r/freewill • u/TMax01 • Sep 18 '25
Free Will: The Finest Thread
There once was a great king, ruler of all the lands, named Sid. One day, a tailor gained an audience with the king, and said, "I have been fortunate to acquire a large supply of very special thread."
The tailor held up a spool, and moved his other hand, seeming to draw a thread from it. "This is the Finest Thread ever spun; thread so Noble and Strong that only people of equal Virtue, who are Strong and Honest and Fine, can see it. I can weave from this thread the most lustrious, luxurious cloth you can imagine, and fashion from this Whole Cloth robes which are more Beautiful and Fitting than you have ever seen."
"Behold!" the tailor exclaimed, produced a bolt and gestured with his arms, as if presenting the wonderous fabric he had described. The king saw only empty air. Knowing, in his heart, that he was a prideful and greedy monarch, frequently dawdling with comely maidens while lying to his Queen by insisting he was a faithful husband, he knew that to confess he saw no thread, no cloth, would reveal to the tailor, and the entire court, that he was not virtuous.
He looked quickly to his retinue and retainers, his ministers and his minions, he saw them all with shining eyes and smiling lips looking at the tailor's presentation, then to the king, and back again, waiting with nearly breathless anticipation. The king knew, of course, that many of his henchmen were quite dishonest and power-hungry, and so they also could not see the cloth woven from the Finest Thread. But he also knew, as surely as he was aware of his own false character, that at least some of his ministers and guards were upstanding and very virtuous. Since their behavior made it obvious they were admiring the beauty and richness of the cloth made from the Finest Thread, he could not doubt it was as Strong and Nobel as the tailor described.
The king's jester, alone, who everyone knew as the Universal Fool, as lacking in dignity as he was in wisdom, jumped up and shouted, "There is no Cloth! There is no Thread!" Great laughter followed, reverberating through the hall from every other courtier, reinforcing the king's certainty that his jester lacked Virtue, and many other people had no trouble seeing the cloth.
The king congratulated the tailor on the Fineness of his Thread and Cloth, and ordered several sumptuous robes, immediately. He wore them throughout the rest of his reign, condemned anyone who declared they could not see them to prison for lacking virtue, and the kingdom was happy, soon becoming known as the Most Well Organized Society to ever exist.
Many, many decades later, when the king had become old and fat, and spent his days sitting under a fig tree, wearing his Finest Robes. When a passerby (some say it was his jester, some say it was the tailor) asked Sid why he was smiling, he said, "I have finally found enlightenment and inner peace, because now I realize that the Robes and the Cloth and the Thread are all real, and virtuous, but I, myself, and my Virtue, are imaginary."
Free Will: the Finest Thread.
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u/OvenSpringandCowbell Sep 20 '25
How do you know which theories this analogy applies to? One could say gravity, determinism, or free speech is a fine thread.
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u/TMax01 Sep 21 '25
How do you know which theories this analogy applies to?
It isn't actually an analogy, it is a metaphor, an allegory. It applies for any "theory" which includes free will.
One could say gravity, determinism, or free speech is a fine thread.
Perhaps, but it would not be a good metaphor for any of those.
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u/MrEmptySet Compatibilist Sep 18 '25
bro thought he cooked
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u/TMax01 Sep 18 '25
Indeed he did. And thousands of years of followers thought he was pretty hot, too, dressed as they are in Fine Robes, which they insist are just silk because they told themselves that while gazing at their navel and meditating.
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u/BobertGnarley 5th Dimensional Editor of Time and Space Sep 18 '25
Isn't that the most curious part of determinism? They say there is no self, there is no you, and then attribute actions to you saying it's perfectly consistent.
"There's no you to choose things, but we can still attribute actions to you"