> how you think chance and randomness exist, there is no proof that they do, everything has a cause.

I don't assume they do, but it is irrelevant to my argument whether they do or not.

> There is no rewinding of time.

Firstly, we do not know this. We do not, in fact know that time passes at all. We have no ability to perceive time other than as a function of memory we do not know whether is real.

But that too is irrelevant to my argument - you're taking it to literally.

It is a shortcut to make am argument about whether the same entity with the same exact state processing the same inputs can produce a different outcome. Making that argument was both in part a rejection of randomness but more critically a rejection of agency: It's an argument that if nothing can change if you can repeat the same inputs to world with the same state, there can be nothing "free" about that process, nor any expression of "will", thus no agency, and that in such a system "free will" is at most an illusion.

> You and I are experiencing time one reality clockrate at a time and our minds refuse to contemplate reality beyond time as we know it, that's why infinity is a difficult to grasp concept for us.

We have no evidence either for or against the passage of time, and we can't have without "outside knowledge" of the system we're within. But that's a digression. We can postulate the passage of time. It does not have any bearing on the argument either way.

> You couldn't have made a different decision, but it was still your decision.

It was "my decision" the same way that was a programs "decision" to produce a given output instead of another based on its state and input. This is - as I said - a compatibilist argument, and one most people get rather agitatedly insistent isn't how things are once you go into the details. People really don't like the notion that they have no agency.

This is why I'm arguing that on one hand "compatibilist free will" is an unsatisfactory illusion, and that one the other hand free will with the agency most people believes that implies is utter nonsense.

To make it clear to you as you have clearly misunderstood my point: Free will is nonsense. Compatibilist free will is nothing more than trying to paper over that by playing silly semantic games that does not imply there's anything "free" about anything, and so I consider it an illusion. And a harmful one at that, because it makes people imagine something very different.

> It is because you assumed that your decisions control all outcomes that you feel deluded. Or you assumed your decisions can't be predicted.

No, I assume my "decisions" are all deterministic or at most stochastic in a way I have no agency over whatsoever and I consider the notion there's anything "free" about it absolutely ludicrous.

Whether or not they can be predicted is entirely orthogonal to that.

> In no way was his free will an illusion?

It was 100% an illusion in that given the same inputs and the exact same state, all we know suggests that cause and effect would either - if you assume randomness ultimately is deterministic at some level - be entirely deterministic - or a stochastic combination of deterministic and randomness.

No possible example you can give addresses that fundamental issue: There is no known logical cause of decisions that isn't either a deterministic cause-and-effect link or randomness, or a combination of the two. Without that there is no agency, and we are nothing more than automatons.

To be clear: I am arguing we are nothing more than automatons.

(Find a "third logical cause" and you'd be up for the Nobel in both physics and maths)

> why did you presume you could control any outcome

I don't presume anyone can control any outcome. That was my point. Hence arguing that a compatibilist "free will" is nothing but an illusion.

> his excercise of free will to attempt suicides is the cause of his tragic paralytic fate

And I'm saying that "free will" is pure illusion. Nothing you have described suggests any source of decision-making other than deterministic cause and effect - you have yourself ruled out randomness. There's nothing "free" about it.

To reiterate, your version of "free will" has a name: It's a compatibilist view. It's well trod philosophical ground.

Words are defined by use, so you're entirely free (heh, sorry) to use "free will" to refer to that, but my argument is that while superficially a lot of people will nod along to that, the moment you explain the implication - that they couldn't possibly have done things differently, people tend to have a strong negative reaction to it.

People want to think they have agency, and with compatibilist free will does not provide that. That does categorically not mean I think free will with agency exists - it means I think using the term "free will" about "compatibilist free will" is wildly misleading.

Compatibilists, cling to this use of "free will" because it is the only way of getting to a definition of "free will" that gives even the superficial illusion of free will without being full of logical holes. "Compatibilist free will" does explain our perception of having free will.

My point is that calling it free will is at best a misnomer, and one that is harmful because the failure to accept that it is an illusion causes people to cling to moral arguments that are wildly invalid without actual agency and actually free "free will".

E.g. without agency any punishment of criminals not designed to minimise harm to all of society including the criminals themselves becomes far harder to justify.

Holding on to this flawed fiction of free will is drastically keeping society in an utterly barbaric, immoral state.