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comment by Kafke
Kafke  ·  3810 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski's Thoughts on Free Will

I believe that if you know the future, that knowledge will lead you to a different course of events meaning your initial prediction was wrong. Unless your prediction accounted for you learning of the future and adjusting your actions.

Essentially, you're fucked either way. It's all deterministic.





lappelduvide  ·  3809 days ago  ·  link  ·  

being aware of what will happen in the future is certainly going to shape the opportunities one jumps at in the present moment. if one knows that situation x is going to end situation x way, he or she will be burdened, relieved, etc. by the awareness of what is going to happen.

having a mental forecast of the future can change one's mindset and approach, because he or she is AWARE of striving towards (or against, or whatever) some goal.

is this an example of schrodinger's theory? essentially, you do not know the possible outcome of something until you solidify the theory in your mind. it then reduces the idea of a surprising outcome / decreases the idea that something can be chalked up to free will or fate.

Kafke  ·  3809 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The best way of looking at it is like this:

Say X can predict the future. X doesn't account for his being able to predict the future in his predictions.

X learning of the future then changes X's actions (since he has new information).

The future is now changed and X's predictions were incorrect (since he changed it).

If he were to incorporate his own actions and knowledge of it (insanely difficult, but possible), he'd be unable to change his actions, since it'd be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The movie "Paycheck" goes into this quite well. The guy builds a machine that views the future, and he then "changes" (not really) the future to allow himself to become rich and to live (the company tries to kill him). He then proceeds to fulfill the prophecy that he saw.

I'm not familiar with "schrodinger's theory", so I can't answer that. But it boils down to either having an imperfect machine, or being a self-fulfilling prophecy (so that you can't change it).