What do we do while deciding if free will exists?

[bennyboy]

Pretty sure, Benny, that no is disputing that you're using "something" at the candle aisle.  Just not convinced that your free will is a tool that determines which candy bar you pick up..if it exists in the first place, or..more broadly, that free will is an explanation for or contributing factor to choice - assuming it does exist.  That's the amusing bit. If we could demonstrate that there were a ghost in the machine..it would get us no closer to demonstrating that the ghost was at the controls. I think theres a simpler explanation for all that ambiguity.

Nothing in my life exists as I see it, so not a problem.

My wife, it turns out, is 99.9999999% empty space, but that doesn't stop me from getting annoyed when she grinds her teeth while she's sleeping. It turns out that my house, my kids, and every other thing I love are impermanent, and a couple hundred years from now, we'll all be so thoroughly erased that it's like we never existed, but that doesn't stop me from feeling it means something to go to work, save money for our dream home, and try to teach my kids life lessons. It turns out that my Mom is probably just a typical primate mammal, and all those things she did that made me feel special were really just a human mother acting like a human mother, but that doesn't stop me from getting a warm fuzzy feeling when I think about my childhood.

The fact is that I'm completely immersed in the fairy tale that we call human existence-- and free will is no less valid in that fairy tale than anything else is. The reality of physics and the reality of what it's like to be human are very different things, no?