From chaos to free will
&gt; If you seriously believe that fundamental forces leave no space for free will, then it’s impossible for us to genuinely make choices as moral beings.<p>&gt; The underlying physics would in reality be governing our behaviour, and responsibility wouldn’t enter into the picture.<p>First, this is one of the few useful things said here. Responsibility, poof. I agree. And I think that radically changes how we should approach so many things. As a hard determinist who is writing arguments, ethics, and moral frameworks around said determinism, I think there is a big issue with a lot of discussions about free will - definition.<p>When most humans say &quot;free will&quot;, they don&#x27;t mean randomness, not even close. While philosophers in this argument have spent a good deal of time on randomness, I think that focus misses the point entirely. <i>Even if</i> there is molecular randomness, how does that give any more meaning to humans? At the end of the day, the human idea of control gains nothing from it.<p>When humans say &quot;free will&quot;, they are referring IMO in actuality to a real thing - a combination of many things, but basically agency + lack of prediction powers. At the end of the day, those are not going away anytime soon, if ever. This is where ethical, moral, and social questions are based, not in free will formally.<p>The lack of formal free will is crucial for underpinning all of this, but it in no way makes ethics and the like impossible. We still exist and experience the world, and it is in all of our best interests to go towards a &quot;better&quot; one. Whether we were always going to do that or not doesn&#x27;t change that, nor does it change the human experience.<p>I will say this - determinism must be approached carefully precisely because of articles like this - it is easy for the worst effect of determinism on humans to actually be the idea itself and how it makes people defeatist about morality. I hope to spend my time making a good case for how to approach it safely and in a way that makes the world better, and I wish more people were looking at that instead of arguing about quantum randomness.