Prescience is terrible because it removes options.
All knowledge does that, even in the everyday world with no Gods or Omegas playing their games. The more surely I know what I want, and the more surely I know how to achieve it, the less freedom I have. Once I make a choice, that choice is gone. I have moved through it and it no longer exists. The imaginary futures of all the things I “could have done instead” are cut off. I never “could have” done them, the moment I saw that they would not lead towards my goal. My freedom is reduced by precisely the amount that I exercise it. Consider the possibilities open to a new-born baby. Compare them with the ineluctable specificity of your present state.
This applies to everything, to the great concerns of one’s life and to the small. Observe yourself in the simple act of walking from one place to another. Notice your legs taking one step after another, in total subjection to your goal.
All knowledge does that, even in the everyday world with no Gods or Omegas playing their games. The more surely I know what I want, and the more surely I know how to achieve it, the less freedom I have. Once I make a choice, that choice is gone. I have moved through it and it no longer exists. The imaginary futures of all the things I “could have done instead” are cut off. I never “could have” done them, the moment I saw that they would not lead towards my goal. My freedom is reduced by precisely the amount that I exercise it. Consider the possibilities open to a new-born baby. Compare them with the ineluctable specificity of your present state.
This applies to everything, to the great concerns of one’s life and to the small. Observe yourself in the simple act of walking from one place to another. Notice your legs taking one step after another, in total subjection to your goal.
“Do you know what it means to be able to choose so swiftly and surely that to all intents and purposes you have no choice?”