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.

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    • Post #36

    Aaron,

    Yes, I see where I have muddled the Everett machine and the later Foreknowledge machine. How does a Foreknowledge future viewer differ from for example a climate model, which will make predictions with an accuracy dependent upon the completeness of the information supplied and thus also computing power available?

    To be honest I find the explanations difficult to get my head around. I don't understand why undesirable outcomes are not viewed because lots of undesirable things happen. What happens to free will if you have to make the outcome match what you have seen happen? Who then is steering the machine or the human mind? There would be no need to consider why choices were made only that they were made, it seems to me. The advantage of a model is it is only indicative of what might happen under certain circumstances and the circumstances can be altered. Steering to avoid them.

    Hi Robert,

    Thanks for reading my work, I look forward to reading your paper after finals in my technical program have concluded next Friday. Thanks also for giving these wonderful points of critique which provide me with another opportunity to clarify.

    I will go point by point:

    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.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    To take what is strictly necessary for my argument to extremes, all that is required to let it go through is the recognition that it is logically possible for a computer to follow a simple program accurately, and for a robotic arm to accurately move a small weight from one location to another. Of course, there is no question that these feats are logically possible, since they are everyday occurrences. The possibility of a malfunction in either of these systems, then, is irrelevant to the conclusiveness of the argument I offer against the logical possibility of Cassandra machines.

    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).

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I did not comment on this issue. I said that our eyes see events after they happen, but I made not comment as to why our eyes cannot see the future without some kind of aid like a foreknowledge machine.

    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.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    If you are referring to viewer foreknowledge, why not?

    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.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    True. As far as losing resolution through time, this is an intriguing concept that I have not delved into. Thank you for that.

    (Continued in next post)

    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.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    The essential point is that all foreknowledge machines which are not in an interference viewing scenario will deliver identical viewer foreknowledge when applied to any given future outcome. This means that all parties who use foreknowledge machines will necessarily work together toward the same outcomes, as these outcomes have been optimized for the parties concerned by the complex quantum process which would make viewer foreknowledge possible. Referring to your last sentence above, one must remember the special case of non-interference which occurs when parties who know about a given future act to bring that very future about.

    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.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Okay, you would be surprised. According to my knowledge of current technology (and even what was reported in journals twenty years ago), if foreknowledge machines are possible, I would be surprised if it takes our best and most open-minded engineers longer than that to figure out how to make them.

    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.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    You may know this, but I have to respond in the following way every time someone describes foreknowledge machines as a predictive technology. Foreknowledge machines don't predict anything. One could base predictions on viewer foreknowledge and they would always be right (that is why they would be "predictively useful," to distinguish them from Everett machines which could not help us know anything about which future will come to pass), but foreknowledge machines themselves aren't involved in prediction at all.

    I am now fully convinced that I need to emphasize this distinction much more clearly, since five or six other people have also arrived at the same (understandable) misconception (which I did not sufficiently guard against, as the possibility of confusion here had not occurred to me).

    Now that that is out of the way, I think you may have been expressing that a future-viewing machine which sometimes delivers a view of the future that is wrong would still be useful. However, when would we trust it and when would we assume that it could be wrong? A predictive technology that is sometimes wrong is fine--that's the nature of prediction--but a viewing technology cannot sometimes be wrong, and be useful. That would be like a telescope which sometimes shows Blackbeard and Captain Ahab walking on the deck of a distant ship, when only Blackbeard is on board. See what I mean?

    I look forward your further thoughts. Your comments have been extremely valuable. Thank you once again, and I am keen to read your essay and continue our productive conversation on the work we are both doing to help our fellow humans and the future of our planet.

    Warm regards,

    Aaron

    Hi Alan,

    Thank you for taking the time to read my offering. I will read yours soon as well. I would like to correct the characterization of foreknowledge machines given in the following excerpt: "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."

    It is important for me to clarify that this is not an accurate description of what a foreknowledge machine would be, since they would not predict anything. Instead, they allow the operator to actually peer into the future to see exactly what will occur (i.e., viewer foreknowledge), or they will encounter an interference viewing scenario. Seeing the future would be "predictively useful," since with such access one could always formulate predictions that would be 100% correct, but doing so would not itself constitute the reception of a prediction.

    This kind of technology may not be physically possible, but it is logically possible. Please skim the article with these clarifications in mind, and pay particular attention to technical note ten. I see clearly now that I must emphasize in future papers or a book on the subject that foreknowledge machines represent the transcendence of prediction. For additional clarification, please read my conversation with Michael Allan at the top of this page. All the best to you here, and in all things.

    Warmly,

    Aaron

    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

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      • Post #44

      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

      Hi Daniel,

      Thanks for reading my essay. I am glad you see the potential that foreknowledge machines promise for the amplification of beneficial outcomes. However, this effect would not depend upon the wisdom of people in charge. If you were to read my longer ebook on Amazon, you would get a lot more detail about the nature of the mechanism.

      Now, it is my duty to respond that foreknowledge machines could not be implemented with very powerful computers, as you wrote. Prediction is very limited. Foreknowledge machines represent the transcendence of prediction, forecasting, simulation, et cetera, in favor of viewing the real thing whenever possible. No matter how powerful, no computer could ever become a foreknowledge machine.

      I understand your complaint. We don't know how to build one, or even all the principles upon which one could be based. The point of the paper, however, is purely logical--it specifies the kind of machine that is both logically possible and useful, and then advocates for what beneficial purposes such machines could serve. The technical details of actually building one will have to wait for our best scientists and engineers to crack one day, if such machines, in addition to being logically possible, are also physically possible.

      Aaron

      Aaron M. Feeney,

      Responding to your invitation to rate your essay: I do not think that relativity theory is correct. I do think that the effects known as time dilation and length contraction are real. In the case of time dilation, I don't mean a property of time, I see it as the observed effect that events slow down under the correct circumstance. There are two points that follow from this: One is that I do not accept the idea of space-time or general relativity. The second is that these ideas are accepted physics theory with a long history of effects that are interpreted to confirm the theory. Therefore, investigations into further development of the effects predicted by relativity theory are certainly justified. In other words, your essay presents something that deserves serious consideration in line with accepted physics theory. That is how I judge it. I think physicists should seriously evaluate your essay and in keeping with that opinion, I am pushing your essay up for greater visibility hopefully to be evaluated by the judges. Your essay is a far better fit, in my opinion, for the subject of this contest than are many others that are presently highly rated. Good luck.

      James Putnam

        Hi James,

        Thanks so much. I am glad you see the feasibility and promise of what I have been working on, as well as its fit to the contest. (To really see what I've been up to for the last few years, take a look at my ebook on Amazon.)

        Your website looks interesting. I agree that physics could use a shakeup or two, and I enjoy reading works from authors who suggest new ways to do that. I've got it bookmarked. As well, I have your FQXi article on my spreadsheet to read. All the best and good luck to you too!

        Warmly,

        Aaron

        I am thinking that the single antimatter particle dynamic can be interpreted like retrocasuality dynamic (Dirac equation), so that can a macroscopic mechanism with a prevalence of antimatter be interpreted like a local pastward time travel?

        How an antimatter universal computer (analog or digital) work, with interaction with the matter (photons of measurement)?

        It seem more and more interesting.

        Dear Aaron,

        Excellent essay! A pleasure to read. I had some loosely thoughts that I want to share.

        We don't need to hurry to invent a future viewer. We can wait until past travelling is invented and come back and change nothing.

        The oracle of delphi was an early future viewer, who told Oedipus that he would kill his father and marry his mother. To avoid his faith he left for Thebes, where he killed his father on the way and married his mother. It seems, that the future viewing provoked the events it viewed. Same as in your P-0 program in the computer. It will do, what the future viewer tells him. It's a bit the chicken-egg problem. But I can't avoid the horrifying picture, that its' the future viewer that is steering us.

        I wonder whether we could decide if the future viewer is telling us something about the future or the past. If there are only deterministic reversible laws the future viewer could not tell us anything, that we could not know now. Future and past have not a real meaning. If we add the second law of thermodynamics - entropy increase - and the future viewer would tell us something, that increases the relative information to what we know already it would be almost sure an information of the past and not from the future. How comes? This is the topic of my essay.

        I met a boy with a story coming from the future. The fool thought he could change his past.

        We shall not know the future otherwise we would not act in order to steer it.

        Best regards,

        Luca

        • [deleted]

        • Post #50

        You're welcome, Robert. It was fun, since your questions and points are so good. Now for the next round:

        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.

        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        As you will see in my paper, it is a generalized future-viewing machine that is put to the test, to see if it could act like a Cassandra machine, not a Cassandra machine.

        Now, as I wrote in my previous response, I was taking what is strictly necessary for my argument to go through to extremes. Indeed, this argument could still work in a time before Alan Turing, when all they would have had to go on is logical possibility. I meant, then, that as long as there is no contradiction in the idea of a computer following a simple program and accurately controlling a robotic arm which operates properly, then the argument is solid. For a run of P-1, for instance, it is impossible for any kind of machine or omniscient being whatsoever to provide the computer with a definite x-value that will turn out to be correct with respect to the future position of the weight (during any run where the computer operates properly and the arm functions as designed), because x does not equal x 1 (in modulo 4). From this we know that the generalized future-viewing machine cannot be a Cassandra machine, i.e., it cannot be a future-viewing machine that can always supply definite and correct information about all future outcomes, in every circumstance. (The italicized words combine to mean that one must only determine whether it is possible for the computer and the arm to function properly, to see that the argument succeeds.)

        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.

        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        Yes, that is what I meant. Any finite speed of light would only allow us to see the past.

        Now, if the speed of light were infinite, light would not come from the future. Arriving at a destination before leaving is not a matter of going faster. An infinite speed of light would allow us to see the present, no matter how far away the things we are looking at might be.

        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?

        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        You might have meant information about a gamma ray burst while it is still in transit, say in 2015, but, in my last response, I was referring to viewer foreknowledge of its eventual detection on earth in, say, 2020. So, viewer foreknowledge received in 2014 of the 2020 detection event could be used in 2014 to deduce the burst's 2015 position.

        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.

        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        Who knows how they would work? The paper primarily offers logical observations to isolate the kind of useful machine that could exist, in principle. It leaves it up to others to eventually discover how to make one, if they happen to also be both physically possible and feasible.

        (Continued in next post)

        Hello Aaron:

        Per your post on every author's page regarding the internal rating practices, no, I do not think it is ironic that self-interest is involved in the rating practices of such authors. If we cannot harness self interest as a species, we will by no means be able to "steer humanity".

        Looking at your article, I find a future predicting machine to be very impractical. And since my main focus is on practicality, I'll be rating your essay accordingly.

        But there is a silver lining on this cloud. I have been involved in a wisdom-of-crowd project in the past, and it DEFINITELY harnessed self interest. That prediction "machine" was called Intrade. Alas, Intrade shut down because it was blocked from opening up in the USA. But while it was open, I enjoyed it immensely because it gave me a chance to put my money where my mouth is. And I even wrote a very pertinent article about my experience with Intrade with respect to LENR:

        How I Made Money from Cold Fusion

        How I Made Money from Cold Fusion

        Dear Aaron,

        Read your essay. The foreknowledge machine is an interesting concept. I'm not sure if I got it right, though.

        If I got the gist, I think your claim is that a foreknowledge machine will only show future events that would not be/are not changed by the observer. Or anyone or anything. And that if a 'successful' result of an event is not shown, that is, no clear result is shown, it should not be attempted. Is this the case? This seems to imply that many future events can only be observed at most once. Indeed, that many (most? almost all?) future events cannot be observed at all with such a machine. Unless perhaps there is only one foreknowledge machine, and its results are not shared.

        Like to know if I got this right. Thanks.

        OH, yes. Thanks for your observation, and your helpful scale. I am not down-voting either.

        Charles