Human Intelligence is an Illusion

[The Grand Nudger]

I was not arguing that our will is illusory, only that our "free will" is, and that our sense of conscious self-direction is.

The one doesn't follow from the other.  Our sense of conscious self direction is likely in error in a great many ways, but this in and of itself is incapable of establishing that we lack such an ability altogether.  To define such an ability as somehow "unnatural" or superseding the natural may make the position untenable...but only insomuch as you've defined it as such...rather than demonstrated that it must be so.  Even more mystifying is whatever sense you insist that such an ability must come from "elsewhere".  

Personally, I'm not all that concerned with hard determinism, though I find it difficult to escape....and this is largely down to having so many examples of a systems ability to self direct regardless of the limitations determinism may place on the same. I find the idea of libertarian free will absurd, but since it's unimportant to any ability of ours seeking an explanation the absurdity is contained to the proposition itself rather than the operation of a human (or machine) system.