Does our capacity for analytic reasoning really change the situation all that much? There might be both advantages and disadvantages to all this recursive thinking. For example, flies have much faster reaction times, than people, likely because their situational awareness is not cluttered up by a bunch of cultural assumptions, distractions, personal presumptions, social expectations, etc.

Actually the flawed logic of determinism originates with the fact our experience of time is only a reflection of the process creating it. Just as we still experience the sun as rising in the east and setting in the west.

As mobile organisms, necessitating a sequential process of perception and as humanity, with a narrative based culture, we think of time as the point of the present, moving past to future, then projecting it out linearly.

The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Energy is "conserved," because it is the present, as its activity creates the change that is time.

As well as temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes.

So the process of determination only occurs and only can occur, as the present. There can be no outside observer, because observation is subjective and finite, while the actual reality has no over-all reference frame and is infinite.

Causality is a function of energy exchange, not necessarily sequence. Yesterday didn't cause today, the sun shining on a spinning planet creates this cycle of days and nights.

Our perception of reality is these flashes of perception, like a bunch of strobe lights flashing and reflecting around us. The sequence is a function of our perception, not direct causation.

Since this energy only exists as the present, it is immaterial to assume it has any sense of future determination.

The concept of free will is also flawed, as a will free of cause would be equally free of effect and the premise of will is to affect. We are part of nature's process of selection.

Consider that energy, as process, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.

Remember that it is energy that is causal.

Also consciousness goes past to future, as the patterns it generates, perceptions, thoughts, emotions, intutions, etc, go future to past.

So it would seem that consciousness functions similar to the energy, than the patterns. It drives our thinking, not the other way around.

It should also be noted that the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems process the energy driving us on, while the central nervous system and the brain process the signals emanating from ourselves and our environment. So, yes, it does seem our thoughts are always slightly behind the curve, because they are. The function of recursive thinking isn't to react, but to analyze, so that future reactions are better informed. That is why we are not flies.