You agree that extracting meaning from language is not a one-to-one process, yes? You can appreciate that people sometimes get a meaning other than what was intended by a certain set of words? I'm sure you do and you can.
That's actually a more important line than you might realize. We'll have to set it aside for another day, but extracting meaning other than what was intended can sometimes seem like an argumentative surrogate. Colloquially, it can almost seem deliberate, except it would be such a fool's mission for someone to actually do so, and thus unlikely. In the end, it remains a mystery, but if it really is a natural thing, then people, and at large, not just here, need to recalibrate their expectations of each other.
But it's true, some people's reading comprehension seems like a puzzle. At large, sure it is something we can see among the wannabe mavericks of social media, like the expatriate lawyer, congresional spouse, and former news CEO who would appear to make a decent living by getting it wrong and pitching fits.
There was an occasion
last year↗ when I needed to cite a dictionary in order to clarify my use of the word, "about"; the critique can feel nearly petty, except my usage on that occasion was ambiguous precisely as criticized. It's one I need to remember, especially as part of the style derives from trying to figure out how to forestall simplistic petty faqing. Still, it was a pretty straightforward example.
There is another version we see in politics, juristics, public relations, and internet argument, in which one responds to an argument by saying, "Do you mean [____]?" and then posits a straw man of their own making in order to answer that, instead. Sometimes, with that trick, the underlying pretense of confusion just isn't believable, but even still, believability does not inherently mean genuine confusion; there comes a point at which, fine, people can believe what they're seeing, but it doesn't speak well of the ostensibly confused.
There are, of course, myriad manners of confusion to consider, but, right, another discussion.
(For the record, Baldeee's use of the phrase, "you have", is very similar to the ambiguity of how I used the word, "about". Here's the twist, though: I am already aware that James R sometimes shows confusion regarding the word, "you"; Baldeee might not have known.)
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Meanwhile, you're looking over the available flavours. You see chocolate and peppermint, but you don't like those nearly as much as strawberry icecream. "I'll have a strawberry icecream!" you say.
"Aha! I knew that's what you'd choose", I say.
Does my knowing in advance what you'd choose mean that your choice wasn't free? You got exactly the flavour you wanted. Nobody stopped you from choosing chocolate or peppermint instead of strawberry.
If I'm on a train heading down a track with no switches, then I know exactly where the train is going. But I don't necessarily have access to the control cabin. I have no ability to make the train take a different path. I can't stop or start the train. I can't even use the PA system. My knowledge of the path and the journey doesn't give me any special power over the train itself.
It becomes more important to observe that your version of knowing isn't really knowing.
So, Crow and Eagle are fighting over a baby. Okay, not really, especially because a baby isn't hard or substantial enough to achieve the effect, but ... oh, hey, I guess wee don't need a bird with something inexplicable in its mouth to fall in front of the train in order to cause an unexpected derailment. Two bits of good news out of Anacortes: Only the engine fuel spilled, and it wasn't Norfolk Southern, this time. Oh, wait, that latter isn't good news.
If you're on a train heading down a track with no switches, then you know exactly where the train is going, and this
knowledge of the path and the journey doesn't give you any special power over the train itself, that "knowledge" is not knowledge.
Ceteris paribus, sure, you can expect a relationship between track, course, and destination, but as Burlington Northern just learned, all else is not necessarily equal. It's one thing that something is wrong with the track, but if you already know this, and can account for it, we might wonder why the hell the train is on that track. Moreover, compared to the question of free will, and regardless of track condition or other factors that might dispute what you think you know, we might also suggest the free will of having boarded that train in the first place is worth considering.
Is it an electric train? What if a battery, or some component of the power system, catches fire? Sure, the schematic suggests everything ought to work, but it's almost impossible, at this level of generality, to know which component of the electrical system will fail.
(If you're on a 737 Max with no access to the autopilot ... er, never mind.)
Just out of curiosity:
Are you able to at least consider the idea of the universe as a single event?
Or is that simply an impossible context to ask of you?
It could be that where you and I might dispute about free will is a marginal question of precision. As long as the math works out, the result we have is the only outcome that was ever truly possible. And within those margins, there is something we might perceive as resembling free will, but in that case I find myself wondering whether lemon sorbet actually exists.
