Sorry for not being clear enough, you misunderstood me completely.<p>I was arguing about emerging behaviour which might be unavoidably complex and not at all tractable even in a very regular system with simple, relatively well understood components. Take cellular automata, or your very own example, the human brain.<p>As to the free will, it makes total sense as a concept when you consider it versus other intelligent actors, and indeed this is the only useful operational perspective unless you are a theist. E.g. my actions do not depend on your agenda very much, other than we have some synchronized exchange of comments here. Denying it exists is a popular but fruitless philosophic cop-out, akin to using Zeno&#x27;s paradoxes to challenge general relativity.<p>I however used &#x27;agency&#x27; to emphasize functional aspects of the behaviour. The emergent behaviour that might or might be not aligned with behaviour you try constrain it.<p>&gt; A program, on the other hand, can be written with a very simple and straightforward goal system: maximize advertising revenue; maximize account value; maximize paperclip production.<p>Well no, it can&#x27;t. None of the programs currently doing anything like that are simple, straightforward or put it bluntly, very good at that. All such systems today are able to operate in very narrow interval of a few controlled variables. And it&#x27;s not for lack of trying.<p>Your quick paced but narrow minded paper clip factory would have as much chance of wiping off life on Earth as a chess computer on bringing down the electric grid.