Choosing means: a) evaluating multiple possible outcomes b) selecting from those the outcome with the highest desired value c) taking the action with increa

Choosing means: a) evaluating multiple possible outcomes b) selecting from those the outcome with the highest desired value c) taking the action with increases the likelihood of the desired outcome That's it, end of story. No "spiritual nonsense" necessary. This definition lines up with human intuition, and it also applies to determinstic things like machines. For example, Using this definition we can say things like 'the load balancer chose that server' and even ask why. This definition allows you to debug choice-making processes, and reason about them. So when we ask 'why did the load balancer choose this server', it would be absurd to answer 'because the programmer told it to.' It's true, but empty. The same applies to the claim that 'lots of what people are doing is the impact of advertising'. True, but vacuous. Why did things happen? "Well, because of physics" - that's a true answer to every question that tells us nothing. Of COURSE we can improve the choice making mechanism inside a load balancer. That fact is obvious to us. What's less obvious is that you can improve the choice making mechanism INSIDE OF YOU because you aren't a static object but rather a sequence of different deterministic objects. In each moment, your neural connectome changes slightly. Pathways that you activate become more automatic, and pathways you don't activate atrophy. You activate pathways by selectively activating your attention. That's how you do it. That's how you change yourself, so that you are a different person who makes different choices. That's how you improve your decision making apparatus - by being good at selectively paying increasing attention to signals that are helping you. Individual persons can improve their choice-making mechanisms as well. I know becuase i've done it. I struggled for years making bad choices, and i always used logic like you are using to tell myself 'it wasn't my fault'. That may have been true, but it was useless. It didn't help me make better choices. Only by accepting that I am responsible for the choices i make, and _embracing this fact_ was i able to change my choice making apparatus from something that was pretty terrible to something that works quite well. When you go around telling people they don't have free well, you're jamming up their choice making apparatus. You're convincing people not to bother making choices. It's probably worse than advertising. Making better choices comes down, ultimately, to controlling your attention during the choice making process. I agree that advertising is super destructive. It's like the opposite of meditation.