Fate is a term used in fantasy books to add mystique. Not everything needs to be codified. Not everything is justified.

+1 Although there are people who will assert there is compatibility between determinism and freedom to choose, I am not one of them and so I cannot answer this question except to say that it is not possible. Given quantum indeterminism, that is given that some aspect of the universe is not determined, there is no reason to believe we are determined either.

@TimBII See Shimon Malin's "Nature Loves to Hide" for a view of the collapse of the wave function that leads to Plotinus and Whitehead. Also, it is a gestalt shift to change from a deterministic view to an agent causation view with agents being everywhere. The orderliness comes from the constraints agents provide to other agents by their choices. This makes the world orderly. To see how choices are made we go back to the quantum collapse. Interpret that as an atemporal choice so there is nothing material causing it and note that our choices appear to be instantaneous as well.

@TimBII "then how come at classical scales the universe appears VERY deterministic" → Quantum stuff is very misunderstood. You see determinism at large scales because at large scales you see the average of effects. Brains are causal machines; stuffing "free will" into quantum effects is something people do because they don't understand what things mean, not something that makes any real sense.

@FrankHubeny "To see how choices are made we go back to the quantum collapse. Interpret that as an atemporal choice so there is nothing material causing it and note that our choices appear to be instantaneous as well." → This makes no sense to me. Human's choices are certainly not instantaneous (lots of experiments show this, and it breaks every intuition of mine to assume it), and quantum randomness is by definition not causally determined so cannot constitute a choice.

@TimBII I didn't say whether I think free will is real, just that randomness won't help you. Deterministic models of physics aren't so much an illusion as an approximation.

"That seems to imply that very occasionally, we'd see things at the classical scale that don't fit with determinism." → Yes, this is correct, though you'd not be able to tell because nobody has a model of reality sufficient to distinguish an unlikely deterministic event from an unlikely nondeterministic one at classical scales.

@Veedrac Regarding instantaneous choices think of all the choices we make to move a foot or type a letter. Some of our choices do go through our rational processing and we are aware of them. This is what experiments can observe. I didn't follow your argument about quantum randomness.

@FrankHubeny Those choices aren't instantaneous. This is obviously true if you understand the brain as a causal physical system built on slow chemical propagation. See work by eg. Mark Hallet and Benjamin Libet.

On the topic of randomness, my point is that even if quantum indeterminacy was fundamentally important to the human process of thought (I doubt it), it would only add stochasticity, which tells you nothing about choice because it tells you nothing about decisions. It can't tell you anything about decisions because randomness is intrinsically undetermined by the environment.

@Veedrac I agree that quantum indeterminacy is not fundamentally important to human thought. It is just one form of indeterminacy that is rather easy to identify. Whatever we have for indeterminacy is our own. I just use QM to show that indeterminacy is possible everywhere. The assumption that brain activity causes our choices already assumes we have no free will. One could flip that around and say the brain activity is caused by our choices. The instantaneous (or atemporal) part is there to guarantee that there are no hidden variables explaining the choices we make.

@FrankHubeny Our choices are part of our brain state; this doesn't in itself prevent free will to the extent that free will is a meaningful term. / "The instantaneous (or atemporal) part is there to guarantee that there are no hidden variables explaining the choices we make." → Can you clarify what you mean? It's not a choice unless it's causally determined by one's mind. That's why it's not a choice for the earth to orbit the sun, and it's not a choice for a die to roll a four. It's only a choice if it happens because of the decisions made in one's mind.

@Veedrac I don't see the mind as part of the brain. What you observe in the brain is the mind telling the brain to do something. It does not even have to be something we are aware of. When you say "causally determined" do you mean by an agent or an event? The agent causation that I maintain we have has no event causation causing it although it may be subject to many constraints. So for all practical purposes from a measurement perspective it is instantaneous, like the collapse of a quantum state. We should probably take the discussion to chat.

@FrankHubeny So the mind is where? In our feet? When I say causally determined, I'm just talking about physics.

The mind need not be anywhere. Placing it somewhere specific in space would allow it to be analyzed spatially. Giving the choice an instantaneous aspect also makes it atemporal although having effects on space-time.

"Placing it somewhere specific in space would allow it to be analyzed spatially." is a bad thing why? Brains aren't going to stop being causal regardless of your refusal to measure it.

"Giving the choice an instantaneous aspect also makes it atemporal although having effects on space-time." But it isn't...