I too am a member of the unwashed masses that is finding this discussion fascinating.
The deterministic universe vs. one with free-will is a thought exercise that I often ponder over. The point that I keep running into, personally, and one that I would love others feedback on is this:
If you were able to exactly duplicate the entirety of the universe at a specific time, and do this repeatably, would any of these duplicates have differing futures?
Localizing it further, if I was able to completely replicate myself, brain-state and all, would the copy make the exact same decisions as the original (assuming all stimuli are also equal)?
Personally, I have a hard time conceiving of these situations not all leading to identical futures, and hence a deterministic universe. It's not until I start thinking at the quantum level that I can see some glimmer of non-determinism - is this what others believe the source of 'free-will' is? Quantum flux?
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