The concept of a strictly deterministic working world can be reframed as the concept of a computer simulation.
Ultimate reality as a computer simulation obviously can - and does - some sub-simulations, brought by us via our modern computers. Even human brains could be termed as such "sub-simulators".
However, within the concept of a strictly deterministic world, no such sub-simulation is independent from the simulation ultimate reality does as a whole. Because the existence of such sub-simulations correlate to a 100 % with what ultimate reality simulated at other places and other times (even in the future). That's why some physicists speak of a space-time block universe that is independent of time.
Although that concept of a block-universe has no conscious goal what to simulate, the simulation itself and its results are nonetheless predetermined if we believe in the concept of a strict determinism.
The substrate on which this gigantic simulation is performed is considered by some to be of secondary interest, since all what counts are the fundamental concepts of computation. In a certain sense, that gigantic simulation can be thought of as being simulated on itself - namely on the fundamental concepts of computation. And how could it be other, since a strictly deterministic world cannot have been come into existence by some non-deterministic events. Even if there was a big bang, if we want to hang on to the world view of strict determinism, then that big bang had to be caused by some deterministic causes - and they themselves also - and so on infinitely.
Thus, a strictly deterministic world must be thought of as as an eternal simulation. It has and will simulate everything that is possible to simulate, infinitely often. Of course, such a strictly deterministic world is thought to also being able to simulate consciousness (otherwise consciousness wouldn't be existent, so the argument goes). Consequently that eternal simulation also does simulate you and me infinitely often during its infinite, eternal course of events.
What we call "particles" and their behaviour then are merely computational steps in that giant simulation. Our best physical theories have already figured out to what computational steps these "particles" belong to. Of course, this seems to imply that parts of this gigantic simulation (human brains) are able to figure out what smaller parts of that simulation do - so that this gigantic simulation at least knows a little bit about due to what principles it comes about in the first place.
Although this may be true (if we assume strict determinism to be true), the above mentioned human knowledge about the principles behind that simulation is predetermined by the whole simulation. Here the question arises whether or not it is (logically) possible for a mindless simulation to not only become aware of itself as being a simulation, but moreover to also figure out the principles on which the whole simulation is based on. Many scientist would say that both questions can be answered with "yes":
every simulation at some point becomes partly aware of itself as a simulation. It then figures out a little bit about due to what principles the whole simulation comes about - and the result is that these principles must be considered as fundamental, since they are eternal. To now "solve" the riddle of how some abstract, eternal and timeless principles (like mathematics) are able to produce a time-dependent computation on just the substrate science has found in our world, it is tempting to say that an eternal simulation does not need any substrate to run itself.
Why? Because the world we observe must - according to an eternal simulation - be a repeated version of an infinite series of identical computational histories in the past. And the fundamental principles of simulation (computation) are logically not changeable whereas the substrate could logically be replaced by some other substrate. One now could argue that the latter is not a logical conclusion and the whole universal simulation we speak of here can exclusively only run on a substrate we call "matter". The point here is that we have no chance to answer this question - since we have no chance to answer the question why there does exist such an eternal simulation at all.
That would be the end-point - if there wouldn't be a subtle detail in the whole chain of reasoning: If we even have no chance to answer the two questions about why only a substrate we call "matter" can do such a simulation and why there should at all exist such an eternal simulation, we could reframe these two questions into the one question whether or not an eternal deterministic world is at all a reasonable concept.
It seems that I have reached the end of reasoning here. My intention was to examine the reasonability of a deterministic world view. Without doubt, there is some determinism in this world. And whether or not the world is exclusively deterministic or not, in either case there is an unambiguous answer out there, there is an unambiguous truth out there that already has answered this question - independent of me asking.
I can only say that it seems to me that truth somehow must be a fundamental and universal measure for all of that. And if true - then it is astonishing for me that this benchmark also realized itself in the endeavour of all scientific reasoning. Moreover, that endeavour is characterized by the ever same goal, finding out what is true and what is false. This is goal-oriented behaviour and I conclude from its existence that for answering all the questions that couldn't be answered here in this post, goal-oriented behaviour must somehow come into the equation. In this sense I agree with Lorraine about her arguments concerning human will and goals.
