Dennett is definitely a compatibilist. When he says that consciousness is an illusion, he means that there's no real pattern that corresponds to our folk psychological notion of qualia (ineffable, incorrigible, private, etc.). Mentality more broadly is real for him in virtue of their being a predictive stance we can take that uses it as an assumption and generates good (in the information theoretic sense) predictions.

I could go into my opinion that determinism, if true, doesn’t necessarily have helpful or useful application when it comes to improving society somewhat.

This is where I land too. I do think the universe is deterministic but like, okay? Then what? I still have to live my life as if it isn’t.

Same goes for the “are we living in a simulation” thing. I’m pretty convinced by the math argument, I think it makes more sense that this reality is a nested one rather than the top level one. But until someone can give me cheat codes to break the simulation it impacts my life exactly not at all.