If free will was not real

[Gemini]

I'm under pressure from people, but the pressure (usually) falls short of duress.

I think , again, it's a semantic switch rather than a meaningful distinction.  

Pressure leans on factors that are already present in my decision making (such as the desire for social approval) while duress obliterates my autonomy with violent threats or actual violence. It's not just a pedantic distinction.

I'm referring more to your compulsion to eat chocolate when I say duress, just as a heroin addict is under duress regardless of whether or not any external force or agent is turning the screw.

I read an article that said eating chocolate cake for breakfast can help you lose weight, and decided to try it out. Having a "compulsion to eat chocolate" means something specific about my state of mind which is quite different than the decision I made; a compulsion would be more like an eating disorder.

Excellent, so in what way, then..does a nest thermostat -not- have free-in-context will?  It;s a learning thermostat that requires no duress or coercion from an exterior agent in order to make selections as regards microclimates within a given structure. This is why I don't see much utility in the concept.  

The concept compatibilists define as "free will" has plenty of utility, once you get all the philosophizing about causality out of the way. It's a particular cognitive process that humans with healthy frontal lobes engage in, which we experience as decision making. Which is why your reductio fails--nest thermostats don't have frontal lobes.

Well, I don;t believe in spirits, but I do acknowledge the existence of a mind.  If the mind has, as an ability, the power to be the initiator of events which are not themselves programmed -into- it by..say, our biology and environment.  If our minds arent just elaborate computers....for example, then I;d be willing to consider them as free in some meaningful context - magical spirit powers are a non-issue to me.  This is obviously what "free-will" is angling for...but compatibalist free will ends up being the business of calling red green, rather than discovering or establishing that something -is- green.  It;s a redifinition of a term in the face of evidence to the contrary, and dearth of evidence or explanation in support of...rather than the abandonment of a failed idea.  To me, that would be like deciding that zues really did exist, except that the term zues refers to a cumulonimbus cloud.  Well, I'll just keep calling it a cloud - just as i refer to my will.  There's no use for the prefix "free".  It describes nothing.

(Bold added)

You're defining via negative. Which leaves my question on the table. Is there a coherent definition of incompatibilist free will?

Bob didn't make you do something, but your sugar junky brain -did-. Compulsion, coercion, duress....it applies to either case, and seeing as how your internal compulsions have, at their very heart, external value setting mechanisms (why do you like sugar so much?) then the difference is superficial and, imo, uninformative.

My sugar junky brain didn't make me do something. My sugar junky brain (which is identical to me) did something.

You've got to agree there's a distinction between the two. It isn't relevant to the metaphysics of causality, but it's a distinction nonetheless. And it's not obvious to me why concerns over specious metaphysics should supersede a useful definition of an actual measurable cognitive process.