RE: Belief in Free Will
I think your perspective on this is starting a few layers of unchallenged assumptions too deep. We don't definitively "know" much at all beyond that something must exist in some form in order to think. After that we have to start building on reasonable assumptions. The purpose of science is discovery and understanding, but its value depends on both the value and the possibility of discovery and understanding.
It's safe to assume that questions can have true and knowable answers, because asserting that they cannot is itself an answer and a contradiction.
It's safe to assume that knowing the truth can be valuable, because if it cannot then by definition it is not worth knowing that it cannot.
It's safe to assume that you can choose between multiple possible futures of differing value, because there is nothing to be gained or lost unless this is the case.
Having validated these assumptions as logically sound, we can safely reject any theory which conflicts with them and instead seek explanations that are consistent with a reality in which discovery and learning have value.
Can, yes. However not all answers are knowable. To assume they are takes a human-centric view of the universe and assumes we have the cognitive ability to understand everything about reality... which seems unlikely as just a micro subset of that same reality. AI will never fully comprehend the machine they run on, but there are truths about that machine that directly effect their reality whether they know it or not. Questions about that machine could give the AI hints and they could even make true statements, but its entirely logical to assume that not all questions are truly knowable because knowledge has an inherent scope involved and our scope is too limited by comparison with the macro environment we're part of.
Again, yes truth is valuable, because it shapes the accuracy of our cognitive framework's heuristics. However I don't see the value in making value statements about truth. Value is an entirely subjective perspective to lens a truth through. Valuable truths to one person will be completely not valuable to another. Perspectives of value aren't required for truth to be true. If I handed you a piece of paper with the grand unified theory of physics written on it, and it was true, your ability to perceive value in it or understand it at all is meaningless to its truth.
You've in no way established a syllogism that supports this one and its the point I'll disagree with you most on. Subjective value, like I pointed out, is irrelevant, and conflating the changing trajectories of a person's life over time with a willed change in those trajectories does not in any way mean we've chosen between multiple paths, it means we've been directed along a given worldline by . This could be free will, but you've in no way argued it must be. It could be entirely deterministic, shaped not by willed effort but simply the outputs of our cognitive framework's heuristics as they respond to chaotic stimuli in their environment. One cognitive framework could seek to aim for perceived long term value. Another could seek to aim for immediate value. In neither case is a willed choice a predicate.
I don't find these assumptions to be logically sound at all lol. If you'd like to break them down and try to explain how you're claiming they're logically sound I'd be happy to keep exploring the idea. But you're making an assertion of soundness that I just can't reasonably confirm... which is generally not a good sign for an argument relying entirely on logic lol