I will respond to you with this: Everything happens for a reason.

The concept of free will can be illustrated like this: Imagine there were two parallel universes that were exactly identical, and each contained a person that had exactly alike experiences throughout his life as the other, due to the identicalness of the two universes. Now, looking at one moment in both there lives, for example; suppose they both came to a split in a path that leads left and right. Even though they have both had the exact same experience in life and both are biologically equivalent, free will would say that the outcomes of this moment could be different. That is, one might go left and the other right.

Now, the exact same thing would happen in a demonstration of randomness: two identical universes, two identical people, same situation upon which to decide, but different outcomes.

That they have similar outcomes, free will and randomness, does not necessarily imply they are identical in nature (if you can ascribe a nature to free will). While they share the common characteristic of the future not being set in stone, they differ in that free will contains conscious control, whereas randomness does not.

That, I believe, is the deficiency of both of our demonstrations. They only examine the outcomes, which, for randomness and free will, behave exactly the same way.

The dichotomy you set up, I think, further illustrates the difference between free will and randomness. You said (paraphrased) "If outcomes are not determined, then they is random. Since randomness is not free will, free will cannot exist." The problem here is a contradiction between the first premise and second premise. You posit with the first that there is only determination and randomness, that they are the antonyms of each other, that they are the only two possible causes. But then you mention that free will is not randomness, which implies that free will is a third possible cause. And if free will is a third possible cause, then an outcome might indeed be generated by determination, randomness, or free will, whereas your first premise says there is only two causes possible.

Great response!

You are right, I should have explained more about the third "free-will-option" in the OP, but I forgot about it when I wrote the OP and talked about it later in the discussions instead.

I would say that if you have a free will, then you can control your destiny; Your actions are not fully connected to your past. But as I see it, your past is what makes you "choose" whatever you choose. That is the only logical explanation to all of your decisions. When you make a decision you analyze your previous experiences consciously and unconsciously while being affected by the current environments surrounding you.

And in the end, the past must have been determined or occured randomly. Thus you can't control the past, and therefore you can't control the present as the present is directly affected by the past.

That's my take, at least. You can only make one single decision at a time since the past brought you to it. And if not, then your "free will" is random (like in the example in the OP where he may or may not rob the person, depending on randomness. Or as I believe; He must or must not rob him, depending on his past).

Dropped in to point out you're arguably mixing up "free will" and "random actions" but see I've been beaten to it.

Also while ingenious the "rewind" option as explained I don't believe could be considered to prove anything regarding determinism because there is no way to prove that once the rewound time replays that from that point on free will is restored - i.e. I suspect your thought experiment doesn't quite hold water.

I'd also note that true free will as you seem to be implying it would require the power to exectue my desires - something a physical Universe gets in the way of. Due to the nature of our bodies and the options open to us to interact with the Universe our options are contrained anyway in terms of what we can do vs what we can think.

Interesting read though.

Well thank you!

I would agree that past events do have a lot of bearing on the choices that we make in the present.  Easily, it can be demonstrated that people much more often than not do things that meet their strongest desires, which would give evidence against free will (if most actions can be guided by desire, does that not imply the power of external factors?).  The concept of free will, in order to accomodate this, must include a propensity in humanity for laziness, for lack of a better word, in free will or human nature.  In this model, the sum total of all one's past events will most likely  result with one makinga particular choice.  That would at least explain that result.  Whether or not that's a a swallowable idea is different matter of course.

As Reasonable and another user pointed out, a curios and necssary implication of free will is that, if it does exist, it would imply the creation of energy to function.

which are conciquences of past choices

Yes, others choices, which we couldn't possibly control (and they couldn't control theirs either and so on).

Anyway, this is getting silly :D

It is i think its one of those cases where either we give up or our minds die

He didn't write that by his own free will.

It was either determined or random.

Or at least that's your idea.

You made that account just so you could make that comment???

Good grief...