But the absurdity here is just in demanding something of the notion of free will which there’s no reason for, i.e. that you for some reason can’t choose the same option every time. So just don’t require that and it’s fine.
That’s just a brute stipulation. In general, the set of causes (say, everything in the past light cone) of an event won’t precisely determine that event—it will constrain the options, but not lead to a unique selection, as with the rules of chess. The world, at least plausibly according to our best current theories, simply isn’t deterministic. True, most would then say that a choice happens ‘at random’; but that’s just a label put onto something, it doesn’t actually explain anything.
Pulling out a little, the problem here isn’t with how the world works, but how theories work: every theory is a transformation of some input data to yield a certain output—like a computation. But such transformations can’t generate new information, if you don’t augment them with an explicit source of new information which you then don’t further analyze (a black box), like ‘randomness’. So wherever information is created, theoretical model just fall short: that’s all there’s to it. The ‘absurd’ properties of free will are just an instance of taking the limitations of theoretical frameworks and projecting them onto the world—confusing the map for the territory.
The strongest argument against free will is what Galen Strawson calls the ‘Basic Argument’ (BA): to be responsible for one’s actions, one ought to be, likewise, responsible for one’s mental state determining these actions; but then, what determines that mental state? Either it’s externally determined, in which case, we’re not ultimately responsible; or we face an infinite regress where we somehow have to keep determining antecedents of our mental states. Since the latter is impossible, so is free will.
But the argument ends up proving too much, because it’s really an argument that no new information ever can come into being: it’s the same argument that has led to the necessity of an ‘uncaused cause’ to get the universe going, some ‘aseic’ being that somehow determines itself, or else, lead to infinite regress. Indeed, if we think about how we could give a mechanism for randomness, we again face the same issue: something like a Zeno machine, a computer that executes each successive instruction in half the time it took for the previous one, could produce genuine randomness—by traversing an infinite sequence of steps. (Conversely, a finite computer equipped with a source of genuine randomness can, by the Kučera–Gács theorem, produce every output of such a Zeno machine, so the two—the production of randomness and the traversal of infinitely many mechanical steps—are equivalent.)
So really, if we take the BA seriously, we should hold that no new information can ever be created, that there’s no randomness, that nothing could’ve ever come into existence. But clearly, there’s stuff around, so something must go wrong. And that’s just taking the limits of theoretical modeling for the limits of the world. What we’ve really landed on here is just the Münchhausen trilemma: chasing down everything to its ultimate origin, we’re left either with circularity, regress, or dogmatism. For randomness, or the origin of the world, most people are perfectly happy with just postulating some ‘black box’ where randomness is somehow generated, or where the world popped into existence. But that’s not solving anything; it’s just sweeping the issue under the rug. On the other hand, with free will, people all of a sudden think that the same issue renders it impossible—but that’s just being inconsistent. If you’re fine with randomness, you ought to be fine with free will, since the resources needed to bring about one (e.g. a Zeno machine) suffice for the other, too.
Of course, that doesn’t settle the question of whether we have free will. I think it’s the simplest explanation for our experience of having free will, but that of course doesn’t settle the matter. But belief in the usual arguments against the notion of free will, if consistently pursued, ultimately lands one in much greater trouble.
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