For convenience. If you show me a few examples where believing that I don't have free will helps me get what I want, I might start caring about the actual structure of my mental algorithms as seen from the outside.
It is beneficial to believe you don't have free will if you don't have free will. From Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!:
...When the real demonstration came he had us walk on stage, and he hypnotized us in front of the whole Princeton Graduate College. This time the effect was stronger; I guess I had learned how to become hypnotized. The hypnotist made various demonstrations, having me do things that I couldn't normally do, and at the end he said that after I came out of hypnosis, instead of returning to my seat directly, which was the natural way to go,
A monthly thread for posting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently (or had stored in your quotesfile for ages).
ETA: It would seem that rationality quotes are no longer desired. After several days this thread stands voted into the negatives. Wolud whoever chose to to downvote this below 0 would care to express their disapproval of the regular quotes tradition more explicitly? Or perhaps they may like to browse around for some alternative posts that they could downvote instead of this one? Or, since we're in the business of quotation, they could "come on if they think they're hard enough!"