My most pretentious title yet! 🥳

Whatever. I’m not a philosopher, but neither are my friends. So here goes.

I believe in free will. Put me in the camp that says my choices today were not dictated by the cosmic explosion 14.3 billion years ago. I believe there is randomness in the world. I believe in chance.

Furthermore, I believe this truth to be self-evident. I’ll try to briefly explain using a short proof that the free will argument is flawed.

The logic goes like this:

• If we don’t have free will, then chance does not exist

• If chance does not exist, then everything can be predicted

• If everything can be predicted, then time does not exist

• If time does not exist, then we don’t exist (consciousness, space, everything falls apart)

• Since we do exist (just ask Descartes), then we must have free will

To fully give these ideas the inside-out analysis they need is beyond my ability. I don’t have the time to get caught up on all the philosophy already written on these concepts. I won’t enjoy writing about it, either.

What I’m sharing here is a thought that I can’t shake. It’s my best attempt at explaining why it’s completely abhorrent to me that we should throw our hands up and believe we have no choice. That world sounds so dull. I don't want to live in it.

To not have free will implies the existence of a plan, a god-like creator who set the dominos tumbling. I don’t like this at all. It’s too religious, so I reject it on those grounds too.

Regardless, I will briefly explain the five parts of my counterfactual argument. I'm going to argue against the existence of free will in order to prove that it does in fact exist. I'm trying to prove that free will leads to a conclusion that we all must agree could not be possible.

If we don't have free will, then chance does not exist

Yeesh, what a place to start.

If I don’t think too hard about this one, it appears quite simple. With no free will, everything is pre-ordained. Let's be clear here: we are not special. We are made out of the same star dust as tectonic plates and asteroids. If we don't have free will, then nothing has free will. We have to apply the same rules to the entirety of the universe.

Thus everything happens for a reason, and that reason is built into the very fabric of our universe. Every law of physics, biology, and chemistry is describing the perfect order that was set from the beginning of time. If you wound back the clock and replayed the big bang, every single little thing, from the flicker of a butterfly's wing to the last presidential election, every war, murder, crash of a wave, earthquake and cosmic explosion would happen in exactly the same way at exactly the same time.

That's what no free will means.

Therefore, if there is no free will, then chance cannot exist, because all the cards were dealt 14.3 billion years ago.

If chance does not exist, then everything can be predicted.

It’s important to note that this argument doesn’t need to explain how everything is predicted. The point is the mere possibility of perfect omnipotent prediction. Without chance, we leave open the possibility that every single little and large event can be predicted. I find that the anti-free will argument requires this to be true.

Indeed, this argument flows logically from the last one. If everything is preordained, if the cards are dealt and the game proceeds by fixed rules, then if you know all the cards, you can predict everything. I'm not shaken by the idea that nobody can know all the cards. That fact doesn't matter. What matters is that if the cards are known then the future, the entire future can be predicted.

I think this argument flows logically from the last one.

If everything can be predicted, then time does not exist

Here we start to get into the heart of what I'm trying to say.

In the game of Hearts, this is where you see me slough a diamond instead of a heart or the queen of spades. You get suspicious of what I'm up to.

Indeed, this here is the crux of my argument. Everything hinges on this point. If you want to attack my line of reasoning, this is where you should start. I'll try to support my position knowing I've left my kidney exposed.

In a universe where the future is perfectly predictable, we have no need for time. Given this as fact, time makes no sense. Therefore, it must not exist.

I'll briefly explain. If I have the cards, I can play out the future. As I perfectly predict the future, time compresses. I bring the future forward and time loses meaning. It's only when the world is unpredictable that time is necessary. You need time for chance to be chance, for unpredictability to exist.

If you can predict everything, you don't need time. Therefore, time isn't required. If time isn't required, then it won't exist. If it won't exist, then it does not exist.

If time does not exist, then we don’t exist

It follows. If we have no need for time, then we have no need for anything.

Time builds our reality. Without it, there's nothing.

So if we have no chance, we have no time, and we have... nothing.

I'll just end that line of reasoning there.

Since we do exist, then we must have free will

Here's my other vulnerable point. I'm presupposing that we exist. I'm anchoring on Descartes, the one shoulder I stand on. I assume this to be truth, therefore the argument that we have no free will must be false.

The other way to turn this around is to say that those who are anti-free will are also anti-consciousness and anti-Descartes. They must believe that we are living in a grand simulation, connected to the matrix, that we all took the blue pill and are in a dream world controlled by intelligent machines. The AI overlords have already taken over and we're all just pawns on their grand chess board.

I reject this wholeheartedly. I just can't believe it. It's fatalistic. That is wrong and I think I've proven it.

Wouldn't you agree?