Whenever I think about the universe being deterministic, I get caught up on things like the Monorail episode of The Simpsons. For some reason, that's always the

Whenever I think about the universe being deterministic, I get caught up on things like the Monorail episode of The Simpsons. For some reason, that's always the specific example that pops into my mind when I think "does it make sense that the initial position of atoms in the universe would lead ineluctably to the exact state of the world today, without anyone making choices about it?" The idea that a materialistic universe made of unthinking, unchoosing matter bumping into each other would create the "Monorail" song, with all the specific cultural assumptions built into it, is just so much less likely to me than the alternative that I end up just siding with free will by default. Neither the free will argument, nor determinism, nor any attempted unification of the two that I'm aware of are fully satisfying. But, the idea that we're just atoms that, for no particular reason, happen to write the words "I call the big one Bitey", and then just happen to create the infrastructure to broadcast that out, and view it, seems like the more absurd of the available options.