Twenty-six hundred years. That’s how long the question (the Question) of determinism vs. free will has been the subject of conjecture and debate by philosophers, poets, scientists, and artists from Heraclitus to Brooklyn’s barstool philosophers. Maybe longer. (It certainly feels longer if you’re stuck on the next barstool.) Once you’re made aware of it, should you choose to dwell on it, the Question pervades your mind, filling the air around you until obsession leads you, inevitably, to fatalism.
No wonder we don’t dwell on it.
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