Eliezer, you’re spot on with the “Determinator.” The modern free will debate has its roots not in the clockwork universe of Newtonianism but the supposed problem of God’s omnipotence and omniscience. The problem of free will was originally formulated in terms of a Determinator—God—who chose and imminently caused the future. The question was “How can we also have free will?” and free will was, of course, also an important concept in Christian theology (we’re made in God’s image and therefore chose and cause our futures just like God does). As is often the case in philosophy the current debate is just a secularization of the theological debate; they just switch “God” for “Universe”, “soul” for “essential property,” etc, and carry on having the same arguments.
And second, you can’t compute the Future from the Past, except by also computing something that looks exactly like the Present; which computation just creates another copy of the Block Universe (if that statement even makes any sense), it does not affect any of the causal relations within it.
I’m not sure that statement does make sense. It sounds a bit too mystical to me. But it’d be interesting to look at it from a thermodynamic perspective. You can’t predict the future from the past without doing work in the present. Perhaps the work needed would always be greater than or equal to that required for the system you’re predicting to just play out regardless?
Eliezer, you’re spot on with the “Determinator.” The modern free will debate has its roots not in the clockwork universe of Newtonianism but the supposed problem of God’s omnipotence and omniscience. The problem of free will was originally formulated in terms of a Determinator—God—who chose and imminently caused the future. The question was “How can we also have free will?” and free will was, of course, also an important concept in Christian theology (we’re made in God’s image and therefore chose and cause our futures just like God does). As is often the case in philosophy the current debate is just a secularization of the theological debate; they just switch “God” for “Universe”, “soul” for “essential property,” etc, and carry on having the same arguments.
I’m not sure that statement does make sense. It sounds a bit too mystical to me. But it’d be interesting to look at it from a thermodynamic perspective. You can’t predict the future from the past without doing work in the present. Perhaps the work needed would always be greater than or equal to that required for the system you’re predicting to just play out regardless?