Don't know where to put - logical proof the future is undetermined.

I just want to see if my logic is right or wrong, I'd also like to see if anyone agrees. If this has already been said before, oh well, I don't feel like doing research. I want to finish this soon, so sorry about my grammar crimes.

I'm not really experienced with, oh, any Science at all, but recently, I realized that the future must be undetermined. Here is why: if you were to know the position of every particle and whatnot in the universe, which is not practically approachable at all, but it's hypothetical, you could predict exactly what would happen tomorrow. Let's say you see that you will eat eggs. What if you decided you would instead eat Yogurt, or waffles? It would change the course of the future. My point is, if you could be aware of the future, it would change. Awareness, though, would just be in your head. The universe wouldn't change just because you knew that information, it's the actions you take. From this, we can determine that the future is indeed changeable, and if this is accepted, nothing says that actions WITHOUT knowing the future wouldn't change the future as well.

There, poke your holes, people.

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You can't even fathom how one would determine the future. I believe the future has long been determined, yet still unknown due to the fact that we haven't been to the future yet. The ultimate determined future I believe in is Armageddon, which must inevitably happen.

 

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Just reading this makes me think it's already started.

 

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In order to change the future, you must change the fundamental laws of physics. Physical laws do not change. Neither does the future. You would have to step outside of space and time and alter the laws of cause and effect without touching anything. It's a crazy idea. It's impossible.

 

It's an interesting line of thought, however, I think that you've only established that the future is unknowable, and as that can be established independently, your conclusion that an unknowable world has a changeable future doesn't seem to follow.
Anyway, the thread should be in the General Philosophy forum. I will request that it be moved.

 

If they are out of vanilla, I'll take strawberry. The wife will take chocolate, then strawberry and lastly vanilla.

There is free will!

 

The proof you have come up with is that IF the universe is knowable (i.e. determined) AND IF we have the ability to change that future then the future is NOT determined.

Since the conclusion is counter to one of the premises, either the logic is wrong or at least one of the premises is wrong.

Basically your proof is that you can't have a determined universe AND free-will.

It's not a proof that the universe is undetermined, however, as for that you would need to show that we have free-will and that it is more than just the conscious subjective view of our actions (i.e. that it is more than just "Oh, I could have selected A or B and I chose A... therefore this shows I have freewill).

Whether or not we have freewill is hotly disputed, and does hinge in many regards on what one considers free-will to be.
Optical illusions exist, and our brain can't help but interpret them the way it does, but the underlying reality is different.
The same way that we can not help but interpret our actions as being "free"... but this might very well hide the underlying reality.

Anyhoo - my conclusion is that no, you have not provided a logical proof that the future is undetermined, only that free-will (when considered as an underlying reality rather than at the illusory level) is incompatible with a determined universe.

 

Thank you - that's what I wanted to hear, more or less. I was wrong. It's just a fun idea to think about. As I said, no background in Science here, so it's a learning experience... anyway, I just wanted to see what everyone thought of it.

 

I don't think you are wrong. I had the exact same idea which I posted just an hour before yours (in General Philosophy). I don't know if it was just a coincidence or if a meme just passed through us or something ;D

The Impossibility of Knowing Your Own Future


Even the possibility that the future can be known about a system must be compensated for, even if our current knowledge cannot do it.

Don't give up just because the majority thinks you are wrong, I honestly think you are on to something and science is buildt on opposition.

Also, to those that oppose free will: What if free will is the full knowledge of it's own future? Consciousness are often described as emerging from physical systems, and as such the physical system could give rise to knowledge that doesn't affect the system.

 

ok i'll play..

science goes hand in hand with predictability,it is through science that we have been able to predict certain causes and effects,
it is sciences job to correlate all causes and effects..

in a perfect world (or some future world) science would(strives to?) correlate all causes and effects thereby predicting outcomes for any given situation, thereby rendering the cosmos determined..there would be no surprises as all effects would have known causes..

now according to ideal science, when causes and effects are all determined, science says that when the cause happens there is only one effect that comes out of it, IOW there is no changing the effect once the cause has been set in motion, this would apply no matter who was seeing this cause and effect, iow it would still be deterministic even if a non-scientist were viewing the situation.

2+2 will always be 4 even if you have no clue as how to do math..
so knowledge of the outcome has no bearing on the outcome,
using this logic it matters not whether one knows what will happen,the one still cannot change the outcome..

BUT..

science can only determine cause and effect of things they can measure, anything that cannot be measured cannot be predicted with certainty,they can throw probability math into the argument but this is not absolute, it is only educated guess's, thereby cause and effect cannot be determined with any absolute values.

the one true thing that cannot be predicted with absolute certainty is human nature(what you would do), so it seems to me that if it wasn't for humans then the universe would be determined and there would be no free will..but then humans are required to have free will..so again..it is humans that are screwing it all up...so we MUST have free will..otherwise we wouldn't be able to screw anything up....
so the desire to have foreknowledge of future events is the desire to NOT screw things up..ergo we have free will..we just do not have the ability (nor will we ever) to foresee the future so that we can change it (read, to not screw up..)

i'm gonna stop before my head explodes..

 

Perhaps self-awareness itself produces free will? Because if you are aware of something then you can change it.

 

Which I posted on in your thread:
Knowing an outcome is irrelevant as that, in itself, is an influence on that outcome that must be factored into the equation along with all other influences. As the O.P states, to determine that, one must factor in the influence that factoring it in would play.

A fact that both you, and this O.P. forgot to consider when formulating the question.

It is accounted for and it does not change the prediction any more than any other influence you factor in changes the prediction: The Prediction is based on the factoring in of ALL influences related; not all factors EXCEPT for the factoring in of all variables.

The predicted outcome came true because the factor of knowledge of an impending event is Part of the prediction process.

 

It has been considered, the fact that we know the outcome is put into the equation BUT how could we then stick to it? There would be no end to the loop just because our knowledge is put into the equation because that would give a different future where we have to compensate for our knowledge of it - which would give a different future which we know about - which would give a different future...ad infinitum.

The only way to break the loop seems to be free will. If you think about it - free will might be exactly that (full knowledge of it's own system - which is free will - free will is the knowledge of its own system).

 

I mostly agree.

 

Knowing everything includes the brain doing the prediction which possibly makes exact prediction impossible.

I see the thought is discussed already... sorry if I interrupted anything.

 

In the "The Impossibility of Knowing Your Own Future" thread I was arguing a similar case, namely that the message about the future would have to predict the influences that the message has on the future. This might be possible for as long as the message doesn't do much by itself, but as soon as it is read then it starts events that are very difficult to unfold, could still be possible to predict though as long as the reader doesn't read about the future, cause when the prediction process gets to that part then it doesn't yet know the future of its own prediction (which is what the reader is reading if he reads about the future, at that time).

 

You should be right and the reasoning is interesting!
But stated as above its a bit confusing.
Please fill in what is missing in the following description of your thought:

When the prediction process gets to that part where the reader reads about the predicted future then...

 

...it doesn't know what the reader reads since the prediction process hasn't got to the future of it's own prediction yet and that is what the reader reads about if he reads about the future.

It can predict the future as long as it doesn't have to predict the future of its own prediction (that information is not available before it has been predicted).




Another way of seeing it is that the message would have to be completed in the present; but in the present it can't know the full prediction (as it hasn't been fully predicted yet) so any events in the future involving the unknown information (the information of the future that is not yet predicted in the present) can't be predicted.

You could say that the message casts a shadow of itself into the future, where the shadow is the unknown information about the message itself before it is completed.

You could also say that at any part of the future, the message would only have got that far, so any part of the future that needs the information about its own future to predict the next event will be impossible to predict, the reader reading about its own future is such a part of the future.

 

Both of these O.P.'s set the same premise- If it's determinant- that information is available before the prediction. That has been hashed out in your thread- You changed the premise at the end to make it indeterminant and your thread fell over dead.

Why bother trying to necromance your idea here?

For me, I played once. You changed the game halfway through- I won't play again.

 

If I change the premise then I also change the conclusion, I'm only showing why we would be able to change the future if we knew about it. Obviously this is impossible in a hard determined universe, as such it is also impossible to have that message in the first place.

You never convinced me of why we wouldn't be able to change the future if we knew about it. Even in a hard determined universe, if we knew exactly our own future from any time, then we could change it. The message would have to be obfuscated in such a way that we didn't know about it until it happened, but then it isn't exact knowledge of the future...

The premise of my idea was never changed, I just showed my idea from a different perspective where the change of premise also changed the conclusion (the conclusion being that we can't change the future in a hard determined universe - if we don't know about it).

Can you at least see that it is reasonable to change the perspective in this way? I never abandoned my idea that it is impossible to know our own future in a hard determined universe, I'm just expanding on it in different perspectives and with different premises to see that whatever premise we have the idea still holds true.

I don't necromance, because the idea was never dead.