Free will with patch notes
A short guide to choosing fuck-all
Freedom of choice is bollocks.
Not in theory. In theory, it’s delicious. It’s got all the seductive appeal of a late-night takeaway menu. You could have this, or this, or even this thing that looks objectively horrible but might hit just right. We fetishise choice like it’s a fundamental human right. But let’s get one thing straight.
We do not want choice. We want to feel like we chose.
There’s a difference.
Because given too much choice, we don’t become enlightened beings making rational, informed decisions. We become stuttering raccoons caught raiding midnight bins, twitching at the sound of every new option. “Organic almond milk or oat? Local elections or fuck the lot? Recycle the plastic tray or accept your role as eco-scum?” Every choice feels like a potential crime.
Freedom? Exhausting.
Choice? Paralysis.
Freedom and flat Earth
The proof’s everywhere. We live in the most choice-rich society ever puked out by capitalism. And what have we done with it? We’ve created entire tribes of anti-vaxxers, astrology influencers, gluten-free fascists and people who think ketchup is a valid pizza dip.
If freedom led to wisdom, we’d all be philosopher-kings drinking green tea and discussing Kant at brunch. But no. We binge conspiracy theories, rage-comment about wind farms and treat hard-earned facts like tapas: pick what you like, ignore the rest.
It’s like someone gave humanity the keys to the car and we immediately drove it into a hedge, argued about whether the hedge was caused by 5G towers, and made a podcast about it.
We’re not good at decisions. We don’t want to be. We want to be told what to do – but gently, and with plausible deniability. We want influencers who look like us to tell us what rules we already believe.
Enter: the illusion of choice
Because while freedom seems like the thing we all want, what we really want is what game designers call “false agency”: a constrained sandbox that lets us think we’re free while gently funnelling us down the path someone smarter has already built.
Do you want the red pill or the blue pill? Doesn’t matter. They both take you to the same place: a metaphor. But you feel like you chose. You feel powerful. You feel involved.
We crave that. That sense of autonomy. Like toddlers who insist on picking their own clothes, only to choose the same Spider-Man shirt 46 days in a row. It’s not about the choice. It’s about being allowed to feel like we made it.
Because actual freedom? It’s terrifying. Boundless options. No one to blame. Just you and the abyss. We trade liberty for nausea. True freedom isn’t the absence of constraint – it requires knowledge, critical thinking, emotional regulation and effort. You can’t drop someone into an open world and expect them to thrive. Most people need tutorials. Guardrails. Pinned objectives.
Absolute freedom is unplayable without a tutorial. People want free will with patch notes.
The IKEA effect, but for life
Give someone a flatpack set of pre-cut moral positions, political views and ethical standpoints – and they’ll hammer them together like it was their idea all along. We love pre-made identities we can self-assemble. It’s the IKEA effect, but instead of a bookcase, it’s your personality. We’ve been assembling disposable identities out of headlines and hashtags for years, so we already have the groundwork. “I’m not sure what to think about that (I’m waiting for so-and-so to write and article about it first.”
We’re absolutely not logic robots – not even remotely. We’re chaos apes driven by mood, hunger, social proof and whatever shiny bauble caught our eye this week. That’s why marketing works. That’s why default settings matter more than choice menus. That’s why UX people get paid six figures to move a button slightly to the left.
Modern life is curated by algorithms, social contracts and behavioural nudges – and honesly, thank fuck. Because if we were left to truly choose from scratch every time, we’d collapse into our own navels from the cognitive load of deciding which brand of bin bags best aligns with our environmental values and deep personal trauma.
No one wants to do the work freedom entails – they just want to feel free enough to justify their bad decisions.
The horror of autonomy
Left to our own devices, we tend to seek out simple narratives, strong leaders and rigid ideologies – not because we’re evil, but because we’re tired of this shit. Choice fatigue is real and freedom is hard. Certainty is a soothing balm you rub all over your naked indecisive flesh. And when reality is complex and ambiguous, people sprint towards the first cockwomble who says “I’ve got the answers” with enough confidence and a flag emoji.
The paradox is this: we long to be free but ache for structure. We want the freedom to say no, but also someone else to blame when things go wrong.
And yes, in theory, the perfect solution is an all-knowing, benevolent rule-maker. Someone wise. Kind. Not Elon Musk. Unfortunately, that person doesn’t exist. God won’t return your calls. And Jeff from Procurement has opinions now.
So what the hell do we do?
Probably this:
We build scaffolds. Not prisons.
We set limits. Not ultimatums.
We offer three good options, not 3,000 bad ones and a sneaky checkbox for “all of the above”.
And we accept that no one really knows what they’re doing. That “freedom” might just be another myth we whisper to ourselves while scrolling through an infinite list of toothpaste brands, wondering which one makes us more us.
So go on. Pick the toothpaste. Pick the party. Pick the plant-based sausage that tastes like compressed depression. But know this: you’re not free. None of us are. We’re just animals with sentience and anxiety, trying to feel in control. Individually smart and capable, but collectively mouth breathing troglodytes.
By the way, you can hire me to write stuff – science stuff, mostly.