It makes no sense to say that X is the most likely present that would result from initial conditions A billions of years ago.
It also makes no sense to say it is most likely that A are the initial conditons that X resulted from.
Both are equally nonsensical assuming indeterminism over billions of years. That’s what I mean by the same applies backwards.
To say that assuming indeterminism we cannot predict over long periods looking forwards. But we can look backwards over long periods makes no sense.
I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. But perhaps you should take your issues up with the scientists doing the historical work and see what reactions you get.
I’m suprised, it seems fairly straightforward, though of course I have to accept I might be mistaken.
Causation is only stochastic in character, so if you’d begun the universe with precisely the same initial conditions you would be certain of coming up with a different outcome next time.
Just as it’s certain that different results would come out of the re run, it is certain that if we try to guess what started off this run we will be wrong, because it follows that out of all the ways it could have started , the one it did start off with, would almost certainly have not resulted in conditions as they are now!
The best chance we’d have of working out what the world was like billions of years ago would be to pick circumstances that current circumstances would almost certainly not have followed from.
Re the scientists the answer is they assume determinism when looking backwards.
Paraphrasing Stephen Hawking he said If the universe hadn’t been as it was 13 billion years ago we would not have been here today.
Well why not? If we re ran the tape there would be next to no chance of us being here today .
and if we ran the tape from different circumstances there would still be next to no chance of us being here today.
No more chance but no less, either.
So there is no more reason, assuming indeterminism, to think we would be here today, if we re ran the tape from different cicumstances or the same circumstances.
So there is no sense to be made of the claim that we wouldn’t be here today if the circumstances had been different, any more than if we re run the tape from the same circumstances we would be here today.
Of course the assumption is being made, same past, same future and that is why we believe can look into the distant past.