Tag: adaptive systems

A five-part descent into the illusion of autonomy, where biology writes the script, reason provides the excuse, and the self is merely the echo of its own conditioning. This is a follow-up to a recent post on the implausibility of free will.

Continuity Is Not Identity

You are not who you were — you are what you’ve become

“A river doesn’t remember yesterday’s curve. But we point to it and say: ‘Look, it’s still the same.’”

The compatibilist move here is subtler — less grandiose than autonomy, more domesticated than sovereignty. It says:
Even if you didn’t choose your traits, your past, your preferences —
you’re still you.
That self has endured.
And moral responsibility flows from that continuity.

But this, too, is sleight of hand.

Because continuity is a pattern, not a person.
And a pattern that evolves without origin is not accountable.
It’s just happening.

A River Is Not a Moral Agent

Yes, you are still “you” — but only in the loosest, most cosmetic sense. The fact that your behaviour follows a recognisable pattern does not imply authorship. It merely confirms that systems tend toward stability, or path dependence, or neural canalisation.

You can be stable. You can even be consistent.
But that doesn’t mean you’re choosing anything.

Continuity is not control.
It’s inertia dressed up as identity.

Predictability Is Not Ownership

We mistake persistence for personhood. If someone acts one way for long enough, we assume that behaviour is theirs — that it reflects their values, their self. But all it really reflects is probability.

“You’re still you,” we say.
But which you?

• The one shaped by sleep deprivation?
• The one under hormonal flux?
• The one shaped by language, trauma, and cultural myopia?

Every iteration of “you” is a snapshot — a chemical event disguised as character.

You’re Not Rebuilding — You’re Accreting

The recursive defence — “I can change who I am” — also crumbles here. Because you don’t change yourself from nowhere. You change because something changed you. And that change, too, emerges from your condition.

Growth, reflection, habit formation — these aren’t proofs of freedom. They’re signs that adaptive systems accumulate structure.

You are not shaping clay.
You are sediment, layered by time.

Character Is Compulsion in Costume

We love stories about people who “showed their true colours.”
But this is narrative bias — we flatten a life’s complexity into a myth of revelation.

Yet even our finest moments — courage, restraint, sacrifice — may be nothing more than compulsions coded as character. You didn’t choose to be brave. You just were.

The brave person says: “I had no choice.”
The coward says the same.

Who gets the medal is irrelevant to the question of freedom.

TL;DR: Continuity Doesn’t Mean You Own It

• The self is a pattern of events, not a stable agent.
• Continuity is not agency — it’s habit.
• Predictability doesn’t prove ownership.
• Even your finest moments might be involuntary.
• And if you’re not choosing your changes, you’re just being changed.

So, no — you are not who you were.
You are what you’ve become.
And what you’ve become was never yours to shape freely.

📅 Coming Tomorrow:

Manipulability as Disproof

If your will can be altered without your knowledge, was it ever truly yours?