(urth) 5HC : Skinner, Turing and yet more Laplace

[maru]

Seems fairly foolish: such a document could save you tremendous amounts
of trouble.
Instance: what if you read that you were going to spend 30 years 
bouncing around
as a penniless bum, deperately unhappy, ill with all sorts of nasty 
diseases, when, due
to sheer chance, you discover that it was your reason on Earth, your 
raison d'etre, to
become an ink artist.  And then it says you are slated to die of a heart 
breaking from joy,
which only happened because in your 30 years on the street you had to 
eat a lot of McDonalds.

Wouldn't a youthful version of you want to skip the hellish 30 years and 
maybe make something
of yourself as an artist before you die?

~Maru
As a rule, I always obey instructions from future versions of me.

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

>>[T]he issue isn't what the demon knows, it's what _you_,
>>as the person who has just been given the prediction, are correct in
>>believing; the implication being that there's no determinate plan of your
>>future actions that you'd be correct in believing if only you knew it.
>>    
>>
>
>If I were given a determinate plan of my future actions, the first
>thing on the list would be "burn this document." And I would.
>
>Obviously, a lot of this kind of speculation is reflected in 
>myths and stories about the working-out of prophecies by those 
>who try to avoid them (Oedipus, the Appointment in Samarra, 
>etc.) - a great deal of effort has been gone to over the ages to 
>show that predestination and free will are not inherently 
>incompatible concepts.
>  
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