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Ganapati comments on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease - Less Wrong
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The elaborate hypothetical is the equivalent of saying what if the programming of Alice had been altered in the minor way, that nobody notices, to order eggplant parmesan instead of fettucini alfredo which her earlier programming would have made her to order? Since there is no agent external to the world that can do it, there is no possibility of that happening. Or it could mean that any minor changes from the predetermined program are possible in a deterministic universe as long as nobody notices them, which would imply an incompletely determined universe.
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Ganapati, the counterfactual does not happen. That's what "counterfactual" means - something which is contrary to fact.
However, the laws of nature in a deterministic universe are specified well enough to calculate the future from the present, and therefore should be specified well enough to calculate the future* from some modified present*, even if no such present* occurs. The answer to "what would happen if I added a glider here to this frame of a Conway's Life game?" has a defined answer, even though no such glider will be present in the original world.
Why would you be interested in something that can't occur in the real world?
In the "free will" case? Because I want the most favorable option to be factual, and in order to prove that, I need to be able to deduce the consequences of the unfavorable options.
What?
Not prove, implement. You are not rationalizing the best option as being the actual one, you are making it so. When you consider all those options, you don't know which ones of them are contrary to fact, and which ones are not. You never consider something you know to be counter-factual.
Yes, that's a much better phrasing than mine.
(p.s. you realize that I am having an argument with Ganapati about the compatibility of determinism and free will in this thread, right?)
Actually you brought in the counterfactual argument to attempt to explain the significance (or "purpose") of an approach called consequentialism (as opposed to others) in a determined universe.
Allow me the privilege of stating my own intentions.
You brought up the counterfactualism example right here, so I assumed it was in response to that post.
I'm sorry, do you have an objection to the reading of "counterfactual" elaborated in this thread?