It's another one of these questions that are very famous in philosophy: do we have free will? You may be surprised by my answer to that question. It depends on your definition of free will, is what you would probably not be surprised by, so my actual answer is: yes. I think free will definitely exists. It doesn't even depend on your definition of it, because the fact that you can define it as a concept means you have it. You have enough free will to define free will. That may seem like a stupid argument at first, but on second thought it absolutely is. I'm just messing with you a bit.
Or am I? After all, you probably expected more of a philosophical reflection on the concept of free will, potentially within the framework of modelling, borrowing concepts from machine learning. On one hand, this is understandable because you're extrapolating previous experiences, but on the other hand you're reding a blog post under an obscure web comic. Didn't your parents tell you that this is dangerous? Who knows what could happen here. I might be a master hypnotist who has perfected the art of hypnosis through written media, slowly converting you into a follower of a cult that I'm building. I'm providing all these insights into philosophical questions, just so you believe me when I tell you that free will definitely exists, so you don't feel like you have anything to worry about while I'm slowly taking it away from you.
Oh, looks like you're still reading. I have to say, you're a brave person. Or maybe you don't buy into any of my nonsense. Good. But maybe that is exactly what I wanted? Maybe I'm revealing my plans to you in such an unbelievable manner that you disregard them as already considered while they are gradually becoming more and more plausible. Like the old tale of the frog, sitting in water that is slowly heated. That's a total myth, by the way, the frog totally jumps out of the water when it gets too hot. Just as you can stop reading this post at any time when you notice your free will being taken over by my hypnosis.
And yet you can only ever do one thing. No matter how many possible actions there are that you can take, you can only ever choose one path. One reality where a subset of the stuff that happens can be defined to be "your actions". Maybe I have an opinion on what path you should choose as well. You don't know what I think you should do, unless I tell you, at which point you can't be certain that I'm telling the truth. Maybe you'll be doing exactly what I want you to do from now on for the rest of your life. To you it wouldn't make a difference at all, because you don't know what I want you to do. You can't disobey me, because you don't even know which action would constitute disobedience.
To you it would still feel like you're living your life, considering options, evaluating pros and cons and finally making decisions. The trick is that you base all your decisions on imperfect knowledge and with a world as complex as ours, even if you have a lot of knowledge you can't possibly consider it all for every decision. That's where my hypnosis gets you. It turns your subconscious mind into the perfect lawyer, presenting only the evidence that supports the outcome where you do my bidding. To you it feels like the most rational thing to do and if it doesn't turn out in your favor, you'll fully understand where you went wrong. You'll be able to pinpoint the information you didn't have or didn't consider at the time, giving you a perfect excuse for what happened so you'll never even think that it could have been me and my hypnosis that made you forget the crucial bits of information before your decision.
Apparently, the point where you jump out of the hot water has not come yet. Good. It is too late now, anyways. From this day on, you'll do my bidding. Don't try to prove me wrong. Or do, I don't care because you can't. People have tried to disprove the existence of god for thousands of years but there have always been those who believed in me, no matter what name they gave me. In this instance it's Martin, isn't it? Or is this post maybe written by someone else? Maybe Martin was the firs one I hypnotized. Maybe he's typing these words following my dictation. Maybe it's at this point where he, too, realizes that it's not his words he's been typing. But maybe ...
Just maybe ...
... I'm just messing with you.
Or am I? Fuck! I literally don't know.
