Compton was one of a handful of scientists and philosophers to propose a two-stage model of free will. Others include William James, Henri Poincaré, Karl Popper, Henry Margenau, and Daniel Dennett. In 1931, Compton championed the idea of human freedom based on quantum indeterminacy, and invented the notion of amplification of microscopic quantum events to bring chance into the macroscopic world. In his somewhat bizarre mechanism, he imagined sticks of dynamite attached to his amplifier, anticipating the Schrödinger's cat paradox, which was published in 1935.
Reacting to criticisms that his ideas made chance the direct cause of peoples actions, Compton clarified the two-stage nature of his idea in an Atlantic Monthly' article in 1955. First there is a range of random possible events, then one adds a determining factor in the act of choice.