Philosophy question:
Red and blue ball sitting on table.
Me: which ball will I pick up next?
God: <names a ball>
Me: <picks up the other ball>
Does this thought experiment prove future reading is impossible?
>>345211
God would've known you'd pick up the other one
>>345211
It proves that God would be shit at poker.
>>345220
But if he names red I'll pick up blue, and if he names blue I'll pick up red. I'll DEFINITELY pick up a red or blue ball, why can't God tell me which one I'll pick up?
>>345243
So its his decision which one are you gonna pick up, not yours, isn't it?
>>345256
It's your decision to always do the opposite of what he suggests. Why?
>>345211
This rests on a misunderstanding of God's power. If an entity that can decide what you do says you'll do something, you do it.
>>345266
Because I'm edgy contrarian
>>345303
But I just said that I wouldn't do it. That's the whole point of the thought experiment, I'm asking this question so that I can deliverability not obey it
>>345211
>time travel shit is impossible
NO WAY!
>>345323
It's God m8. You did it, simple as that. In that moment, you had no free will.
>>345211
Red and blue ball sitting on table.
Me: which ball will I pick up next?
God: <names a ball>
Me: <the the laws of causality and the power of christ compels you to pick up the ball>
>>345211
Red and blue ball sitting on table.
Me: which ball will I pick up next?
God: <makes both balls blue>
Me: <have blue balls>
>>345406
It has God's future reading abilities but no other powers
Replace the word God with "computer with infinite computing power" and it's the same thing.
It's not an argument about God so much as it is about predictive power which is itself just an argument about free will.
If anything it shows that will and power are both based on knowledge. For instance if God/the computer had to write down his prediction but didn't have to show you the paper than the God/computer could win. If he had to show his prediction he would lose.
It means both will and power only exist in relative terms. You cannot have rare power or rare free will, you can only have power or free will relative to that which you are interacting with. Change what you are interacting with (paper revealed or not revaled) and it changes your will and power.
>>345406
It's not really magical if it can't predict your actions, is it?
Besides, your knowledge of its prediction and your contrariness introduces a new element when the prediction is made.
What if this god or device writes the prediction down out of your sight, and you don't know what to pick if your sole measuring stick is do the opposite of what is predicted?
>>345406
It would spit out a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Like "touching balls is gay so you won't touch the balls" and then you don't touch the balls because it's only gay if the balls are touched.
Cause determinism a shit
>>345435
>Like "touching balls is gay so you won't touch the balls" and then
And then I would pick them up.
>>345445
But this is completely deterministic. I get the answer and make a deterministic decision based on it
>>345433
>What if this god or device writes the prediction down out of your sight, and you don't know what to pick if your sole measuring stick is do the opposite of what is predicted?
Then I am God, because I can just write down blue in secret, say red, then present the secret prediction
There is a theoretical device called a paradox trigger that operates on the notion that the future cannot be changed. You set the device to trigger if a certain event happens, and the chance of that event happening is reduced because it has a high likelihood of creating a paradox.
But the device will fail if you leverage a paradox against it hard enough, because the device itself has a non-zero chance of physically malfunctioning no matter what, and that chance is "rolled" against the chance of avoiding the event it's tied to.
tl;dr Future telling devices will just refuse to work if you try to be a cheeky cunt.
>>345428
>For instance if God/the computer had to write down his prediction but didn't have to show you the paper than the God/computer could win. If he had to show his prediction he would lose
What if God was doing this thought experiment on himself? He asks himself which ball he will pick up then picks up the other one?
>Situation: A red ball and a blue ball sit on a table before me.
>Me: Lord, which ball shall I pick up next?
>Lord: Chasten, should thy virtue slew sin beyond a fenced fortress mine, for thou shalt never fear when the night falls fraught with devils under my rule. The thousands that feed the deadened earth their sheared cadavers are one eternal through me, a Word ordained in seven sung skies. I deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, from the noisome pestilence. The trumpeter-angel asks when to seize and release, all below me pleads, but little do they see through my immaculate glass. Take down in ablution, close behind thee thy closet and remember me in thy silence. I am medicine to the corporeal pyxis, all comes and recedes in my name. And so I loved this world that I wept blood and soot a day embittered.
>Me: Amen, amen, amen thrice.
>>345315
And he would know that
Its an omnipitent bieng, assuming god exists and is omnipitent he would know.
>>345588
Underrated post
>>345742
>If god said "im going to pick up the blue ball" then picked up the red ball
Then he would be wrong in his prediction
>>345211
Hows this got anything to do with history, again?
Philosopher/Psychology fags go die.
The delusion is thinking god gives a shit about being proven wrong.
>>345883
>>345211
God knows you're a stubborn contrarian bastard.
God tells you you'll pick one ball, fully knowing that it will result in you picking the other one
>>345890
When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
>>345211
The question assumes that we, as humans, have free choice. If we do, then predictions fail in this instance. If we don't, god (or magical orator device) would have been able to predict we'd choose the other one.
Regardless of free choice, some stuff is always predictable. Theoretically, with enough computational power we could predict everything, however we haven't (and probably never will) achieve that level of computational power.
Have you ever seen Bruce Almighty? It'd be like when Bruce meets God.
>>345211
I have to say two things. Firstly, most of the stuff in this thread is bullshit. Causality doesn't mean you have to or are forced to do something against your will, it only means that you will do it. An all-knowing being wouldn't cause you to do something, it would simply know what you are going to do.
Secondly, the experiment proposes a paradox and therefore is impossible. An all-knowing being such as God would be aware beforehand that you are going to pick the opposite of whatever they say. This cannot coincide with that being having to tell you exactly what they know you will pick, since they would have to know beyond what they say, which breaks the problem.
It's a bad thought experiment.
>>345930
>Theoretically, with enough computational power we could predict everything
Except what ball I'll pick up
>>346689
>It's a bad thought experiment
It's good because it shows that if we assume future reading is possible then we arrive at a situation where it is impossible, a logical contradiction. So it must be impossible
>>346703
It's not good though, and I explained why. The future reader cannot both know that you will pick the opposite of what they say, and have to tell you exactly what they know. That doesn't prove future reading wrong, it just means that you can't force someone to tell you what they know, while they know something else.
>>345883
It is neither philosophy (OP can't into God or causality) nor psychology (unless this were a study of the correlation between stupidity and the tendency to post weeb stoner images)
also HUMANITIES you blind nigger, it's half the name of the board.
>>345211
You forgot an important step.
God:<names a ball, then immediately decrees anyone still has the FREE WILL to choose the other ball, but doing so will result in them and every child of their blood after them will eternally suffer in fire>
You really gonna pick that other ball up? Your entire lineage? Just to prove a point? Eternally suffering for it?
>>346696
Again, that's a question of free will. If we have free will then there isn't a way to predict what ball you'll pick up. If we don't have free will then our actions are always predictable (provided you can account for and calculate all variables).
There's a study out there (forget the name) that told people they didn't have free will. After that, they asked them to take a single cookie from a jar on their way out. The jar was unsupervised, and a vast majority of those told they had no free will took multiple cookies from the jar. It just goes to prove that free will probably doesn't exist, and instead we're just a series of predictable behaviors.
>>346757
Sure. Who the fuck am I? I'm a nobody. It doesn't matter what happens to me. GOD is willingly offering me an opportunity to make him look like an idiot for some reason. Why wouldn't I take it? It's not like I plan to have kids anyway. If you're a gadfly, sting horses. Someone might remember you for it.
>>345451
You gay
The real answer is God (or the magic machine) says "you are trying to be defiant and disprove my ability, thus whatever ball I say you will pick the opposite. You will now think for a few moments on whether you need to pick up a ball before you declare victory and that I could not determine which you would pick up, even though I know which ball you pick up in all possible permutations." Or some long-ass shit describing the actual situation instead of just focusing on the balls.
>>346818
The thought experiment can be done without free will, simply imagine a robot programmed to do what I described in the OP.
>>346987
Then programming dictates action and thus is predictable.
>>346981
You reach the same paradox though. Can God both know that he will do something, and look ahead to know that he will actually do the opposite, which must be assumed will happen with an all-knowing being?
>>346993
But it would still show the future reader reads incorrect futures
>>347015
No matter which ball he predicts, he is wrong.
>>345588
nice digits
>>347017
God could still know you would pick up the other ball.
>>347071
But his prediction would be wrong, that's the whole point.
>>347028
You're missing the point completely. If God can know the future, then he must know that he will choose the opposite of what he predicts. In that case he literally cannot even make a prediction at all, because he knows he would not choose that prediction. Even if he were to predict that he would choose the opposite of that prediction, then he would have to choose the opposite of the new prediction. This would never end. The problem is a paradox.
>>347334
He could predict you would act opposite to his prediction. His verbal prediction would be wrong though.
>>345848
He would be a part of the scenario. But as God his knowledge of the scenario transcends your experience. He knows what you'll pick bit he must choose to move it along.
An omnipotent being would KNOW if you would do the opposite, the color of the ball or his answer is irrelevant to the fact that this being would know exactly how you would act in any timeline.
This thread is retarded.
>>345211
The problem is, whenever he makes a prediction, even if his prediction use mathematics which allowed for either balls to be chosen, that prediction causes you to choose something else, so he needs to make a more encompassing prediction, but that changes which one you will choose, so he has to change the algorithm, and that changes the choice, and that changes the algorithm, and that changes the choice, and that changes the algorithm ad infinitum.
>>347393
... So maybe he would tell you that this infinite regression is the case of how things are, OP.
>>347345
>The problem is a paradox
Agreed. A paradox that can be avoided by simply saying that future prediction is impossible
Jesus so much retardness being said.
>blue and red ball sitting in table
>me(epic ruseman xD): yo god guess which one im picking lol
>God thinks to himself: what a fucking retard, I already know that he is going to pick based on my verbal guess making my verbal guess wrong even if I KNOW the real answer is the opposite of my verbal guess.
>God sends me to hell for being an annoying shit
>Me: Fuck xDD
>God: The fact that my words can be wrong doesn't mean that i don't KNOW the future dipshit.
>>347471
Let me make this very clear:
Can future be read by an all-knowing all-powerful being?: Yes, it can be read.
Can I ask this being "lol what am I doing next?" And get a right answer from it?: No. This being would know the real answer therefore succesfully reading the future but his answer would not be right simply because you CAN make it wrong by knowing the guess. BUT this being would even know he is wrong about what he is saying, he doesnt even care because what he is actually thinking is fucking right and you are the most fucking retarded being in the world.
>>347554
Wrong.
If they are all knowing either through limitless diving power, or raw calculation power, they are much smarter than you, and can easily manipulate you with a self-fulfilling prophecy, and come up with a scenario where you fuck your own mother.
>>347568
Stoner pls go. Then he can both be right and read the future so what? The being right part is not even relevant, the fact he could read the future or else write it or whatever is enough, its the actual point of the thread. What the being says is irrelevant. He knows what is going on.
>>345539
You dont even need to be allpowerful to know what you are doing next, you can literally do that shit yourself and you would always do this:
1. Think "im picking the opposite of whatever i say im picking"
2. Say blue/red.
3. Pick the other one.
Or
1. Think "I'm picking whichever I say I'm picking.
2. Say blue/red.
3. Pick whichever you said you were picking.
You can be right or wrong but you always would know what you were picking.
An all-knowing being would know your thoughts and it would be the same.
Just because he SAYS you'll pick up that ball, doens't mean he doesn't KNOW you'll pick up the other.
That or he's fucking with you and know you'll pick what he didn't say.
>>345211
Do you even know what free will represents?
>>345211
HEY GUYS LETS AGITATE FOR A HISTORY BOARD!!!!!!11 Xd xd XD
>FLOODS IT WITH /b/ TIER RELIGIOUS DEBATES
Not realizing that reality is a social construction and there are no right and wrong answers but merely opinions and intersubjective agreements among people who socially construct reality in similar but subtly different ways.
>>347625
It's simpler to examine this thought experiment if you replace the actors with programmed robots. Like a robot future reader and a robot ball lifter.
>>345211
Search for Newcomb's paradox for discussion about a similar problem.
>>345211
Non it only proves that even the best predictor (a perfect oracle in this case) cannot always predict the future.
When asked "what ball am I going to pick?" The oracle would respond: "I don't know".
This would mean that true randomness actually exists, i.e. that the global entropy of the universe actually increases.
>>345211
God knew the ball you'd choose but he lied. He was fated to.
>>348233
Predicting the future and giving a right answer are 2 different things.
>>348946
Answering IS predicting the future. Of course, as soon as you answer you realize your prediction is wrong
This is why oracles spoke in riddles rather than stating things outright.
What do if you get this response:
"You will pick the ball that is the same color as the car that will kill you."
The problem is the directness of the prediction, and the person being predicted having complete knowledge. If the predictor uses knowledge outside the person, then it can once again make an accurate prediction, as the person would not be able to fully discern the prediction and thus be unable to counteract it.
>>349653
It still can be achieved by couching the answer in data the lifter is unable to access. Though I agree it becomes harder with less variety of action. "The action chosen will break the lifter," sounds a bit silly to me.
Funnily enough, when someone is trying to counteract fate, the MORE branches in the tree of events, the EASIER it is to state the future can be predicted.
>>349653
The robot is all-knowing so it can access the other robot's algorithm and determine if it will or it won't depending on what the guess is. So this all-knowing robot would know all the possible chain of events and know it can't reveal his guess without it being wrong even if he knows that revealing the guess means he picks the other.
So it can reveal the guess in a coded way that lifter robot can't read, if there is no way that this guess data couldn't be accessed by lifter robot then the robot could just lie about the guess while still knowing what is going to happen. How many times do I have to repeat that the verbal guess can be right or wrong and that doesn't mean the future wasn't known all along?.
At much what this experiment does is demonstrate that you can make anyone lie by doing it.
>>349864
Again, we are doing robots.
In the first example the robot will output the wrong answer.
In the second example the robot is not programmed correctly so it is irrelevant to this thought experiment
>>349913
Do the experiment on yourself then, you don't have to be all knowing to know what you are going to do. You can't NOT know what you are going to do independently if you lie or don't to yourself, then you can apply that logic to an all knowing being and you.
The all-knowing being can't NOT KNOW what you are going to do in any instance, so it can just lie about the guess while knowing the real prediction only he himself or give the prediction to you in an encrypted way. So just stop being stubborn and accept this experiment is wack as fuck.
To put it in a less antagonistic way:
1) I can say with certainty whether I will clap.
2) I can choose whether to clap or not after saying which one I will choose.
If 1 is true, then 2 is false, because my saying has locked in my choice. If 2 is true, then 1 is false because I can choose to do the opposite of what I said.
So do I have free will, or does this foreknowledge make my acts deterministic?
>>349913
Wrong answer =/= wrong knowledge of the future.
Imagine you are a looking at the code of a lifting ball robot who does the opposite of what you say he is going to do (Lift the ball or not).
Now imagine you are tasked to predict what he is going to do.
You input the prediction "Not lift the ball" KNOWING he is going to lift the ball, you KNOW this because you know the code. The first "prediction" is invalid to knowing if the future can be read or not because YOU ALREADY KNOW ITS WRONG, you are just predicting the future for yourself, you alone or any person who you can tell the real answer without the robot knowing would know you were right.
>>350132
This experiments are useless in telling if the universe is deterministic or not because they don't address the existence of hidden variables that can be known by some all-knowing being, for example Laplace's Demon:
>We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
>>345211
Matthew 4:7
>>350082
>So just stop being stubborn and accept this experiment is wack as fuck.
Err... It is a logical contradiction that only arises when you assume future reading is possible
>>350132
Obviously 2 is true and what you say doesn't determine your action
>>350304
So you cannot say with any certainty what you will do.
>>350155
>You output the prediction "Not lift the ball" KNOWING he is going to lift the ball
Why would it output that if it knows it is wrong? This just proves that our assumption of it as an accurate future reader is false
>>350226
>This experiments are useless in telling if the universe is deterministic or not
But that's not what the thought experiment is for, read the OP
ur a dumbass
>>345211
Congrats on your plot summary of minority report
>>350329
Actually I got the idea by applying the halting problem to real life
>>350319
That's exactly what it is for you clearly don't understand the topic. Laplace's Demon is basically the creature that can predict anything through all-knowledge, OP's question was if the experiment proves future can't be read (and thus such being couldnt exist).
Existance of Laplace's Demon is basically saying universe is deterministic.
>>350317
Are you retarded?, its not about being right or wrong, its about predicting the future.
You output it because you are just PROVING you can predict the future, even if that is just to yourself. Being able to prove it any further is beyond the fact that it indeed can be done.
>>352820
It's a robot outputting text, that is its only function. It's not trying to prove anything to anyone
You: Which ball will I pick up next?
God: The red one.
>You pick up the blue ball
>God lowers his toga, revealing a tattoo on his chest that says "I knew you would pick the blue one, faggot"
>The angels laugh at just how BTFO you are
