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SforSingularity comments on Ingredients of Timeless Decision Theory - Less Wrong
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Free will is counted as one of the great problems of philosophy. Wikipedia Lists it as a "central problem of metaphysics". SEP has a whole, long article on it along with others on: "compatibilism", "causal determinism" , "free will and fatalism", "divine foreknowledge", "incompatibilism (nondeterministic) theories of free will" and "arguments for incompatibilism".
If you really have "nuked the dead donkey" here, you would cut out a lot of literature. Furthermore, religious people would no longer be able to use "free will" as a magic incantation with which to defend God.
Dennett and others have used multi-ton high explosives on the dead donkey. Why would nuclear weapons make a further difference?
People respond to math more than to words.
Er... no they don't?
Some do.
rather, if one challenges a valid verbal theory one can usually find some way of convincing people that there is some "wiggle room", that it may or may not be valid, etc. But a mathematical theory has, I think, an air of respectability that will make people pay attention, even if they don't like it, and especially if they don't actually understand the mathematics.
If your theory finds applications, (which, given the robotics revolution we seem to be in the middle of is not vastly unlikely), then it will further marginalize those who stick to the old convenient confusion about free will.
Of course, given what has happened with evolution (smart Christians accept it, but find excuses to still believe in God), I suspect that it will only have an incremental impact on religiosity, even amongst the elite.
The only reason free will is regarded as a problem of philosophy is that philosophers are in the rather bizarre habit of defining it as "your actions are uncaused" - it should be no surprise that a nonsensical definition leads to problems!
When we use the correct definition - the one that corresponds to how the term is actually used - "your actions are caused by your own decisions, as opposed to by external coercion" - the problem doesn't arise.
Free will seems like a pretty boring topic to me. The main recent activity I have noticed in the area was Daniel Dennett's "Freedom Evolves" book. That book was pretty boring and mostly wrong - I thought. It was curious to see Daniel Dennett make such a mess of the subject, though.
As it happens, I'm reading through Freedom Evolves right now; up to chapter 3, and while I don't quite buy his ideas on inevitability, it so far doesn't strike me as a mess?
I liked the bit on memes. Most of the rest of it was a lot of word games, IMO.