This is something I've been pondering for a while, and I think it could make for an interesting discussion. I believe that the free will we tend to assume we naturally have actually has many limitations placed upon it by our society, though I'm not saying these limitations are necessarily a bad thing; in fact many of them work out for the greater good.

What do you guys think?

Depends what you mean by free will. Can we do what we want to do? Yes. But we will always do what we want to do. And what we want to do is predictable and determined by the physical state of our brain.

Do we do what we want to? Or are we predestined to want to do certain things at predestined events in our lives?

There is no God or conscious Fate that has mapped out your life, and there's no way to predict your life because of quantum randomness combined with chaos theory, but your life is still entirely determined by the laws of causality. There is nothing that you as a person can do to alter where you will be tomorrow - only chance can do that.

Yeah I know, and I agree... there is one just stream of thought (that I dont believe in) in Hinduism that all of time is basically one straight road that is happening all at once (this is somewhat similar to some later scientific theories too) but that we as humans can only see it unravel second-by-second.

can we do whatever we want? of coarse! now it depends what we do that counts

You're as free as you allow yourself to be, there are restrictive situations that can be avoided by certain actions, you do what you want. However by avoiding those situations by certain actions are you really free by being forced into having to do certain actions? What is truly free to you? Are you free by doing those actions anyways, keeping you physically free, isn't being physically free what you want, so even though you must compromise the actions will lead to your freedom. Or although you do actions that will take away your physical freedom, you did what you want to do, mentally your free, you didn't limit yourself to only certain actions and that alone makes you free.
I digress that you're as free as you make yourself to be, if you believe your not free your not.
Some could argue that people in the holocaust weren't free, however I believe that they could have taken actions to be free. If I were to be taken to a concentration camp I would do everything in my power to resist, even if it killed me and that makes me free. Even if you struggle but get taken anyways you did what you chose to do, even though you failed you're still able to make decisions, though they may take your life they are still there and you have the power to do it.
You decide whether you're free or not.

Also I apologise if I'm hard to understand I have a lot on my mind lately.

We had a thread concerning this 5-6 months ago and somebody brought up a point that has stuck with me for a while.

That free will is non-existent, that all decisions have already been mapped out and decided, when put into a certain situation your decision has already been made, your experiences and genetic make-up have already predetermined how you will react. That how you respond to this post, or this thread, is all dependent on how you were brought up, and the genes you received from your parents.
I also believe there is no such thing as luck or chance, if all is predetermined then how could something be considered lucky, as the possibility of the other event happening wasn't there.

Saying that everything is mapped out by past experience and genes is a reasonable explanation, however does it it explain how one will react when brought up to a problem that they haven't encountered before? I believe that anything can happen regardless of who your parents are or what you've experienced. People who have done horrible things without caring their whole lives have seen drastic changes of decision making when faced with death.

But that also goes into this theory. It has already been planned that their actions, or the actions of somebody else would lead them into this close call with death, which induces this drastic change. So as to say this close cal would be considered a past experience.

Do you see what i mean?

There are an infinite number of possible actions but a small number of probable ones, and the one that we will choose is determined at least partly by the factors Tortuga mentioned. Right now I could bite off my own finger, drink two gallons of water, run outside, and start screaming obscenities at my neighbors. But I won't. Why? I don't want to cause harm to myself, I am not particularly thirsty, and I don't hate my neighbors that much. We have free will in the sense that we are capable of doing almost infinite actions, but there are only a very few logical ones, so most of the time we will end up following a predictable path.

Quote from Zed

There is no God or conscious Fate that has mapped out your life, and there's no way to predict your life because of quantum randomness combined with chaos theory, but your life is still entirely determined by the laws of causality. There is nothing that you as a person can do to alter where you will be tomorrow - only chance can do that.

Quote from Sumfink

There are an infinite number of possible actions but a small number of probable ones, and the one that we will choose is determined at least partly by the factors Tortuga mentioned. Right now I could bite off my own finger, drink two gallons of water, run outside, and start screaming obscenities at my neighbors. But I won't. Why? I don't want to cause harm to myself, I am not particularly thirsty, and I don't hate my neighbors that much. We have free will in the sense that we are capable of doing almost infinite actions, but there are only a very few logical ones, so most of the time we will end up following a predictable path.

Yes but the debate isn't whether or not you will do something logical, it's "To what degree do we really have free will." I don't see how whether or not you follow a predictable path means that you're free or not. Even if you do, as you said there are infinite possible actions regardless of who you are or who your parents are. Although the drastic changes can be factored in, it could also factor in infinite possibilities and wouldn't that mean that although your actions are predetermined that you're still free? Although you're predictable you're still free is what I'm trying to get at. Even you said it, you can do almost anything, isn't that what freedom is?

I think we are free. It's hard to explain, but I believe that even though what we are most likely to choose is in some way predetermined, that we are still technically free to choose anything.