Free will?

Do you believe in free will? That is you can do what you want to do?

A lot of people don't- including Einstein.

Read Einstein's view here. A debate is going on in Scott Adam's blog.

Here is my take:
We do not know enough. No, I am not taking the easy way. Read on:

A true conclusive test of free will actually require us to go back in time. For example consider this question-

Q: If I had free will can I choose between writing this blog or not writing it?

The only way we can decide is by going back in time when I started writing this entry.

As a "thought experiment" let me try to model Universe/Life/Existence as a computer program. The computer program will have many if-loops. Each if loop mirrors a decision or event where the program (Universe) can take more than one possible direction. Output of each loop is determined by the conditions of the loop. Now, given the same set of input, a computer program will always execute the same way. (No, a random number will not change the output, since for a particular seed of a random number, the output is same).

If the input to our universe has already been provided, it will run in a deterministic way otherwise it will not.

So, actually free will depends on whether the universe is a closed system or not? Anybody know that?

It is interesting to think that if free will indeed did not exist, then fate exists. And we should pay more attention to soothsayers.