[card_zero]

They want "agency", which means something like looking at the universe and interfering with it without being part of it, like a scientist with the universe in a petri dish, somehow external to any universe and not subject to any rules or causality.

It's a bizarre but apparently intuitive wish. But this isn't necessary. A robot can select one option from among many. We can predict the robots choice. A human can do the same, and we can't predict the human's choice so well, because humans are deep and complex and actually think, but it's still a mechanism, and so what? The error here is in thinking that "mechanism = robot" and "mechanism = amoral", neither of which are true - except for all the non-human mechanisms, which is the great majority of the mechanisms (processes, etc.) that we see, and we don't like being lumped in with them in case it makes us robots and removes responsibility for choices. But it just doesn't.

[lupire]

And yet, knowing that free will does not exist can change someone's whole life trajectory. So free will is a useful delusion. But we can't control if we get to have the delusion. It's not surprising if this like of reasoning seems familiar.

[card_zero]

Free will does exist, deterministic agency exists, and reasoning that determinism removes moral responsibility is an error. What doesn't exist is this metaphysical type of god-like beyond-universe agency that people obsess over for no obvious reason.

[lisper]

Free will is not a delusion it is an illusion. The difference is significant. Illusions are normal sensory perceptions common across nearly all humans that just happen not to correspond to anything in physical reality.