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Feel free to dispute and tear this to pieces. 3nodding

While studying for an exam I started to wonder if the debate of Fate vs. Free Will actually has any true meaning to it, because it seems like the two concepts are the same if you think enough about it.

So we all know what the idea of Fate is: that everything we think and do is pre-determined, and that we (sentient beings) have no real choice in anything because in essence we've already made every choice (or rather, every choice has already been made) in our lives and are simply executing them in sequence.

And the idea of Free Will to contrast that dictates that the choices we make are real choices and that nothing is pre-destined to occur, simply varying degrees of likely to occur.

That said, here we go:

Let's say you're walking down a path and suddenly it forks. You're faced with twin identical paths, which you decide to designate Path A and Path B.

Somebody who believes in Fate would say, for example, that you're going to walk down Path A and that there is absolutely no chance whatsoever of your walking down Path B because it is your already chosen destiny to walk down Path A. However, therein lies a problem. Despite that, and even if somebody were to appear out of nowhere beside you and say that it's your fate to walk down Path A, you'd still make a choice. Humans cannot sense the passage of time or "Fate", so upon looking at both paths you would still look at both and decide which one you feel like taking, and it would still feel like a real choice to you even if you yourself believe in Fate. And yet, that "choice" would apparently be a part of Fate as well, even though in accordance with the rules of Fate it wouldn't really be a choice because with fate there is no choice, only sequences of actions.

So let's say you don't walk down Path A, opting for Path B instead. The person who believes in Fate would say that it was his/her fate to tell you that it was your fate to walk down Path A, that it was also his/her fate to subsequently be wrong, and that it was your true fate to walk down Path B. Somebody who believes in Free Will would say that your choice was real and that there was nothing pre-determined about you choosing Path B over Path A.

Heck, let's say you choose not to go down any path, opting either to back from whence you came or to just stay at the fork. Same thing.

But if you were that in control of your own actions, the question arises: can you undo your actions? No, you cannot, because as far as we know travelling back through time is impossible. Sure, you can turn around, return to the fork and choose Path A or even go back down the path that led to the fork in the first place, but that won't undo your previous action. That'll be just another action after another action, perfectly complicant with the rules of Fate. And yet that sequence of actions was driven by choices you and nobody or nothing else made, perfectly complicant with the rules of Free Will.

There is no way to determine if anything in life is pre-determined or not, so even though you have complied with the concept of Fate you cannot prove it right.
There is no way to determine if your choice was actually a choice because you cannot go back and choose to undo your choice, so even though you have complied with the concept of Free Will you cannot prove it right.

And yet realizing this provokes the question anyway: which is true?

Fate
Are you making a pre-determined choice, without realizing it, to follow a pre-determined path and thus execute a pre-determined action in front of a previous pre-determined choice and action, all of which are and always have been set in stone and cannot nor ever can be undone?

Or...

Free Will
Are you making a real choice to follow a path and thus execute an action in front of a previous choice and action, which is now set in stone and cannot be undone?

And since neither concept can be proven right or wrong, let's remove them from the question:

Are you choosing to follow a path and thus execute an action in front of a previous choice and action, which is as you execute it set in stone and impossible to undo?

All three questions answer as yes, because they're all the same thing.

xd

since Fate is based upon the principle of Determinism, and Determinism is the opposite of Free Will, the two describe the same effect but have a different cause.

in some aspects of physics, the notion of a "flow of time" is entirely ficticious. In some philosophies, spacetime parallels timespace,

in spacetime, your perception of distance is transitioned with moments in time.

in timespace, your perception of moment is transitioned by distance in space

while Fate Teaches that time is linear and space three dimensional,

Free Will Teaches that time is divided into possibilities within hyperspace, much like the way neurons are connected by synapses that wither without use and rewire.

A theory I proposed once to Hellz, involves a possiblity of space time: That in the grand scheme of things, all events happen at once, and we are through dreams or inspiration able to inspire ourselves and others in the future, and they us in their past, and we ourselves and others in what we percieve to be our own past.

Geometrically, instead of time being linear, it would be akin to a network, or web, with arrows moving in multiple directions.

With Free Will, there may exist Domain space between each direction, thus applying multiple dimensions with variable regions of "spacetime".