Robin Hanson wrote:
>
> Hal Finney wrote:
>
> >Or are there other reasons you can't literally change the future?
> >For example, in a deterministic universe there is a sense in which you>can't change the future, because you can't make any choices, they are
> >pre-ordained. Is this the kind of thing you mean?
>
> I have in mind the standard relativistic view of space-time as a singular
> always existing whole. The standard view presented in a course on general
> relativity, for example, or in a published paper analyzing time machines.
> Even in a non-deterministic universe, if there aren't mystical "free-will"
> demons acting from without, an agent making a choice is really just
> discovering what the future is.
What about the concept that going back to change the past either eliminates the
future timeline you came from, or shifts you over to a new timeline (depending
on whether you buy multiverses or just a single timeline at any given time).
Thus, the future always is indeterminate.
Now, as to market weighting, I was under the impression that a market 'failure'
is really only a failure of participants to accurately predict correct prices,
that the 'correction' that occurs in a 'failure' is really just the market
forces re-asserting themselves over the improperly distorted choices of
participants who are empowered disproportionately by outside factors like
governments, regulation, etc., so in a sense, it is regressing to its true mean
on the timeline.
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