re: #342 iceweasel

Counterfactualism runs afoul of itself three yards off the starting line. If the basic assumption is a ‘what if’, then there’s an implicit declaration that the devil is really in the details, that it really, really matters which person is involved. So, in the ‘Hitler’s death’ example, the disposition and reaction of each geenral individually, in rather exhaustive detail, as well as the reactions of the world leaders, are incredibly important. Each one of these would be very speculative, and in many cases at least two plausible reactions could be given. So if you’re examining any significant change, it would take several lifetimes to map out just a small amount of the outputs.

Counterfactualism could perhaps be done by artificial intelligences, but it’s about as possible right now as identifying the function of a single gene.