At 8/11/09 06:39 PM, XIII13 wrote:
At 8/11/09 05:37 PM, Aughiris wrote:
Thing is, I believe there is no such thing as free will. However, because we can't (yet?) see in the future and therefor cannot predict with 100% accuracy what person A or person B is going to do, you could in a sense say that people have 'free will', but only virtually, because in reality we have no free will at all: everything is determined.
That's what I've been saying this whole time. Also, how do we know that seeing into the future will help us predict how someone will react? If you see that someone is going to jump of a cliff, and that will end up causing the greatest person ever not to be born in the future, and you go and stop them from jumping off, that will end up changing the future, therefore altering what people will do in other parallel timelines.
Yes, that is a nice paradox which I've been pondering about and found a rather simple solution for. Let me give you an example. There is this person, we will call him the professor. He has just finished building a device which will allow him to see his own future. He decides to see 10 minutes into the future. On the screen he sees the building he is in collapsing, resulting in his death. If the professor is both able as willing to escape his death, does this not mean that he will run away knowing the building he is in is going to collapse thus altering his future? Does this not mean that the universe is NOT deterministic?
The thing is, there's nothing wrong with the deterministic universe. What is wrong is the scenario. In a deterministic universe, with this scene, it is impossible for the professor to be both willing and able to escape his death if the machine clearly shows that the building is going to collapse. It is an impossible scene. Should the professor be both willing and able, then the machine would show him a future where he escapes the building and survives its collapse. If the machine shows a future where he dies, then the professor must either not be willing, not able, or both to escape his death.
With this explanation, a deterministic universe is 100% plausible and there is no more paradox.