We saw in the previous chapter that the illusion of free will consists in believing that we could start something from nothing, that our will alone would enable us to direct our lives, and that we would have an indeterminate power of decision. It's the idea that man is capable of disrupting Nature's order more than he is subject to it.

But for Spinoza (1632-1677), man is not "an empire within an empire", i.e. he is not, contrary to what Descartes established (1596-1650), an exception in nature, and is never exempt from the prolongement of the deterministic chain of cause and effect.

And since Nature, says Spinoza, has no prescribed end from a moral point of view, and since humans tend to mistake their imagination for understanding, They interpret it according to what suits their own interests. To the point that they give a meaning to things that derives only from the way they appreciate them and relate them to themselves.

That is, according to their desires, hopes and fears.

This reasoning is illustrated by the illusion of final causes, which is a major obstacle to thought and the exercise of reason, because it simply expresses our need to make the effects of a thing correspond not to its true causes, but to a belief, even if absurd or infantilizing.

A belief that expresses an intention, notably divine, and which, in the way we interpret it, is often superstitious, Or ignorance.

And that's why new diseases such as AIDS in the 90s or covid in 2020 have always been perceived by some as the expression of a divine and often punitive intention, according to a reasoning that runs counter to the principle of causality that underpins rationalism and modern science established since Copernicus (1473-1543), Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo (1564-1727).

The fact is, as Spinoza says, that it matters little to people that so many things are beyond their imagination, that there is more disorder than order in nature. Yet the complexity of things beyond their grasp should dissuade them from believing in any teleological project. It doesn't matter, he says, because humans' belief in the relevance of their certainty based on what suits their desire and utility is always stronger than any rational argument or concern for truth.

Finalism thus amounts to inverting the causes and effects of things in order to understand them: for example, we believe that the reason we have eyes is to see, and that the reason we have teeth is to chew. Whereas, of course, it was to see that the human species developed its eyesight during the course of its evolution, and it was indeed through the need to feed itself, and to eat meat, that our dentition also developed as it has today.

And this is exactly what the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829) asserted (image 3.3.3) when he established his predarwinian theory that it is the function that creates the organ, and not the other way round.

But as Spinoza says, "the delusion of men does not end there", and among all the examples of naive, and ultimately rather amusing, teleological ideas, we often cite the famous example of the biologist Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814). This former director of the Paris Museum of Natural History regarded the finalism of nature with poetry, lyricism and a certain naivety, considering that the melon, for example, had been created for the sole purpose of pleasing large families, since its ridged skin made it easy to cut into equal slices.

The definition of inflation given by Keynesian economists and advocates of the welfare state, for example, also illustrates this paradox very well. According to them, inflation is an increase in prices which, according to some central bankers, comes either from "nowhere", or from geopolitical contexts which nobody can control or anticipate. While an increase in prices can indeed lead to cyclical inflation - for example, when the price of oil rises, the prices of certain processed goods will also rise - the real structural causes of inflation are primarily linked to an increase in the money supply, which in turn implies a fall in the value of money and, ipso facto, a mechanical rise in prices.

Believing, or having others believe, the opposite is tantamount to dreaming with one's eyes open, as Spinoza mockingly put it, and constructing a line of reasoning that is false, or misleading, and which is all the easier to get accepted because it is heard as an expected response to prove oneself right. In this case, when advocates of state intervention consider inflation to be the best way to solve economic problems.

However, this biased interpretation of inflation leads us to forget that, while it is useful for managing the economy in the short term, it is in fact a hidden tax, leading in the long term only to human and material disasters, and rendering states incapable of not abusing their power. This is what Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) describes so well in his essay The Road to Serfdom, when he evokes the servitude from which states can no longer extricate themselves.

Finally, it's worth noting here that this finalistic mechanism is also well illustrated in the way Bitcoin's detractors express their criticism by focusing precisely on its effects.

Because while some of the effects of Bitcoin can certainly be criticized, due to the cognitive bias associated with the fact that it's a new and disruptive technology, we have a strong propensity to see only the negative effects. Especially if reality doesn't match our desires, for example if we're religious when faced with a Copernican revolution like Spinozism, or if we're a central banker when faced with a decentralized digital currency concept.

However, it's quite clear that if a religious person or a central banker shows understanding, curiosity and good will, and if they take an interest in a concept, seeking first to understand it rather than judging its effects in order to match their opinion to their expectations, then they will certainly be able to adhere to it.

Thank you for your attention, and I'll see you in the next chapter.