Yes, I've been thinking a lot about this and if free will is just an illusion. I sorta like to think it is just an illusion. It does make it easier to deal with "wrong" decisions.
In professional poker there is a rule/saying, "you can do everything right and still loose" (due to chaos). The trick is to not over-think your mistakes, if you made a stupid decision reflect why, if you didnt make stupid decision it might not have been a bad decision, just unlucky.
You cannot control the chaos only adapt and look ahead, instead of if only i did this or that i would be better off. You cannot know for sure if something would happened or not.
You absolutely have free will to do something about your situation, but you cannot guaranteed outcome.
It is likely that you could have using your mind, body and life experience.
Do you think that you could have done the situation better if you were using their mind, body and you had their life experience? I believe that we would all have the same outcome. If that is the case, then free will is an illusion.
Lives go on as we cannot predict/simulate our world to 100% predict human reactions and decisions.
> I believe that we would all have the same outcome.
We are not talking about impossible hypothetical situations. We are talking about Bob and Alice, where Bob thinks to himself that only if he followed same career choices as Alice he would be in the same place as her. Since he is smarter and harder working than her. And that is simply not true due to life being chaotic, unfair and luck plays its part. He would have a chance but not guarantee to have same outcome as Alice.
i dont really see how you can say free will is an illusion so you shouldnt do something.
Thats a direct contradiction
No, if free will is an illision, then even "choosing" to believe in it and "choosing" to let things go is an illusion. It would apply to every "choice" we make.
It's about _past_ decisions, nobody says you shouldn't care about doing the best for you in the present. You can't be sure if your decisions are the best, but you surely have to avoid the bad one if you can !
The meta level is to recognize classes of mistakes and create a process around preventing them to help avoid future mistakes.
But even as I say write it, in a couple of minutes my brain will jump back into thinking I'm in control. It's very strange.