 As an argument for incompatibilism, the appeal to the metaphor of the branching roads (“the garden of forking paths”) fails. If we strip away the metaphors, the main premise of the argument turns into the claim that we have genuine choices between alternative course of action only if our choosing and doing otherwise is compossible with the actual past and the actual laws. But this claim is none other than a statement of what the incompatibilist believes and the compatibilist denies.