One could argue that He implanted a conscience in us so that society wouldn’t fall apart and the human race would develop. In your book The First Commonplace you wrote that this is most likely the reason for the commandment.

You wouldn’t need free choice for that. He could just program us to bear witness to good.

I didn’t understand the argument. I’m claiming that God wants us to have as much free choice as possible so that things will be as interesting as possible for Him. In that picture, He would want to program us as little as possible. As an aside, I’d add that the one who would want to program us as much as possible is the Jewish God, who according to you created us in order to solve problems outside the world. Such a God wants to solve those problems with as much certainty as possible. Therefore, on any plane where actions stemming from free choice do not solve those problems, He would limit it.

Since He Himself says otherwise, what’s the point of discussing this hair-splitting?

I still don’t understand. I argued that God wants us to have free choice so that things will be as interesting as possible for Him. You responded that morality is evidence that God cares about us, and therefore it’s unreasonable to claim that we were created to entertain Him. I argued that this is a way to preserve the human race so that it develops, which would be more interesting for God to watch. In response to that, you argued that in that case God wouldn’t give us free choice when He could simply program us to do good. I replied that the more deterministic factors there are influencing a person, the more certainty God has about what we will do, which reduces the enjoyment of the unknown. Take a movie as an example. A person watching it doesn’t want spoilers in advance, because knowing what is going to happen ruins the enjoyment. I didn’t understand your last response.

I’ll answer one last time, because this hair-splitting isn’t leading anywhere.
God created the world and us with choice. That could be done to entertain Him, but in my view it’s far more reasonable that it was done so that we would make use of it (I assume He can entertain Himself if He wants). He also gave us morality, so that society would be properly ordered (and not merely survive), and that also means that what we choose and do matters to Him. In addition, we have a tradition that He gave the Torah and demands Jewish law and morality from us. Conclusion: the world was created by Him so that we would observe Jewish law and morality. QED.

What do you mean by a properly ordered society?

Morally.
A society in which people don’t suffer.