We reference Lucas's blog post titled reconciling-determinism-and-free-will. Because it's is barely more than a tweet, we've included the entire post here as well:

Reconciling Free Will with Determinism

Free will and determinism seem to conflict with each other. But the apparent conflict disappears when we understand that determinism and free will simply describe the world from radically different perspectives and at fundamentally different levels. Free will makes sense only within the context of the physical world, whereas determinism makes sense only from a perspective that is outside the physical world. Consider the determinist statement, “The future exists and has always existed”. It seems like a contradiction in terms, but only because our language forces us to express the idea misleadingly in terms of the past and future. If we assign special meanings to the temporal words in the statement—namely, if by the future we mean “objectively real events that from the perspective of our present have not yet happened”; and if by always we mean “transcending time itself” rather than the usual “existing across all time”—then the contradiction resolves. Assigning these special meanings allows us to express determinism as atemporal and objective: as a description of a physical reality of which time is an attribute. Conversely, free will, which is by far the more intuitive concept, is needed to explain certain kinds of events (i.e., choices) that occur within time, and thus within the physical world that determinism describes from the outside. Determinism and free will are compatible. We really do make choices. It’s just that, from an atemporal determinist perspective, these choices have “always” existed.

Follow Lucas on twitter or check out his blog.

We discuss

• Levels of explanation regarding free will
• The (in)compatibility of different levels of explanation
• Why the lack of free will does not hinge on reductionism
• Memetic arguments for the non-existence of free will
• Whether we can have moral responsibility without free will
• The universe as a filmstrip
• Whether we're all just Frankenstein's monster

Socials

• Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
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How much do you want to want Frankenstein's monster? Send your answer down the tubes and over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Special Guest: Lucas Smalldon.

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Go follow Bruce on twitter (https://twitter.com/bnielson01) and check out his Theory of Anything Podcast here.

(Also Vaden's audio was acting up a bit in this episode, we humbly seek forgiveness.)

We discuss

• Does theorem proving count as creativity?
• Is AlphaGo creative?
• Determinism, predictability, and chaos theory
• Essentialism and a misunderstanding of definitions
• Animal memes and understanding
• Turing Machines and computational universality
• Penrose's "proof" that we need new physics

References

• Ask Us Anything I: Computation and Creativity (Listen first!)
• Logic theorist
• AlphaGo movie

Socials

• Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
• Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
• Help us fund more 64 minute-long blog posts and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here.
• Click dem like buttons on youtube

Create us up an email with something imaginatively rote, cliche and formulaic, and mail that creative stinker over to incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

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We discuss

• Problems with the current peer-review system and how to improve it
• The Mind-Body Problem
• How chaos theory relates to determinism
• The four functions of language
• Why you don't argue with thermometers
• Whether Popper thinks we can build AGI
• Why causality occurs at the level of ideas, not just of atoms

References

• Link to the essay, which you should most definitely read for yourself.
• Ben's call to abolish peer-review
• Discrete Analysis Math Journal
• Pachinko
• Karl Buhler's theory of language

Quotes

This, I think, solves the so-called problem of 'other minds'. If we talk to other people, and especially if we argue
with them, then we assume (sometimes mistakenly) that they also argue: that they speak intentionally about
things, seriously wishing to solve a problem, and not merely behaving as if they were doing so. It has often been seen
that language is a social affair and that solipsism, and doubts about the existence of other minds, become
selfcontradictory if formulated in a language. We can put this now more clearly. In arguing with other people (a thing
which we have learnt from other people), for example about other minds, we cannot but attribute to them intentions,
and this means, mental states. We do not argue with a thermometer.
- C&R, Chap 13

Once we understand the causal behaviour of the machine, we realize that its behaviour is purely expressive or
symptomatic. For amusement we may continue to ask the machine questions, but we shall not seriously argue with it--
unless we believe that it transmits the arguments, both from a person and back to a person.
- C&R, Chap 13

If the behaviour of such a machine becomes very much like that of a man, then we may mistakenly believe that
the machine describes and argues; just as a man"who does not know the working of a phonograph or radio may
mistakenly think that it describes and argues. Yet an analysis of its mechanism teaches us that nothing of this kind
happens. The radio does not argue, although it expresses and signals.
- C&R, Chap 13

It is true that the presence of Mike in my environment may be one of the physical 'causes' of my saying, 'Here is
Mike'. But if I say, 'Should this be your argument, then it is contradictory', because I have grasped or realized that it is
so, then there was no physical 'cause' analogous to Mike; I do not need to hear or see your words in order to realize
that a certain theory (it does not matter whose) is contradictory. The analogy is not to Mike, but rather to my
realization that Mike is here.
- C&R, Chap 13

The fear of obscurantism (or of being judged an obscurantist) has prevented most anti-obscurantists from saying
such things as these. But this fear has produced, in the end, only obscurantism of another kind.
- C&R, Chap 13

When's the last time you argued with your thermometer? Tell us over at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Image Credit: http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/modernlanguages/research/groups/linguistics/

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