I’m not sold on the whole universe being deterministic, but Robert Sapolsky has a book called Determined which has pretty much convinced me that we don’t have any agency. He’s a neuroscientist, and breaks down what goes in to our actions based on the immediate causes, our environment, our upbringing, our culture, and, in my opinion, doesn’t really leave a place for agency to remain. I don’t really understand his arguments well enough to articulate them here, but I think he’s done some interviews on YouTube which I’m sure will cover the gist of it.

I’d love to see the future, because I really am hopeful for humanity to move beyond all this bullshit to some post scarcity utopia :)) Failing that, I’d probably go watch Phineas Gage’s big moment, because, woah.