Removing the Element of Surprise by Aaron M. Feeney

Very interesting essay, Aaron. I think your ideas are valuable, although I have my doubts about the feasibility and value of a foreknowledge machine. A few thoughts:

1) I don't think a Cassandra machine is possible either, but I don't think you demonstrate this logically. Your thought experiment seems to me to assume that the machine that executes the program on the basis of the Cassandra machines input cannot go wrong. But I don't think you can assume that any physical machine is perfect.

2) I didn't understand your explanation of why we see/remember the past but not the future. I don't think the speed of light is the issue, since the laws of physics seem to be CPT-invariant (essentially, should run the same forward as backward).

3) I would add, however, that we probably can't have foreknowledge of events--like a wave of radiation from a gamma-ray burst--traveling toward us at light speed.

4) Even if foreknowledge machines are logically possible, they may not be physically possible. The obstacles may not be philosophical, but physical. And even if there is some way to observe the future from the present, we may lose a lot of resolution at any distance through time.

5) I found the idea that foreknowledge machines would end war intriguing. You are right that countries that go to war generally (but not always) do so because they disagree about what the outcome will be. But it seems to me--perhaps I have misunderstood what you are trying to say here--that outcomes that depend on the human use of information about the future are precisely the kind that a foreknowledge machine couldn't foresee.

6) Even if a foreknowledge machine were possible, I would be very surprised if this was something we could develop in 20 or 30 years.

7) I agree that better predictive technology would be valuable. But machines that are occasionally wrong are still extremely useful if their error rates are low. We don't necessarily need theoretically perfect foresight.

In any case, I enjoyed reading your essay. I'm rating it now. Good luck in the contest!

Best,

Robert

Aaron, I think Tommy's saying we could discover the time of a future catastrophy, or one that's merely apparent. Suppose the machine shows all flights landing safely (as you say), but only till 9:13 p.m. tomorrow. Thereafter it returns no view for any flight in the world, nor any other class of future outcome. Naturally we infer a global catastrophy tomorrow night. That inference might be wrong, but it frightens people and causes them to act in dangerous ways, perhaps with catastrophic consequences. Hence the diagnosis, "Killed by self-fulfilling prophecy". - Mike

Hi Aaron,

That's quite an interesting analysis. I think I couldn't help but take your foreknowledge machines as a metaphor for the scientific project. In this way its an interesting analysis. In particular a Cassandra machine illustrates the concept of how as we know more, we can appear less and less able to cheat fate because our predictions are inevitable, and at they same time they grow in number.

It almost made me think that at least in its use as a metaphor, a foreknowlege machine implies the viewer as an active participant, rather than a separate observer. That is, in viewing the future in enough detail, they are able to trace some of the events back to their own decisions (or decisions of others that they might influence). In this sense it doesn't disempower us as often depicted in scifi/fantasy, but instead links the future to our own actions, giving us the control to shape our own destiny. That's not to imply that our choices are somehow removed or separate from causality, but merely that our choices are a powerful part of causal reality that shapes our fate.

Perhaps science and foreknowledge machines are different then, in that science can never wholely predict an event that in turn relies on the choice we make, if that choice relies on our observation of the event. In other words, a discrete future prediction is inherently paradoxical, but a probabilistic one that refers to our choices is not only possible but desirable!

Your essay was certainly different, and certainly thought provoking. Thanks!

Maybe I'm not thinking clearly (I began by claiming that foreknowledge is impossible, and now I'm claiming it pretty much exists already) but here are my thoughts on: A) observer's built-in time viewers; B) fossils, future fossils and the form of foreknowledge; C) will as close-foreknowledge machine; and D) myth as eternity viewer.

A. There's a "present viewer" built into the observer that's generally obligatory. Most other viewers (past, present and future) are viewable only through it. It's also error prone. I'm not sure this is helpful, but maybe we could say that the problem Tommy is pointing to (May 9, if actually a problem) is caused by these in-built errors being amplified by the foreknowledge machine.

The observer also has built-in past viewers and future viewers, these being the only other ones that are accessible directly, i.e. without intermediation of the built-in present viewer. All are likewise error prone.

B. A fossil is a past viewer, a kind of back-knowledge machine. Switching to foreknowledge then, what might a "future fossil" look like?

For me, this was a fruitful question.

C. The human will (or "practical reason" as Kant calls it) seems very close to a foreknowledge machine. Its accuracy is variable, but often high and under one's control. With effort, one can usually increase the accuracy to whatever is needed. When my tea cup is empty, I often activate my will to obtain a "view" of a cup refilled. Soon after, an actual refilled cup materializes. It materializes surely enough that I'd gain nothing by moving to the certainty of a foreknowledge machine. For most purposes (here echoing Robert, May 10, no. 7), the close-foreknowledge machine of the will seems adequate.

Interestingly, it can have any range in time.

D. I think of myth as a fusion of back-knowledge and foreknowledge, a kind of Janus-faced time viewer of unlimited range. The thesis of my own essay is that it's possible to construct a myth of near-perfect accuracy in its further reaches (very close to foreknowledge there), and that it's also necessary.

I've some related thoughts on backward time travel (it too seems to be happening already), which I hope to share after I re-read the essay. But judging by how often I think about it, it's already the most interesting of the essays I've read. - Mike

Dear Aaron,

I wrote a comment here, but for some reason it went to nirvana. I'm writing again, but now in short.

I find your essay interesting. There are 2 intertwined issues, I think: outcomes and decisions, which generate an information overload that place limits on practicability. However, your essay interests me more in the foundational side, and I will be rating it based on that solely. I think that removing time travel from your essay would bring it a better rating, but I will not place weight on the latter on my rating, but more on the idea of foreknowledge machines.

Best,

Christine

Aaron,

It is difficult to find time to read over 150 essays carefully. I read yours in response to your comment on my essay page about the Community Rating system. While I would like to read your essay through more carefully before final rating, I understand that your essay focuses on the possibility of a foreknowledge machine, essentially a simulator that runs faster than real-time, so that we may accurately predict the future. Further, you make an interesting argument that people would behave better if they knew what the results of their actions might be. While I agree that more accurate information is generally better, people often do not behave rationally, even in the presence of reliable predictions. For example, the evidence of anthropomorphic global warming follows from extensive computer simulations of the global climate system. These simulations are scientifically well established, but the long-term implications are widely either denied, ignored, or put aside for future generations to deal with. In my own essay "Just Too Many People: Towards a Sustainable Future Earth", I argue that the key problem facing humanity (and giving rise to a variety of climate and resource problems) is that the global population is already unsustainably large, and must be reduced going forward. This is not a popular argument (as perhaps reflected in the relatively low Community Rating), but the facts speak for themselves.

Alan Kadin

Okay...time travel. As a devout quantumologist, I must conclude that traveling to the future as a way of predicting the future from the present is necessarily futile. QM tells us that there are a very large number of possible futures, but we only ever know one future. Your future viewer would only see one of those futures or would see a superposition of all of the them and therefore also not be very helpful.

As you can see, there is no problem with causality since a future viewer would not provide any better information than the physics we already have and so the changes that you cause are already in one of the possible futures anyway.

Dear Aaron,

Very interesting idea, indeed, of a foreknowledge machine.

The future-viewing machine you propose is very interesting because it seems to incorporate my definition of science. Let me explain:

Science is about finding causes of results. When we see a result, science can tell us what the root cause(s)of the result are e.g. the air is heating up because we are adding more carbon dioxide. The reverse, the cause seeding the impact, is not always true e.g. if we add carbon dioxide the only result is not warming.

Your foreknowledge machine seems to correctly predict the result of an action (cause). Am I understanding your thought correctly?

What is the implication of the fact that different people will have different foreknowledge? If no foreknowledge exists, will the future-viewing machine show any result?

- Ajay

It is interesting the Cassandra machines; some time ago I thought a strange tachyon machine (a story for the grandchilds), where a machine that write in the present write in the same machine in the past, so that who write a text? The ink disappear in the present, to appear in the past, and the pen in the present delete the old writing! There is a book in a temporal loop, and no one write the book.

The computer can be a Turing machine that write in the past, deleting the present tape, so that the computer have the result before of the calculation (always a story).

I am thinking that each weather forecasting is a Cassandra machine, if the forecasting is perfect, and the prediction time is not high: if there are classical equations, and weak quantum effect, then the Cassandra machine work well.

Each dynamics have forbidden trajectories, so that it is true that not all the futures are possible (simmetries and invariants), and each real Cassandra machine can say this prohibition.

A machine that reduce locally the entropy, for example cooling a system, or concentrating a system, is a local Cassandra machine? Is it possible to include information in the system, to send locally message in the past?

If an essay make you think, then it is a good essay.

Dear Aaron

You have put in a lot of thought into this. The concept of a foreknowledge machine is the stuff of science fiction, but you have considered the possibility of their being real - like one day we can download an app that will tell us what we will do in the next 24 hours or week or year. I would imagine that if such a machine were possible its accuracy would diminish with the distance in the future of the setting.

Unfortunately, from my own point of view, and more specifically from the physics of my Beautiful Universe theory , there is no time dimension. Past present and future are just outcomes of memory, perception and speculation successively. All we have is one universal 'now' state that changes.

You can counter by saying, yes but what will future 'now' states be? I do not subscribe to many-world theories, so the future such a machine would read would be a Laplacian causal projection. Alas it has been repeatedly argued that any tiny variation in setting the initial conditions (the butterfly flaps its wings, or not) will cause a large change down the causal chain (the storm, or not).

As for the single photon experiment read Eric Reiter's experiments on his unquantum.org site. He has proven that there is no such thing as a point photon - ie the photon goes through the two slits all the time.

I wish you all the best, and do not worry nobody is going to tell about WWIII through a foreknowledge machine. Be happy ...now.

Vladimir

Thanks for the interesting clarifications, Aaron. I'm glad if my comments were helpful. I have a few more quick responses:

1) I'm not sure what you mean when you say that it is logically possible for a computer to follow a program accurately. Computers certainly can follow programs accurately. But that's an empirical fact, not an analytic statement. I don't think we can ever guarantee that a computer will necessarily follow its program. It seems to me--I admit I might not have really understood your scenario--that it might be the computer that fails when connected to the Cassandra machine, rather than the other way around.

2) You wrote that "all known optical systems can only receive information about past scenes" because "it always takes time for light from any scene to reach any lens". I took that to mean that we see the past rather than the future because the speed of light is finite. I'm guess I'm not sure now what you mean here.

3) I'm not sure how information about the future from another point in spacetime can arrive faster than the speed of light. What am I missing?

4) My guess is that foreknowledge machines are not physically possible in our region of the universe. Especially if they depend on closed timelike curves to work. As far as I know, there's no evidence that such curves exist--Godel's spacetime is kind of a theoretical special case, right? And if a foreknowledge machine had to create and manipulate such curves to function--is there another way--I assume the amount of energy required would be literally astronomical.

5) I will have to think about how this works more carefully, since I'm not sure I understand how this would work.

6) It will be interesting to see who's right. I agree that in some ways technology develops exponentially--if that's what you're suggesting--but I also think that qualitative advances become exponentially harder to achieve in some areas. Projects that require infrastructure or use high energies can be particularly slow. I am afraid at this point we may not even have controlled fusion in 20 years.

7) You seem to be using distinguishing prediction from foreknowledge in a technical way that wasn't clear to me when I first read your essay. But in any case this is where I think I most strongly disagree with you. A viewing technology that is sometimes wrong can still be tremendously useful. It won't be useful--and may even be harmful--in the specific case where it is wrong. But on balance--if the error rate is low and roughly known--it can be very valuable. Consider diagnostic tests. These routinely produce both false negatives and false positives. But if the error rate is low enough they are still an invaluable tool of medicine. Our actual telescopes inevitably distort images, but nevertheless remain useful to us. I doubt that any machine can run without producing errors. We should certainly seek to minimize observational errors. But we can live with some. In fact, I think we have to.

Thanks in any case for the interesting discussion!

Robert

Hi Domenico,

I'm glad you enjoyed my essay. I found your "strange tachyon machine" idea interesting, as well as the Turing machine which has the result before the calculation. There is a history of this kind of musing.

I would like to respond about your repeated mention of Cassandra machines. Cassandra machines are not logically possible, they are like round squares. We can talk about them, just as we can talk about round squares, but neither can ever be real. So, the phrase "each real Cassandra machine," is as nonsensical as the phrase "each real round square." Instead, I suggest that you may mean to refer to foreknowledge machines, as they are both useful and logically possible.

Now, with this change in terminology in mind, perfect weather forecasting would not be a foreknowledge machine, because foreknowledge machines do not forecast or predict anything. They see the future as it will happen, or they give only vague information or fail to operate if they encounter an interference viewing scenario. Also, I would not say that a machine which reduces the local entropy is a foreknowledge machine, since every living organism does exactly this.

I recommend looking over my article again and reading the conversations with Michael Allan, Tommy Anderberg, and Robert de Neufville above. I would love to hear your further thoughts after this clarification.

I now have your article in my spreadsheet to read, and I look forward to it. All the best to you here, and in life.

Aaron