Imagine that there exists a fortune teller, who is able to see what will happen in the future with an almost perfect accuracy. — Mizumono

It's a fun thought experiment, like the Grandfather paradox. My solution? Consider alternate universes created each instant - different paths into the future.

Imagine that there exists a fortune teller, who is able to see what will happen in the future with an almost perfect accuracy. — Mizumono

Considering this, it would mean that the fortune teller is in fact, not able to undertake any action that would be spontaneous and thus, that the future is inevitable, because he will never be able to change any future event. — Mizumono

Well, you leave a loophole when you qualify the prediction as almost perfectly accurate. With this loophole in place, there is always a possibility that any prediction is wrong, and thus the rest of the reasoning doesn't go through.

Without the loophole, there is a simple answer: whatever the fortune teller predicted, that is going to happen. You didn't say that the fortune teller knows all that will happen in the future. If by spontaneous decisions you mean those decisions that the fortune teller did not foresee, then there may still be room for those. But they will not change whatever he correctly predicted.

Is the fortune teller responsible for his actions (or inaction) that have a causal impact on a foreseen outcome? Our ideas of agency and personal responsibility were formed under conditions that do not accommodate such hypothetical scenarios as a regular occurrence. Therefore, we do not have shared intuitions that can help us converge on an answer. Your take is as good as anyone else's; I don't think there is a meaningful debate to be had here. There isn't a right or wrong answer to the question, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Well, you leave a loophole when you qualify the prediction as almost perfectly accurate. With this loophole in place, there is always a possibility that any prediction is wrong, and thus the rest of the reasoning doesn't go through.

I didn't think about it but you're completly right, because if his predictions would be perfectly accurate this would also mean that they are in fact inevitable and the whole argument would become nonsense in the first place.

If by spontaneous decisions you mean those decisions that the fortune teller did not foresee, then there may still be room for those. But they will not change whatever he correctly predicted.

And that is what i meant by saying that for him the future becomes inevitable, because at the exact same instance he foresees his own decision to act it becomes the reason for the future event, as i said above. And your assumption would lead to the same, as even though he did not foresee his spontaneous action, the future remained the same, so that his decision to act and the act in itself still did not change anything.

There isn't a right or wrong answer to the question, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

My goal with this assumption was mainly to clarify if i maybe had made a logical error in one of the steps to this dilemma. As i acknowledged above the solution to this thought lies in the degree of accuracy that the fortune teller has. If he has perfect accuracy then the argument becomes nonsense as it is obviously perfect and there is no room for mistakes. And what i have now come to realize is, that in the instance his skill becomes non-perfect, you could argue that he simply did not foresee the consequence of his decision to act, which would fall in the 0.01%(for example) margin of mistakes he ever makes.

:up:

Also a good argument for it being contradictory for something to be both omnipotent and omniscient, which is an extreme case of the OP.

If such a thing knows for certain and infallibly what a future event is, they must also know that they cannot stop that future event from occurring, otherwise then they would know that said future event might not occur -> contradiction.

If something knew of a future event and had the power and will to stop that event from occurring, then the knowledge of that future event was not certain and infallible, otherwise it must have transpired regardless -> contradiction

Probably not original, but new to me.

Does this question assume some hypothetical universe where the future is pretty much already written, or deterministic, about to take place no matter what? In this universe right now, at the lowest level we know of 'probability' is what governs it... at a macro level those probabilities almost even out so that we get things like solid objects and we don't see tiny probabilities like a grapefruit morphing into a penguin happening a lot, or ever... But this is why physicists assume an unwritten and probabilistic future.

How can I explain this simply.... okay so the odds of throwing a head or tail... is 50/50 right? Well this does not stop ten heads arriving in a row... it can happen... in fact the probability is known... its 00.01% (roughly)... 100 in a row is very very tiny, but crucially its not zero... and no combination given enough coin tosses will be zero. There is a non zero probability of every single combination possible.

And the LARGER the sample of these 'probabilities' the more solid the overall outcome.... so if you throw that coin a million times then it'll be heads pretty much 500k times... give or take just a few heads or tails either way.... yet in there, in that list of throws there will be all sorts of strange likelihoods that panned out. Enough throws and you'll get the Mona Lisa encoded in binary with Heads=1 and Tails=0. But again at the macro level you don't see that you see 500k heads and 500k tails from a millions coin tosses.... well thats quantum mechanics in this case... and it also governs causation... tiny weird little probabilities can throw the overall picture one way or the other.

So in our marcro universe and the future? Well you just cannot predict it with any accuracy at all. You can have a good idea the sun will come up in the morning based on past experience, but theres also a non zero probability the universe will suddenly evaporate in a big crunch... thats no zero either... in which case the sun will not come up in the morning.

In your scenario you need a coin that results in heads then tails, in that order, forever, in order to be able to alter or predict the future accurately... but we live in a probabilistic and not deterministic universe I'm afraid....So its just not possible. And what we do know is you don't get to see the heads or tails until you throw the coin either, until then its just a probability.

It's pretty simple. Like in coding. You have a standard variable that has a static value that can be changed. When you call this variable you get the value. The variable has always been equal to the assigned value, until changed. Seeing as you left the fortuneteller or the fortuneteller in question has yet to "consult" .. whatever it is they do, neither persons have information of the updated value of the original variable.


Therefore, you will now have...


Not so complicated really. Not how it usually works of course.. but not impossible.

Yes but code is deterministic.... even the Rand function is deterministic.... I suppose a quantum generated random number is not but thats not coding, that's the result of quantum processes.

And also at a macro scale you get macro causation.... which means every time you drop a ball it will fall.... there's no probability gravity will suddenly fail to work, so there are deterministic processes at a macro level. But even those are subject to some probability. Not a lot but over time, and of course given the number of such outliers in probability they will all add up to make future states non-computable. Hence Heisenbergs uncertainty principle. You just can't know the value of some variable until the die is cast... you can guess I suppose, but thems the breaks. Its not a case that if you had enough compute and enough time you could work it out, its that its not a thing that can be worked out, no matter waht. Its forever a probability until you take a measurement, (the waveform collapses.)

Now if this were a machine learning model you were talking about it might be a better analogy... and lets assume you had a truly massive data set the size of a universe? Well now you are limited to optimisation and probability rather than solid unmoving code. But of course in an evolving universe you still cannot calculate what a future state will be, based on the current state.

So yes, calculating the future is not possible.... you can guess that out of 100 things X is more liekly to happen than Y, and we use that at a macro level, but the further out you go, the lower the probability your guess will be right.

You must consider your use of the word knowledge in the thought experiment you wrote. If you know something, by definition it can't be changed. Thus, if there is something the fortune teller can do to change that event, he cannot also assert that he knows it will happen. Alternatively, his knowledge is conditional on his inaction, or action in the usual manner.