The free will / determinism question(?) is entirely pointless because even if you know the answer, it won't have any effect on you. (I haven't read the relevant sequence and I don't have a strong feeling that it would change my mind, but you're free to give it a shot, or two, or spray the whole clip)
In the abstract it doesn't have an effect. In you look at particular choices and investigate whether those choices are determined by specific outside factors or by free will it matters.
People like to think that marketing has no effect on them, but if you actually go out and measure marketing has a deterministic effect on the choices people make.
People often rationalize decisions they make with explanations about why they choose that have nothing to do with the factors that determined the decision. They think they were capable to make the decision based on...
After I posted my great idea that "Determinism Is Just A Special Case Of Randomness" because "if not I don't see how there could be free will in a deterministic universe" I was positively guided by the LW community to read the Free Will Sequence so I am learning more about our biases and how we build illusions like free will and randomness in our minds.
But I don't see a list on LW or Wikipedia of a list of cognitive illusions and I think it would be great to have one of those just as it is useful for many people to visit the List Of Cognitive Biases page as a study reference or even to use in day to day life.
I think these are some cognitive illusions that are normally discussed as such:
- Free will
- Randomness/probability
- Time
- Money
There must be many more, but I don't find a list with summaries and that would great (to help me avoid writing posts like my "great idea" above!).
EDIT: The majority of comments below are about questioning if they are illusions or not and if they should be called cognitive illusions.
I guess there is no list of cognitive illusions because there is no academic agreement about these issues like in cognitive biases which are generally accepted as such!
Thx for the comments!