> The view you are elaborating has a logic to it. You could argue it's the zeitgeist, at least among educated and STEM-adjacent circles.

You could argue that most opinions or beliefs about how the World operates are cliche or similar if that's the case, there's only so many different beliefs that make any sense at all to hold and it's likely there's a group of people holding those beliefs as well and that they are not original at all. And you could also argue that a belief that 2 + 2 = 4 is cliche, because so many people believe that to be the case.

> In general, I think the utility of seeing everything through a mechanistic/algorithmic lens is overblown.

That requires some sort of measurement on how many people see it through that lens and what they evaluate it as, but I'm seeing the opposite since most of the time I find it the other way around.

> And I don't feel I understand the world any worse for dropping such mechanistic world-images I may have held years ago (I'm more at peace with it, if anything).

I can't tell how other people understand the World, since one of the learnings throughout my life have been that different people ingest information in so many different ways. Some think in images, some are not able to picture things in their mind, some don't have inner monologue. So naturally there would be a different methods of understanding things. But if I think of myself, I understand things best when I think of them as algorithms or mechanical steps that I think through. I have trouble understanding or remembering facts on their own, without internalizing the mechanisms, the cause and effect after if I have done that, it feels to me like I actually understand it. I don't even know what other way there is to understand that. It's perfectly possible that there's some other innate ways of understanding things or having a feeling that there's understanding, that I can't get just because I'm wired in a way that makes me understand things only if I can think of it as an algorithm. E.g. what I've found fantastic for learning subjects myself is actually coding through them or trying to simulate them using code. It actively engages my mind to try and simulate whatever happens in the real world. And subjects I had trouble engaging with in school, if I go through coding them, I feel like I'm actually learning them and becoming smarter. E.g. if I want to truly learn biology I should build a simulation tool that will simulate how cells behave, whatever different things in cells do, how organs work, etc.

> If one truly holds the view that one is responsible for one's actions, and not the whims of determination of chance, where is the space for the excuse "it's not up to me"?

I still don't see it in that way. Everything being deterministic and algorithmic doesn't make me have those excuses. I happen to have a reward mechanism, that rewards me for e.g. eating. It's been shaped by the process of evolution. I have many other reward mechanisms. I didn't choose those reward mechanisms myself, but I strategize on how to achieve those rewards, and I know that playing a victim is not a way to achieve your goals. Certainly there are people who mistakenly might believe that, but it happens to both, whoever believes in determinism and whoever believes in some sort of free will. I know that if I do good work, I get good rewards. So I do good work.

> Disentangling one's views from one's behavior can go a long way in measured, written discussions like this, but I don't see it being the case in real life. It is the case however, that we can be a hodge-podge of contradictory views and standards, and that we commit to one for a moment, then to another. This is a matter of strength and cohesiveness of character. And we are good at "saving face" in front of us and others. For example, if you've met people who partake in a vice yet will say stuff like "This is bad for me." - the actual underlying view is "This has obvious drawbacks but I still think the enjoyment is worth it." It's only when they can maintain the view that the drawbacks are not worth it, that they can break out.

Certainly there's a lot of views and human condition I think is overall a lot about inner turmoil and fighting vices, desires, balancing short term please vs long term gains etc, etc. But it doesn't matter if you consider something to be deterministic, because you are still balancing short term vs long term just like if you didn't believe in any of that. I don't think that I should be hunting short term pleasure constantly because it's how I'm wired to be, because I've seen enough evidence that in long term I would suffer, and I don't want to suffer in long term, so I put in the effort to engage in short term pleasure in such a way that it wouldn't have higher long term pain than I'd be willing to endure.

I can even visualize these aspects algorithmically and mechanically. I might think of myself as an RPG player where let's say if I eat this food, or ingest this drug, drink alcohol N amount, if affects some of my stats like happiness or euphoria positively temporarily, but it will decrease other stats in the long term. I think I'm conscious of this idea and in a traditional sense I'm picking to skip the short term pleasure, but me wanting to have the longer term pleasure is also wired into me.