Go ahead. Eat that large pizza by yourself, buy that $200 Lego set and dye your hair purple at 2 a.m. It seems as if the internet has figured it out — we should do what we want and be impulsive once and a while. Be spontaneous. Live a little.
Here’s the thing, though: You’re not actually using your free will, because it doesn’t exist.
Your random decision isn’t random at all. Every single choice you make is the inevitable result of everything that came before it. And yes, I mean everything: your upbringing and experiences, every conversation you’ve ever had, every relationship that shaped you, every movie that made you cry and every time someone disappointed or surprised you.
The cultural conditioning you’ve absorbed since birth about what’s acceptable, what’s admirable and what’s embarrassing is all because of a lifetime of things that have already taken place.
Everything exists as part of an infinite causal chain, stretching back to the beginning of time — if we want to get dramatic about it.
Your decision to go to that cafe you thought was cute was caused by the Instagram post you saw yesterday, which was caused by the algorithm trained on your previous behavior, which was caused by every click you’ve ever made, which was caused by your interests, which were caused by your experiences, which were caused by where you grew up, which was caused by where your parents met, which was caused by — you see where this is going. Everything is connected.
Furthermore, our natural instincts are just as wrapped up in this as our thought-out choices.
Allow me to visualize it for you. You’re at a party, you’re giving a speech and you tell a joke, but it falls completely flat. Crickets. That gutting moment where you can feel your face getting hot, and you’re already mentally replaying what you said, trying to understand what went wrong. Why didn’t it land? What was off about the timing, the delivery, the reference? You analyze it because you want to learn not to make that mistake again.
Now imagine the opposite: You tell a joke, and everyone laughs. You remember that beautiful moment where you felt like the most charismatic person in the room. You’ll try to replicate whatever you did that made it work.
Maybe it was the way you paused before the punchline. Maybe it was your deadpan expression. Maybe it was just that this particular group of people was primed to find that particular joke funny. That is your instinct being molded by your experiences.
But here’s the deeper question: Why did they laugh? Or why didn’t they? The answer isn’t simple. It’s not just about your delivery or the joke itself.
What humanity has collectively learned about humor over thousands of years is baked into that moment, the cultural context of what’s funny and what’s not.
Each person’s individual life experiences impact how they will take a joke — maybe that joke reminded someone of their favorite comedian, or maybe it touched on something they’re sensitive about.
The perception can also be influenced by the context of that specific room — like the people’s mood that day, which was itself caused by whether they slept well, which was caused by whether they had caffeine too late, which was caused by the work deadline they were stressed about, which was caused by — again, infinite causation. Therefore, that “instinctive” reaction you have was already predetermined by everything that preceded it.
As neuroscientist Sam Harris argues, you cannot choose what chooses you. Your choices are part of causes that you ultimately have no control over. Your instinct is just the sum of all your previous experiences of telling jokes, being laughed at, being judged and seeking approval. It’s not a spontaneous spring of free choice.
You might be thinking, what about the inherent randomness of the universe? Doesn’t that save free will?
No, it doesn’t, because randomness is just that. A coin being flipped isn’t random — it’s unpredictable, as the outcomes are already established. The brain is a chaotic system similar to weather, determined by the laws of physics — but trying to predict next Sunday’s weather with perfect accuracy isn’t realistic because there are too many variables. But that doesn’t mean weather is “choosing” what to do — it’s just following the rules of physics.
Your brain works the same way. The unpredictability doesn’t prove free will exists — it just proves that you’re complex.
So, here’s what I find fascinating about the “remembering I have free will” trend: It reveals something important about how we think. We need permission to want what we want.
People feel they need to justify their desires. They need to invoke this grand concept of “free will” as though it’s a permission slip from the universe to do something they might be judged for, but, in reality, it’s a shield, justification or excuse. You don’t need to justify your desires by appealing to some mystical power of choice.
Just because free will is an illusion doesn’t mean you can’t use it as a thinking aid. If you’ve lived happily imagining you have free will, keep doing so. You’re going to make the choices you’re going to make anyway, whether or not you label it as such.
Want to make that chaotic decision? Great, the universe has already decided you will. Want to text that person you said you wouldn’t text? The confluence of every event in your life has led to this moment where you’re going to do it.
Freedom without free will doesn’t exist, but freedom from justifying your actions to others does.
