It’s a question I’ve tried to answer before, both directly and peripherally (see Cancel Culture). And the answer seems to change as I learn more about life. Right now, my answer is “no”. And here’s why. Take this thought exercise. There are two paintings in a gallery, both are for sale. They both look exactly the same, down to the brushstroke. Same image, same colors, same frame. You can’t tell the two apart. So you ask the curator what the deal is. She tells you that the one on the left is the original. The one on the right is a forgery painted by a college student. Which one would…
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What is Choice?
Jason Pargin (a.k.a. David Wong), an author I admire greatly, wrote an article about free will recently. He’s known for pushing the envelope of what you can do in a story, toeing the line of bizarro fiction and bestseller. He’s great at boiling down heavy philosophical arguments into entertaining digestible meals. He’s had some great ones recently: How ‘Good Vs Evil’ Narratives Are Breaking Your Brain, Stop Telling Me Humanity Is Doomed, If You’re Scared of Competition, the World Will Eat You Alive. His latest is Every Argument We’re Having Is Secretly About One Thing. Basically it’s an age-old question: do we have free will or are our actions mindlessly…
