My first project out of college was canceled after a year of hard work. Nothing to do with me or my team. Just the company decided not to do it anymore.
I’ve found that the solution is just not to think about these sorts of things.
The day-to-day work is often rewarding enough, and you’re getting paid because somebody wants you to do it. Make sure that you raise your concerns occasionally, but the rest of the time, just enjoy the daily grind. If you let this stuff bother you, you’ll burn out.
What’s the best response? The best response is to laugh in their face and go find someone else to talk to.
The person you described is an idiot. Can you tell whether a person actually has free will by observing their actions? Like just by looking at them, can you predict exactly everything that they’re going to do?
(This is actually almost identical a famous problem in philosophy called the “philosophical zombie.”)
If the answer is “no”, and it is, then it doesn’t make sense to base your actions based on whether you have free will, because it doesn’t actually have any effect in your daily life, other than to irritate other people with your pseudo intellectual babble.