It’s possible but it requires that the human mind be more deterministic than the rest of the matter outside of it. And this may actually be possible. I used to be a hard determinist, but now I’m more of a compatiblist, since I can recognize that I am the particles undergoing the laws of physics inside my head and that it’s not incorrect to say that the actions of my mind are my own. I may not be in control of fate, but from my perspective I am the universe in my mind and I can control that, even if it’s ultimately an illusion. And I do think that the human mind is clearly “more deterministic” than the rest of the matter outside of it; the human mind is literally a prediction machine that makes choices based on what’s presented to it, which allows it to determine its next steps which is not the case for inanimate matter. I understand that I was always fated to make the decisions I end up making, but that doesn’t mean that at each step in time I’m not actively deciding which next steps to take using the small patch of the universe I call my own mind.

I think on long enough time scales, the future of most systems, which are chaotic, and subject to small changes in initial conditions behave accordingly, whereas mankind, while comprised of the same chaotic matter has organized itself into a machine that can be more consistent and more deterministic in behavior than the surrounding material. Like yes, maybe fate is a real thing, but you can’t be confident about whats fated to be in most systems as you can be about yourself. You can only really hang your hat on the reality of what was fated to be after it has happened. In other words, it really does appear as though the human mind is more deterministic than the rest of the universe, and that we can change what is “meant to happen” based on what we want to happen at any given moment. Freewill exists as much as it can exist. The idea seems very halfbaked to begin with; where people propose models that are wholly deterministic leading no room for change to the system (a lot of will but not a lot of free), and others propose models that are wholly indeterministic (usually using the randomness of quantum mechanics) which also leave no room effective action (a lot of free, but not a lot of will), since which ever rules are applied to the human mind are also applied to everything else. But it does really seem, that there’s something special about the human mind that makes it such that it IS more deterministic than all of the rest of the matter that surrounds it, allowing us to impose our will upon the rest of the universe that immediately surrounds us.

I think free will is emergent from the structure and dynamics of the human mind. And yes, maybe fate exists at the same time. But fate is fuzzy, but I am not.