It seems like agents in a deterministic universe can falsify theories in at least some sense. Like they take two different weights drop them and see they land at the same time falsifying the fact that heavier objects fall faster
The main problem is that it isn’t meaningful for their theories to make counterfactual predictions about a single situation; they can create multiple situations (across time and space) and assume symmetry and get falsification that way, but it requires extra assumptions. Basically you can’t say different theories really disagree unless there’s some possible world / counterfactual / whatever in which they disagree; finding a “crux” experiment between two theories (e.g. if one theory says all swans are white and another says there are black swans in a specific lake, the cruxy experiment looks in that lake) involves making choices to optimize disagreement.
In the second case, I would suggest that what we need is counterfactuals not agency. That is, we need to be able to say things like, “If I ran this experiment and obtained this result, then theory X would be falsified”, not “I could have run this experiment and if I did and we obtained this result, then theory X would be falsified”.
Those seem pretty much equivalent? Maybe by agency you mean utility function optimization, which I didn’t mean to imply was required.
The part I thought was relevant was the part where you can believe yourself to have multiple options and yet be implemented by a specific computer.
Basically you can’t say different theories really disagree unless there’s some possible world / counterfactual / whatever in which they disagree;
Agreed, this is yet another argument for considering counterfactuals to be so fundamental that they don’t make sense outside of themselves. I just don’t see this as incompatible with determinism, b/c I’m grounding using counterfactuals rather than agency.
Those seem pretty much equivalent? Maybe by agency you mean utility function optimization, which I didn’t mean to imply was required.
I don’t mean utility function optimization, so let me clarify what as I see as the distinction. I guess I see my version as compatible with the determinist claim that you couldn’t have run the experiment because the path of the universe was always determined from the start. I’m referring to a purely hypothetical running with no reference to whether you could or couldn’t have actually run it.
Hopefully, my comments here have made it clear where we diverge and this provides a target if you want to make a submission (that said, the contest is about the potential circular dependency of counterfactuals and not just my views. So it’s perfectly valid for people to focus on other arguments for this hypothesis, rather than my specific arguments).
The main problem is that it isn’t meaningful for their theories to make counterfactual predictions about a single situation; they can create multiple situations (across time and space) and assume symmetry and get falsification that way, but it requires extra assumptions. Basically you can’t say different theories really disagree unless there’s some possible world / counterfactual / whatever in which they disagree; finding a “crux” experiment between two theories (e.g. if one theory says all swans are white and another says there are black swans in a specific lake, the cruxy experiment looks in that lake) involves making choices to optimize disagreement.
Those seem pretty much equivalent? Maybe by agency you mean utility function optimization, which I didn’t mean to imply was required.
The part I thought was relevant was the part where you can believe yourself to have multiple options and yet be implemented by a specific computer.
Agreed, this is yet another argument for considering counterfactuals to be so fundamental that they don’t make sense outside of themselves. I just don’t see this as incompatible with determinism, b/c I’m grounding using counterfactuals rather than agency.
I don’t mean utility function optimization, so let me clarify what as I see as the distinction. I guess I see my version as compatible with the determinist claim that you couldn’t have run the experiment because the path of the universe was always determined from the start. I’m referring to a purely hypothetical running with no reference to whether you could or couldn’t have actually run it.
Hopefully, my comments here have made it clear where we diverge and this provides a target if you want to make a submission (that said, the contest is about the potential circular dependency of counterfactuals and not just my views. So it’s perfectly valid for people to focus on other arguments for this hypothesis, rather than my specific arguments).