Thanks, Aaron. Excellent clarification in your reply. Now, here's another question - your description of foreknowledge machine and the influence on individual human behaviors seems to echo in a remarkable way the laws of Divine Providence as postulated by Emanuel Swedenborg, here paraphrased: All humans have free will; God wants all humans to achieve their maximum potential for good (in spite of their inherent tendencies to be selfish / evil); At every moment in a person's life, God is providing learning opportunities and feedback to each human seeking to help him/her achieve that maximum potential; Of necessity, God's divine providence must be invisible to the human awareness or they would then perceive their actions or choices as compulsions or rebel against the very thing God wants to achieve.

How is the foreknowledge machine different?

Many thanks - George

All the most useful clarifications, gathered into one place (Part I):

A response to a comment made by Eckard Blumschein, on his page:

Thanks for explaining why you were bored with my essay. However, my essay is not about prediction or forecasts in the slightest. The machines I am referring to are not some kind of simulation generators. No data would need to be added, because they do not compute anything.

Instead, they literally look into the future to see it for what it will be. Now, obviously, we have not invented such machines yet. However, in order for something to be recognized as feasible, it must first be recognized as logically possible. What I have done is to analyze the logic of a future-viewing machine, to isolate the kind of future-viewing machine that is logically possible. The initial step in this process is proving that a naive kind of future-viewing machine is not logically possible. I recommend that you take a look at a recent conversation I had with Robert de Neufville on my page.

By the way, I agree wholeheartedly with you that an article about some kind of a predictive simulation machine would be tremendously boring.

_____________________________

Comment from Robert de Neufville, on this page:

"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).

{Note: In all future work, including the re-writing of my current offerings on this topic, I will not use 'predictively useful.' It's use was clearly a mistake, as I see that it is unnecessarily confusing. Instead, I will only use 'outcome-informative.'}

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?

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.

______________________________

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.

______________________________

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].

Dear Mr. Aaron M. Feeney

Irrespective of existence of CTC, the physical analysis of such things is very useful for development of physics.

But you forget

1. references of Hadley , which tries to connect quantum mechanics and general relativity with the principle of CTCs.

2. One form of double slit experiment exists, where only after take off of electrons it is decided, if both slits will be opened or only one. Unfortunately, I do not remember details of this thought experiment and link for it. But this experiment is connected with CTCs.

3. It is also an option that Libet experiment, in psychology, is connected with CTCs or with foreknowledge. This is also a link which would give total survey of possible existence of CTCs of your paper.

In this contests, Luca Zimmermann gives essay about nature of time. Maybe this one is also important for you.

Physics of time is also connected with consciousness, with QM and with special relativity. In this paper, I try to prove that time does not flow if matter does not exist.

It would be useful to analyse consequences of time-machines, thus if it is possible that such device could cause some contradictions, for instance, that some thing arise without that any one do anything.

My name Janko is west Slavic name, in English it means John.

About the evaluations I also think, that nobody deserve 1, so this mark is unfair. I proposed my system for evaluation . But, FQXi is maybe the only way that someone read our essay so this is also one benefit of this. One the newest idea is that everyone gives also the quiz of its essay. If someone does no pass this quiz, he cannot evaluate it.

My essay

Best regards

Janko Kokosar

Hi Aaron,

I want to first extend my gratitude for your thorough response. It's beyond doubt that you put substantial thought into your explanation, and I'm genuinely appreciative to have encountered some novel concepts (which I am admittedly still trying to parse, although I realize that others may have, in their comments, posed similar questions as I have, and you may have already responded to those). The concept of an interference-free foreknowledge machine (a term which I think is well-worded) is something of a confusing notion to me, but one that I'm certainly willing to consider. I wonder how it'd be possible for such a machine to deliver information from a future to a past (subjectively, our present) without interfering with the progress of time, thereby creating a different set of future information. I apologize if my question seems rudimentary - I realize that there may be something I overlooked, but I sincerely appreciate the consideration you put into your essay, and I will definitely be doing some more thinking about it in the future. (Then again, perhaps my future self already has, and all I have to do is try to get in touch with him for his insights)

=)

Wishing you the best regards in the competition and in all else.

    Hi Alex,

    Your confusion, as you describe it, is well-founded. Within the definitions given in my writings, there is no such conceptual thing as an, "interference-free foreknowledge machine." That combination of words is contradictory. It is absolutely essential to the concept of foreknowledge machines that they must encounter interference in certain situations, and that they can only deliver viewer foreknowledge if they do not encounter interference. Acting to bring about a given future that has been seen, because it is desirable, is the most important example of a case wherein there would be no interference. For instance, whenever a foreknowledge machine operator who works for an airline would see that a given flight will land safely, she would approve it for takeoff.

    I do discuss the naive conception of interference-free future-viewing machines (future-viewing machines, not foreknowledge machines), and I term them Cassandra machines. However, it is easy to show that such machines are logically impossible.

    I believe these comments will clear everything up for you. Thank you for visiting. Please feel free to post back with your thoughts, or any additional questions.

    Warmly,

    Aaron

    Dear Aaron,

    Thanks for your reading my essay.

    It seems that the essence of the writing escaped you

    the essence is human consciousness that is the "creator" of reality.

    It is not the apparently material reality which is the result of the the lined up Eternal Now Moments in our causal consciousness that is causing our future, it is the ability of the non-causal part of our consciousness that can "hop" to a new Eternal Now Moment with even other PASTS, the past that we are aware of as for now is at one side a warning of "How NOT to act" and on the other side gives us glimpses of better probable and available futures.

    Indeed ref 17 has fallen of reality it is :

    Wilhelmus de Wilde : "The Consciousness Connection" http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1370

    best regards

    Wilhelmus

      Dear Aaron,

      Your statement, "For example, consider a setup consisting of a computer that controls a robotic arm which can place a weight in any of four positions around a circle. Also, let a modulo 4 counting system govern these positions, meaning that one counts around the ring as follows: 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0..." on the parameterization of Thought Experiment, seems to be assigned in apparent cyclic-time from extrinsic reference time; whereas the dynamics of the universe as per ECSU paradigm is in discrete holarchical cyclic-time, that is intrinsic.

      With best wishes,

      Jayakar

      Hi Aaron,

      I had a chance to read your essay and I liked it much more than I thought I would. The title and abstract made me think that you had some kind of *Cassandra* type future viewing scheme in mind which you deal with right at the very beginning. Anyway the break down of the three different types of future viewing schemes (Cassandra, Everett, Foreknowledge) is very instructive, but also bears a bit more reading in detail. Really the middle part of the essay should be read while at the same time working out examples (or just repeating the examples you give). I have to admit I did not do this due to time, but the arguments at first glance looked solid so I just took these as given. Also in this sense there is some *loose* connection between the Everett future viewing and my path integral suggestion since the Everett version of QM does try out all possibilities (but I'm not sure there is any weighting -- all possible future evolutions of the wave function that can occur do occur). In the path integral (either the one applied to physics or my loose metaphor for trying out different societal strategies) there is a weighting.

      Now your proposal still has the technical problem of the actual realization of a future viewing device, but as well I think many of the proposals here have one or more open points. For example in the case of my proposal one can ask would governments really implement such a experimentation of societal "paths" and would they really select the objectively best path rather than the path that is best for them personally (i.e. would get them re-elected).

      Also in my essay I talk bit about the Black Swan Theory of Taleb, who talks about events which he terms as unknown unknowns -- events that are completely outside our ability to predict (modulo some future viewing scheme). Now assuming one had a foreknowledge future viewing device it seems that it would be able to predict some of the "black swan events" of Taleb -- for example the rise of Google which I think Taleb would term a black swan event would in principle be knowable by the foreknowledge type of machine you discuss. But what about non-human black swan events? A meteor impact, a nearby star going supernova, a black hole wandering into our solar system and disrupting our Sun, etc. Note this is just a technical question since such events don't really count when one talks about "steering humanity" since they come from left field.

      Anyway a very much enjoyed reading your essay. Best of luck in the contest.

      Doug

      Aaron, I love a good logic puzzle, and I love the way you constructed this one -- separating the possible from the actual.

      What stands out for me, is that any possible future viewer machine rules out quantum entanglement and collapse of the wave function as real physical phenomena. For if Everett viewing can never be actual, information at the boundary of branching events exists always in the unactualized future.

      Which only leaves the classically based future viewer hinted in your reference: "We shall embody this viewpoint in a principle of self-consistency, which states that the only solutions to the laws of physics that can occur locally in the real Universe are those which are globally self-consistent. This principle allows one to build a local solution to the equations of physics only if that local solution can be extended to be part of a (not necessarily unique) global solution... (Friedman, et al., 1990)."

      Indeed, I think quantum computing models that exploit quantum discord approach this global threshold, finding a unique solution from the slightest coherence of a very noisy system. The noise may actually force a unique solution, suggesting cooperating quantum particles rather than random motion. I have long thought about the results of the single-photon-at-a-time experiment you reference, in this context. Most theorists are still trying to save entanglement; I do not think they will succeed.

      In the same classical way, I suggest that cooperating least elements of any system exploit the local-global identity, such that system-wide, future and past states exist everywhere parallel. So I guess I prefer that, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery put it, "(Our) task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it."

      Great piece -- high score from me!

      Best,

      Tom

      To All,

      Thank you FQXi and everyone here for such an amazing forum for new ideas to help our struggling world. More specifically I want to thank all the wonderful thinkers I've interacted with here, who have given me so much to think about and who have helped me refine and clarify my work. A special thanks also goes out to whoever thought of this year's fascinating and important topic.

      This has been an unforgettable experience, for which I will forever be grateful.

      Sincerely,

      Aaron

      A new solution to "Fermi's paradox":

      In very concept, a technology capable of allowing future events to be viewed and analyzed beforehand (in contexts where doing so is logically possible) would automatically ensure peace and cooperation among all interacting groups who possess it, even among civilizations from distant star systems who have just met for the first time. Some of the reasons for this have been explained in "Removing the Element of Surprise," and have implicitly been much more deeply explicated in the earlier and longer work, Understanding Future-Viewing Machines and Time Travel.

      In these writings, after the most basic imagined kind of future-viewing machine has been shown to be in violation of logical possibility, and after another kind (which is at least logically possible) has been shown to be useless for revealing outcomes, a third kind of future-viewing machine which is both logically possible and which would be of enormous utility is described. This third kind of future-viewing machine is referred to as a foreknowledge machine.

      One of the most critical insights to relate about the use of foreknowledge machines is that they would tend to strongly amplify beneficial world outcomes, while all feasibly preventable negative world outcomes would be virtually eliminated. Do not misunderstand what this means: While the utilization of foreknowledge machines would factor strongly into the development of future outcomes, the future would by no means have been changed through their use. Instead, the future that would emerge would necessarily emerge in the context of their use, from the very start.

      What kind of future would we all agree to create together, if we knew everything about that future beforehand? Answering this question allows one to realize the kind of relationship with the future that foreknowledge machines would bring about. This is because, in the context of a civilization which uses foreknowledge machines, in cases where definite information about the future is received, such examples of viewer foreknowledge (a term defined in either work) can only pertain to a future they are inspired to produce or accept. If the future they see would have been feasible for them to diverge from, they would produce or accept it because it (or the future they know it will lead to) is desirable to them. (Any future that is simply not feasible for them to prevent, will have to accepted by default.)

      The chief variables which contribute to what would be seen involve who has access to viewer foreknowledge before a given event, and who acts in accord with that knowledge prior to its occurrence, either knowingly (based upon it) or unknowingly (through command structures or subtler social influences). Of course, the most cohesive and powerfully beneficial results would occur if an entire civilization became united in mind and purpose through universal access to key aspects of viewer foreknowledge.

      It should be clear that, if foreknowledge machines are indeed physically possible (and there are ample reasons for believing that they are), the above points sufficiently illustrate why civilizations everywhere who eventually develop them will choose to incorporate their use into every aspect of their conduct.

      This constellation of concepts leads to a new solution to "Fermi's paradox." Any civilization who uses foreknowledge machines would likely choose to not make their existence known to (at least the whole of) another civilization which has yet to (at least secretly) adopt foreknowledge machine technology. In other words, future-sighted civilizations would choose to essentially remain hidden from future-blind civilizations. This measure would not be taken out of fear, but due to compassion. Were a future-sighted civilization to reveal themselves to a future-blind civilization, this would invite the possibility of conflict. However, note that conflict is both undesirable and easily avoidable.

      With reflection, it gradually becomes apparent that mutual future-sightedness (at least on some level) is the only context that a future-sighted civilization would deem appropriate for revealing themselves to a new civilization. Also, they would certainly not want to rob a future-blind civilization of the formative experience of discovering future-sightedness for themselves. So, in general, future-sighted civilizations would naturally choose to stay hidden from any future-blind civilizations they might discover.

      Now, a newly future-sighted civilization (as we may soon become) would, in the course of its grand transformation, quickly find itself in a wonderful position. Soon after gaining future-sightedness, they would come to know, well ahead of time, when first contact would subsequently happen, and this foreknowledge would give them time to prepare mentally. After their momentous achievement, every future-sighted civilization who has learned of their transition would be eager to joyously meet, congratulate, and welcome their long-lost relatives into the larger community.

      With all of these considerations in mind, it seems that graduating from the future-blind stage could very well be a universally understood prerequisite to first contact for civilizations everywhere. In addition to all the other benefits future-sightedness offers, the eventual development of foreknowledge machine technology might also, in fact, be the only way for us to end our cosmic loneliness.