles, your will simply recycle yesterday’s patterns into tomorrow’s life.

2. Every excuse is just a well dressed fear

Your ego protects you from embarrassment more than it guides you to greatness. The moment something feels uncertain, your mind pulls the emergency break and calls it logic. Until you are willing to look stupid you will never be free.

Excuses sound rational, but really you’re just protecting yourself from discomfort, rejection, or failure. The truth is, progress always feels awkward at first. Freedom comes only when you allow yourself to stumble, look foolish, and learn.

3. You don’t have a personality, you have a pattern

What you call you is just the most rehearsed version of who you’ve been. Identity is a trance. You perform it until it fossilizes. The only way to change is to stop trying to feel different and start doing different.

The most practiced set of responses — the habits of thought, emotion, and behavior — harden over time into an identity. Change starts when you act differently long enough for the pattern to rewrite itself.

4. The shadow you ignore becomes the God you serve

The traits you deny in yourself don’t vanish, they possess you in secret. You will chase them in relationships, project them on enemies, or pass them onto your children. What you refuse to own, you will be owned by.

Your jealousy, anger, greed, or neediness won’t vanish. Instead, they’ll seep into your choices, your relationships, and your worldview. This is the paradox of the shadow: the more you repress it, the more power it gains. Until you acknowledge and integrate those hidden parts of yourself, they will rule your life.

5. You are not judged after this life, you’re revealed

Everything you practice, your choices, your impulses, your love or your neglect gets carved into your soul. Not in some heaven or hell, but right here in your relationships, your regrets and your reflection. You don’t get away with anything, you become it.

Life doesn’t hand down verdicts at the end; it etches your choices into who you are. Every habit, every kindness, every cruelty leaves a mark. Over time, these marks don’t just tell your story — they become you.

So, in conclusion, you’re not stuck, you’re rehearsed. Every choice you make is shaping you into the person you’re becoming. Break the trance, step into the awkwardness, the uncertainty. Because freedom doesn’t come from being ready — it comes from doing different, until different becomes you.

But I was just watching an interview with the great Robert Sapolsky, (renowned Stanford neuroscientist, evolutionary biologist, and author), on Alex O’Connor’s youtube, where he gave one of the most coherent explanations of the no free will argument that finally made sense to me! So I wanted to share it how he explained it. What follows are Sapolsky’s words, not mine!

When somebody does some behavior, we ask, why did they do that? Where did that come from? Why did that just occur? And what is scientifically clear to me by now is that’s a whole hierarchy of questions.

‘Why did that occur?‘—you’re asking which parts of the brain did or didn’t do something in the last half second, but you’re also asking something about the sensory stimuli for that individual in the prior minutes—Were they terrified? Were they stressed? Were they aroused? Were they hungry, sleepy, whatever?

And you’re also asking, ‘What about your hormone levels this morning?’ because that’s going to influence how sensitive your brain was to various environmental stimuli. What were your last years like in terms of trauma, finding love, finding God—whatever? Because as the backbone of this whole field of neuroplasticity, you will get major changes in brain function and structure in response to experiences like that.

And then you’re off to your usual suspects—adolescence, childhood, fetal life, your genes. Amazingly, you also have to consider what kind of culture your ancestors came from—what kind of ecosystems they were living in—because that had a ton to do with it. Because within minutes of birth, the culture in which your mother was raised will influence her mothering style.

So, why did that person just do what they did? Because of everything from one second ago to millennia ago—all of these influences.

When you look at the amount of our behavior that all of those prior events encompass, what you conclude is we are nothing more than the sum of our biological luck, (over which we had no control), and its interactions with the sum of our environmental luck, (which we also had no control over).

And it’s not like you’ve got to keep in mind a whole bunch of different scientific disciplines, because maybe neuroscience doesn’t disprove free will, but endocrinology does, or genetics doesn’t but physiological ecology or—No, the key point is that all of these different disciplinary approaches turn into the same thing.

What do I mean by that?

You’re talking about genes and behavior. If you’re doing that, by definition, you’re talking about millions of years of evolution of your genes. And you’re also talking about what your childhood was like, when experiences then were causing lifelong epigenetic changes in your gene regulation. And you’re also talking about what proteins your brain was making under direction of your genes 25 minutes ago. And when you look at how it forms one continuous arc of influences, my two cents is there’s not a crack anywhere in that edifice in which you could shoehorn in free will.

One body, two minds!

Once cut off from each other, it was like the patient had two separate minds occupying the same body! The left brain controls the right side of the body, as well as language, logical thinking, mathematics and problem-solving. While the right brain controls the left side of the body, as well as emotional expression, tone, facial recognition, understanding maps, art and music, and “big-picture” thinking. But both operate as independent entities, seemly unaware of each other!

Neuroscientist Roger Sperry was conducting split-brain experiments in cats and monkeys when he observed that after the procedure, each hemisphere could learn things separately. This made him wonder if the same could be true for humans. He teamed up with Michael Gazzaniga, a graduate student working under him at the time, to study how the two hemispheres of the brain communicate, and what happens when that connection is severed.

They carried out numerous experiments and observations on patients who had undergone corpus callosotomies, such as showing them images in only one eye, or asking them a question in only one ear.

When shown an image in the right eye, (connected to the left brain, controlling language), the patient is able to accurately describe what they see. But when shown only to the left eye, (connected to the non-verbal right brain), the patient could not describe what they had seen, but could point to it with their left hand, or draw it! Their right hemisphere knew information that their left hemisphere was unaware of!

In another experiment, patients were handed an object in only their left hand, (controlled by non-verbal right brain), while blindfolded. Afterwards, when asked what they were holding, they couldn’t say, but their left hand could point to the object in a group of items!

The right hemisphere also experienced independent emotions. When shown a disturbing or violent image to the right hemisphere only, the patient would look uneasy or nervous but couldn’t explain the reaction. When asked, they would simply make something up. Even though the right hemisphere is unable to speak, it can understand speech, follow instructions and answer yes/no questions using gestures!

It was concluded that both hemispheres were acting independently, had different thoughts, and would even make different choices. When asked to pick out what shirt to wear, the right hand might reach for a smart shirt, (the more logical choice), while the left hand might reach for something more flamboyant or expressive.

In extreme cases, this even lead to “Alien Hand Syndrome“, where the patient is unable to a control their left hand; repeatedly unbuttoning their shirt while their right hand tries to buttoning it back up, or even slapping them without their control!

However, patients were not aware of their separate identities, and did not feel like “two people”. In every case, the left hemisphere, with it’s control of language, logical thought and internal narration, would rationalise the behaviour. Their left brain filled in the gaps so well that they didn’t perceive the split, and believed they were acting as a single, unified self.

The Left Hemisphere Confabulation Test

Another interesting finding was the Left Hemisphere Confabulation Test. Researchers would flash a different image to each eye, a chicken claw to the verbal Left Brain and a snowy scene to the non-verbal Right Brain. The patient would see the chicken claw, but when asked to choose between a shovel and a chicken with their left hand, they would pick up the shovel. However, when asked why they had chosen the shovel over the chicken, instead of looking confused, the Left Brain would immediately start to confabulate to make sense of the situation; the shovel is for cleaning up after the chickens!

This shows us how our left hemisphere prioritizes coherence over accuracy—when it lacks information, it automatically invents logical-sounding explanations rather than admitting uncertainty. It explains how we tend to rationalise an instinctive decision after the fact to make it seem conscious and deliberate, when really we acted first and thought later.

Split-brain research reveals that the brain is not a single, unified entity, but rather a collection of systems working together. It shows that our left hemisphere is constantly storytelling, constructing a narrative, sometimes inventing explanations that don’t even reflect reality. But what does it mean for our understanding of consciousness itself when it can be cut into two with a knife? Are both hemispheres still part of a single self, despite having independent thoughts and emotions, or have they become two separate entities—sharing a body but unaware of each other’s existence?

Parallels Between the Brain and Agentic AI

To me, these findings bear a striking similarity to the current, agentic approach to artificial intelligence. In agentic AI a network is made up of multiple independent agents (small, specialised programs), each focused on one particular task. One might handle language processing, another image recognition. There could be agents for memory, decision-making, emotion, creativity, spatial awareness, etc. And one overarching agent (sometimes called an Orchestrator) that receives the request and decides how to delegate it among the specialised agents. The Orchestrator then integrates the responses from the various agents and stitches everything together into one single, coherent response.

Much like an AI Orchestrator, the left hemisphere receives input from our various senses, (sight, sound, touch), etc, hands tasks off to the various “agents”, (visual cortex, auditory cortex, limbic system, motor cortex, prefrontal cortex, etc.), then constructs a unified experience by stitching the responses together into a single narrative.

But if consciousness can be divided in two, then perhaps what we think of as “the self” is nothing more than a useful illusion, held together by the brain’s ability to tell stories.

René Descartes was a Rationalist. This means he believed that reason and logical thinking are more reliable sources of knowledge than experience or sensory perception. Rationalists believe that our experiences and perceptions are subjective and cannot always be trusted, whereas knowledge obtained through logical thinking, much like mathematical truths or philosophical principles, are objective and remain universally true.

In 1641, Descartes published a series of Meditations on First Philosophy, in which he shut himself away in a heated room, isolated from all distractions, and systematically started to doubt everything. His goal was to strip away all uncertainty until he is left with an unshakeable foundation of irrefutable knowledge that he can then start to build on.

In Meditation 1, (Systematic Doubt), Descartes begins by questioning everything he believes to be true:

Our senses sometimes deceive us, how can we trust them entirely?

Sometimes when we dream, everything feels completely real—until we wake up, how can we be certain we aren’t dreaming now?

And here’s where it starts to sound like something out of The Matrix: What if a “malicious deceiver” is manipulating our thoughts, making us experience a reality that doesn’t even exist, how would we know?

He even questioned whether he has a body; hands, eyes, flesh, blood and senses, or merely believes he has all these things! By the end of the first meditation, Descartes is left with the terrifying realisation:

What if nothing is certain at all?

He writes, “so serious are the doubts into which I have been thrown as a result of yesterday’s meditation that I can neither put them out of my mind nor see any way of resolving them. It feels as if I have fallen unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom or swim to the top.”

It’s here, in Meditation 2, (The Cogito), where Descartes is struggling to find any foundation to stand on. In his journey to strip away all uncertain beliefs he discounts anything that can be doubted, no matter how unlikely, until he is left only with what he can know to be true. He asks, if my hands and body may not exist, and my memories might not be real, and the world might not even be real, then how do I know if I even exist?

The First Irrefutable Truth

Descartes realises that even if everything else is uncertain, he cannot doubt himself. He must exist, (in some shape or form), because even if he is being deceived entirely about everything, it’s still him that is being deceived. Even if he doubts his own existence, the very act of doubting proves that he exists, because he is doing the doubting. If he didn’t exist, he couldn’t be doubting his own existence!

Cogito, ergo sum — Je pense, donc je suis

This was originally written in Latin, then translated into French, but many believe the English interpretation is actually a mistranslation; a more accurate version would be, “I am thinking, therefore I am”. It’s the act of thinking that proves Descartes existence, (in that moment), not merely his ability to think.

Descartes continues his journey in four more Meditations on First Philosophy, where he argues that:

• God must exist, because the idea of a perfect, infinite God could not have been conceived by him, a finite, imperfect being. Only God could have placed this idea in his mind.
• If God is perfect, why do humans make mistakes? Descartes concludes that error comes from human free will, when we make judgements beyond what we clearly understand.
• He reinforces God’s existence, arguing that a perfect being, in order to be truly perfect, must exist and that God is not a deceiver—therefore, what we perceive clearly and distinctly must be true.
• And finally he considers whether the external, physical world really exists? He concludes that since he can clearly conceive of his mind (non-physical) as separate from his body (physical), the two must be distinct (mind-body dualism). Moreover, since God is not a deceiver, he would not trick us into believing in a physical world if it were not real—therefore, the external world and our bodies must exist.

As an atheist, I don’t share Descartes’ conclusions in his later meditations on the existence of God, nor do I believe they have endured as timelessly. However, I cannot help but admire his rigorous, methodical approach to seeking objective truth—dismissing everything questionable until only the undeniable remained: I think, therefore I am!

And the answer would undoubtedly be, because you are in the main application window, and haven’t “popped out” yet!

Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided that you should not have the right to insert images in your messages until you have discovered the “pop out” button. Think of it like some poorly thought out rite of passage.

Once you have “popped out” into a new window, you now have access to the Insert > Pictures option that was previously so elusive to you.

If this option is still unavailable to you, (greyed out), then the chances are you are in “Plain Text” mode. Select the “Format Text” option from the top menu, click on the “…” [more commands] button on the right-hand side, and select Message Format > HTML.

Now you can add images to your emails! Hey, you didn’t expect something like adding a photo to an email in Outlook to be easy, did you?

I started off by writing the lyrics:

They tweet and chirp, it’s all just lies,
They’re gathering data, those government spies,
Underneath the feathers it’s wires and steel,
Wake up, birds aren’t real!

They charge on power lines from dusk till dawn,
Got you feeding them bread like some kind of pawn,
But they don’t really eat, they can’t even feel,
Wake up, birds aren’t real!

Birds aren’t real, they’re government drones,
They’re made of wires not skin and bones,
With integrated circuits and a beak of steel,
Wake up, birds aren’t real!

They got lithium batteries that last a week,
They work on cellular networks, the data’s ‘cheep’,
They’ve got a gyroscope, a GPS, and DVD,
And their beady little eyes can see in 1080p!

Refrain:
Wake up, birds aren’t real! (x2)

Chorus:
Wake up, birds aren’t real,
Underneath the feathers it’s wires and steel,
They don’t need to eat, they can’t even feel,
Wake up, birds aren’t real!

Once I was happy with these, I spent about a whole day feeding verses into Suno.AI. Suno uses generative AI to take a music “genre” and description or lyrics to create a 1 minute song clip. When you find one you like, you can opt to extend this clip for another minute, and another minute, adding different lyrics each time. The results are impressive, but each clip feels like a section out of the middle of a song. You can’t really generate a whole song this way.

So my next step, armed with all the little “pieces” of a song, was to use another AI tool, VocalRemover.org, to separate the vocals from the music. This gave me instrumental bars that I could chop and change like musical building blocks, and vocal samples, both male and female, that I could overlay for the chorus and refrain. Then it was just a case of arranging them all into a song!

And here’s the result. Please watch to the end, and like or comment on YouTube, as this is my first ever song and I’m trying to get the algorithms to pick it up!

But with a bit of patience and perseverance, the final results were way better than anything I could have created by hand!

How? Why? Well… it all started when I took an interest in crypto-mining, (my new hobby). I built myself a small mining rig, with one 3000 series GPU, and started mining Bitcoin at a rate of about $2 USD per day.

It was never going to get me rich, but I had great fun learning all about the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Like most people, I had heard about Bitcoin, but had no idea all the other imitation coins out there.

• mining coins such as Ether, Litecoin and Monero
• stablecoins that are pegged to the USD, such as Tether and the USD Coin
• meme coins that started as a joke, such as Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and even DogElon Mars
• game coins such as MANA, GALA, Axie and Enjin coin, and many, many more.

So when I discovered that I could create my own cryptocurrency, quickly and cheaply, my only thought was – why not?

Most cryptocurrencies run on Smart Contracts, which are “automated agreements” between two or more parties. For example, I agree to pay you this much, the sum is automatically transferred from my balance to yours by the Smart Contract. In a way, Smart Contracts are like digital vending machines, because they allow transactions to occur without the need for a human to mediate. These Smart Contracts are stored in the blockchain.

The biggest blockchain for public smart contracts is Ethereum, but it has become so congested that fees are high and transactions slow. A typical transaction can cost over $50 USD, (sometimes as much as $100 USD), and take several minutes to complete. This is why I selected the newer Binance Smart Chain (BSC) for my $NEIL currency, where transactions typically cost under $0.40 USD and take only three seconds.

I wrote my smart contract in Solidity programming language and deployed it on the Binance Smart Chain, where it will remain forever in the Blockchain, and can never be changed or removed. That means Neil Coin ($NEIL) cryptocurrency is here to stay!

And why are they worth so little? Well, basically $NEIL coins are worth what little liquidity I put in to make them tradable. If I was prepared to sink about a million dollars of my own cash into $NEIL coins, then they would be worth about $1 each. But I didn’t, and so they are worth $0.0007 each.

To find out more about Neil Coin ($NEIL), and how to buy them, read my Initial Coin Offering whitepaper here!

But please note, this is just for fun! I am not a financial advisor, and this is not financial advise. The $NEIL token offers no real expectation of gains. Consult a professional financial advisor before investing in cryptocurrencies, and don’t take anything you read online as financial advice, ever!

I’ve been a huge music fan my whole life, everything from Simon and Garfunkel, to Dubstep and Grime, but one band always stood out to me.

I first heard of the Beastie Boys in 1987, saw them live in 1994, learned about the plight of the Tibetan people through them in 1996, watched in shock as Yauch announced his throat cancer to fellow band members and the rest of the world in 2009, and mourned at his tragic death with fans, only 3 years later, aged 47.

Since Yauch’s death, we’ve had the release of a New York Times bestselling book in 2018, and the Spike Jonze Apple documentary in 2020.

I wouldn’t say I’ve been listening to the Beastie Boys continuously that whole time, but I’ve still got the first LP I bought on vinyl 34 years ago, and if I had to pick one band to personify my life, they would be it.

That’s why I decided to make this printable poster for my office wall, based on the iconic 1987 photograph by ©Lynn Goldsmith, (please don’t sue me!).

If you want your own copy, you can download it here as a printable PDF:
https://www.neilhillman.com/downloads/BeastieBoysSpiritAnimal.pdf