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KidKilobyte t1_iwxgymj wrote

Reply to comment by Mortal-Region in Are you a determinist? Why/why not? How does that impact your view of the singularity? by Kaarssteun

I said determinism, but also believe in the many worlds hypothesis. That said I try to be the best me on this thread of existence, make well reasoned choices, and hope that leads to better outcome than the "other-me"s that fate chose to make poor choices.

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Kaarssteun OP t1_iwxhaci wrote

That sounds highly conflicting to me. A determinist wouldn't believe in the concept of choices in the first place, no?

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Mortal-Region t1_iwxjwnk wrote

Many-worlds is deterministic. Many deterministic worlds.

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red75prime t1_iwxzjqj wrote

Not exactly. You can't predict which outcome you'll observe, so for you it's indeterministic. For a "god" who knows the whole universe superposition it is deterministic, but the "god" will have computational difficulties untangling worlds from that superposition.

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Mortal-Region t1_iwy57dx wrote

Well, many-worlds or not, a deterministic universe is difficult to extrapolate exactly. The point is that a deterministic universe's present state contains all the information you need to do so (even if it'd be extraordinarily difficult).

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red75prime t1_iwy72kg wrote

You cannot precisely predict the future state of the universe while being within the same universe, even if you know all the data (which is impossible). Look for physical impossibility of Laplace's demon.

Belief in determinism is devoid of actionable insights (for now at least).

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Mortal-Region t1_iwyor4t wrote

The idea of a super-scientist making predictions is just a way to describe it. All that's really being claimed is that a given state is entirely determined by the prior state.

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