You can hardly steer yourself effectively into the future if you don’t have an understanding of the consequences of your actions.
Yes, it might be necessary exactly for that purpose (though consequences don’t reside just in the “future”), but I don’t understand this well enough to decide either way.
Consequences not being in the future seems to be a curious concept to me—though I understand that Feynman dabbled with the idea on sub-microscopic scales.
I think we’ve got it covered with Newcomb’s Problem (consequences in the past) and Counterfactual Mugging (consequences in another possible world). And there is still greater generality with logical consequences.
FWIW, I wouldn’t classify Newcomb’s Problem as having to do with “consequences in the past” or Counterfactual Mugging as having to do with “consequences in another possible world”.
For me, “consequences” refers to the basic cause-and-effect relationship—and consequences always take place downstream.
Anticipating something doesn’t really mean that the future is causally affecting the past. If you deconstruct anticipation, it is all actually based on current and previous knowledge.
You are arguing definitions (with the use of a dictionary, no less!). The notion of consequences useful for decision theory is a separate idea from causality of physics.
Re: “It doesn’t seem that there is a place for the human concept of prediction in a foundational decision theory.”
You can hardly steer yourself effectively into the future if you don’t have an understanding of the consequences of your actions.
Yes, it might be necessary exactly for that purpose (though consequences don’t reside just in the “future”), but I don’t understand this well enough to decide either way.
I checked with the dictionary. It had:
the effect, result, or outcome of something occurring earlier: The accident was the consequence of reckless driving.
an act or instance of following something as an effect, result, or outcome.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/consequence
Consequences not being in the future seems to be a curious concept to me—though I understand that Feynman dabbled with the idea on sub-microscopic scales.
I think we’ve got it covered with Newcomb’s Problem (consequences in the past) and Counterfactual Mugging (consequences in another possible world). And there is still greater generality with logical consequences.
FWIW, I wouldn’t classify Newcomb’s Problem as having to do with “consequences in the past” or Counterfactual Mugging as having to do with “consequences in another possible world”.
For me, “consequences” refers to the basic cause-and-effect relationship—and consequences always take place downstream.
Anticipating something doesn’t really mean that the future is causally affecting the past. If you deconstruct anticipation, it is all actually based on current and previous knowledge.
You are arguing definitions (with the use of a dictionary, no less!). The notion of consequences useful for decision theory is a separate idea from causality of physics.
Is “consequences” really a good term for what you are talking about?
It seems as though it is likely to cause confusion to me.
Does anyone else use the term in this way?