The historical facts about Ernie's creation (being created by a goddess, with Laplacian predictor powers, with certain intentions) are not relevant to whether Ernie acts freely 30 years later
After all, our grounds for saying that there is no relevant difference between the two is that the historical facts about Ernie’s creation (that he was created by a goddess, with the powers of a Laplacian predictor, with certain intentions, and so on) are not relevant to the question of whether Ernie acts freely or unfreely 30 years later. If they are not relevant, they don’t provide us with reasons for thinking that Ernie is unfree. By contrast, we do have reasons for thinking that Bert acts fr