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Freedom

I'm really struggling to comprehend soft determinism/compatibilism. How can free will be compatible with determinism? Surely by definition, they both necessitate exclusivity to each other?

Here is a side note to your question. Soft determinism consists of two propositions: (1) the the thesis that determinism is true; (2) that it is compatible with freedom. Compatibilism on the other hand is merely (2). So soft determinism includes compatibilism, but there is more to it. I am a compatibilist but not a soft determinist (I am a compatibilist indeterminist), as I believe that there are some events that have no causes (denial of universal causation), and I also believe that the state of the universe plus the laws of nature do not determine the next state of the universe (determinism), and I also believe that some human actions are free. The only other compatibilist indeterminist I know of is David Lewis.
Freedom

I am a very skilled amateur magician. As such I believe I hold a slightly better understanding about perception, deception, belief, conviction, and the human thought process than the average man on the street. One aspect about humanity that continually amazes me is the sheer predictability of actions and the dearth of variation when it comes to responding to a given situation. Case in point: In the middle of presenting a card trick where a chosen playing card continually goes to MY pocket under increasingly strenuous conditions I make the off-handed comment "One time I did this trick and I applied a little too much pressure and the card invisibly shot out and ended up in some other guy's pocket...". 9 times out of 10 after I am done with the initial sequences the spectator I am engaging will challenge me to make the card go to HIS pocket. Needless to say I have already secreted the card to his pocket using technical machinations much, much earlier. To the spectator the challenge was a random one; to me it...

The fact that our actions are predictable as such or by itself hasno tendency to imply that they are unfree or that they are determinedor not freely chosen. I can predict that I will continue to work on myhouse yet again today, but that is because I very much enjoy it, andthe action's predictibility does not somehow frustrate its freeness.Many people are predictably kind, say, but that does not mean thattheir kind actions are not less free and praiseworthy. There may ofcourse be others who are naturally kind, but even they, it seems to me,can well be thought of as free and as deserving praise for their moralquality. It is not the absolute predictability of the motions of theplanets which makes us suspect that they are not free agents, but thefact that we know that they are great balls of rock or magma orsomething. (The philosophical discussion of "compatibilism" over the last hundred years is very helpful here.) Ithink of culture as a very natural but very human attemptto find or create something...

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