Are we all biological robots?

I recently started learning more about quantum computing, and somehow that drove me into an existential crisis. From quantum mechanics, it’s easy to get distracted by existential questions, and I somehow ended up on the topic of free will, consciousness, and similar ideas. My original goal of learning about quantum computing was left on hold. This is typically me. I start out on something and get distracted by distantly related topics after a chain reaction of exploration, only to fall into rabbit holes. And I love rabbit holes.

I always had the thought that the universe could be deterministic. Everything in the universe follows the laws of physics, and most of these laws have deterministic outcomes. Based on my understanding of physics, everything is, in fact, deterministic. If we take Newton’s laws of motion, for example, we can determine the position of a ball thrown at any point in time, given all the factors. So in my view, everything was indeed deterministic because everything is made up of matter, including humans, and matter obeys the laws of physics.

So if everything, including us, humans and all animals and plants in this universe, is just following the laws of physics, this means everything has a cause. There’s nothing happening on its own. The ball we talked about earlier was in the air because I decided to throw it. I decided to throw it for the sake of an example. And why did I need an example? Because I was writing about free will. Why did I write about free will? Because I read something that led to it. So everything is cause and effect.

I always had this thought, but I also believed there was something else at play in our brains that allowed us to make some sort of free decision. I didn’t believe it when someone told me everything is fate. I didn’t believe in the concept of fate. Only recently did I get the time to actually stumble onto the truth that it is, in fact, very scientific. A wide majority of scientists are in agreement that free will doesn’t exist. These are neuroscientists who study the brain, and from what I’ve read so far, decisions are made in the brain even before we are consciously aware of them. So it is almost like the brain is just a machine.

Are we all just biological robots?