I was thinking about making a video on this, who knows, I still might, but I wound up having a discussion on free will and I spent the whole time rolling my eyes. I have no idea what the true position of the free will denier was, he was kind of vague about the whole thing, but he kept saying that we couldn’t have free will because… reasons.

It all kind of fell apart from there.

To be honest, I’m not even completely sure how we got there. It didn’t start out on free will, but it came up and he started insisting that it doesn’t exist.

Therefore, I defined my terms. Most dictionaries give it something like this: “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.” The one I think I settled on was this: “freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention.” He didn’t argue with that one, although certainly, it didn’t go well for him in the end.

I used my standard example. Say I go into an ice cream shop and walk up to the counter and order a vanilla cone. Did I exercise free will to do that? Obviously. I could have ordered any flavor at all. Where we usually go for frozen yogurt, there’s a Gamestop next door. I could have gone there instead. All of this demonstrates free will, right?

No, he says. There are external factors that affect what you do. Obviously. If ice cream had never been invented, then there would be no ice cream shops and thus, I couldn’t have gone into an ice cream shop. That’s like saying that because I can’t flap my arms and fly, I have no free will, which is patently stupid. Of the myriad choices available to me, I can freely choose any of them. That’s free will.

He tries another angle. My life experiences affected my choices. If I like vanilla, then I am more apt to choose vanilla. Sure, but that’s not the question at hand, is it? My personal preferences might impact what I choose, but I am still making a choice. I could walk in and order chocolate or any other flavor on the menu. If I had a nut allergy, I could order peanut butter or pecan. It would be bad for me to eat it, but I could still do it, right? People make bad decisions all the time but they’re still decisions.

I could also walk up there and order an elephant. How does past experience of preference stop me from doing that? Or, I pointed out, I could make something up in my head. Give me a garglesnap! It isn’t even real but I can order it. I’m not getting it, obviously, but nothing stops me from making the attempt!

He still wouldn’t accept it. There was something that was controlling my actions, he insisted. Great, now you’re making a positive claim, you have the burden of proof to back it up. What is it, specifically, that is controlling my actions? Go ahead and produce your evidence for that?

Of course, he couldn’t do it. He hemmed and he hawed and then he made an excuse and left. That was the end of that. This is how these conversations always end, with the no-free-will-advocate running away. Why? Because this is all just “it seems to me” and “it seems to me” is meaningless. It’s meaningless when the religious do it and it’s meaningless for everyone else as well. Nobody cares how it feels to you, we care if you can demonstrate that it’s true. This is how far too many conversations end. People either get mad or they get frustrated and they run away.

How sad is that?