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One can believe one of these three things. One can believe the universe is a product of each person's free will, and that all things we do and experience are products of our free will and not products of anything else other than our free will. One can believe the universe is a product of determinism, where everything is a consequence of a previous action, including our thoughts and feelings being nothing more than products of genetics, behavioral stimuli, and the environment influencing us. Or, one can believe the universe is a product of both which is compatiblism, which would mean we have the free will to make choices but once we make a choice we must absolutely follow the path we have chosen to the end until we reach another choice at which point we repeat the process. Which of these three views do you believe is closest to what you believe and why?

I believe the universe has it's own determined destiny. It will live and die regardless of anything that is done. We cannot change the universe's eventual demise several billions of billions of years in the future.

However the life within will be shaped by free will. Each human has free will, influenced by subconscious reprogramming but will decide their own fate at the end of the day. Humanity will decide their fate, they may decide to end each other or escape the grasps of our own mortality.

but in the end all will be lost when the universe dies.

Compatibilism is literally just the idea that freewill and determinism are not mutually exclusive. Depending on how you view freewill and the concept of choices this is actually a lot easier than most people believe. Anyway I'm a determinist who may or may not believe in free will. Frankly I haven't heard a definition that satisfies me. Determinism to me seems almost like a given. uwu

Determinism. Largely because I believe in cause and effect.For example, if a usually timid person gets in a fight, it could be because they had a shitty day, or they don't like the other person, or they feel threatened and don't see another way out. Or maybe D. All of the above.
If you choose to get something to eat it's because you were hungry or bored or you're just craving something. The key word is if. Our choices are dictated by the little ifs in life.
We're like mindless computers that way.
In order for free will to be possible, we'd have to be able to make choices with no reason or ifs whatsoever.
And sometimes we're not even given the illusion of a choice.
Added to that I'm a predeterminist. I believe in fate, destiny, or whatever you want to call it. The idea is that whatever happens was always going to happen.
We can't see the future and know what our decisions would have been, so we can't choose a different one. So either way, free will is out of the question in my mind.

"My" thoughts on compatibilism:

"My" thoughts on determinism:
"I am standing on the threshold about to enter a room. It is a complicated business. In the first place I must shove against an atmosphere pressing with a force of fourteen pounds on every square inch of my body. I must make sure of landing on a plank travelling at twenty miles a second round the sun – a fraction of a second too early or too late, the plank would be miles away. I must do this whilst hanging from a round planet head outward into space"
"The plank has no solidity of substance. To step on it is like stepping on a swarm of flies. Shall I not slip through? No, if I make the venture one of the flies hits me and gives a boost up again; I fall again and am knocked upwards by another fly; and so on. I may hope that the net result will be that I remain about steady; but if unfortunately I should slip through the floor or be boosted too violently up to the ceiling, the occurrence would be, not a violation of the laws of Nature, but a rare coincidence…

Verily, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a scientific man to pass through a door. And whether the door be barn door or church door it might be wiser that he should consent to be an ordinary man and walk in rather than wait till all the difficulties involved in a really scientific ingress are resolved.

Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World New York-Cambridge, 1929, p. 342

"My" personal opinion:

daniel dennett compatiblism ftw.

determinism is for people who refuse to take ownership of their own actions. "oh well all my decisions are made in advance so i better just do whatever". all this stuff about neurons and whatever is cool and all but they are pretty far and away from how we actually live our lives.

in terms of what spooky turtle said, our lives are always determined up until whatever present moment we live in, there is no spectre of free will that acts out of an ethereal sphere outside of reality. BUT, our choices are not dictated by the little ifs in life, but the very big ifs in life. towards the future there are boundless possibilities, sure, we are determined by what have previously happened to us and there is no way to change it (that's why i think the time travel analogy in the game grumps vid falls short) but we can take active agency in what we will take from these experiences into the future, where we will make the new events that will continue to define our past. if we are not given the illusion of choice it's because we refuse to believe we have a choice in the first place. if you don't like your choices within the rules, take it upon yourself to change the rules.

we are not like mindless computers, we are mindful people.