All the most useful clarifications, gathered into one place (Part II):
Question submitted by George Gantz, on this page:
"[W]ould a truly rational human, having in hand one of your foreknowledge machines, be inclined to give up the human struggle to make his or her own choices? Would they still be human?"
(I will use the female pronoun.) It would be very unlikely, if not impossible, for a person to be able to see (or eventually be told, by a third party) detailed aspects of her own personal future, for either of these things would cause the future-viewing machine to run into an interference viewing scenario in the first place. However, in general, the future of a civilization's course would not fall into that restricted category.
So, getting back to your question, in effect, a human being could not see or know her own future choices, but the larger results of everyone's contributions could be known to all. Now, to bring about the larger results that have been seen, a foreknowledge machine operator could see a relevant person's future choices and delegate someone to interact with her in some subtle way, hinting her toward her contribution to the viewed result.
As you can see, every human being would have to make all of his or her own choices. The differences in the lifestyle of a future-sighted civilization (as opposed to our presently future-blind civilization) consist in the fact that everyone would know the combined end result of everyone's actions, and, most importantly, that that end result would automatically be beneficial to a significant majority of actors (unless avoiding it would literally not have been achievable within the timeframe). This is because, otherwise, the conditions of a VCO would emerge. However, viewer foreknowledge of a given future means that a VCO will not, and so could not, emerge. (For if it did, what had been received could not have been viewer foreknowledge in the first place.) Therefore, viewer foreknowledge automatically leads to an amplification of beneficial outcomes for an entire "future-sighted" community (which in this case is assumed to be a future version of our whole civilization).
So, to answer the first part of your question, everyone would still make all their own choices, because no individual could know exactly what her own choices will be. Of course, this automatically answers the second part of your question too.
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In response to Kevin O'Malley, on this page:
Now, as far as the practicality of my idea is concerned, I wonder how many people would consider the idea of cell phones to be practical in 1879? Only approximately 110 years later, cell phones were starting to become a widespread phoneomenon (yes, that is a real typo, but it was so funny I decided to leave it), and look at where they are today. Practicality is not a good measure of the usefulness of an idea if one allows themselves to think in terms of decades or centuries of progressive surprising developments.
I have to give a reply I've given many times before. Foreknowledge machines do not forecast or predict anything. They see the future as it will happen, or if they encounter an interference viewing scenario they give only vague information or fail to operate. So, foreknowledge machines cannot be described as prediction machines to any extent, even though a person could be wildly successful by using one claim that they have made predictions. However, a person who uses a foreknowledge machine and then claims to make predictions about what he has seen would be lying: They have not predicted anything, because the foreknowledge machine has not predicted anything. When a person receives viewer foreknowledge and knows that it is viewer foreknowledge within a complete theory of foreknowledge machines and sufficient experience with the machines themselves, they would know they have seen the future for exactly what it will be.
Here's a parallel: Can you claim to predict something you have just seen in a telescope? That would be an absurd word to use. You can predict that your friend with good eyesight will also see a distant fixed object when she looks in a telescope locked to a tripod, but once having seen it, to express that you "predict" the thing itself is wrong.
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From Tommaso Bolognesi, on this page:
"...when... [foreknowledge machines] show something, we can be sure that what the viewer sees will definitely happen...[,] since... [viewer foreknowledge is inviolable]. Then, why bother acting? Can`t we comfortably sit and listen to the Beatles vinyl records, while waiting for the foreseen future to happen, whether good or bad?"
Wouldn't the manner in which we would respond to viewer foreknowledge also be available in viewer foreknowledge? Yes, it is true that we could be sure of every future we might see in confirmed viewer foreknowledge. However, what you are proposing is a situation wherein a society would attempt to contradict a given instance of viewer foreknowledge--but engaging in such an attempt would have led to an interference viewing scenario in the first place, so that society would not have had viewer foreknowledge to contradict. Upon receiving viewer foreknowledge, we could not all just sit back and listen to "Let It Be," if that would contradict what we have seen--such a combination would be physically impossible within the context of the very concept of... [foreknowledge machines].