I’ve wrestled with the concept of free will for over a decade, and I’ve reached a conclusion that might seem paradoxical: we don’t have free will, yet we do. You need to hold both ideas in your mind simultaneously.

When you examine the laws of physics, determinism appears to be an undeniable truth. Yet, in our day-to-day experience, we live with what feels like free will. Without the belief in free will, life becomes absurd. How could you function if you didn’t believe you could make choices?

Still, leaving it at that isn’t satisfying. I want to settle this debate in my own head once and for all.

Settling the Debate

Imagine the universe as a massive pool table. The first atom, the first event, is like the initial break shot that set everything into motion. Every subsequent event—every atom’s movement, every creation, and even every thought—is a consequence of that first cause, governed by the laws of physics.

Cause and effect rule everything, including our minds. In this sense, free will cannot exist because every thought we have is predetermined by prior events. The laws of physics don’t stop at our skulls; they operate within our brains just as they do outside them.

But that’s the quantum perspective—a lens focused on the subatomic realm.

We don’t experience life on the quantum level. Our experience is rooted in the macro level, the everyday reality we perceive. If you were to strictly adopt the quantum perspective, even consciousness itself might not exist. After all, consciousness is simply an emergent property—a result of atoms and molecules interacting in specific ways. From a purely quantum standpoint, you could argue that consciousness is an illusion. But would you seriously accept that?

The fact is, you are conscious. You’re reading this right now, and I’m writing it. We both know that we are thinking, experiencing beings. And if consciousness is real, then free will—an emergent property of consciousness—must also be real in our lived experience.

Free will and consciousness are inseparable. You can’t believe in one without the other. And because we accept consciousness as real in our everyday lives, we must also accept free will as real.

This doesn’t negate the quantum perspective—it simply means we can’t operate based on it. The quantum realm is not where we live; it’s not where our experiences take place. We live in the macro realm, and our understanding of free will must align with this realm of experience. You can’t base your understanding of existence on a realm you don’t inhabit. Think of it this way: if you live on land, you can’t function as if you were underwater like a fish, and if you’re underwater, you can’t move as if you were on land, if that makes sense. You must shape your way of operating according to the realm you actually live in.

So while it’s valuable to understand the quantum perspective and entertain the idea that free will might be an illusion, you cannot live as though that’s the case. To do so would be insanity.

In the world we inhabit—the realm of conscious beings—we act, think, and create meaning based on the belief that we have free will.