Hopefully we can agree that at least part of the universe "chooses" outcomes, rather than them occurring randomly. You could assume that "choosing" is what rand

Hopefully we can agree that at least part of the universe "chooses" outcomes, rather than them occurring randomly. You could assume that "choosing" is what random outcomes feel like but I don't think that's productive. Given that we have evidence of physical systems evolving their states by conscious choice, that begs the question "Why would large, complex physical systems have a governing force that doesn't exist in smaller physical systems?" Occam's Razor suggests that consciousness and will drive the evolution of all physical systems, and our elegant equations are merely statistical approximations following the law of large numbers given a population with a natural variance. Of course we can debate what it means for a low information system to be conscious and have will, but I think that's a more meaningful debate than trying to pinpoint the exact moment that a system becomes complex enough for the magical emergence fairy to sprinkle consciousness dust on inert matter.