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However, taking the question as purely a thought experiment (and only a thought experiment, the idea of actually doing it is simply ludicrous), we can do some pretty interesting things with it from the point of view of Free Will.
First of all, as it is a thought experiment, we can build a computer that is unbelievably fast; let's say almost instantaneous (we have perhaps harnessed quantum computation). We will also ignore quantum indeterminacy and the other factors I mentioned in the above post. And also, let us assume somehow we have managed to make a record of the position and momentum of every particle in the universe, and entered it into our computer.
Now since this machine knows the laws of physics, and everything in the universe, including us (we will assume Cartesian Dualism is false) follows the laws of physics, it seems to follow that we can see into the future, including what our actions will be. Further more it seems that having seen this future, we would be unable to act in any way other that what was predicted: how could we? We must follow the laws of physics. But this doesn't seem to make any sense! How can we not be able to make a choice about how to act? We seem to have arrived at a contradiction.
After coming across this paradox, we must back-track and see what unwarranted assumptions we have made. What went wrong? We entered perfect and complete data into the computer, it knows all of the physical laws? What more is there?
The computer is part of the universe.
This is what went wrong.
We must understand how the computer stores its data: in some futuristic highly condensed ram. It takes the position and momentum of every particle and stores it somewhere in ram. But all of the atoms that make up the ram must also be stored somewhere else in memory. And the atoms that make up that piece of memory must be stored elsewhere, and so on, to an infinite regress.
So a computer cannot predict the future of a universe of which it is a part, for to do that would mean it would have to simulate itself simulating itself simulating itself simulating itself...
But what if we remove the computer from section of the universe to be predicted? We built a massive, impenetrable barrier all around the computer (again, some breakthrough in physics allows us to construct such a barrier). We then load the computer with all of the data about the world outside the barrier, and ignore everything inside the barrier. Now the computer will go on it's merry way and predict the future perfectly: Every word you say, ever war fought, every novel written. The future of humanity will be predicted in just a few seconds. It will even predict the exact moment of the future that the barrier will be breached. At this point the simulation is forced to stop.
So you will never find yourself in the situation that you will know what it is you have been predicted to do. Your illusion of free will is secure. After opening the barrier which stores the computer, you will find an accurate description of all of the events of history that have occurred since the machine was started years ago. Yet this history was created mere moments after the machine was started! You could have been standing just outside the room, knowing that your very future is inside the room waiting for you to read...but that the prediction only goes as far into the future as the moment that you will read it! (The last line reads, “and then Bob opened the door into the computer room with the intention of reading this report”).
I find that this thought experiment has some strange parallels between Godel's Theorem/Turing's Halting Problem (with the computer being asked to essentially swallow itself up) and with Quantum Mechanics (with the computer behaving differently depending on whether anyone is "observing" it or not).
Fun to think about: but completly divorced from reality I have to say.
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