For example, I predict that in a few minutes I will turn off the computer and go home, buying groceries at the supermarket on the way
And that is exactly what I did. And for my next trick, I ate because I was hungry, and tonight I will sleep when I am tired.
The sensation of free will is the experience that our acts seem to us to come out of nowhere. But they do come out of somewhere; a part of us that is inaccessible to experience. The sensation is real, but to interpret it at face value is like imagining that your head has no back because you cannot see it.
Given the spike in free-will debates on LW recently (blame Scott Aaronson), and the usual potentially answerable meta-question "Why do we think we have free will?", I am intrigued by a sub-question, "what would it feel like to have/not have free will?". The positive version of this question is not very interesting, almost everyone feels they have free will most all the time. The negative version is more interesting and I expect the answers to be more diverse. Here are a few off the top of my head, not necessarily mutually exclusive:
Epistemic:
Psychological:
Physical:
For me personally some of these are close to the feeling of "no free will" than others, but I am not sure if any single one crosses the boundary.
I am sure that there are different takes on the answers and on how to categorize them. I think it would be useful to collect some perspectives and maybe have a poll or several after.