system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I do not believe that "Free Will" is a coherent concept. CMV

I have never heard a precise definition of free will. It seems to be a very important philosophical concept, but I can not think of a way to distinguish a world in which people have free will from a world in which they do not. Because of this, I think that every debate ever held on this issue was a result of semantic confusion, and not legitimate difference of opinion.

Please do not try to convince me that free will exists, until someone can convince me that free will has a consistent and coherent definition. Thanks!
gpt
Determinism is the concept that everything in the universe is determined by variables that are already in existence. In other words, we can look at the state of the universe right this moment and determine everything that will ever happen by calculating influences between those variables and the laws of nature. Cause-and-effect governs the entire universe, so if we could examine the whole universe for causes, we can determine all effects, and what effects would follow from those, and so on.

Fatalism is similar, but it holds that everything is already "set;" the future is just as immutable as the past or present, and whatever actions we take have been preordained and cannot be altered.

Free will is the concept that decisions we make can be unbound from both of these ideas. That it's an exception to the deterministic/fatalistic nature of the universe because human choice is something we can control, and can make transcend predictability.

For example, say for instance we had the technology to examine the universe and determine a future with certainty. Free will would enable us to simply change the conditions of the universe (by being in a different place, changing the state of the causes involved, etc.) to result in a different future. It's the ability to do that, essentially acting independently from the laws of nature.