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You haven't thought about this enough. Make it small so it's understandable - say any game involving choice. One has free will within the predetermined set of conditions of the game. A choice to buy a property or not in Monopoly seems like free will but it isn't really. Life is the same.

Considering that we as human beings don't get to decide what exactly we remember, recall, when we recall or how much we recall - that is memory. What we remember and what we forget. I point this out because it's not a conscious activity but also determines actions, greatly so even.

In the Monopoly example perhaps a property is bought bc its a favorite color or they remember winning before with it or its the one they kno their cousin wants. Whatever the personal reasons, there are reasons - nobody plays Monopoly with all logic and reason.

So we have limited circumstantial choices and predetermined biased assessments of those choices - both beyond our control.

What is free will in that context?




Complexity is unbounded, so the discussion around free will probably makes more sense on the opposite end of the choice spectrum. We have a countably infinite number of choices (due to thermodynamic energy limits) to make even within a framework of quantum mechanics, where electrons can only have discrete energy levels (limited number of ‘choices’). Choosing meaning from the infinite looks more like free will than deciding heads or tails.




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