Root Cause

You might be thinking to yourself, “If determinism is true, why do most people believe in free will?”

I think it has a lot to do with how we perceive things. For example, if someone were to do something you wouldn’t expect, it’s easy to think, “That was random”—which might imply some sort of free will. However, if you were to zoom out, you would probably see that this caused this, and therefore, that happened. Just to be clear, we often think, “What is the single root cause?” But I don’t think it’s ever just one thing; I think it’s everything. Every single event that ever happened before was crucial in producing the exact result we see today.

It seems as though most people want to believe they’re in control. We’ve also been conditioned from birth to believe it. Even though I believe in determinism, I’m constantly acting like I don’t. That conditioning runs so deep. It requires constant mental gymnastics, and I doubt I will ever be completely unconditioned. Even if future generations were raised to understand determinism, it would still take generations to fully shake that programming and stop acting as if we are in total control.