Go to Jail (Free?) Card

Determinism is the idea that events are completely caused (“determined”) by past events. This means that anything that happens was destined to happen, since past events led to it. When a tree falls down, it did so because an axe chopped it. And therefore the tree falling down was “determined”, and that event could not have happened differently.

Based on this, everything that any human will has done or will ever do is already set in stone. This leads to an interesting conclusion: that people don’t have free will. This position is held by “hard determinists”, whereas “soft determinists” or…