this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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[โ€“] howrar@lemmy.ca 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't think you understand how hypotheticals work. When someone says "suppose X happens", it doesn't means X can or will happen. They're asking you to imagine a scenario where it does happen. How the rules of the universe changes to allow it to happen can be up to you, and there's many ways that you do it, but some will lead to more interesting thought experiments than others. You proposed a rule change where knowing when/how you die with absolute certainty means being immune to all harm until that point. I don't think that's a very interesting scenario to think about, so I proposed an alternative that is closer to how our universe actually world and can simply be explained by very good (or bad, depending on perspective) luck.

[โ€“] Dasus@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

I don't think you understand how posting hypotheticals on forums works; they get elaborated and "tested" by asking questions or positing premises. Thought experiments, as you seem to be aware of the term at least.

OP used the word exactly.

That means you have exact knowledge of it.

Of course having exact foreknowledge of such a thing would affect your life. Would that effect then affect the thing being the exact time and date? If not, then it's utter gibberish, because by telling you about it, they've already changed history and thus it won't apply anymore.

If however it won't affect it, then you've gained immortality. You could play Russian roulette as much as you want and never have to fear dying. You can perhaps argue that maybe you survive a shot, but how would that be possible from a large calibre revolver aimed directly at the brainstem?