4.2 The Fine-Tuning of Free Will

“Fate is not a laid railway track that mercilessly transports you to the endpoint; fate is a huge gravitational field. You cannot change the direction of gravity, just as you cannot command a river to flow backward. But you are a ship with a rudder. You cannot eliminate wind and waves, but you can adjust the angle of the sail. So-called free will is not about resisting that inevitable ending, but about choosing what attitude and what cost to slide into that ultimate geometric destination.”

In the previous section, we established “geometric fatalism”: the evolutionary trajectories of the universe necessarily converge to strange attractors in phase space. This seems to pronounce the death sentence of free will. If the ending ($\Omega$ point) is already destined, if even the grand trends of history are the inevitable unfolding of the Hamiltonian spectrum, what meaning does our individual struggle have? Are we just pretending to improvise on a stage with a predetermined script?

This section will defend free will through the microscopic perspective of FS geometry. We will prove that fate and freedom are not contradictory.

Fate determines “where to go,” while free will determines “how to go.”

This fine-tuning ability, though negligible in macroscopic energy, has a world of difference in “Qualia of Experience” and “entropy cost”.

Entry Angle: Soft Landing and Hard Landing

Let us compare life (or the evolution of civilization) to a spacecraft returning to Earth.

• Fate (Gravity): Earth’s gravity. No matter how the spacecraft flies, it must eventually return to the ground (attractor). This is determined by physical laws and cannot be resisted.

• Free Will (Attitude Control): The spacecraft’s attitude control. The pilot holds the control stick and can fine-tune the Angle of Entry into the atmosphere.

This tiny angle difference determines two completely different fates:

1. Hard Landing (Crash):

   If you try to resist gravity or hit the atmosphere at the wrong angle (vertical), you will encounter enormous air resistance.

   • Physical result: The spacecraft generates intense heat due to violent friction (entropy surge), eventually burning up or crashing.

   • Life mapping: This is a life of “resisting fate”. Full of pain, anxiety, and destruction. Although the ending is the same (both return to the ground/death), the process is a disaster.

2. Soft Landing (Glide):

   If you conform to gravity, adjust attitude, and slide into the atmosphere at the optimal tangent angle.

   • Physical result: You use aerodynamic lift to offset gravity, smoothly converting potential energy into kinetic energy, eventually landing gracefully.

   • Life mapping: This is a life of “conforming to the Way”. Full of flow, meaning, and constructiveness.

The essence of free will is “attitude control.”

You cannot change the potential energy topographic map defined by the Hamiltonian $H$ (that is determined by cosmic constants), but you can change the “cross-section” of your state vector $|\psi ⟩$ relative to this topography.

By adjusting your $v_{int}$ (mindset/cognition/strategy), you can choose whether to “collide” with reality or “cut into” reality.

The Ethics of Least Action

In FS geometry, this also corresponds to the active application of the principle of least action.

Nature always tends to take the path with minimum action $S$ (most economical).

But for a complex intelligent agent, there are countless local minima in phase space.

• Some paths can reach the endpoint but are rugged (high dissipation).

• Some paths are smooth and smooth (low dissipation).

Free will is the “right to choose paths.”

When facing difficulties, you can choose anger (high-entropy path) or acceptance and resolution (low-entropy path).

• Anger causes your wave function to undergo violent destructive interference with the environment (internal friction).

• Acceptance makes your wave function undergo constructive interference with environmental trends (resonance).

Although at the limit $\tau \to \infty$, both return to nothingness; in the process of ${\tau }_{now}$, the former is hell, the latter is heaven.

We have the freedom to choose “heaven mode” or “hell mode” to clear the level.

Participatory Fine-Tuning: The Positive Side of the Butterfly Effect

Further, according to nonlinear dynamics, although the shape of attractors is fixed at large scales, they are extremely sensitive at fractal edges.

This gives free will a “four ounces moving a thousand pounds” ability.

You don’t need the power to topple mountains. You only need to apply a Planck-scale “will bias” at critical bifurcation points.

• You cannot change the grand fate of “humanity will eventually move toward silicon-based” (attractor).

• But you can decide whether this process is “peaceful evolution” or “reconstruction after nuclear war ruins”.

This fine-tuning, though not changing the endpoint coordinates, completely changes the phase of the path integral.

And in quantum mechanics, phase is everything.

Different phases mean different interference patterns, which are different “textures of reality”.

Conclusion: Be an Elegant Pilot

So, don’t feel powerless because of “fate.”

Fate is just “gravity”. Gravity is not to bind you; it is to provide you with “gliding power”.

If in a vacuum (no fate), the spacecraft cannot turn and can only move in uniform linear motion, that is the greatest unfreedom.

It is precisely because of attractors and potential energy differences that we can perform complex maneuvers and experience the joy of piloting.

True freedom is not “go wherever you want” (that is random walk).

True freedom is “dancing the most beautiful dance on the way to the inevitable destination.”

We are pilots of the cosmic spacecraft.

Although the route map (physical laws) is already drawn, although the terminal station ($\Omega$ point) is already determined.

But how to hold the steering wheel, how to control the throttle, how to draw that unique golden trajectory among the stars —

This is entirely up to you.

Since we understand the gravity of fate and have mastered the fine-tuning of free will, is there a limit to this fine-tuning power? If we push this “aspiration” willpower to the extreme, can we generate a reverse causal closed loop, making us not just conform to fate but even “create our own origin”?

This leads to the theme of Volume III: The Closed Loop. We will explore that most insane logical structure—Bootstrap. We will see that you exist because future you “pulled” present you out.