 The idle argument as originally presented was designed to show, not that fatalism was correct or incorrect, but that it would have a certain consequence. However, a generalised form of the version that omitted “it is fated that” would, if sound, seem to threaten to establish something akin to fatalism: not, indeed, that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do, but that acting is futile. Although it seems that Chrysippus’s reply would show that such an argument would not in fact be sound, it is not at all clear where exactly it would go wrong. A detailed discussion of this question can be found in Bledin 2020.