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A short story with a question: You are walking home one day. The weather is cold and beginning to drizzle. You don’t want to get wet and are nearing your home. Then suddenly you have two choices. One is to run the remaining distance, the other is to cross the street early as there is more cover on that side. What do you do? At first this seems to be a trivial issue. After all its just what path you take home right? The question we have to answer is at the crux of that: Do you have free will, and if so what even quantifies free will? Well first let’s start with something we know (or at least have enough evidence to build a theory on), multiverses and timelines. Brushing over this super quickly, a multiverse denotes any 7th dimensional object or higher. Time is the fourth dimension, timelines parallel and concurrent in the same universe are 5th and 6th dimensions. This is the current model most scientists use so I won’t bother to mess with it for today. For this mental exercise I will come from a standpoint of assuming free will does exist. I will also forgo extreme theories, technical jargon, and in fact a lot of the science as the question here is more of a spiritual/moral one. Assumed timeline theory instead of the newer, spacial reconciliation based theories.
Our first hurtle to overcome on our journey to free will is the 5th dimension. Taking our example above say you took the running option. Great, you choose something… right? It’s more complicated than that. While in the current timeline you are in you picked running, the timeline adjacent to our own you choose the safer option, to walk under the cover of the other side of the road. This flip flop of choices takes place infinitely, at random, for all of the conceivable timelines in which that choice was provided to you. “Okay” you say. “But just because I make different choice in all timelines doesn’t negate my free will.” To which I’d say you would be correct. Let’s move this up another level.
Welcome to the 6th dimension. You now can see the beginning and end of every point in time in your universe. This dimension shows you everything there is to be seen in your universe. A perfect photocopy of every possible reality conceivable in your universe divided into the plank unit. You take it in for a moment: every single divination, every major event, every person place and thing, all here. If it was different, its in its own new point in time. You have to think of this dimension as 3d sphere. Time is a layer of the cube, and to hop from one to another point you have to traverse this 6th dimension, the same way to move from one area to another you traverse 3D space. You turn to look at me grinning: “Why, this is just all the possibilities I had before just now charted out and able to be traversed!” I’d say you were correct. You while in that universe were plotting out choices so far as we can tell of your own free will, navigating this cosmic chart like a connect the dots puzzle (with each choice you made or not being a dot!). However, we aren’t quite finished yet on our journey.
Behold, the 7th dimension (if your primitive brain hasn’t actually melted by now that is). You know that sphere of all possibilities you could navigate in your entire universe? Now that is a dot on a line, with infinite numbers of other universes similar to yours sharing the same phase spaces. Each one unique, each one not quite like the others. Welcome to What-If land: the Multiverse. Truly anything is possible here. Real is relative, constants are variable, nothing is the same. With all this surely your free will can be proven false now… right? Nope, as all these deviations both human and inhuman are still based in some form on free will. If you had asked: “do my choices matter?” the answer would laughably be no, and would have been since dimension 6. However the fact that you still have a choice, that you still have autonomy despite looking at quite literally everything from the perspective of a god there is more to be grateful for than you could fathom. The universe is harsh, infinitely infinite, and even deterministic, but it is never in violation of your free will. While I will leave the moral questions (such as the infamous question of how God can allow free will but know all?) for another post. For now though takeaway this: You are an amazing being, with power and control over your destiny. The very laws of the universes guarantee your free will. Don’t squander it, use it!
End Notes: This turned into quite the mini paper but in truth I’d been thinking about this for awhile so it was time to write. If you read all this, well you’re a legend, but also I am always willing to discuss and my DM is always open. For your own brain’s sake here I stopped at 7D but originally had planned 10. I don’t want to hurt anyone mentally lol. Basic Understanding of key concepts mentioned (not really all the sources I used but for just some context):