My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know that they don't. The reality isn't important: what's important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.
And yet I know that, because free will is an illusion, it's all predetermined who will descend into akinetic mutism and who won't. There's nothing anyone can do about it - you can't choose the effect the Predictor has on you. Some of you will succumb and some of you won't, and me sending this warning won't alter those proportions. So why did I do it?
Because I had no choice.

(Ted Chiang "What's Expected Of Us")