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aspera comments on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions - Less Wrong
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My mother's husband professes to believe that our actions have no control over the way in which we die, but that "if you're meant to die in a plane crash and avoid flying, then a plane will end up crashing into you!" for example.
After explaining how I would expect that belief to constrain experience (like how it would affect plane crash statistics), as well as showing that he himself was demonstrating his unbelief every time he went to see a doctor, he told me that you "just can't apply numbers to this," and "Well, you shouldn't tempt fate."
My question to the LW community is this: How do you avoid kicking people in the nuts all of the time?
Strictly speaking, if you somehow knew in advance (time travel?) that you would "die in a plane crash", then avoiding flying would indeed, presumably, result in a plane crash occurring as you walk down the street.
If you know your attempt will fail in advance, you don't need to try very hard. If you don't, then it is reasonable to avoid dangerous situations.
I think this is the kind of causal loop he has in mind. But a key feature of the hypothesis is that you can't predict what's meant to happen. In that case, he's equally good at predicting any outcome, so it's a perfectly uninformative hypothesis.
That was exactly my point. If he could make such a prediction, he would be correct. Since he can't...