At some point I intend to read some philosophical works on free will and determinism, but I want to record a thought I have that may be unoriginal, refuted, or both.
"Free will", as I think about it, I believe entails the ability to take an action that was not predetermined. ("Causality" on some level requires free will, because I have to have a sensible way of thinking that Y did happen when X did happen but wouldn't have happened if X hadn't happened; I need for the very notion of a counterfactual to make sense. Part of the reason I'm interested in free will is that I'm interested in causality.) Perhaps, however, if I live in a world that is ultimately deterministic but in which I in some practical sense can't predict whether X will happen, but can predict that Y will happen if X does, perhaps that gives rise to the perception of "free will" that I require. If minds of the a similar order of complexity to my own are unable to predict whether I will do X or not, perhaps that amounts to "freedom".
This perhaps fits into the notion of "compatibilism" -- again, I haven't read as much as I eventually should.
