Indeed, we dealt with the more philosophical points in a serious and respectable way, but we touched less on this practical question; I only raised it there and you answered it briefly. So I thought it was worth expanding on it, especially since just a few days ago I heard another friend make exactly the same claim as mine here.
When I said that I’m aware of it, I didn’t mean awareness on the part of the genes, but of the goals and feelings that passed through my mind before I decided to act one way rather than another.
Maybe I’ll explain it differently: do you agree that an act of choice always requires a purpose, otherwise it would just be randomness, and every purposive act can be linked as a causal act? Therefore I always find it appropriate to interpret the purpose that stood before my eyes as the causal factor that made me act this way and not another.
Second, I’ll offer another idea for the illusion of choice. We feel that the thoughts passing through our brains are a product of our own choice. But science today knows that these are involuntary computational circuits.

The fact that thoughts pass through you doesn’t prove anything. Nobody claims that an act of choice is arbitrary. That’s just a conceptual mistake. Indeed, purpose is turned by the will into a cause. But the decision that this is the purpose is a free decision without a cause.
The science doesn’t know any such thing. According to that absurd assumption, there’d also be no point paying attention to the “scientific knowledge” (mistaken) that you’re talking about. That too is a result of computational circuits, and we’d have no way to know whether it’s true (and even if we knew it was true, how would we know that that very knowledge itself is true…).

David Hume’s argument against causality is well known: you can’t observe a causal force between two objects.
Are you claiming here too that even if thoughts pass through our minds, we still can’t see a causal connection between them? After all, this isn’t an observation external to me but an internal observation.
Besides, the skeptical claims can also be asked about the believer: who says the thinking really isn’t mistaken? And if you say that here I’m aware that there is a coercive system and there I’m not—still, over there too the considerations are made under a coercive system, and the choice is only within it.

No, that’s not the core of my argument. The question is whether those thoughts determine the result or only influence it, like my topographic analogy regarding choice. See my article here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%91%D7%98-%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%98%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A9-%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%9F/

The question about the illusion of choice can also be raised regarding trust in the senses and in our thinking in general. Maybe our trust in them is implanted in us and has no real basis. I’ve already said here more than once that I don’t see any point in engaging in purely skeptical questions.

(Look, I can’t deny that a significant part of the thought process going on in my mind definitely feels to me as though it’s being done entirely by choice. And as for skepticism, I didn’t start that part of the discussion—you brought up the coercive system…)
In any case, the question I asked was only about the interpretation of the various *actions* I performed, not the thoughts. Since according to all sides choice does not occur in the absence of thought, I can always connect the thought that was present in my mind at time N to the action done at time N+1, and link the two. In fact, it even seems very reasonable to do so!
So, if I understood your claim correctly, there are two kinds of possibilities that can happen:
1. The understanding/thought at time N was that the action is worthy of being done. If so, then there is no room here for choice to impose a veto.
2. The understanding/thought at time N was that the action is not worthy, and nevertheless there is still a desire to perform the action. Here, it seems to me, is our disagreement: my claim is that this thought aroused a renewed and stronger desire to refrain from the act. And your claim is that this is a desire that wasn’t necessarily caused by the thought.
My question is: do *I* have any way to decide which of the options is the correct one? Because as I already mentioned above, just as David Hume wrote that one cannot discern the relation of causation between two events, how can I know whether it is correct to link the thought at time N as the cause of the inaction at time N+1, or not?

Believing in free choice and believing in ghosts are one and the same. Both exist in the place where human ignorance resides.

Tuvia,
Your comment about the coercive system is a misunderstanding. The claim that if there is a coercive system then there is no justification for assuming it is reliable is not a skeptical claim. It is a positive doubt, with a basis. If you have a computer with unknown software and you ask it what 1941X469357 is, would you accept its answer or not? I wouldn’t accept it, and there isn’t a shred of skepticism in that. I wouldn’t accept it because there is no basis at all for assuming its software is designed to multiply numbers. By contrast, the claim you raised regarding the believer—that maybe his belief is mistaken—is an ordinary skeptical claim. That’s why I didn’t go there, just as I usually don’t engage with skeptical arguments.
1. Not correct. There is room for a veto, for example because of inclination. Beyond that, the question is where thought gets its conclusions from that this is a worthy action. It chooses values and commitment to them.
2. Your distinction between desire and thought is artificial. At least in the realm of values, desire is itself thought.
By the way, your description starts with thought and then brings in desire. I start with urges and influences and then bring in desire.

1. How is it possible to impose a veto because of inclination when the person holds that this is the proper act?
2. So you’re claiming that part of the act of thinking is actually volitional? Personally that sounds very hard for me to argue, because how can one think of something new out of nothing? For example, see how hard it is to think of genuine new insights. It sounds almost impossible to think of something “new.” That sounds much less plausible even than acting without a cause.
Do you mean that in your description thought itself is also part of desire?

1. Exactly the same way that thinking about what is proper imposes a veto on inclination. It’s only a question of perspective. A person decides to surrender to inclination, and therefore imposes a veto and does not do what he sees as proper.
2. I’m claiming that what you call thought is really desire. Thinking about what is proper and improper is a value judgment. Therefore it is really desire and not thought (or perhaps one could call it moral cognition).