Do people have free will?
Hank accepted determinism in 2018 and in 2025 said we have less agency than we think. Since 2017 John has doubted he is the captain of himself: he cannot choose his thoughts or feelings and mostly flies, like a moth, toward whatever light he sees.
Axis: yes, choices are free ... no, choices are determined
Positions by date: 5 records in 5 videos. The position did not change in these records.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-07-25 | first on record | John finds this exhausting and terrifying: he cannot stop being scared, and if he cannot choose his thoughts and is partly made of them, he wonders whether he is the captain of himself. | What OCD Is Like (for Me) 00:01:44 |
| 2021-09-07 | restate | John feels like a person with a soul making free-will-ish choices, but most of the time he is a moth flying toward whatever light he sees: money, status, power or rage. | My Two Favorite Jokes 00:01:05 |
| 2024-09-17 | restate | John concludes that not only algorithms decide how we feel: even in nature he, the purported captain of the ship of himself, does not decide how he feels facing a coyote. | My Consciousness. Their Capital. 00:03:12 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-06-08 | first on record | Hank has come to rationally accept determinism, which philosophy defines as everything being part of an inevitable chain of cause and effect. | Intentionally Ignorant: Does Free Will Exist? 00:01:36 |
| 2025-06-27 | restate | Hank says we have less agency than we think, citing the elephant rider metaphor: the body is the elephant and consciousness the rider, and sometimes the elephant will not go. | You’re Not Addicted to Content, You’re Starving for Information 00:06:10 |