2a) Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

2a1) The verb decide has deadly interesting origins. Though it came through Middle English deciden, Old French decider, and Latin decidere, you can tell that there's the prefix de-, kind of meaning "off". This was in the language as far as etymologists can trace it, and is either from Etruscan or Proto-Indo-European. It's the other part of decide that's surprising: -cide. Yup, as you may have guessed, this is the same -cide present in words like homicide, suicide, regicide, fratricide, genocide, and all those other euphemistic terms for nasty kinds of death. All the roots trace to the Latin verb caedere, meaning "to cut". The death-related words are connected because of the correlation between "cut" and "kill", a side meaning which later evolved from the word, and decide is connected because when you make a choice, you cut out all the other possible choices. So it sort of makes sense, right? Caedere comes from Proto-Italic kaido, from Proto-Indo-European kehid, which meant something more like "strike".
Choices @The Etymology Nerd

2a2) In contemplating the free will versus determinism debate, it seems that if we take "decide" as a snapshot of action in spacetime, we slice the Gordian Knot of the debate. Whether one is causally determined to decide one path over another, or suspends one's decision in a rational vacuum, the decision still closes the future to the one path chosen. The variance is reduced, and a new variance set arises.

2a3) Related: The Golden Path ("Secher Nbiw" in the ancient Egyptian language) was an expansive prescient interpretation that was only visible to the Kwisatz Haderach and the Bene Gesserit (revealed in Heretics of Dune). It foretold the fluid events of the future, both great and small. More profoundly, however, it revealed an optimum path through the countless threads of cause and effect that were encountered by the human race.
The Golden Path