How Free Will and Omniscience Works

[The Grand Nudger]

I admit my "knowledge of some series of events" was ambiguous in the respect of not annotating the 'possessor' of this knowledge. In the case od the "dial", it or the machinery attached or the operator or some combination thereof, must have "knowledge of some series of events".

On the other hand;

There was a movie (I cannot think of the name of it now) in which a young girl had the power to foretell the future. Her comment on this power was "Once you know the future, it changes".

Then precognition, and hence omniscience with regards to precognition would be an entirely different animal.

Or in the scene from 'The Matrix', "Would it have happened if I had not mentioned it?".

Both of these scenarios allow for free will.

How would the example of a precognitive who knows the future (but th knowing changes it)- who then knows the new future (but the knowing changes it) allow for free will. Seems to me that this would propose both a completely useless sort of precognition -and- a lack of any "free will". These futures, however they may be changing - so long as we are not referencing will or choices- are still known, and still not subject. Keep in mind, we aren't trying to determine whether or not the future can change (though that would be amusing) but whether or not free will can change it. Supposing that we made the argument that at least this precogs will (and free exercise thereof) could have an effect on the future that does little to help us, wouldn't you agree? It also leaves us in the situation of explicitly stating (at the very word go) that this particular precog is immune to the flow of time that it observes...a special case for a special friend.

So people suggest things, and those suggestions might eventually become an actuality, but why did they suggest them, and if the suggestion can force the hand of fate where again is free will to be encountered?

A perception of free will does not equal the actuality of the same. Even without invoking either of these examples we already have a perception of such a thing, and proposing them changes what any given entity's perception of free will may be but says nothing of whether or not they actually possess it.

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It's the knowing that presents the trouble (not the act itself mind you, but how it might be possible), because this would require that some point in the future, some event or circumstance is set, it cannot be altered (or it is not knowledge of an event, but knowledge of the possibility of an event). It would be difficult to explain the particulars of how knowledge of the future would change the future, if it could be known from the past - given that this knowledge will - at that future moment- BE a part of the past. If we propose that the circumstances of the past lead inextricably to the events of the present and future (causal determinism) then that knowledge of the future itself is one of those particulars, and why would precognitive ability be unable to pick that up?

My favorite narrative on prophecy or precognition btw is that of Cassandra, capable of foreseeing the future but incapable of either convincing others of the validity of her visions or altering the events she foresees. I like this narrative (over all others no less) because it follows the consequences of what would be if that knowledge could be possessed. It may be, for example, that Cassandra's warnings lead directly to the tragedy she foresaw, but keep ion mind, she saw the tragedy, not the lead-in, and in this example the lead-in required her warnings to shape the tragedy, so-to-speak, even from before the moment of her birth. This gift she was granted had no effect on the process (whatever it was) that made such a gift possible.

(the machine and dial btw, could simply tune to some time at random, perhaps the numbers of the dial don't actually correspond to anything at all, they just send you "somewhere, somewhen" in time. No knowledge of events is required - beyond the knowledge of what event happens at that particular time)