HappyD, what is you opinion on what I said here? Agree? Disagree?

I don't want to force you into a long-winded debate on every detail from the post. I'm just interested in your general feelings towards it. 

Then the curiosity would affect his will-power, and he would find a reason to reconsider his current preferences. He probably didn't choose to have someone telling him that though, but even if he did, he made that choice for a reason.

Yes, I read the dice part. If you made a point then I failed to see it.

I think the definition of control is too lose here.

You always have control, that is part of your predetermined circuit. Nothing is forcing you to do anything YOU don't want to do. As such, you are free to be who you are. Weird, but true.

It's not up to us to worry about who we are, it's up to us to just be who we are, unadulterated. As such, if you were given the choice to act according to how you felt instead of according to how someone else wanted you to behave, you should choose how you feel unless part of you realizes this other person may be leading you in a direction that is good for you. And since you understand how important external influence is to your identity, you can now make that decision more intelligently.

As commendable as this is, criminals have a choice to do the right thing, and that's encoded in their dna and through nurture.

They could even flip a coin if they are too afraid of being bound by their own mental forces, or could then chose not to because they realize a coin is dictated by nature and that would not change anything. Well, at least it would give them a chance to be exposed to the alternative. If this is really the only way out of their obsession then so be it.

If the criminal were any smart they would just put a small effort in to just do the right thing regardless.

Alright I will bite...

Say me and a criminal are fighting, then all of a sudden I take out a gun and give it to him, he shoots me and I die. How would I expect profit from that and if so what did I profit from that?

There are a myriad of reasons for not to post, life can be quite more complex than what you can imagine.

It's not like I had a blast doing nothing, and I had a PS2 next to me but I didn't feel like playing for no reason at all.

And when we have to choose between multiple options that are equally good or bad, how do we do it?

I believe the crux of your argument is this: every time someone commits an action, you can always find some motive or desire behind it, such that when they performed that action, it satisfied or achieved that desire or motive.  And in the case of two conflicting desires, the one determined to be ultimately the most satisfying will be achieved.  Therefore, actions are determined by the most powerful preset preferences, which is decidely not free will.

Assuming that's an accurate summation, I would contend that a person can make actions that are not the ones determined  by that person to be ultimately the most desirable.  In any scenario given in this thread, one can find a motive and counter-motive.  But in none of them can it be definitively shown which was the most preferred motive. Perhaps one might seem likely to be the more preferred, but how could we really tell?  And since free will, by definition, can choose an action without regard to its value, we cannot tell if an action was chosen because of strongest preference or free will.

Exactly. A person reading this could decide "whatevs, to prove this 'profit' thing wrong, I'll just do the thing that profits me the least in something really trivial, just for the heck of it".

@OP. I don't disagree with you, I disagree with the wordings you use and how your view is supported. First of all I don't think the word profit is what you're looking for. I think what you're looking for is inclination.

Reason. There are cases where a person will purposefully do something that profits them the least, simply because that's what they want to do most, with no gratification whatsoever, it's just their nature. An example would be deviance. Above and beyond the gratification of self-worth related to deviance, a person may simply not want to do what others tell them to do, no matter how counter-profitable that may be. In essence, you're using basic cases to explain a more complex concept, but the basic cases make your explanation seem unreasonable, yet they intend to make it more comprehensible. By being overly simple, they cause us to miss the point of what you're actually trying to say.

What you're actually trying to say is that noone can be considered guilty or laudable for any given action at any given time, since this is ever a product of their inception. It doesn't matter what they reason in the end that choice will never ever change given a chance to "go at it" again.

Am I right?

I think this is true, but how does someone put that into practice? I can leave this convo and say "In that case fuck it, I'll just do whatever I want", since it's inconsequential in the end. Right? Wrong, because even if I have the "choice" to do what's wrong, I was given (by nature, by God, same diff) enough to make the right choice with a minimum of effort. As such, with my predisposition, if I make the wrong choice (like hurting someone with absolutely no reason), I have used my given abilities for evil whereas a less fortunate person would have wished to have what I had to make better choices.

For those that believe in God, this goes in line with "God judges the heart" and the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30).

Well I'll give you mine I guess.  Lack fo control to me means freedom (My other post).  I agree with everything you said, but would ascribe it to being free rather than a lac of free will.  People who are free are people who are able to be influenced by outside factors.  To be free is to have the ability to have one's direction changed in an instant by an outside force (It's not really a "decision making power").

Will, is the power to have that effect on other people - to influence the direction of others.  You say you have no control because your fate is determined by external forces all the time, but you have that exact effect on OTHER people all the time - you change the fate of others.  For example, giving a gift to someone, giving money, beating someone up, convincing someone in argument, etc...

In other words, we are exercising our will all the times when we affect the fate of something, and we exert our freedom all the times when we allow ourselves to swayed in some manner.  If you care to understand this in depth more you would have to at least see my earlier post as well which is fairly short I think.  Essentially, freedom is what makes life undetermined, and will is what makes it determined.  Also, some people like to be free, and others not so much.  Same goes for having will.

my free will is that my brain decides for what i think should be the best for me/others/whatever. so, just because my brain is doing that for me doesn't mean i have no free will. my brain is my brain, whatever the reason is that i do it because of my brain i do it because it is the will of my brain -> my free will

that's how i define free will, not if i can do something which isn't my preference just to proof myself that i can decide against myself and my brain.