Ican’t fathom how someone, even given a perfect model of every cell in my body, could predict whether or not I will scratch my nose within the next minute.

so your argument is just personal incredulity?

The issue is not about choice. It is about control. Your next action is purely dependant on the current state of your brain and the stimuli around you. Where is the part that isn’t controlled by this system? How did you cause your brain to be exactly how it is right this moment? Was it not a cause of your previous brain state and the stimuli in the previous moment? How can you shown it’s not turtles all the way down?

The chaos comment is not really relevant. Chaos isn’t choice, I only brought it up to show that at the level of our brains and the interactions we have there isn’t anything random. A world rewound would produce the same outcome.

i have yet to see any evidence thatethere is anything that overcomes the deterministic nature of the universe. the rare bit of chaos we get from quantum mechanics is washed away by the law of large numbers.