Free will and omniscience

Brian-M said:
That's why oracles always travel in pairs. One from the present to observe, and one from the future to tell you what it observed first time around. It's true, have you ever met an infallible oracle that traveled alone?
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No, three. It's like the old joke about the Russian secret police. They always traveled in threes. One could read, one could write and the third kept an eye on the two intellectuals.
 
AvalonXQ said:
Nope. I'm saying the chance of X happening may still be 50%, even though the oracle knows X will happen.

Actual probability 1/2, Bayesian probability 1.
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That's a really, really bizarre point of view. You seem to be suggesting, either that Bayesian probability isn't a description of reality, or that at best it's an add-on to reality that allows you to choose between "actual" reality and Bayesian reality. But it's not like that; Bayes' theorem provides a more accurate description of reality than the simple standalone probability of an event. Or, put differently, if simple probability analysis gives one result and Bayesian probability gives another result, then it's the Bayesian probability that's right. So, given that Bayesian probability is, not an alternative, but a better description of reality, then your statement above is tantamount to an admission that prescience negates free will. Or, put differently, in your terms Bayesian probability does automatically usurp the model that you erroneously refer to as "true" probability, but is in fact an inappropriate model that treats events in isolation. Since no system can be seen as isolated from an omniscient entity, the naive probability model can never be correct.

In effect, every time you claim that Bayesian probability suppports your position, you're mis-stating your claim; what in fact you are claiming is that your position is supported by rejection of Bayesian probability as a correct model.

Dave
 
AvalonXQ said:
So you're conceding that my omniscient being knows every fact, but you're claiming that a being that knows every fact but doesn't force that fact to occur isn't actually omniscient?
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GeeMack said:
The omniscient being, to those of us who aren't making up definitions to support an otherwise unsupportable position, knows the outcome of events with certainty. So it does constrain the possible outcomes to the outcome it knows will occur, with certainty, because of its omniscience.
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Please, Avalon. Give up.
 
AvalonXQ said:
Nope. I'm saying the chance of X happening may still be 50%, even though the oracle knows X will happen.

Actual probability 1/2, Bayesian probability 1.
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That flies against everything we know about probability. Once you KNOW the outcome, the probability of the outcome is 1, or 100%.

But since you seem to have knowledge of probability that trumps mine, perhaps you can explain that to me.
 
Dave Rogers said:
In effect, every time you claim that Bayesian probability suppports your position, you're mis-stating your claim; what in fact you are claiming is that your position is supported by rejection of Bayesian probability as a correct model.
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That's correct. I'm claiming that Bayesian probability is an evidential probability model. It's based around the idea that our information is incomplete, and calculates probabilities based on the evidence we have.

I already gave this example: if I select a ball and put it in my pocket without looking at it, the ball is actually a certain color (that is, the actual probability of the ball being blue is either 1 or 0). But the Bayesian probability of the ball being blue may be 1/4, because the Bayesian probability is based on limited knowledge.

The problem is that people conflate Bayesian evidential probability with the actual probability of truly random events, which is something different.

I am hypothesizing the existence of a being who, because it derives its knowledge atemporally, can exist at point A where the probability of an event is less than 100% but still have full knowledge of the outcome of that event at point B where the probability is 100% (because the event has happened).

My mechanism (thanks to Bill) is atemporal causality: the reason the Oracle knows the outcome at point A is that the outcome is determined and observed at point B, which the Oracle has access to. So the cause of the Oracle's knowledge is the future event.

In this way, I am asserting that the outcome is not restricted at point A. The electron really does have an even probability of being spin-up or spin-down and will interact accordingly until the states collapse. When the states collapse at point B, the Oracle will observe this and will therefore have the knowledge of the states available at point A.

Of course, all this is secondary to the actual point about free will, but if it can be understood how I explain and resolve the paradox with random events, the extension to nondeterministic nonrandom events should be more straightforward.
 
H'ethetheth said:
You might want to provide some evidence for this class of events before you do that.
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I'm not planning on providing any evidence for it. I'm here in this thread to demonstrate that the concepts are consistent; not that they're real.
 
My problem is this. A usually defined, deterministic and random are complementary. In other words, in my understanding of the terms, you are describing an empty set.
 
AvalonXQ said:
That's correct. I'm claiming that Bayesian probability is an evidential probability model. It's based around the idea that our information is incomplete, and calculates probabilities based on the evidence we have.
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So does the simple assumption of random outcome for a single event. Bayes's Theorem just uses more information.

AvalonXQ said:
I already gave this example: if I select a ball and put it in my pocket without looking at it, the ball is actually a certain color (that is, the actual probability of the ball being blue is either 1 or 0). But the Bayesian probability of the ball being blue may be 1/4, because the Bayesian probability is based on limited knowledge.
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But you're getting it the wrong way round. You're using Bayesian probability to describe the situation in which everything is known; an omniscient entity, by definition, has unlimited knowledge.

AvalonXQ said:
I am hypothesizing the existence of a being who, because it derives its knowledge atemporally, can exist at point A where the probability of an event is less than 100% but still have full knowledge of the outcome of that event at point B where the probability is 100% (because the event has happened).
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If it can exist at point A with full knowledge that the probability of an outcome at point B is 100%, then that is logically inconsistent with that probability being less than 100% at point A. You're suggesting that, at point A, the real probability is both 100% (because God knows the outcome) and less than 100% (because you want to preserve free will). You're then using Bayes' Theorem as an appeal to magic, because you've got some muddled idea that Bayes' Theorem can say that a single event has two different probabilities. It doesn't work that way; if the outcome of an event is known, then probability isn't applicable.

AvalonXQ said:
My mechanism (thanks to Bill) is atemporal causality: the reason the Oracle knows the outcome at point A is that the outcome is determined and observed at point B, which the Oracle has access to. So the cause of the Oracle's knowledge is the future event.
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You're explaining away a contradiction by proposing a self-contradictory explanation. There is no such thing as atemporal causality. Causality is, pretty much by definition, temporal.

Dave
 
Roboramma said:
Or alternately:

I flip a coin and look at it, seeing that it's heads, without showing you. I ask you, "heads or tails?"

From your perspective the chances that it's heads is 1/2, from mine it's 1.

But the fact that you lack information about which way the coin came up doesn't mean that there's a chance that it's tails. That 1/2 is only a measure of your ignorance, not of the actually possibility of a different result.
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This is a more accurate representation of omniscience. It's also going to be handwaved away, because apparently ignorance of the result means that you still have a choice, even when there's only one option.
 
Dave Rogers said:
Bayes's Theorem
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I'm not talking about Bayes' Theorem; I'm talking about Bayesian probabilities -- that is, probabilities assigned based on degrees of knowledge, which are often conflated with the actual probabilities of random events.

No wonder it sounds like we're talking past each other if you think I'm talking about a statement of conditional probabilities when I'm talking about Bayesian (evidentiary) probabilities generally.
 
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Belz... said:
I hope you're not surprised that he doesn't know how probability works.
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That is an insult that I take very personally. I absolutely do know how probability works.

I also know, as I've been pointing out for several posts, that people confuse actual probabilities of random events with evidentiary (Bayesian) probabilities attributed to limited knowledge. I also know the statistical treatment that entails.

You don't like my metaphysics; fine. That's no reason to insult my mathematical understanding. I am certainly aware of, and quite competent with, these concepts.
 
Roboramma said:
Or alternately:

I flip a coin and look at it, seeing that it's heads, without showing you. I ask you, "heads or tails?"

From your perspective the chances that it's heads is 1/2, from mine it's 1.
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This is a perfect illustration of Bayesian probability.

Objectively, the coin has already flipped heads. Its actual probability of being heads is 1.

However, our evidentiary probabilities for the coin having come up heads are different, because our knowledge is different. Yours is 1; mine is 1/2. This is based on our knowledge of an already-certain event; an event that is certain because it already occurred.

Now, extending this logic further, in the case of a being with foreknowledge, there may be a situation where the probability of the event is 1/2 (because it hasn't happened yet and there are no constraints on the possible outcomes), but a being has an evidentiary probability of 1 for the event (because of foreknowledge).
 
I'm quite bummed out by the insult of my mathematical abilities above, so I think I'll take my leave of this thread for a while.

Thanks for the excellent, and clearly sincere, analysis of a lot of these points.
 
It still seems to me that for omniscience to even be possible, all events must be immutable. It's not even a matter of the universe being deterministic or not, it's a matter of all events definitely being immutable. In a reality where omniscience is possible, 'now' might as well be the position of the needle on the record, and "Comfortably Numb" is always gonna be the last track on side three, whether you've heard it before or not. And in that context free will doesn't seem to do much for you.
 
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