Just because words can refer to their means of communication, doesn’t mean the words aren’t still separate from their means of communication.
In computer programming, you have values but you also have addresses to where said values are stored in memory. You can create “pointers” to values, which hold value addresses as their value instead of the value itself, but pointers have their own address different to the address of the value, and you have to “dereference” them recall the actual value. Now, you might equally try to create a pointer to point to its own address (analogous to “I am speaking”, or any tautology) but even if compilers let you do this, the pointer value and the pointer address would give you the same value but this doesn’t mean values are addresses.
Overlap/coexist doesn’t mean convergence into the same thing. Operational equivalence isn’t complete equivalence: a good example that’s on topic is that Fatalism and Determinism could both be used to predict the future, so they are operationally equivalent, but they aren’t the same thing because how you get there makes all the difference. It’s like two routes of the same length to the same destination are not the same route: “I am speaking” is not the same as I am speaking (without inverted commas).
Your last two challenges have been fun! I had to give them some thought, keep 'em coming.
Do you mean Molinism?
I “loled” because it’s like me recommending that you go read something that you were saying in much the same words anyway - like telling a teacher to go to one of his own classes. I don’t think it’s bizarre to lol at something like that.
Yes Fatalism would allow choice and Free Will, and all kinds of feel-good stuff that isn’t actually true - it’s like a botch attempt to reconcile things like Free Will with the fact that things can be totally predictable (by Determinism), just for the sake of holding onto the feel-good stuff. Fatalism fits all the criticism said to be against Determinism, because Free Will advocates like the feeling of being in control, having a prima causa self that can decide ex nihilo, but under Fatalism it wouldn’t matter - which is demoralising . Determinism does away with the feel-good stuff by sticking to hard truths that can be reliably and repeatedly tested, which just so happens to fit perfectly with the fact that things can be predicted - even complex things.
There’s still choice in Determinism, but you need to examine what you mean by choice. I still choose to write this post instead of do something else that I want to do, but it’s because the four fundamental forces resulting in me choosing that - not because my prima causa self decided ex nihilo. Even if Free Will could be true, you still only ever choose one choice just the same as under Determinism, except under Free Will you “could have” just as easily chosen to do some other thing instead, even though you didn’t. It seems like you could have, and yet you didn’t for a reason, and no evidence that you could have chosen otherwise at that point in time will ever occur again because the time has gone. Choosing something different at a later point in time is not the same thing as choosing it at the previous time, because the determining factors have changed. Even if you could go back in time to choose the other choice, the determining factors would have changed. If you went back in time and had no recollection of it, and all determining factors and reasons reset as well, the reasons for you choosing your choice would be no different, so you’d still choose the same thing that you had your reason to choose just the same.
This is all Determinism really requires for you to get to grips with: a proper examination of terminology and what terms really mean (like “choice”).
But if all proper examination and use of examples to prove my point is “waffle” to you then stay in the dark all you like. Determinism is still the best model of what’s going on and Free Will is still full of contradictions. You’re just being determined to side with the contradictions at this point. It could change, given the right reasons being determined - but with incomplete information of exactly what’s stopping you, we’ll just have to find out. If anyone was able to follow the complexity of what’s determining each neuron in your brain to not see sense then it would be perfectly possible to figure out how to get you up to speed - difficult technology would be needed but it would be perfectly possible.
More interesting questions arise here though - what happens when such technology is possible and the exact complexity of Determinism behind people’s thoughts is cleared up? The potential for misuse is scary, but it seems this is most likely our future. On the positive side, we wouldn’t need to dance around in circles if a machine could simply process “oh this is the reason he doesn’t understand”.