Current science is based on models that are from any agent point of view non-deterministic, and philosophy doesn’t make any predictions.
That aside, there is still a strong sense in which determinism is in practice useless, even if the universe truly was deterministic. You don’t know the initial conditions, you don’t know the true evolution rules, and you don’t know and can’t predict the future outcomes any better than alternative models in which you don’t assume that the universe is deterministic.
For example: standard quantum mechanics (depending upon interpretation) says either that the universe is deterministic and “you” is actually a mixture of infinitely many different states, or non-deterministic, and it makes no difference which way you interpret it. There is no experiment you can conduct to find out which one is “actually true”. They’re 100% mathematically equivalent.
However: neither option tells you that there is only one predetermined outcome that will happen. They just differ on whether the incorrect part is “only one” or “predetermined”. Neither are philosophical determinism, even if one interpretation yields a technical sort of state space determinism when viewed over the whole universe.
However, I can’t offer much help with the actual problem in your post—that you need to avoid thinking about determinism to avoid being demotivated. I just don’t feel that, and can’t really imagine how thinking about determinism would make a difference. If I consider doing something, and have the thought “a superintelligent being with perfect knowledge of the universe could have predicted that I would do that”, it has no emotional effect on me that I can discern, and doesn’t affect which things I choose to do or not do.
Current science is based on models that are from any agent point of view non-deterministic, and philosophy doesn’t make any predictions.
That aside, there is still a strong sense in which determinism is in practice useless, even if the universe truly was deterministic. You don’t know the initial conditions, you don’t know the true evolution rules, and you don’t know and can’t predict the future outcomes any better than alternative models in which you don’t assume that the universe is deterministic.
For example: standard quantum mechanics (depending upon interpretation) says either that the universe is deterministic and “you” is actually a mixture of infinitely many different states, or non-deterministic, and it makes no difference which way you interpret it. There is no experiment you can conduct to find out which one is “actually true”. They’re 100% mathematically equivalent.
However: neither option tells you that there is only one predetermined outcome that will happen. They just differ on whether the incorrect part is “only one” or “predetermined”. Neither are philosophical determinism, even if one interpretation yields a technical sort of state space determinism when viewed over the whole universe.
However, I can’t offer much help with the actual problem in your post—that you need to avoid thinking about determinism to avoid being demotivated. I just don’t feel that, and can’t really imagine how thinking about determinism would make a difference. If I consider doing something, and have the thought “a superintelligent being with perfect knowledge of the universe could have predicted that I would do that”, it has no emotional effect on me that I can discern, and doesn’t affect which things I choose to do or not do.