Another take at clarifying that UDT seems to say, to add to the discussion at the end of the post: there is no way to change not only the past, the future (see: free will), but also counterfactuals. What was, and what will be is fixed to what it actually was and what it actually will be, but the same applies to what could be, that is what could be is also fixed to what it actually could be. This doesn’t interfere with the ability to determine what will be, what was, and what could be. And that’s all UDT says: one can’t temper with what one could’ve done, in the sense of changing it, although one can determine it.
To bind preference, shouldness to this factual setting, it’s better to forget the details of expected utility maximization algorithm, and say that what the agent thinks it should do (at the moment, which may be a very limited perspective that doesn’t reflect all of the agent’s preference, but only that part that acts at that moment) is what it actually does. Thus, different preferences simply correspond to different algorithms for choosing actions, or more generally to different ways in which the agent determines the (dependence between) past, future, and counterfactuals.
Now if we get back to the point that all these things are “fixed” and are “as they actually are”, we can see that there can be no rational disagreement, about anything, ever. One can’t disagree about facts, but one can’t also disagree about values, when values are seen as a counterpart of actions, facts also. Of course, different agents are different systems, and so they get located by different observations and perform different actions, and in this sense can be said to have different states on knowledge and act on different values, but this is a fact about dots on the picture, not about the picture whole.
(Of course, counterfactuals are the only real thing in the context of this discussion, “past” and “future” aren’t concepts appropriately homogeneous here, when I say “determine the future”, I mean “determine the ‘counterfactuals’ that branch in the future”.)
What was, and what will be is fixed to what it actually was and what it actually will be, but the same applies to what could be, that is what could be is also fixed to what it actually could be.
As it could have been in the beginning, so it could have been now, and forever could have been going to be.
Another take at clarifying that UDT seems to say, to add to the discussion at the end of the post: there is no way to change not only the past, the future (see: free will), but also counterfactuals. What was, and what will be is fixed to what it actually was and what it actually will be, but the same applies to what could be, that is what could be is also fixed to what it actually could be. This doesn’t interfere with the ability to determine what will be, what was, and what could be. And that’s all UDT says: one can’t temper with what one could’ve done, in the sense of changing it, although one can determine it.
To bind preference, shouldness to this factual setting, it’s better to forget the details of expected utility maximization algorithm, and say that what the agent thinks it should do (at the moment, which may be a very limited perspective that doesn’t reflect all of the agent’s preference, but only that part that acts at that moment) is what it actually does. Thus, different preferences simply correspond to different algorithms for choosing actions, or more generally to different ways in which the agent determines the (dependence between) past, future, and counterfactuals.
Now if we get back to the point that all these things are “fixed” and are “as they actually are”, we can see that there can be no rational disagreement, about anything, ever. One can’t disagree about facts, but one can’t also disagree about values, when values are seen as a counterpart of actions, facts also. Of course, different agents are different systems, and so they get located by different observations and perform different actions, and in this sense can be said to have different states on knowledge and act on different values, but this is a fact about dots on the picture, not about the picture whole.
(Of course, counterfactuals are the only real thing in the context of this discussion, “past” and “future” aren’t concepts appropriately homogeneous here, when I say “determine the future”, I mean “determine the ‘counterfactuals’ that branch in the future”.)
As it could have been in the beginning, so it could have been now, and forever could have been going to be.
I’m a fan of the particular prior tense myself. http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/today-we-learn.php
Years ago, Jennifer Rodriguez-Mueller and I invented the genre of Tense Poetry. An example:
I love the idea, and the indentation structure reminds me of code.
This calls for Dr. Dan Streetmentioner’s Time Traveler’s Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations!