Chapter 4 Summary

Reading 1:“Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends”

In a future society, a prisoner, Q, is given months of physical and psychological tests and then is isolated in a comfortable hotel-like prison cell. The walls of the cell are full of books, many of them black volumes that look like a huge encyclopedia. Q discovers that he is part of an experiment trying to prove that human behavior is predictable and that people don’t have free will. In this version of the experiment, Q is aware that his behavior is being predicted: He is able to read each prediction in the black volumes after it has come true. Q wants to believe he has free will and tries to foil the experiment. When he is unable to do so, he must decide whether to die or go on with his life.

Reading 2:“A Little Omniscience Goes a Long Way”

In a comic dialogue between God and Satan, Satan tells God that he and the other angels are tired of God controlling everything they think and do. Satan says “We do everything we do because you make us do it. That makes us feel like puppets. It’s not dignified. We’re not responsible for anything we do.” God replies that they do have control because they can do whatever they want to do. Satan says that’s not good enough because what they want God makes them want; they don’t want everything to be inevitable. God says that the opposite of inevitability is chance. They try an experiment with Adam and Eve, attempting to put chance in their bodies and minds in a way that Satan finds attractive.