Does Knowing The Future Allow You To Change It?

idav said:

If a then b. Omniscience, full knowledge of now.

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I don't follow. Unless you're talking impossibility.

Willamena said:

I don't follow. Unless you're talking impossibility.

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If a then b is a prediction.

idav said:

If a then b is a prediction.

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Prediction is not knowledge.

Willamena said:

Prediction is not knowledge.

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Something known to be inevitable would be knowledge of the future. If a, the current state, then 'b', the future state. Supposing you could test it, the math will come out the same every time, cause math doesnt lie.

Knowing what effect that 'change' will have on the outcome of events allows you to change it.

I don't have the belief in the a future, there is only now, the so called past is nothing but remembrance, the so called future is just wishful thinking.

The past makes the present and the present makes the future ... You are the master of your Destiny.

I agree with falvun. I don't believe the future to be just a linear path. Instead there are many different routes you can take

idav said:

Something known to be inevitable would be knowledge of the future. If a, the current state, then 'b', the future state. Supposing you could test it, the math will come out the same every time, cause math doesnt lie.

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Predictions carry no inevitability, because all the variables cannot be determined. The nature of knowledge makes it not possible.

Willamena said:

Predictions carry no inevitability, because all the variables cannot be determined.

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Which is why complete knowledge of the current state, the now, must be a known. If all of now is a known the inevitable would also be known because the variables would be taken into account giving a 100% accurate prediction.

The nature of knowledge makes it not possible.

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Why is that? In theory, if it exists it is knowable, but obviously humans are rather limited in that respect.

idav said:

Which is why complete knowledge of the current state, the now, must be a known. If all of now is a known the inevitable would also be known because the variables would be taken into account giving a 100% accurate prediction.

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This assumes that randomness doesn't exist.

The Sum of Awe said:

I personally can't find myself to ever be in with the parallel universe idea.

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I don't believe it myself, but it is a possibility.

But, I don't really think that the future exists in any sort of actuality. Hence, I don't believe that the OP problem could ever actually occur.

idav said:

Why is that? In theory, if it exists it is knowable, but obviously humans are rather limited in that respect.

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Because of locality.

Falvlun said:

This assumes that randomness doesn't exist.

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I don't think anything is really random, we just haven't figured out the space-time variables. With every point in space-time a particle can be, it would have a reason for being there. A particle gets influenced by the macro world and then violates space-time to make it seem random but the experiments are influencing the outcomes. That's why people think the particles can time travel when they try and "trick" the particles to not collapse.

I think you could change it, but necessarily.

Now, just because it has been seen to be the future does not mean that you can't change it because changing it would mean that it wasn't the future anymore. I think that things change so much that there are various possible futures that could happen depending on whether various things happen and whether various people make certain choices.

So, since there are so many things that go into making various possibilities possible, I think it would be possible to become aware that a certain thing will happen, should things keep going in the direction they are going, and make changes to influence things in a different direction.

So, to answer the question: possibly, because the future is not absolutely definite, it's uncertain, but not necessarily possible in all circumstances because there are so many elements that go into making something happen that you may not always be able to influence things enough to change the course of events at that time.

The Sum of Awe said:

If, hypothetically, you can know an event in your future, would this allow you to change your future? If so, was it an incorrect future and thus you never knew it in the first place?

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That's it in a nutshell. What you "knew" wasn't true: you didn't really know the future at all. The future isn't changeable. Que Sera, Sera.

All else is inconsequential chatter.

"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it." ~ Ooguay