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    Made withinDC&Austin
    Retrocausation (the later coin flip A causing the earlier... — Carmelics
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    Perspectives
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    Home/Modality & Possibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Retrocausation (the later coin flip A causing the earlier prediction B) generates a paradox because intervention is always possible after the prediction is made.

    CausationModality & Possibility
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Causal processes that run backwards in time are constrained by consistency conditions (Novikov's self-consistency principle) that physically prohibit interventions that would generate paradoxes.
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    • 2.If retrocausation holds, then any apparent 'intervention' after prediction B must itself be part of the causal chain that produced B, making true prevention nomologically impossible.
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    • 3.The intuition that intervention is 'always possible' conflates epistemic access with metaphysical openness, a distinction Judea Pearl's interventionist framework explicitly marks via the do-calculus.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Price and Wharton's time-symmetric causation model shows that retrocausal constraints manifest as boundary conditions, not as local compulsions, so freedom to 'try' intervening is compatible with systematic failure to succeed.
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    • 2.Lewis's counterfactual analysis of causation requires that we evaluate dependence under the closest possible world, and in worlds with retrocausation the closest worlds where A is prevented are worlds where B never occurred in the first place.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.If the coin flip A causes the earlier prediction B, then after B has occurred we should not be able to prevent A from happening.
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    • 2.It is always within human power to intervene and prevent the coin flip A after prediction B has been made.
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    • 3.Therefore A seems both to be the cause and not to be the cause of B.
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    Topics

    Modality & PossibilityCausation

    Connections

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    Free Will & Foreknowledge1 linked

    Related

    Causal processes that run backwards in time are constrained by consistency condi...If retrocausation holds, then any apparent 'intervention' after prediction B mus...If the coin flip A causes the earlier prediction B, then after B has occurred we...It is always within human power to intervene and prevent the coin flip A after p...
    +4 moreShow less
    Lewis's counterfactual analysis of causation requires that we evaluate dependenc...Price and Wharton's time-symmetric causation model shows that retrocausal constr...The intuition that intervention is 'always possible' conflates epistemic access ...Therefore A seems both to be the cause and not to be the cause of B.

    Similar

    If the coin flip A causes the earlier prediction B, then after B has o...88%It is always within human power to intervene and prevent the coin flip...83%The coin flip A cannot be the retrocause of the prediction B.82%In situations where no one intervenes, there is a high correlation bet...82%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: causation-backwards
    View source passageHide passage
    Can the bilking argument be challenged in such a way that the mere possibility of intervention does not generate any serious paradoxes? The bilking argument is due to Max Black (1956) who assumed the following scenario. Suppose Houdini makes a prediction about the outcome of, say, a coin about to be flipped \(B\) before someone actually does the flipping \(A\). We may also assume that in the past Houdini rarely failed in his predictions. In this case we might be tempted to say that the Houdini’s
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit