So... this is going to be a bit trollish... but I think fair....
I read a few incredibly long threads about free will over the last week, and they mostly seem to be examples of the problem I was talking about during the virtual-meeting last week: Arguments where we can't tell what's a disagreement about words vs a disagreement about ideas. It's like someone with a stick drew some chicken scratch in the sand spelling out "Eff are eee eee <space> double-uew eye el el" and then everyone lined up to mark their territory, and say a few words while they were doing it.
At no point were the various functions of the terms broken out and resolved, at no point were new words introduced for the concepts at play so the territory-marking could stop.
There has to be some good way to break out of those conversations. We should be able to identify those situations more readily, and resolve them more readily. What are the ideas at play (however they are being labeled)? Of those ideas, which, if any, are actually in dispute? Why are different positions in that dispute held?
Or do we just want to fight over what a word should refer to? That is also a fine conversation to have. But there has got to be a better way to have it than waiting to see who has the bigger bladder.
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Here are some of the issues in that particular argument:
1) Historically and at present "free will" is a morally charged issue. Most normal people were/are interested in it because of its role in moral reasoning. This is not to say it is a religious issue. "Free will' is the difference between murder and manslaughter, it is central to parental discipline and social mockery. That concept of free will is something several people have argued we could do away with completely. (I recommend "Beyond Freedom and Dignity".)
2) Like many old-fashioned concepts, there are those who have tried to retreat "free will" into physics. It is unclear what the function of "free will" is in such an argument, and why we would care if it existed (i.e., unclear why we care if we are not trying to prop up its role in moral reasoning).
3) The retreat into physics can go a "systems" route or a "quantum" route. The system route starts to talk about up-causation, down-causation, circular-causation, dynamic systems theory, control theory, etc. The quantum route starts talking about indeterminacy at ridiculously small levels. However, while it is clear those discussions are looking for something, it is almost never clear how that something relates to anything that would have been understood as "free will' at any point in human history before the last half-century or so.