It doesn't really matter whether the universe is determinstic or not, because even if it were, it would be impossible to build anything to exploit that determin

It doesn't really matter whether the universe is determinstic or not, because even if it were, it would be impossible to build anything to exploit that determinism on any useful scale, and so the future remains unknowable. You can think of the universe as a giant computer calculating its own future one picosecond at a time. There is no way to 'jump ahead' and find out the future. Hence it doesn't matter whether it's determinstic or not. And probably never be possible to tell anyway. And anyway if it's not determinstic, what is it instead, Random? How is that any better or any different? How does free will approximate in this metaphysics? Imagine your skull as a boundary between whats inside it and whats outside it - what you do next is mostly to do with whats happening inside your skull rather than outside it. Apart from certain scenarios like freefall, skydiving or something. And yes the workings of your brain have been determined by things outside your skull over time - your experiences and memories and genetic inheritance and so on. But the proximate cause of what you do next is mostly whats inside your skull. So lets just call that agency or free will and be done with it.