AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Except when it comes to omniscience, there is no observation because the results are already known without having to observe it. The cat is not assumed to be both alive and dead, it is KNOWN to be both (assuming multiple universes and such) ever since existence came about.

In this case, God isn't determining the state of the universe by observing it. The universe itself is already known in its entirety by God the instant it comes into being. There is no observation on the matter, all outcomes exist and are known to exist without a fundamental need to double check.

In other words, it's as if someone shuffled a deck while you were blindfolded and facing the opposite way in a completely different room, and you knew what order the cards were in. Knowing it doesn't affect the game that the people at the table are playing, and they might have guesses as to the order of the cards and the likelihood that the card they need will crop up next, but only you truly have the knowledge of the contents of the deck, and your knowledge of it does not affect the results, because you are wholly removed from the situation.

If God were to interact with the universe, observe it, make changes, then yes, he would fundamentally alter the universe. Divine intervention would cause that moment in time to be forced to go a certain way, and at that point, free will is completely stripped from that branching point in the timeline.

The difference here, that many people get hung up on is that omniscience and omnipotence DOES NOT mean that God is obligated or willing to fix the problems that people experience. Any intervention of his would change the universe, and in all likelihood, could make things worse. Besides which, if timelines do branch like we would suppose they would given the existence of free will, then why would God necessarily... care if things went badly for you in this timeline? In another timeline, things went great for you, or you made the right decision that you didn't regret. Or maybe in another timeline you made a horrible mistake and God didn't come on your behalf to fix that.

In this case, your existence fits a set of standards that have to exist because it's a possibility caused by the choices of you and others. You make this bad choice in your life because there's another you who did the opposite, and without either of you, there was no choice to begin with.

Also, as an addendum, I would like to say, isn't it also possible that if there are an infinite number of timelines that cover every concievable choice combination that any person, groups of people, or people combined in the universe can make, isn't it also possible for the same exact timelines to repeat, like a movie, infinitely because the you or the me or the anyone in that timeline made the same choices that you/me/anyone in this timeline has made? If there are an infinite number of this timeline, doesn't that mean the you in any timeline truly has the free will to make their own choices, even if it completely runs parallel with another timeline?

I have to disagree - knowledge necessarily implies observation. An omniscient being may not point eyes at your socks to know they're under your bed, but A] there would likely be some mechanism by which it happened but is above our plane of understanding and B] regardless, the fact's simply being known alone is enough to render certainty.

I read a book like this once, pretty interesting idea. The main character could see the future, but he wouldn't see a single future, he saw a variety of different outcomes all at once.

Basically, suppose God is inherently omniscient by knowing all possible outcomes of every possible decision a person could ever make ever. Each decision, each combination of decisions, splits the timeline into many different possibilities. God may be omniscient in the sense that he is able to see every branch, even though the combinations would be basically infinite. Heck, you could even support the idea of truly "random" events (like, at the quantum level) splitting into their own possible timelines. God may not "predict" the outcome, but he would be able to see each possible outcome. Maybe you could extend this into a theory of parallel universes, where in total, all possible outcomes of an event come to pass, they're just in different timelines. So naturally if God knows all the outcomes he will have predicted the outcome correctly by knowing that they all came to pass.

I don't think this version of omniscience is quite "all"-knowing by the strictest, but its as absolute as its going to get.

Of the mind that things are all going to happen a certain way, we just experience it as choices?

An omniscient being does not require observation. They do not need it. They could be blind, deaf, and dumb, but still know everything. It's not observation, it's just knowledge. You may never have seen a nuclear explosion, but you know that you'd die if you were in one. It's the same principal, knowledge without any source. A being who is omniscient by nature would be born and would constantly exist in a state of knowing all things.

This does not affect or alter the things at all. Saying that a choice could be either way in a realm where the timeline is strict and stable is just honestly a stupid thing to say. In that universe, everything would be the same regardless of if someone looked at it or not. There is no either way, there was no choice to be made, there is just what happened.

And then in a branching universe, it continues to not matter, because you've done everything you could ever have done already. Time to us is a series of cause and effect but to a being who knows and understands everything, it's just a thing. To it, you exist. You do not exist along a linear path, you just exist, and every choice you could ever make you already have and have not simultaneously.

It's an odd thing to wrap your head around, but in separate timelines you're still you. There's a timeline where I didn't put this sentience into this post. Or I didn't make one spelling error. These tiny things have already split into hundreds of billions of an infinite number of different universes, but all of them would be me. To a being who knows all and is watching, all it sees is a point where there is a giant branching path, and that point is part of another branching path, which is part of another branching path, all the way until the beginning of time or before. These are not really separate selves. They are all me, still. They're points where I made a choice, or something happened to me, or something happened in a completely different spot in the universe itself and made the new branch.

The omniscient being would just see me in a whole bunch of different spots. Maybe he could go "oh this one did this this and this" but in the end there are so many paths that have all already been taken why bother.

If time is a singular thing, going straight forward with no branches, then what is observed would have come to be without observation.

If time is a many fingered thing, with infinite possibility creating infinite timelines, then what is observed would be every choice and every experience to ever exist and the observation doesn't matter because everything has already happened. bodaciously, in every sense of the word, everything.

To compare it to Schrodinger's Cat, in a fixed timeline, the god would know the cat is dead/alive, and even if he did not, it would still be the same result.
In a branching timeline, the god would see the cat as dead and alive at the same time and see the timelines that came of both, so there would be no "right" result that it could observe.

Man, I find this discussion hilarious seeing as I'm currently watching Steins;Gate.

Sort of. I'm a pretty firm believer in Smart's Dilemma, which states that things are either predetermined or they are random, neither of which leaves room for our conception of free will. I'm leaning towards the predetermined side, but there are some strong arguments for randomness as well.

Honestly

I figure it doesn't fucking matter. Even if everything is predetermined and set in stone, then that doesn't mean diddly shit to me. Whatever, that's not something I can change so why worry.
And if there's an infinite amount of potentials, then whatever that still doesn't matter to me.

What matters is what I'm living right now, because I don't know the future, I don't know how time works, so why make it a focus of my life?

Uh, yeah. There are all things I've already said.
I think you're misunderstanding the scope of 'observation' and its meaning in this context. If it is known or acknowledged or in any way recognized, it is observed.

Observation is experiencing an event through human senses, so, no, having knowledge of something before experiencing it is not observation.

Like I've said before also, it doesn't matter if it's observed. Either it's predetermined and not changed by the observation, or there's multiple possible events that are all happening.

There's also the fatal flaw of Schrodinger's Cat's normal interpretation. There is no wave function to collapse when the box is opened, the cat is either alive or dead, and saying it exists in some other state in-between both until observed is beaten down pretty solidly by common logic. What would actually collapse the function is any event happening at all. There would need to be no observation, nobody would have to look and be sure. The second the geiger counter detected radiation the cat would be dead, the second it did not, the cat would be still alive. The thought experiment isn't saying that something doesn't happen until observed, it's a question as to when the change actually occurs, what is the exact point where reality comes to a conclusion on if this cat will live or die?

So any form of observation, or knowledge of events, wouldn't change the conclusion even in a fixed universe. The only difference an omniscient being would have, is they would be able to see and understand the point where reality "makes a decision" down to it's basest concepts.

You're doing that thing where you make up your own specifications for a word's definition again.

The common definition of observation is:



To perceive is to:



In total omniscience, there is no need to become aware of knowledge. If that were the case, God wouldn't be omniscient. In that case, God does not perceive or observe the universe as we would expect him to. That's assigning human-like characteristics to an entity that is non-human in the hopes of some universality or a manner of hubris.

In philosohical matters, I propose a broader definition. That definition is too literal to really matter in terms of the argument I'm making - there's no other word that conveys the fact that an omniscient deity would in some way go about being aware.
There's simply no other word in the English language that addresses the problems such cognizance would pose for the concept of free will.

That would be because, as previously stated, the idea that it would affect free will is complete bullshit and makes no sense.
Omniscience means, by it's very definition, that you do not need to observe to know. An omniscient being, by definition, would not need to observe. They would not need to experience an event.

Lets imagine, just for a second, that there is an omniscient being who looks, acts, and otherwise is human. They have human blood, bones, skin, and by any test would be human, but they happen to have omniscience. Lets place that person in completely empty space, bodaciously as far away from Earth as possible, an infinite distance away.

They would have no ability to experience events on Earth. They could not observe events. It could not happen through any means whatsoever.
But, they're omniscient. They already know what is going to happen.

This is not observation. This is not watching and experiencing events. This is having knowledge of events.

And something to very seriously note is that even if they were observing life, actually living on Earth, it would change nothing. There would still be things it could not observe. Like I said, there is no wave function that remains uncollapsed until someone realizes an events happened, because that's not how any part of reality works.

If you're under the assumption, for whatever reason, that you can change events by seeing something that happened, as if it might not have had you not, you're just feeding your ego. It's a false statement, and a false idea of how the universe works. Knowing something, being aware of events, does not change those events, does not suddenly lock them into one possible outcome.

Omniscience, as I've said a hundred thousand billion times, would never in a single billionth of a billionth of a second actually alter the universe by just having the knowledge.

Could an omniscient being change the universe? Yeah, actually, probably. Knowing everything and all things means you could affect events before they happen, that you could probably play with reality like a child with playdough. Omniscience might even be enough of a vast scale of knowledge that an omniscient being might just become omnipotent as a side effect. But just the knowledge? The fact that they would know everything wouldn't change a daisies thing.

You are technically correct. The existence of an omnicient being does not, in itself, change anything

What my, and I believe YCobb's, point is that the existence of such a being is inextricably linked to the nonexistence of free will

Smoke doesn't cause fire, but you'll pretty much always see them together. Similarly, omniscience doesn't directly cause free will to be impossible, but you can't have the first without the second.