NOEMAA philosophical identity study

Predicting a choice

Related to Pierre-Simon Laplace’s image of a complete prediction in A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1814). This is not Newcomb’s problem.

Laplace imagined an intelligence that, knowing the forces and the positions of everything, would see past and future as one formula. The questionnaire’s case is a small and human version: a predictor tells you what you will choose. If the prediction can be settled in advance, the choice looks fixed. If it cannot, something about the choice is not yet a fact.

Newcomb’s problem adds a box, a reward, and a decision theory dispute. Those are not this question. Compatibilists can say a prediction is compatible with responsibility. That reply is available elsewhere in the questionnaire and is not scored as the middle of the line.