If you could know Anything or Everything....would you want to? (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

The device could say "no", and just when you're about to eat it, a meteorite could kill you right on the spot.

 

[BrianW]

Jeff, you're messing with powers beyond your control. If the device answers "NO", then you'll be struck dead by a meteor or a heart attack before you can take the first bite of the donut.

Don't mess with the device.



I get dibs after Jeff bites the big one!

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Haha! And if the device answers 'YES' then someone would rush in and hold me down and shove the donut down my throat while I am attempting not to eat it...

 

[Holadem]

That is because you are under the remarkable illusion that you are in total control of your future . A number of events could occur to make the device correct.

--
H

 

[Jeff Cooper]

I love discussions like this.

Being able to know the future would validate free will. Like my example above, at any point that you have 100% unfallable knowledge of your future actions from an outside source, you can immediately choose to do something else. I tend to think that this alone proves that it is impossible to be able to have such knowledge.

Thus, the only way to say we have no free will, is if we can never ever come in to knowledge of our future actions. At this point though, from our perspectives we still have free will, simply because we cannot ever know what we will do. If our path is set in stone, but we can never know what that path is, then does it even matter or make a difference if it is set?

I have a friend that is a die hard supporter that we have no free will. He is a physicist, and his argument is that as beings, we are completely predictable. Since we can accurately predict the behavior of single cell organisms response to stimuli, he belives that the same can be done for us, albeit much more complicated. Our behaviors are at the deepest level simple responses to stimuli. He believes that if you had an extremely powerful supercomputer that could keep track of all the near infinite variables that influence our actions, then it could predict with 100% accuracy what we will do. He says that this would prove that there is no free will.

I think his argument is flawed in that he is relating predictability and free will, when in reality there is no connection. Being able to predict a response or behavior does not take away free will. Free will is about having a choice, not what choice you make. For example if I tell my friend that he has to choose between $1,000,000 or a hot soldering iron in the eye, I can predict with 100% accuracy that he will choose the money. However, just because I know what he will do, does not mean that he wasn't perfectly free to choose the iron in the eye.

Of course, my friend's supercomputer could also never exist, because if it did tell me what I was going to do, I could then do something else, thus making it fallible. Only if it's results were never made known to me, could it be completely accurate, but who cares about that if you can never know?

 

[Holadem]

No, such a computer should be able to predict this as well. In end, assuming you'r friends theory is correct, you WILL end up exactly where the computer said you would, try as you may to change things.

For an illustration, try the 1st half of the movie Minority Report.

--
H

 

[Jeff Cooper]

I think that may be possible if you have a broad, general enough prediction. But the more specific, precise and immediate the prediction, the easier it becomes to break it.

Of course this opens up a whole 'nother can of worms. If the computer tells me I am going to die in 10 years, do I suddenly become invincilbe for the next 10 years? Will I become like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, just because the prediction must hold?

 

[Charles J P]

For good examples of this type of stuff in the form of prophecy, check out Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Its rife with classical "Oedipal" type of scenarios where in trying to escape a prediction you ultimately fulfil your own fate.

A better movie example would be Big Fish. "This is not how I go."

 

[MarkHastings]

But if the device KNEW you would live through the next 10 years, it would already know that every attempt you make to kill yourself, would end up in failure...

The gun you point to your head would fail, the train you jump in front of would run out of gas before hitting you, just as you are about to jump out of a plane, someone would either stop you or you'd chicken out at the last minute.

SOMETHING would have to impede you from dying at every attempt.

That's why it would be scary to ask it when you were going to die. I don't see how anyone could live with the knowledge that they are going to be invinsible for the next 30+ years.

And plus, when those 10 years are up, you will be more cautious and that cautiousness may be what ends up killing you. Who knows, without asking the question, you may have lived a longer life.

That's why I wouldn't want to know.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Of course, ironically, if the device hand't of told me that I would live for the next 10 years, then I wouldn't have gone jumping in front of trains in the first place...

Could the device factor in the results of it's prediction to influence it's prediction? Seems like an impossible endless loop to me...

 

[MarkHastings]

That depends on wether it's true that the future has already been mapped out.

If you didn't know you were going to die in ten years, you obviously wouldn't go jumping in front of a train, but if you accidentally fell onto the train tracks as a train was coming, something remarkable would happen to keep you from dying.

Just like these stories you hear about people who SHOULD have ended up dying, but didn't. Some believe that the reason is because they weren't supposed to die, so that's why (for example) the guy lived after his parachute didn't open and he smacked into the ground.

 

[Holadem]

The scope of the prediction is completely irrelevant.

Guys (Jeff, Mark),

IF:

1. EVERYTHING, including human behavior can be reduced to data
2. EVERY interraction can be reduced to laws
3. The computer knows ALL the data
4. The computer knows ALL the laws

THEN the computer CANNOT fail in it's prediction. End of story.

--
H

 

[BrianW]

Yeah, that was me. But I have to correct you on a spelling error, though. It's not spelled "astrophysics". It's spelled "armchair-physics". The notion of an unchangeable future (and past) comes from the results of a series of thought experiments involving time travel scenarios simple enough to be subject to mathematical (i.e., objective) analysis. And I bring up the subject of time travel only because it speaks to our musings over free will and predestination.

Say, wasn't it you, Robert, who worked with me years ago to teach Geek-Think -- and how to conduct a proper experiment -- to the wonderful guys at HomeTheaterTalk who wanted to test whether they could hear a change in speaker wire direction?

With regard to inducing fallibility in the device, you could say, "This statement is a lie. Was the statement I just said a lie?", and watch it blow up. Yeah, it's an old trick used in the 1950s to make robot's heads blow up.

I'd like to say something about that topic, but, like Holadem, I just don't have the time right now.

Holadem, I thought at first you were going to jump on my assumption that the past is unchangeable, given that I as much as said that time travel is possible. But you're right that in stating that we have free will at all (past, present, or future) is venturing into the big unknown. I am of a mind to believe that free will and predestination can coexist. I'll say more when I have time.



If I had such a device, I would keep it simple:

Me: Is Halle Berry naked right now?

Device: No.

Me: How about now?

Device: No.

Me: Now?

Device: No.

Me: Um... Now?

Device: No.

Me: Okay, how about now?

Device: No.

Me: Dang! Okay, now?

...

 

[Blu]

Then consider if there is no free will to speak of and everyone is running on a treadmill through a set number of days would that make your life less enjoyable?

If my typed words were predestined and I made a tipo was it willed that it would come to pass even though I might use the spell check?

I can really live a enjoyable life regardless if I am in complete control of my future or a predestined future.

Just because I might laugh at a stupid joke that I remember during the day doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy it any less than the first time I heard it. Therefore it is funny and I enjoyed it.

It doesn't hold much bearing on the arguement just wether a life governed by free will or not is enjoyable IMHO.

I think that if a machine said "Yes" or "No" then something would either prevent or encourage the answer be that free will or predestination.

 

[george kaplan]

There are a number of Twilight Zone episodes along these lines. Off the top of my head is one with William Shatner who finds a all-knowing yes/no device in a diner, and another one with a camera that takes pictures of the future. I'm sure there are others.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I come back to the point that if the future is unalterable, you have not exercised any choice at all in arriving at that future.

In the context of Blu’s question, I reduce the argument to one simple, domestic example:

My wife is now asleep and when she wakes up will either go into the kitchen (turning left in the hall off our bedroom) and make coffee or she will turn right and come to the room with the desk and computer and ask me to do it (there are of course many other choices, but I’ve reduced to two for simplicity). If she has free will she can choose to do either. But suppose I now ask Blu’s question: will she ask me to make coffee? And the answer is yes, that means that she cannot choose to go make coffee herself. The future is unalterable. She can only ask me to make the coffee and can do no other.

How then, is this free will?

I suggest that it is not.

Note that I am not claiming that it is not possible that the future is unalterable—only that if it is, then we cannot exercise free will.

All in the context of Blu’s question of course.

 

[Blu]

I believe that Calvin promoted the idea of limited free will. You can do anything that does no impede upon the Divine. This would essentially make you a moral free agent. Especially since you don't know what the Divine's will is, how can you impede upon it other than to use faith?

I'll not risk the locking of this thread by commenting further but it is a theory of limited free will which is a good one as well as the other two proposed.

 

[Bob McLaughlin]

I remember that Shatner Twilight Zone episode, George! It was realistic in their response to the machine: essentially they became addicted to it and were afraid to ever leave the town. I can totally see that happening.

Call me shallow, but I think my first order of business with the machine would be to make some money on Powerball. Just ask "Will this number be drawn today?" and run through each of the 60 numbers until you have the winning combination.

After that, world domination.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Actually Calvin (sort of) codified prior thoughts and work on predestination (which the Church considered to be a heresy). His views (as I recall—perhaps incorrectly) were not so stringent as most of the earlier thinkers. Nonetheless his views that some men were absolutely consigned to hell (regardless of their works) and some were to be saved (regardless of their actions) was absolute.

It might be noted that most Presbyterians (in the US, at least) do not necessarily share the theology of Calvin and John Knox.

 

[David McGough]

Id like to be smart enough to play and win a Jeporady.
It gets me how smart some people are..
Talk about GIFTED...