Thinking you have a choice and making a choice are interesting notions to hold. Knowing is a different game all together. It is very nebulous around whether it is an illusion, or whether we can actively influence things.
We can all ideate things, or use the argument that I might say "purple monkey dishwasher" to the person who asks me "how am I going" today, but that isn't necessarily me expressing my free will.
I need to find a bloody definition of free will before I am totally convinced if it exists or it doesn't. The reason the topic is so important to me is I'm trying to write a fictional story about it at the moment, and I can't entirely and exactly articulate what I want the theme or the learning of it to be.
Impasse, perhaps?
the definition of free will is a complicated thing. you can look it up, but i don’t think it’s something that can be defined in one specific way. and yeah, sure, a person’s free will might be influenced by their genetics or life experiences — but even then, could someone really predict what that person would do next, even if they knew everything? like, from that person’s perspective, could their next move — or even two moves ahead — really be predicted?
That's the "magic" of it all - we can't know. Too many variables.