[uncanny2]

Consciousness is the inflection upon the potential of existential being.

Will is the determination of resolve in the moment of now.

Free will is a will unfettered, not that it is not based upon rules, or inputs, or inference, or ignorance, or even luck.

Having a free will doesn’t mean you aren’t an idiot or reflexively trained for optimal results. Having free will means no one is coercing you, and that you are the captain of your vessel “in the moment of now.”

This whole “moment of now” thing is really important as it refers to the “execution” of will, not its fickle formative uncertainty. Thinking about what you’re going to do when the time comes isn’t the same as what you do when the moment arrives.

This consciousness thing is a feedback loop all the way down to the domain of quantum potentials. The brain does not work on qubits, it works as a holographic sieve. Our brains are not “states” our brains are “potentials” which interfere and resolve.

Will or “free will” is the high level tool for driving this outcome, allowing a “conscious awareness” layer which may change the course of behavior, yet it is a benefit that behavior works itself out without conscious high level awareness as the formative details are complex and may be undermined by the limited context window of awareness.

We may master our consciousness beyond ordinary human understanding. Through deliberate training the mind may learn to manipulate even the most subtle and deep cognitive capabilities. Martial artists and soldiers and musicians and all sorts of others learn that asserting will to form leaves lasting impressions which become automatic yet still remain driven by the ultimate conclusion of will (determination of resolve) in real time.

[hsynkrkye]

it's not your choice that shapes that ship, that captain, and that decision in the "present moment," but your genetic makeup and the environmental data loaded onto it. And that "moment of now" is not some clean break from what came before the execution itself is shaped by the same biology and everything that has been poured into it since birth. Coercion doesn't have to come from the outside; it can come from within. The Jim Twins made the same decisions without ever knowing each other or being guided by anyone. Who was the captain?

as for training the mind martial artists, musicians, soldiers yes, the mind can be trained. But that training happens within the limits your genetic makeup allows. Not everyone who trains the same way gets to the same place because the range of what's possible was never equal to begin with. Deliberate practice doesn't prove free will; it only shows how much of what was already there can actually surface.

the quantum and holographic brain part these models are still speculative and not accepted in the mainstream of neuroscience. To link uncertainty to free will is to confuse randomness with freedom. If we don't know how the die will fall, i don't think that means the die has "free will.

[uncanny2]

A die does not have free will. Nothing to do with it.

Randomness has nothing to do with free will. Not swerving atoms or whatever.

What you say has truth to it. We are constrained, and necessity dictates our determinations. The whole apparatus exists to make the best navigation of uncertainty as possible, that’s it. Free will isn’t for fun or creativity, it is to survive and succeed with a high level override.

We still use trial and error, there is still a feedback loop where our intentions and reality must negotiate for satisfying results.

Without the “liberality of will” this feedback loop would not have a point of reflection. The mind is only emulating a state machine it is not a state machine. It is “potentials interacting” through constructive and destructive interference.

The difficulty in satisfying your question lies not in the originality of thought, rather the necessity and consequences of the intention.

As far as uncertainty, that is the natural circumstance of reality. And in a universe governed by uncertainty, ignorance and confusion is a natural state of mind.

I can say I have more “free will” than an ordinary person because I have spent decades making myself do things I don’t want to do, or doing things I determine necessary at great expense to myself. It may not sound like much, though willfulness and self reliance may be developed just like strength or memory.

That my environment taught me to develop self reliance and my genes make me tough and intelligent is something, yet these are quite average in relation to all humanity.

What makes us “unique” or “willful” is not one decision, it is the compounded effect of continuous assertions over a lifetime.

There are those who discover their override and there are those bound to their impulses. I cannot validate this for you, only offer the insight. I call myself a “free will occultist” and I actively fight “thought control” if that says anything about my “self programming.” And I do program myself. Even as an advocate of these ideas. I address my mind and body as a guided technology. The persistent determination of resolve separates ideologies from pragmatic practice.

Freedom is not the ability to choose, it is the capacity to create choices for one’s self.