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[KittyTac]

Determinism doesn't matter if you can't determine it without being outside the universe.

To us, the universe is essentially random, because our knowledge of the future would alter the future.

Only on the atomic/molecular level. Neurons are so big compared to atoms that the randomness doesn't matter too much.

[hops]

That's not how it works. Like, if you gave an accurate summary of next year's economic situation, that would affect the economy.

[KittyTac]

That's not how it works. Like, if you gave an accurate summary of next year's economic situation, that would affect the economy.

It only affects large groups of people (they would use the predictions to manipulate the economy) or individual atoms (observing them in any way would change their trajectories), but not cells. There's no probabilism on the cell level.

[hops]

I'm not sure what your point is.

[KittyTac]

I'm not sure what your point is.

I told you that brains are almost completely deterministic. You denied it. Our knowledge of the future at the microscopic level won't change the future because probabilism only works at nanoscopic levels.

[hops]

Uh... okay? The brain might be deterministic to an omniscient observer, but we sure don't know enough to make any meaningful predictions about them yet, so it's pretty much random chance to us.

[Reelya]

Even though brains are deterministic, they're definitely complex enough to exhibit large amounts of mathematically chaotic behavior.

Chaos theory kicks in even for very simple deterministic systems, such as the three-body gravitation problems, e.g. for extremely simple systems with small numbers of parts that can be fully mathematically defined and are 100% deterministic, all prediction breaks down quite quickly.

Brains are just clearly more complex and far less predictable than that. Any sort of change in inputs (for example, giving it any sort of prediction about it's future) are going to make potentially huge changes to how that future plays out.

[Maximum Spin]

Okay, this conversation is stupid, but one important point: if an omniscient genie or something gave out a perfectly accurate report of next year's stock market activity, or any other perfect knowledge of the future, it wouldn't change the future — it would just be constrained to (accurately) be in some natural minimum of the possibility space where that knowledge doesn't change the outcome. Like "there will be massive bank runs and all your money will be worthless!" or something similar. The genie would already account for the change that spreading the knowledge would produce.

[Reelya]

I was thinking of something similar due to a discussion about "oracles" in the Order of the Stick. People were concerned about the "paradox" of an oracle's predictions causing themselves to come true, but in fact, an oracle can only speak words that cause themselves to come true, merely by being excluded from saying all things that do not lead to their own truth. People seek out an oracle to guide their actions, so what the oracle says must influence them, and clearly, in a way that makes the words true.

However, where you're wrong Maximum, is that the act of seeking a prediction gives you a different future to the one where you didn't seek a prediction. You say that predictions don't change the future, but that misses the point that the act of getting a prediction leads to a different future than one one where you didn't get the prediction.

[Maximum Spin]

People were concerned about the "paradox" of an oracle's predictions causing themselves to come true, but in fact, an oracle can only speak words that cause themselves to come true, merely by being excluded from saying all things that do not lead to their own truth.

Actually, it's slightly less constrained than that; an oracle is only permitted to say things that do not render themselves false by the saying, which can include self-causing and non-self-affecting truths. An oracle can say (eg) "Xykon will be at this gate before that other one" because Xykon's plans are not affected by the oracle's answer.

But with that exception, yeah, an oracle saying self-causing truths should not be surprising to anyone, that was the whole point of oracles almost 95% of the time in classical stories.

[ChairmanPoo]

I dont think free will and determinism are mutually exclusive

[Reelya]

True, but however, consider that a good-enough oracle knows what they're about to say before they say it.

[scriver]

I dont think free will and determinism are mutually exclusive

Post-determinist worldview dye

(Disclaimer: I have no idea if there already exist anything called that and if there I take no responsibility for anything it entails)

[Maximum Spin]

I dont think free will and determinism are mutually exclusive

Ultimately, that position is equivalent to "not using the same definition of free will as everyone else".
To the majority of people, free will means that your decisions are not predetermined by the state of your brain, which is incompatible with determinism.

eta noticed this:

However, where you're wrong Maximum, is that the act of seeking a prediction gives you a different future to the one where you didn't seek a prediction. You say that predictions don't change the future, but that misses the point that the act of getting a prediction leads to a different future than one one where you didn't get the prediction.

Not sure where that amounts to me being wrong; that all comes before the prediction and thus does not change the prediction you get, so it's simply irrelevant to what I was saying; moreover, the proffered scenario implied, to my mind, that the genie just shows up with this information unsolicited rather than being asked.

[KittyTac]

Free will pretty much implies a soul of some sort, so a true materialist does not believe in free will. I consider myself to be a true materialist.