Examples are not metrics, and in this case the examples are particularly meaningless. How do you know the dead albatross and the cannonball did not choose to fall? What objective measure are you using to determine whether or not a choice is being made? You are glossing over the hard questions with vague assertions and intuitions.
All you have observed is that one albatross flew away, one did not, and nothing more. You can say nothing more, unless you are claiming omniscience of the internal state of these objects (which incidentally, would make them deterministic and remove all possibility of objective Free Will).
You will never come to a useful or valid conclusion about Free Will if you play fast and loose with terms like "choice". The truth, at least as far as mathematics is concerned, is pretty simple and well defined but you do not like the consequences and so you keep trying to define terms that you can hide those consequences in. Definitions are not reality, and just because I can define a relationship that is mathematically invalid does not give that relationship any kind of reality -- to be real, the mathematical inconsistencies still have to be resolved first.
There are additional hard questions for which the answers are merely being presumed, not ascertained.
Does the live albatross actually make a "choice", or is the flap response a reflex? I have yet to see a dropped bird "choose" to fall. Is there really a "choice" involved?
If the live albatross's wings are clipped, does it now fall because it no longer makes a "choice"?
How about if the live albatross is anesthetized?
Conversely, does the dead bird fall because it has no "choice", or because (like the wing-clipped live bird) it chooses to fly but has been rendered physically unable to?
If the cannonball (or the dead albatross) are tied to a large enough helium balloon, do they now rise because this gives them the "choice" not to fall?
Mere presumptions of "choice" being the factor, or even the key factor, in the fall/not-fall results bring about several kinds of contradictions and counterexamples.
In the thought experiment, as the live albatross decides to fly away, he musters molecular machinery in his body to accomplish that end by successful communication, i.e. the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in the molecular machinery in going from a before state to an after state – which also results in the dissipation of heat into the local environment.
The dead albatross and the cannonball cannot successfully communicate. You'll have to take my word for that because I have no intention of tossing dead albatrosses and cannonballs until they, or I, reach maximum entropy with the environment.
The observations I gave you are obviously thought experiments, I haven't actually been to the leaning tower of Pisa. But Einstein’s relativity is also based on thought experiments as were many before him going way back to the ancient Greeks. Thought experiments lead to the next step of the investigation.
Again, it is not rocket science.
For the Lurkers here, anyone who has had a housecat or a teenager or a spouse - voted in an election or sat on a jury - knows what free will is and knows he does not need to scale the Leaning Tower of Pisa and throw a live albatross, a dead albatross and a 12 lb cannonball over the side to prove it.
You call the cell intelligence and flatworm intelligence “highly determined”. I certainly don’t agree. The cell is given a choice of which way to go and he chooses. The flatworm which regenerated from the half that didn’t have a brain is presented with a light stimulus and he chooses to scrunch up just like the one which regenerated from the half which did have a brain.
I reckon we can argue over what is the proper threshold definition for intelligence, if you’d like. I’d say intelligence would have to be more than awareness (consciousness); intelligence would require decision making and action based on that decision.
Give the flatworm a choice, scrunch or be zapped. Give the teenager a choice of a new car or a promiscuous date for his sixteenth birthday. Give the live albatross a choice to fly away or go *splat*. Give the dog a choice of Alpo or Kibbles n Bits. Give the wife a choice of wall color for the nursery.
By observation we can see that choices get made - some choices are more predictable than others but they are choices nonetheless.