Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 May 26

= May 26 =

Russia in the Central African Republic Civil War and African as a whole
Can anyone give me some insight into what the incentive is for Russia is to be involved in the CAR civil war? Is it simply wanting the CAR to be indebted and influenced by Russia, or is it deeper than that? I know China and France's influence in contemporary Africa is vast, but is Russia's present elsewhere? Aza24 (talk) 07:08, 26 May 2021 (UTC)


 * The Soviet Union used to use Cuban proxies in Africa, as in Angola -- see Cuban intervention in Angola, Cuban military internationalism. In  the "horn" region of East Africa, if the United States was allied with one of Ethiopia or Somalia, then the Soviet Union was inevitably allied with the other (which did not contribute to solving any problems).  I don't know much about the situation in the CAR today, but it used to be very solidly in the French sphere, so if Putin thinks he could loosen the connection with France, that might give him an incentive to commit mischief... AnonMoos (talk) 08:50, 26 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Russia’s Strategy in the Central African Republic from the Royal United Services Institute says that Russia has three objectives:
 * 1. To replace France as the dominant influence, as AnonMoos says above.
 * 2. To challenge UN sanctions for its own commercial gain.
 * 3. To use the CAR as "a springboard for expanded influence in Central Africa".
 * Alansplodge (talk) 10:27, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Determinism and predictability
I have seen this argument in a number of places. It goes like this:


 * If determinism is true, then a person's actions are predictable.
 * A perfect predictor could, in theory, predict a person's actions perfectly if determinism is true.
 * Consider a prediction by a perfect predictor. For example, the machine might predict that a person will wake up at 6:00 am tomorrow morning.  It seems that the person will inevitably wake up at 6:00 am, assuming that the predictor really is perfect and the person has no knowledge of the prediction.
 * However, what happens if the person knows of the prediction? The person could easily make a different choice, and this seems to break the determinism.
 * I have seen make the argument made that the predictor simply is not perfect (because it could not predict the effect of its prediction on the person's behavior. However, it seems that the predictor could, in theory, be perfect all the times when the person does not know about the predictions.  Does this mean that the problem lies in the idea of a "perfect predictor" (instead of determinism)?
 * I really cannot make sense of this, as it is hard as can be for me to imagine how determinism could not be true.173.188.199.123 (talk) 23:21, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Okay, thanks!173.188.199.123 (talk) 23:49, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
 * There are LOTS of perspectives on this. What you're asking about is questions of philosophy, which is mainly understood as a field that tries to establish how we should think about or conceptualize various fields of human activity, but it is not scientific endeavor with experimentation and definitive results.  It's a means of using reason and rationality to try to organize your thinking about a subject rather than a way to test an idea or a concept.  If science is about learning what the world around us is like, philosophy is more how should we think about the world around us, and there really aren't definitive "right" or "wrong" ideas in the same way.  If you want to know more about how various philosophers and schools of thought have handled concepts like free will and determinism, I would start with those two articles, and just follow on links from there.  -- Jayron 32 23:45, 26 May 2021 (UTC)


 * This seems to be related to the problem of self-reference, in a sense. It's an interesting thought experiment. One solution is simply that a perfect predictor cannot exist, which is certainly a plausible one (see Chaos theory for one out of many reasons why). Zoozaz1 talk  01:53, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Also Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. (It doesn't literally apply here, but I think the problem is analogous). Iapetus (talk) 08:48, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Also also Gödel's incompleteness theorems, etc. There are lots of results in 20th century math and physics that are proofs of uncertainty. -- Jayron 32 11:07, 27 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Here is the recommended method for making a perfect prediction apparatus: (1) Make a perfect copy of the universe; (2) Let it run at twice the speed of the universe it is a copy of; (3) Inspect the results and report them back to our universe. Needless to say, the copy needs to reside outside the existing universe, otherwise the normal universe is disrupted and any predictions need to be based on the now disrupted universe, which means we need to modify the copy, and so on ad infinitum. --Lambiam 08:56, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The thing is, because of quantum uncertainty, even if you could do that, you wouldn't end up with the same universe. It's baked into the physics.  The clockwork universe is a dead concept.  That doesn't mean it isn't deterministic, just that it is not predictable or reproduceable.  -- Jayron 32 16:48, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Re self-reference: A completely deterministic world could also be seen as a formal system, powerful enough for Gödel's incompleteness theorems to take effect. --T*U (talk) 09:14, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * A lot of amazing answers here. Thank you all so much!173.188.199.123 (talk) 17:38, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

There has been a lot of discussion of Newcomb's paradox... -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:17, 27 May 2021 (UTC)