It sounds like you are conflating "free will" with "quantum uncertainty".
No, I am simply discussing the implications of knowledge for uncertainty. The past is defined by 'what is knowable'; the idea of free will in the past seems to me to be incoherent - if you see me wearing a blue tie, I can't go back to this morning and choose a different one.
Equally if God knows I will wear a red tie on December 4th next year, I can no longer change that fact. And if I could change it, He wouldn't know.
Schroedinger's cat is just a convenient simple thought experiment about how observation fixes the past. It's familiarity saves me from having to explain the details; the quantum effects themselves are not real important in this context.
Personally, I do not believe in quantum uncertainty
It is a set of observations; it is something that exists, and does not require belief. You may choose to believe or disbelieve any of the interpretations of it that have yet to be experimentally ruled out; but saying 'I don't believe in quantum uncertainty' is like saying 'I don't believe in gravity'.
any more than I believe that anything can be "random"... and I also believe that "free will" is an illusion. The cat is not both alive and dead.. our measuring processes are simply flawed and contribute to the measurement.
I agree that "free will" is likely an illusion. But the whole point of quantum uncertainty is that our measuring processes MUST be flawed - precise measurements of certain pairs of facts are not just difficult, they are impossible.
This is the most important part of what you were saying, I think:
An event that is in the past for ANY single observer is immutable, regardless of its being in the future of all other observers; if God is a super observer with the ability to observe all events at any point in time, then when he does so, he fixes ALL events in his past - and eliminates any alternative possible events than those he observed. Only if the first observer has yet to observe the event, can the event's outcome be indeterminate.
It fixes all events in HIS past. yes, exactly... just like our own past is fixed. The thing is, "HIS" past is our future... one that will eventually be decided by us... or in other words, has already been decided by us in the future. All I hear as a complaint about this is "what if I change my mind?" well then at that point the information will have changed... so what?
Quite. If you are going to change your mind, then that change is already part of the totality of space time, so it has, from A God's perspective already occurred.
When you say, "WHEN god observes..." you are falling into a linguistic trap. God does not observe in a "when".. so it is not linear like the mortal making the decisions.
Yes - a more precise phrase might be 'given that God observed' - all events have been seen by God before any of them happen. That's what foreknowledge means.
disclaimer: god does not exist, omniscience does not exist, and this is kind of why it is not likely that it could... but it is fun to talk about.
Of course; this is purely hypothetical. IF an omnicognisant entity or entities exist, THEN choices (freely willed or otherwise) are logically impossible.
Of course, no such entities exist; but that doesn't render free will a certainty, or even very likely. Certainly human brains operate on the scale of chemical reactions, where quantum effects are not significant.
My understanding is that descision making in the brain is chaotic - like the weather, it is completely determined, but nevertheless impossible to predict.
Of course that doesn't stop the philosophers from wasting oceans of ink on the subject.
). But this is not what I am talking about. That situation creates a paradox. one certainly CAN write volumes of books on that... it is an impossible situation.. like paradoxes generally are.
