The concept of "choice" contradicts determinism and causality

Let me open by reminding you of your own definition: Choice is the notion that a system of awareness could have any degree of freedom over its actions in a causal and deterministic reality. Lets assume we have two people Dan (who lives an entirely deterministic life) and Fred who lives in an alternate universe and while his choices are influenced by material reality has in fact some degree of freewill. That is Fred's actions are not completely determinable even with perfect knowledge while Dan's are. Oscar the observer lives in a 3rd universe and must figure out which material being is Dan and which is Fred. Oscar discovers to his horror that Dan's choices are so complex he can't tell the difference from Fred's. My point is that if all possible finite observers cannot tell the difference there is no difference. There are no infinite observers. If Dan makes a choice and a) Dan experiences himself making a genuine choiceb) Any observer regardless of how well he knew Dan and Dan't universe would be unable to predict Dan's choicec) Stepping outside the universe -- doesn't help, the math overwhelms outside the universe observer as well. Then Dan really did make a free choice. This infinite observer is essentially God. And the argument being constructed is: God knows everything ->God knows what you are going to do ->You don't actually have freewill. I'd have problems with that argument even with God's existence. I can have freewill and at the same time make predictable choices. For example beginners is chess are thinking through and freely choosing their moves. But their thinking processes are so transparent to more senior players that they can be manipulated and controlled by them. Poor thinking is not the same as no thinking. And the issue of computation complexity is key. Lets use chess. Most estimates today put the number of atoms in universe between: 4×1079 and 1081. There is a notion called Shannon's number (http://en.wikipedia.org...) which represents roughly the level of complexity of completely understanding chess. That is knowing everything there is to know about any position. To store that would take 10123 boards. Or to put that in perspective, take every atom in the universe and store in it more than all human knowledge every created and you still couldn't fit the tree in. I can solve a chess game 1 move away from completing perfectly. 2 moves away... but with each step the complexity of the solution increases. And very quickly so much so that any possible system is overwhelmed. Computations that require more energy than is available in our universe to carry out are effectively infinite calculations. The results are completely unknowable. We can treat those finite but incredibly difficult calculations as having no answer. And any ergodic feeding into another creates that sort of tree. If you had perfect knowledge of my initial state. I thought about a choice for a minute or for an hour there is no way to determine with certainty what I will choose. The computation is undoable. By hand waiving away the computational problems you are moving outside the realm of materialism. Essentially allowing for an all knowing God without using those words. So I'm rejecting your theory. _____ Cross X: a) Can you explain to me how an outside observer can distinguish Fred from Dan? How does Oscar meet his challenge? b) What would freewill look like in your view of the universe? ___Thank you for a solid response. This has turned into quite a mentally challenging debate! As an aside having truly random events does nothing for cryptography and the degree of randomness we have is fine for gambling. That point wasn't central to the debate but you were incorrect. We can take that one to comments if you like or drop it.