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If you want to me to tell you what determined a decision you made then you'll have to tell me why you made it. Unless you want me to make a reason up?
Indeed it is. 'I preferred to choose that' is a clumsy phrase. Please try to avoid using it.
You're confusing something that you prefer with something that you want. Yet again. I won't be explaining it. Yet again.
Your claim is that it is all physically determined...so why do you require me to tell you what you should be able to predict?
I prefer to stay home and play video games, but since I need money to eat I go to work. So it's clear that prefer has a meaning besides an after-the-fact recognition of what was chosen.
You re-defining terms willy nilly doesn't make that the definition of the term. It just shows you're playing semantic games, which wouldn't be necessary if your position weren't irrational.
Why do I need to supply you with a reason? Why can't you simply predict the reason based on the choice?
It doesn't invalidate my point that what you call free will and what is called determinism is mostly whim without rhyme or reason or cause and effect.
Because (and do I really have to explain this to you?) there'd be an enormous number of reasons why you choose not to have icecream. How can we discuss what determined your choice if you don't give me the reason why you made the choice?
that means that I must be able to prefer something other than what I actually prefer, and to not prefer what I actually do prefer. 
You can't provide me with the reason but somehow you believe in an unbroken chain of physical relationships? This is your thread and your claim, so why do you expect those who challenge you to do your dirty work?
Free will doesn't mean "not determiend by anything", so you're just attacking a straw man no proponant of free will believes in, and given you refuse to defend your position of physical determinism it is unsurprising that you must engage in such fallacious arguments.
No, you have no choice in what you prefer. It will determine your choice. You aren't coerced, but it's you that makes the decision. It's just not a free will decision.
No, what you want to do is not necessarily what you you prefer to do. And this has been explained many times.
I don't have an idea of free will. It doesn't exist. What we choose is determined by antecedent conditions. Your idea of free will is that you can make a decision where it isn't determined by any antecedent conditions. If you do that then it's an arbitrary decision and no free will is involved.
Then go start a thread on free will using whatever definition you like and stop wasting my time.
That's quite the assertion, but not a demonstration.
Playing semantic games doesn't change the facts. And given that your claim is that preferences can only be known after the choice has been made is nothing but putting your conclusion into the definitions. It's not an argument, it's just begging the question.
Then how can you claim that it is an illusion? If you don't have an idea of it, how can you then go on to deny it is in operation? This is patently intellectual dishonest, which is unsurprising given the irrationality of your position.
Ok, free will, in the case of the murderers of ZaZa, you would say they made a free will choice.
It's certainly not as simple as making whatever choice we want at any given time, as if choices are made in a vacuum. But that misses the point of the debate, which is a question of whether or not our decisions are perfectly predictable based on past conditions making any choice we make an illusion. Someone arguing determinism must deny themselves any semblance of agency, or else they are being inconsistent in their claim of determinism. It seems to me that it is impossible to genuinely believe in determinism, and so it is an irrational position to hold and requires linguistic games to maintain.
From now on in, when you see the little rainbow on your post it'll me be saying, yeah - I read it but it's not worth my time responding to it. For all sorts of reasons which I don't want to regurgitate yet again. So it'll be 'optimistic' in that I'm optimistic that your next post will be worth responding to. Feel free to use it yourself in that manner. It'll save us so much time...
