He means "you know, stuff like flipping time travel and changing the goddamn past".

We are in a certain sense talking about determining the past, the distinction is between shared structure (as in, the predictor has your source code) and time machines. The main problem seems to be unwillingness to carefully consider the meaning of implausible hypotheticals, and continued distraction by the object level dispute doesn't seem to help.

("Changing" vs. "determining" point should probably be discussed in the context of the future, where implausibility and fiction are less of a distraction.)