Right. And let's not forget that any such 100-line program would not be—in any meaningful sense—written by anybody, but instead predetermined by the initial conditions of the universe 14 billion years ago, give or take. Something bounced off something else (as it had to) and, presto, these particular tokens were arranged just so. Remember, of course, that the same initial position and velocity of particles during the big bang implied the inevitable and precise creation of the compiler, the processor, the memory, the keyboard, the particular arrangement of letters on that keyboard (and the language they represent, which itself does not communicate anything that wasn't ordained before the first stars coalesced), as well as the office chair you sat in—with its 7 points of articulation!—and the Homer Simpson coffee mug that nobody decided to fill with coffee, but which was in all important ways filled with coffee by the universe itself. At no point did anything ever happen except by predetermined interactions, and the initial conditions of the universe caused all of human history to play out exactly as it did. I think we can all agree that that just makes intuitive sense, and isn't preposterous at all. In fact, we have to.
Human history would certainly have been different if the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs hadn't free-will'd itself into an extinction event I guess.
> Right. And let's not forget that any such 100-line program would not be—in any meaningful sense—written by anybody,
Its perfectly meaningful. If I'm hiring a programmer I know that the mindstate of the one who did the physical action of typing that program is arranged such that they can write useful code for me. Whether that is the result of free will or a chain of causality leading back to the big bang doesn't matter.
The universe is not deterministic because it has a constant stream of fundamental randomness (quantum noise) running through it. This is how you end up with the deterministic-random dichotomy.
