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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease - Less Wrong
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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?
Sorry for the delay in replying. No, I don't have any objection to the reading of the counterfactual. However I fail to connect it to the question I posed.
In a determined universe, the future is completely determined whether any conscious entity in it can predict it or not. No actions, considerations, beliefs of any entity have any more significance on the future than those of another simply because they cannot alter it.
Determinism, like solipsism, is a logically consistent system of belief. It cannot be proven wrong anymore than solpsism can be, since the only "evidence" disproving it, if any, lies with the entity believing it, not outside.
Do you feel that you are a purposeless entity whose actions and beliefs have no significance whatsoever on the future? If so, your feelings are very much consistent with your belief in determinism. If not, it may be time to take into consideration the evidence in the form of your feelings.
Thank you all for your time!
Wrong. If Alice orders the fettucini in world A, she gets fettucini, but if Alice' orders eggplant in world A, she gets eggplant. The future is not fixed in advance - it is a function of the present, and your acts in the present create the future.
There's an old Nozick quote that I found in Daniel Dennett's Elbow Room: "No one has ever announced that because determinism is true thermostats do not control temperature." Our actions and beliefs have exactly the same ontological significance as the switching and setting of the thermostat. Tell me in what sense a thermostat does not control the temperature.