If free will was not real

[Angrboda]

I know, which is why the compatibilist position is a semantic game of hide and seek, rather than a description of some ability or quality that human beings have.

Being free from duress/coercion is a real property that human beings can have. To define language in such way as to permit distinctions that obtain on a regular basis (having legal autonomy vs. not having legal autonomy) rather than defining freedom of the will in terms of something that is at best a speculative plausibility and at worst incoherent is hardly a semantic game of hide and seek. It's just good linguistics.

What is happening in the brain of someone with a gun pointed at them that is different from the same brain imagining its future state after choosing the chocolate cake? How is having a gun pointed at my head not just another decision to be made? I fail to see the distinction between the two decisions is anything more than an artifact of your definition. You could define free will as making decisions in the absence of Bobo the clown, simply making a definition doesn't imbue the situation with metaphysical properties it didn't have before the definition. If our will isn't free under 'duress' then it isn't free under ordinary thought processes either. You say that being free from duress/coercion is a real property that human beings can have. I'm not seeing the 'real' part of it in the brain. Just decisions. Gun, no gun. Cake, no cake. It's all the same in the brain.