Omniscience: A thought experiment

[The Grand Nudger]

In your branching time scenario, Noctella, the omniscient being has foreknowledge of all possibilities as well as all actualities - in any frame of reference.  It doesn;t actually matter which "you" in which scenario you care to invoke - the omni being has you covered. If precognition is even -possible-...if no being possesses it, by any means...... then choice as we conceive of it is not.  

They are mutually exclusive propositions.

[Alex K]

@Rob
The collapse of QM wave functions is to my knowledge of the Everett model almost the same thing as reduction of a superposition of alternative timelines in the many worlds case to one (though not necessarily exactly one, but up to remaining uncertainties). It's a deep problem which states of the observed object it collapses to. What I don't understand is why you need a separate time for the observer. Can't you have the same scenario with one timeline?

[robvalue]

OK thanks I don't really know what I'm talking about, I'm clutching at straws. Just hoped I'd stumbled upon something!

I thought that the observer has to be outside the "timeline" of the bit of quantum whatever he is observing, so as to be viewing it as a stationary model which much collapse. If you're in the same timeline as the thingy, you're not going to be able to see it as static, as you share its time. I'm probably totally wrong about that.

For example, as a totally made up way of trying to explain what I mean, say our universe is made up loads of quantum objects. Little building blocks or something. But each object is also a self-contained universe, with its own seperate timeline going on. As no one from outside the mini universe has observed it yet, all possibilities remain. But as soon as we look at it, since we're outside its timeline, it must collapse and show everything that will happen.

I think I can safely abandon all hopes of this being anything more than my imagination getting carried away with my very limited understanding of QM! I thought I better say it though, as it slapped me hard in the face.

Thanks for taking a look though

[Anomalocaris]

Hmm, very good efforts to try and get round the paradox You're defending God better than theists do!

My question would be: if all these possibilities exist, with "me" doing every possible action, what makes any particular branch more meaningful than any other? Surely that is arbitrary? I'm every single one of them.

If instead "I" am described by just one branch, and all the others are not really me, then does God know which branch will be the real "me" before it happens?

This whole thing lead me to an interesting thought. Theists often say God is "timeless" without giving any thought to what that actually means. So I'll do their work for them. God isn't timeless, but he is independent of our time. He has his own time. Let's say he looks at our universe.

What will he see? Since we have removed our time from the proceedings, what he sees cannot change. So if he sees all possible branches, then none of them will ever be "chosen". If he sees which one does get chosen, then all the possibilities have collapsed just by him looking at the universe. The others are now irrelevant, they cannot be chosen.

This seems to me like a startling analogy to quantum mechanics, where a whole host of possibilities collapse down into a single form when they are observed. When we view the quantum level, are we viewing a time-independent version of another universe, like God is with ours?

One might argue a separate instance of you exists along each possible time trajectory. Each "you" is real and distinct from each other "you". Omniscience would need to know each and every "you".

The subtler point is just because a separate and distinct "you" exist to cover every possibility, that doesn't automatically mean that omniscience can be statistical and Would not need to specifically knowing any individual you and what what trajectory it has taken.

[vorlon13]

It's early and I haven't had the morning Joe take hold yet, but could there be 2 theoretical  forms of omniscience ?

Invoking computer science as my inspiration, could we have a database containing all the answers to all the possible questions,


---or---


could we posit an algorithm that would 'compute' the correct answer to any question posed ??




See the difference?  Is one more 'impossible' than the other ?

[robvalue]

Chuck: sure, if we say that all possibilities are all me, he could know them all and none of them happens any more than any other one. This is like the multiverse theory, I suppose.

The problem then becomes, which me is getting judged? I've done everything that is possible, good or bad. And which me goes to heaven or hell? I'm going to be totally different depending on what happens to me.

Does each "me" get judged separately and sent to alternate versions of heaven or hell?

I'm sure the bible covers this somewhere, I'll have a closer look

Whoops, God is now torturing an infinite number of me for an infinite time. He just got more evil to the power of infinity.

[Anomalocaris]

Chuck: sure, if we say that all possibilities are all me, he could know them all and none of them happens any more than any other one. This is like the multiverse theory, I suppose.

The problem then becomes, which me is getting judged? I've done everything that is possible, good or bad. And which me goes to heaven or hell? I'm going to be totally different depending on what happens to me.

Does each "me" get judged separately and sent to alternate versions of heaven or hell?

I'm sure the bible covers this somewhere, I'll have a closer look

Whoops, God is now torturing an infinite number of me for an infinite time. He just got more evil to the power of infinity.

Omniscience may be an absurd concept, but it doesn't necessarily deserve to be associated with even more infantile concepts like Christian god, heaven and hell. 

[robvalue]

Lol no. Nothing deserves that!

So what do we do about God knowing a question he can't answer? Is that semantic trickery, or must this be excluded from the definition of omniscient? It seems whatever happens, God is bound by logic. If he is not, we cannot even discuss him at all.

[The Grand Nudger]

@Vorlon

Invoking computer science as my inspiration, could we have a database containing all the answers to all the possible questions,

An interesting conjecture.  Would this, to you, satisfy the conditions of knowledge..let alone all knowledge, including foreknowledge?
If I wrote out a list of every real number between 0 and 144.....would you take that to mean that I actually knew the answer to every multiplication operation limited to two numbers, 0-12, that I possessed that knowledge...that I even knew how to multiply to begin with?  Would I, further..possess -foreknowledge- of any given multiplication operation you were to ask of me next tuesday?  

For my part..I'm not sure that a list actually qualifies as knowledge in every context (though obviously it;s knowledge of those numbers..at least) - and to me, clearly not foreknowledge.  That all boils down to my bare bones requirements of the term knowledge, I suppose.

You?   

[Exian]

Hey! I have some dumbass questions that many of you could probably answer.

Is an infinite supply of information necessary for some being to be considered omniscient?

If there is a limited supply of information, and a being knows all of that information, would it be considered omniscient, even though it has a limit?

My gut reaction would be to say that if a universe is that of one with a limited supply of information, then any being that knows all of it would be considered omniscient within that universe, but I'm still not sure if that being would be considered omniscient by definition, or, if it knows it has a limit, that it would know what might be beyond its limits. Seems to be "no". Does that go on to say that for a being to be considered omniscient, existence has to be infinite?