[StevenRayOrr]

> So I don't think that most of them are purposely intellectually dishonest but just lack awareness.

Some days I feel this charitable. Others not. Usually I suspect they're too intelligent for a lack of awareness to be a good enough excuse: there comes a point where ignorance becomes willful. Then again, this is precisely the problem we're talking about here: when our cognitive biases are so comfortable that our brains erect strong defenses to keep intruders out.

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I probably should have avoided being categorical with my comments on choice. While the capacity for such a choice appears to be unique to the human being, I am not entirely convinced it is, but that has more to do with intuitions about nonhuman minds rather than any sort of certainty. However I am incredibly cautious about the kind of research into free will that you're talking about, because, even if I doubt the inevitably of the endpoint you suggest, it remains an attempt to transform the human being into a calculation, into a process, and that reduces our affairs into mere administration. It's one of the (productive?) contradictions in my own thought that I am constantly pushing up against: my politics are such that I see the value in that kind of bureaucratic management, but my philosophy is such that I see it as dehumanizing. There is no natural equilibrium to be had here, so our duty is one of rebalancing, of maintaining the scales between the unique capacity for human choice and ensuring the conditions of life that are necessary for our biology.