for this conversation to make sense you need to say which conception of "free will" you think is illusory

I’m sad OP never directly responded to this as far as I can tell… because it would clear things up a lot

Personally I don’t believe in the idea that people just make decisions independent of context, or have ideas from divine inspiration or “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”. In this sense classic free will doesn’t exist but also choice and, yes, to an extent, what some people would call free will does exist, because we still make choices and make our own histories, just in shit tons of context