[teew]

For some reason, most opinions on this topic that one reads on forums with of technically inclined people are non-compatibilist (the view that causal determinism and free will are mutually exclusive) while a good number of people that think a lot about will (i.e. philosophers) are compatibilists...

Note though that in metaphysics/theory of mind determinism is defined as the state at a given moment being necessitated from the state at a previous moment. I think one could critique your argument by saying that you're just pushing back the question of determinism by one level (i.e. "what's responsible for your preference of apples in the first place?"). The fact that you always choose the same way can then be taken to be a proof of determinism instead.

A compatibilist line of argument for your position might go something like this: What we consider a free will would hardly be met by a will completely detached from any deterministic constraints whatsoever. If a necessary condition for free will was that it is free from any external conditions, what would there even be for it to 'choose', and on what basis could its choices be made? Only if your mind knows of apples and oranges (objects subject to deterministic systems) and can interact with them (is at least partly part of the same system) can it make a meaningful choice between them. (Again, this view is based on the assumption that determinism exists and that free will is possible.)

[GoblinSlayer]

Looking in the past doesn't change much, because the agent exists in the past too and is a cause of the present agent. But choice really happens in present, so distant past is a wrong place to look at, but if you look in the wrong place it's expected that you don't see anything.

[numpad0]

Sometimes I wonder if those non-tech philosophers are actually smart or they're just free-running their hallucinations with entire System 1 and circular reasoning detection turned off, just because doing so allows them to generate more plausible text faster for stronger in-group approvals...

Isn't the concept of free will somewhat of a mysticist mental pleaser that it'll be the thing that save us in the end in doomsday scenarios? If we accept that the world is deterministic and so are our minds and behaviors, that will be quite depressing, and if we assume free will and our souls are real, that means decisions we make comes from trekky super-reality and therefore potentially infallible, which happy.

> Note though that in metaphysics/theory of mind determinism is defined as the state at a given moment being necessitated from the state at a previous moment. I think one could critique your argument by saying that you're just pushing back the question of determinism by one level

I think this is just tangential to free will. If a state_old -> state_new transition() was deterministic code, but code involved RNG sampling, it can be considered both deterministic and not. It cannot be ruled one way or another here.

> What we consider a free will would hardly be met by a will completely detached from any deterministic constraints whatsoever. If a necessary condition for free will was that it is free from any external conditions, what would there even be for it to 'choose', and on what basis could its choices be made?

This part looks like a strawman sandcastle made up to overload opponents. A lot has to be defined in your favor for that argument to work. What's wrong with rolling a dice(assuming it still works)? Is randomness make a choice laughable meaningless non-choice?

I'm starting to understand why "technically inclined people are non-compatibilist", everything is just way too under-defined that people are barely on same pages.

[GoblinSlayer]

Supernatural or nonexistent is false dichotomy fallacy. The third option is free will exists and natural. Many things follow this pattern: flat earth, geocentrism, lightning, soul.