The Wit’s Guide to Free Will

Or, get in, chooser

The Game of Chess by Sofonisba Anguissola, c. 1555

We have no choice but to believe in free will. According to most scientists and philosophers, the complex chain of physical, chemical, biological, and historical circumstances that begat you pretty much dictates what you’re going to do next. Oh, you rolled your eyes? They saw that coming. 

“Free Will was the excuse for everything. It was God’s alibi.”
— Graham Greene

I learned all this from The New Yorker’s review of Robert Sapolsky’s Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, which deems causal determinism to be “the default assumption of most modern science.” Those who try to squeeze a bit of agency in there are called compatibilists, and more power to them! Though I suppose they already have all the power they’re going to get. 

“A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer

I find the philosophical explanations of this hard to grok, probably because my mother didn’t eat enough malic acid during my first trimester. But I totally get what Patrick Tucker calls informational determinism in his 2014 book The Naked Future. Essentially, he explains, we now have the data points and the computing power to accurately guess what you’ll do next.

“All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.”
— Samuel Johnson

The example that’s stuck with me is a Microsoft experiment from the first decade of the century, when researcher John Krumm had hundreds of people carry around GPS trackers for six solid years. At the end of that, their models could predict a subject’s location with more than 80% accuracy up to 80 weeks in advance — meaning they “can predict where you will be—down to the hour and within a square block—one year and a half from right now.” Say, how long have you had an iPhone?

“Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
— Albert Einstein

Despite this, we all think our phones are listening to us. How else would they know that your mother was coming to town and she needed new perfume? This classic Reply All episode explains how — informational determinism! — but it just isn’t innately satisfying to our squishy brains. 

“Blind but sure-footed, we step forward as if into a remembered dance.”
— Margaret Atwood

But forget all that, because the most useful definition of free will comes from Keith Waterhouse in his book The Theory and Practice of Lunch. 

“Lunch, as opposed to dinner, is where you can invite a charming lady without her boring husband, or a fascinating man without his boring wife,” he writes. “Dinner is an obligation or even a retaliation. Lunch is free will.”

I’ll extend this metaphor: Family is predetermined. Friends are free will. Life, then, comes back to compatibilism. Invite them all to brunch and hope they get along.

“One would be in less danger
From the wiles of the stranger
If one’s own kin and kith
Were more fun to be with.”
— Ogden Nash

---

This week’s Recommendation: An insulting memoir

When burning bridges, most people have the good sense to let the ashes wash downriver. Not this week’s Wit to Read recommendation, an all-time classic of recorded vitriol! As usual, this recommendation is for my paid subscribers:

Next month’s Riposter: Ani Castillo

It’s beginning to look a lot like the time when I reveal December’s Riposte Card artist, the talented person I pay with the money provided by Founding Subscribers to make actual physical postcards for your enjoyment.

Ani Castillo

is an astonishingly clever Mexican-Canadian illustrator I had the good fortune to meet at a Substack meetup, and I love the artwork she’s created for you, dear subscriber. It’s the perfect holiday card for people who don’t send holiday cards, and I’ll share it here next week. 

---

Quote Vote

“Free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man.”
— Flannery O’Connor

Nice to be able to exercise your illusion after all that, eh?

---

You were always going to read this far in Issue 230 of Get Wit Quick, my fellow compatibilist. You also want to read more about free will, so you can click this link to find Ted Chiang’s brilliant short story What’s Expected of Us, which was published in Nature of all places. A mere 900 words to further twist your brain! Very unlike my book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting, which was more of a brain massage. And you can repay the favour by massaging the❤️  below.