I think you are confusing input vs output. Humans are much like data machines. they learn from their environment and then output more data. Each set of data affects individuals. No single choice at the end belongs to any individual.
Somni covers this up pretty eloquently
No , I'm not confusing anything. In fact, what I said implies this as well -
My point was that if you begin discussing free will from a high- level point of view, that is, human behaviour - a result of an incredibly complex process, it can and will lead to a lot of confusion, as can be inferred from the other comments in this thread. Instead, you could talk about the general case, from a low-level (physical) point of view to show that free will as a concept in itself is flawed. Then you'd have shown that in general , no organism - at any point in the past or future, is capable of "free will" . For example, if free will exists, then each sub atomic particle has free will of it's own, because we are nothing but a huge collection of these particles, and free will cannot be an emergent property of a bunch of different things put together. That would be an absurdity.
This intuition comes when one is able to grasp the deterministic (purposely avoiding talking about quantum mechanics for now because it will take much more than a comment to expound on why 'randomness' of quantum mechanics doesn't mean free will) nature of reality.
this is what i tried to do in the post - hence the many examples. I said the assumption of free will is false. it has no basis other than a religious one.
even in quantum mechanics the observer can alter the experiment. lol
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm
that's a pop science literature obfuscation, "observer" really means any particle that is interacting with another particle, it doesn't need any human interference, but anyways, the inherent 'randomness' present in QM is far from free will.
You mind if I turn parts of your post and comments and my comments into a blog post? Some thought provoking stuff.
fair enough. try this one
https://phys.org/news/2015-10-zeno-effect-verifiedatoms-wont.html
it will be my pleasure. let's keep this thing going. :D