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I'm trying to figure out why you said all that. It's not like I disagree with you on it. I don't, but for insignificant points.
Here's how we got here:
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Kylie: Which involves information travelling to the present from the future. How is that not time travel? Information is travelling back in time.
Mark: Your answer demands that time be the constant, instead of either travel or information.
Your statement immediately above says information travel (which is not what usually is meant by time travel, in which is meant a person or object --not information). My comment was to show that if information (or object or person, for that matter) is taken for the constant, time would be the variable, or perhaps travel.
All that was meant tongue-in-cheek, by the way. Just having fun with thoughts.
But to go with your post here: "...any answer I give isn't likely to be an accurate reflection on the world we live in...", I agree, (although that is true to some degree with anything answer we give concerning even the present, haha --since not only are we inept at conveying concepts by words, but are even worse at accurately drawing concepts from words) but I'm thinking that if we were privy to the sight of future events they would be largely unintelligible to us, unless we were also privy to their context.
I disagree. Paradoxes are involved only when the time traveler is capable of action. Time traveling knowledge is not capable of action, so this knowledge does not prevent free willIt may not require me to be the time traveller, but there is time travel involved, so time travel paradoxes are still there.
You went to a lot of trouble to say nothing against anything I said. Mine was no more word salad than yours. I only point out, as you did, except with a lot less words, that randomness is not possible, if Cause-and-effect rules, and that whatever we do fits perfectly into cause-and-effect. Science says no different. I'm sorry if my salad didn't provide a full meal.More word salad.
The whole issue of determinism (or predeterminism) is a total red herring in science. All physically useful definitions of determinism boil down to saying that all the information contained in a time series is also contained in any individual 'frame' of that time series. Therefore, all that means is, if you want to have free will and determinism, then all the information required to understand free will must also be encompassed in that single frame. Although that is perfectly possible, it is also perfectly irrelevant .. we already know (from Physics) that not all the information is encompassed in that single frame (see footnote #1).
Attaching some fundamental randomness to the picture, and calling that the source of new information, is equally erroneous, because although technically random digits do contain new information, that's not the kind of information that people are interested in when they talk about free will. So the actual free will that philosophers have been agonizing about over the eons, when projected onto physics, would have to look like some new source of information that is either contained in the present, but does not appear in the quantities physicists have thought how to measure or perceive, or else appears with time in a way that is not fundamentally random (see footnote #2).
If the latter, then 'free will' involves the creation of information.
Now, I have no idea how this new information is created by the application of 'free will', I say only that if this picture is completely compatible with all physics we know, (which it is, because we still have no knowledge of many of the processes we choose to treat as random), then what are so-called compatibilists (and libertarians) arguing about? We, (the physicists), simply have no idea, so for philosophers, citing physics to argue about it, is just outright foolishness.
Footnote #1:
.. that is, unless one attaches non-observable other worlds, expressly to encompass that information like the proverbial angels dancing on the pin .. but that is a totally transparent gambit ..
Footnote #2:
.. if indeed there is any such thing as fundamentally random, which one can personally side with Einstein in doubting, though his particular approach to the alternative was fruitless ..
A choice results in an outcome. Are you not familiar with the idea of Cause-and-effect?Outcome, options for outcomes... Would you care to explain why you think these are different?
A choice was made on my behalf. Thus, it was made for me.
I see that you're reduced to quibbling over wordplay now. If that's all you;ve got, then your argument is falling apart.
Then you are missing my point. See, if Time itself is what changes from the perspective in which we consider it, it can perhaps change in relation to the object, so that time is what travels, and the object is stationary.If something is coming from the future and going into the past, then it is time travel. Doesn't matter if it is an object or information.
I disagree. Paradoxes are involved only when the time traveler is capable of action. Time traveling knowledge is not capable of action, so this knowledge does not prevent free will
A choice results in an outcome. Are you not familiar with the idea of Cause-and-effect?
What exactly do you mean by "made on my behalf"? Made in your place? No, I have not claimed that, nor does what I believe mean that. God decides what will happen, yes, including decides precisely that you will make the choice(s) you make. That by no means denies choice.
But I repeat myself, as do you.
Then you are missing my point. See, if Time itself is what changes from the perspective in which we consider it, it can perhaps change in relation to the object, so that time is what travels, and the object is stationary.
Don't worry, it is not a serious conversation.
I'm suggesting that is the perspective we might put to it, but that in fact it may be the other way around. In fact, in some of the stories, the person who "travels in time" doesn't actually change where he is (at least in relation to earth geography), but time changes around him.Not sure what you're saying. Time is the path along which things are travelling. It is not what is doing the travelling.
So how does this take away free will?I disagree. What if I am shown my own future? Is that future version of me the version of me that saw the future, or is it a version of me that had no idea? What if I saw myself getting into a car crash? Obviously my future self isn't a version of me that saw the future, or she would have seen that she'd get into a car crash and then been able to avoid it. Since I saw it, I can avoid the crash, and thus that future I saw could not be me. But then, how could I see that if it never happened?
I never said that. I said its possible in the context cited, but is irrelevant to Physics and goes against what we already know to be the case... I only point out, as you did, except with a lot less words, that randomness is not possible, if Cause-and-effect rules ..
Rubbish ..Mark Quayle said:Science says no different.
What I said was consistent with the mainstream scientific viewpoint.Mark Quayle said:I'm sorry if my salad didn't provide a full meal.
My purpose was only to respond to your original post where you invoked the butterfly effect, which displayed a common physical misinterpretation:I'm just saying that if I saw one particular future, then a small change in any event from that timeline can lead to larger changes down the line, just as the example with the weather modelling computers shows.
I don't think that's what the butterfly effect idea is saying. Rather, it's saying that a small change can lead to much larger changes which are impossible to predict from looking at the small change that started it in the first place.
I can look at a small change, and I can never tell what the outcome will be until I see the outcome for myself. I may drop a coin and it goes down into the drain in the gutter, and I can never know how my life would have turned out differently if I had not dropped the coin.
And the same happens in reverse - I can look at the outcome of some change, but I can never use the outcome to figure out what the initial change was. I can't say, "I'd never have gotten the job I have now unless I had played that wrong note when I was practicing piano when I was 7."
No, I just need to create a small change.
That's precisely the point - small changes can lead to big differences, but we can't predict what those differences will be.
No, it's about how small changes can lead to large changes later on because they send things down a different road.
No, I don't need to know where my future is heading. Making a small change is enough to send me on a different path through life, even if the outcome can't be known until I get there.
This suggests that if I have perfect information about every single subatomic particle, every scrap of energy in the universe, I could predict everything with 100% accuracy. I don't think this is true. There are random fluctuations that render any attempt to predict the future with 100% accuracy impossible. It's an educated guess at best, and the farther into the future you try to predict, the less accurate you will be.
This was the only point I was challenging. Given that the conversation has now moved on, I'll go back to 'sleep' and clarify, (not challenge), your newer above points, by commenting that there are indeed models which display sensitivity to initial conditions. In science, those (math) models aren't just accepted as being true when it comes to describing the physical (real world) .. Such claims require objective evidence that they are, and even then, the aim in doing that, is to determine the useful probabilistic range over which that might apply.Kylie said:It doesn't even need to be that clear cut. You ever heard of the butterfly effect? A butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing and a month later you get rain instead of sunshine in Central Park New York, just because the flapping wings changed the air currents so slightly, and this change lead to a different weather system in a different part of the world. So I could change what happens to the people I saw by something as simple as coughing.
I'm suggesting that is the perspective we might put to it, but that in fact it may be the other way around. In fact, in some of the stories, the person who "travels in time" doesn't actually change where he is (at least in relation to earth geography), but time changes around him.
Lol, I like to say, wait a minute --here we are spinning on a globe careening through space clockwise (or ccw if you look at the pinwheel of the milky way from the other side, i.e. apparent top vs bottom) around the center of the galaxy, which itself is moving at impossible speed and we want to pretend that if we are suddenly in the past that we will not materialize in outer space?
My purpose was only to respond to your original post where you invoked the butterfly effect, which displayed a common physical misinterpretation:
Ok, and so I don't lose the thread, the remarks in this thread at this juncture were about Cause and Effect. Can you show me how Cause and Effect is irrelevant to Physics, (or have I already lost the thread, (lol --quite possible.))? THAT is all I was saying.I never said that. I said its possible in the context cited, but is irrelevant to Physics and goes against what we already know to be the case.
Rubbish ..
What I said was consistent with the mainstream scientific viewpoint.
What you're saying is not.
Or even what the point of this tangent to the thread is. I was just remarking. I like talking to you, lol.Given that time travel is impossible in the real world, and given that Back To The Future would have been a very short movie if the director had insisted on this kind of thinking, I fail to see what your point is.
Toy models of weather can certainly be deterministic in the mathematical sense. Physics uses toy models all the time, like the Lorenz equations. But that toy model does not tell us that literal butterflies change weather, and more complete models tell us quite the opposite ie: that literal butterflies do not 'change' weather, because that would involve a scale error physically, a category error philosophically and the very assumption that there is anything to 'change' in the first place, is fundamentally unscientific.And the example I gave is commonly used as an example to show how a small change in initial conditions can lead to drastic changes later on. Is this not what the butterfly effect idea is about? In what way is it a misinterpretation?
But that toy model does not tell us that literal butterflies change weather, and more complete models tell us quite the opposite ie: that literal butterflies do not 'change' weather, because that would involve a scale error physically, a category error philosophically and the very assumption that there is anything to 'change' in the first place, is fundamentally unscientific.
The butterfly motion is only one of billions of motions leading to the hurricane. You would be at a loss to show that the lack of the strokes of its wings would make a large difference in the hurricane's actions or effects.A scale error? You mean like how a difference of one part in a thousand can rapidly lead to very large changes?
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