If the world is determined, then we have pseudo-random number generators in us, not truly (quantum-mechanical) random randomizers. If our world is determined, all our lottery tickets were drawn at once, in effect, about fourteen billion years ago at the moment of the Big Bang, put in an envelope for us, and doled out as we needed them through life.
The winner cannot properly claim it was his “destiny” to win, but whatever advantages accrue to winning are his, destiny or not, and what could be fairer than that? Fairness does not consist in everybody winning.
Probably the most frequently cited reason for hoping for indeterminism is that without it, when we choose an act, “we could not have done otherwise,” and surely (ding!) that is something that should be important to us. This, too, is not as obvious as it has often seemed, and in order to get a glimpse at how this familiar idea might be misleading us, consider the curious category of inert historical facts.
Source:
Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s Book Intuition Pumps
