[rewgs]

I think it's pretty obvious that free will is an illusion.

No matter what, every action -- even if that action is somehow clearly defined as an act of free will (I guess the "classic" example being one of rebellion or a wholly unexpected action) -- springs from a cause. That cause has its own cause. And so and on and so forth, until you pass the barrier between what we call consciousness and what we call organic hardware and pass into the realm of the (currently) measurable and predictable.

Just as a technology, sufficiently advanced, appears to be magic, so then does a complexity, sufficiently complex, appear to be something other than what it is. I bet everyone on HN a Coke that Consciousness will one day be understood than to be nothing more than a whole lot of complexity masquerading as something more. Ditto for any concept of free will within the universe, though I suppose that'd be a whole hell of a lot more harder to prove ;)

Free will simply does not exit, no matter how complex reality is or brains are.

Side-note: while they're pretty bad movies over all, the Matrix sequels summed this concept up pretty will with the whole idea of the One being essentially the free will machine of the Matrix, the "Integral Anomaly" -- essentially baked-in variety/novelty/choice/etc, which is still no less part of the machine itself. Just as a random number generator function returns a random number, it's still programmed to do it.

[rewgs]

Christ I was clearly tired when I wrote this. Apologies for the horrible grammar.