This conversation may even provoke another struggle session with "Hard D" determinists and those are always a fucking chore.

yeah i was a little afraid of that when I used the term probably will just say disengage immediately if anyone tries lol.

Maybe everything we do is predetermined on some subatomic scale

but like from our best approximation of nature this isn't in the case, which is why i just think the popularity of the "we don't exist" theory among physiscts very strange, it almost at some level denies both experience and physics itself to cling to this philosophy because it supports the idea that everything is predetermined like you so desperately want, it feels almost religous in nature (and again to clarify, it's not the philosophy itself that is religious, i do think it has some validity as far as I think dismissing it out of hand would probably be an even more religious thinking, it's moreso that i find the popularity of it among people who are well known to like, fucking despair that quantum mechanics means the universe is fundamentally not predetermined to be a sign that a lot of them are probably not coming at it from a super well grounded philosophical perspective)

We still experience qualia and consciously ("illusion" or otherwise) live accordingly. What the fuck are we supposed to do, with our lives, with society itself, with these clout-chasing asterisks in our lived experience?

yeah it's a big part of the reason I don't follow the philosophy, whether I actually exist and it's me choosing to follow this or if it's just how my qualia was predetermined to be arranged, I fundamentally think the philosophy is anti-human and leads to a lot of ideas for society that I (or my qualia) resolutely oppose. kinda similar reasoning for why i give no thought to whether or not we live in a simulation other than maybe like a fun 2am conversation when I'm drunk with my friends, focusing and obsessing about it doesnt do any good for society and that ultimately is my number one philosophy.