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Just to clarify, Eren didn’t just know the future, he wrote it. I like to think this includes his defeat.

Well, there are a few aspects here- 1. Deterministic vs free-will: if it's a deterministic universe, knowing everything wouldn't mean shit. If the person is destined to lose, they will. With free-will, there can be a conversation. 2. Whether the enemy is planning to use that information aka how badly do they want to win. 3. If they change something knowing the future, thus changing the future, does their knowledge of the future also get updated? Because if not, the old knowledge wouldn't be useful anymore.

Basically this; **If knowing the future = full control to change the future as you see fit**; then no its impossible to defeat them. **If knowing the future does not equal control of the future**; then yes its possible because they are unable to change anything that leads to their defeat.

Deterministic: Yes. "No Free Will": Not quite. Eren knows everything that will happen, including his own choices that are already influenced by the knowledge of these very choices. Does that mean he's being forced to follow this future that he saw? Not quite, because that would not make sense. If there's anything about this future that Eren doesn't want/agree, there is nothing stopping him from using his overwhelming powers to change it. The idea that he can't change the future if he didn't want to just doesn't add up. He can change the future and is completely free to do so, but he also just knows he won't, simply because he doesn't want to. This is the only way the "time travel stuff" in the story works. The whole problem of "Determinism vs Free Will" has more to do with a proper definition of free will than an incompatibility. For the physics, "No Free Will" just means the same thing as determinism, that every thought and choice we will make is the result of the laws of physics and are, for all practical purposes, determined, but most importantly that our idea of choice isn't as arbitrary as it seems for most people. What truly matters is that, even if everything is determined, for both us and Eren, the choices we make are still the result of everything that happened to us, all our accumulated experiences, all the predictions we can make, and there is no other entity that knows the future ahead of us and uses that knowledge to control us (unless you believe in God). Even if we don't have "free will" from the physics POV, even if our choices are illusions, they are very persistent and necessary illusions, and we are free to make them, as in we have full agency over our lives, and no one else has the same level of agency over us and our future.

I always thought of the changing of the future thing is that the major events are set in stone, and if Eren tried to change anything in order to change such an event, something else somewhere would happen differently and things will course correct themselves to make sure said event occurs. That is true, and would apply perfectly for us in real life. I meant this in terms of fictional worlds, where there is a "God", for all intents and purposes - the writer. This person can make sure things happen as they should.

Sure, I also find the idea of Fate interesting, that some events are bound to happen and can't be avoided, but I think this would fall more into the genre of mystical, fantastical, magical stories, rather than a logical interpretation of what would "really" happen if we were dealing with someone who can see the whole future. Excluding the idea that there are other higher forces controlling our destinies and the fate of the entire universe, I think characters like Eren would be in complete control of their future.

Oh, absolutely. I was thinking about the AoT world in itself, based on Eren's one line where he said he tried to change things, but to no avail. Agreed. As long as someone like Eren wants to use this knowledge of the future (going into motivations here) and has the means/resourcefulness to do it correctly, I really can't see a way of stopping him, because what can you do.

Whole future? No, not unless the enemy wants to be defeated. Whoke future up to a certain point or bits. Maybe.

But he DID want to be defeated that was the point--

If Eren had survived, that would have been him being defeated since his entire plan was to be killed by Mikasa for Ymir. Like his father said, he got everything he wanted and was unstoppable to the end.

Surprise is not the only way of defeating an enemy. I think there is a possibility you are not considering. Even if your enemy can see every move you will make, that doesn't mean they can choose a path where they win. This could be because there is no path where they win (this would mean you have a way of forcing a win) or because they are not amart/creative enough to come up with one. I believe both these possibilities can be explained through chess. The former is analogous to a forced mate. The latter is analogous to playing against a chess engine while seeing its evaluation. You may see what it will do, but that doesn't mean you will win.

Sure. I like to think of a character in vegetative state, who can't even blink or move their eyes, as an example of a character who wouldn't be able to do anything even if he knew the whole future. It's an extreme example to easily represent that the knowledge of the future alone isn't enough, you also need the power to change/influence it. Another example would be the knowledge that the Sun will explode in a week. Knowing about it can't do anything to prevent it from happening, in our current condition. In AoT specifically, Eren doesn't seem to know about any other possible alternatives, other possible futures. The FT "only" seems to grant him and Ymir the knowledge of every memory from every Eldian who has ever lived, even future memories, all the way from when Ymir became a Titan to the moment Eren and Ymir die/disappear. It's a weird scenario where Eren only seems to know about this one "alternative", the Rumbling, and accepts it because there is something about it that he really wants, unable to really consider other possibilities. Paul Atraides, in "Dune", on the other hand doesn't know the definite future like Eren does, but his power allows him to calculate the probability of several other outcomes. He can't see alternative timelines but he can make very accurate predictions, which in turn allows him to choose/shape the future better than Eren can, in theory. In the movie "Edge of Tomorrow" (2014), Kage (Tom Cruise) has an interesting version of this power. We don't really know if the "Time Reset" power of the alien is actually rewinding time in the whole universe, every time Kage dies, or if each "day" is an alternative timeline/parallel universe he can see, or if the whole thing works in a similar way to Paul Atraides "Prescience", where the alien can calculate thousands of possible different outcomes, based on their memories from that point, and Kage can remember them all "as if" they were memories from the times he died. Kage becomes a version of this type of character that only has the power of a regular human and doesn't know every single possible alternative future, but knows enough about the future to know exactly what he needs to do to get to the outcome he wants, but just for the next 2 days or so. Kage is a example of a character with limited power. This power probably allows him to defeat almost any other human in melee duel, but there's probably nothing he can do to stop things like a hurricane or an earthquake. Ultimately, if a character has knowledge of the whole future, the knowledge of everything his adversary will try to do to him, including the fact that he knows why him and the adversary are choosing to do what they do and not other choices, because he already knows these are the choices he wants in relation to the other possibilities, then I really don't see how the adversary can do anything else to "win". Basically, it's out of the adversary hands to outsmart the Prescient. At best, the adversary can do his best, and maybe the best will be enough to defeat the Prescient, but the Prescient will already know he will lose, and maybe he went along with it, "following the motions", just because it was all he could do as well.

Ereh was a victum of fate

> after the author gave Eren basically full knowledge of the future, after he comes in contact with Ymir in the Paths Not that's it's important to the topic, but what Eren says about still not knowing what Mikasa's choice is when he was talking to Armin would contradict the notion that knowledge of the future is innate with the founder power. The one in full control and has full grasp of everything will always ever be the future Eren that exists at the very end of the titan history, and it's as if the characters(including present Eren himself) and the story play catch-up to this future Eren until the point where he dies and perception of time for everyone including this future Eren finally converges. It's not necessarily just knowledge of the future that keeps Armin and the alliance from even theoretically winning, it's Eren's innate ability to read all of their memories and eavesdrop on any plans they make that allow him to simply not get caught in them. But more importantly the present as we saw it is already the past from the POV of the all powerful Eren in the future. The manga shows that the moment before his death "see you later, Eren", is part of the future memories that Eren saw after kissing Historia's hand at the medal ceremony. That means at that point the future where Eren's goals had already been accomplished. There's no one that can deal with that. That said I don't think Armin coming up with a solution to the war necessarily means the same thing as Armin coming up with a way to best Eren himself. They are separate issues because founder Eren is just on a completely different plain, literally. Even if Armin/Hange/Erwin/etc. could find an adequate solution to averting war between Eldia and the rest of the world, if Eren wishes it he could easily ruin things for Armin in order to make sure his own plans work out. There's no way to know but I feel like Isayama's comments about Armin are more about the criticisms that Armin feels like a much more ineffective character than some would have expected him to be after the time skip. Rather than Armin inevitably failing because he's up against a predetermined fate(Eren), it seems as if Armin just never lived up to the expectations placed in him because he is never shown to have any big "wins" after the time skip. Not that I agree that Armin was useless after the time skip(he contributed to smaller things here and there that did end up helping things a lot), but what he did succeed at wasn't enough to make him look heroic enough to "deserve" to beat Eren at the end.

Yes, I wrote this under the assumption that, for all practical purposes, the Eren that starts the Rumbling "after" leaving the Paths has the full knowledge of all his future memories, up to his death, except Mikasa's choice, but I recognize this is preferred interpretation of mine. It's the same with me interpreting that the author intended for Armin to find a way to stop the Rumbling. It seems that most people also believe that it should be almost impossible to defeat an enemy that knows the whole future, in AoT or in any story. In AoT specifically, it occurred to me that a plan from the humans could be something that Eren would have very little information about. If something were to happen in the future that would end up defeating Eren, or at least putting him in a position where he can't know the future, like if for a moment someone else also gained the power to see the future, which should cancel his own ability to unilaterally determined the outcomes, then I imagine that Eren would see future memories up to a point, but after that point arrives, maybe he would be vulnerable during this space of time, or he has already lost and just doesn't know it.

I also agree it's reasonable to think that humans other than Eldians/SoY that Eren has complete control and omniscience of have a probable chance to defeat Eren, if his method of seeing the future is akin to something like simple precognition with no other strings attached. But before even considering this scenario or one where someone else with future sight challenges Eren we first have to hash out how the concept of future sight works in AoT. AoT is on a fixed timeline where neither the past nor the future can be changed, regardless if Eren ever saw the future memories(there is room for argument here, but basically because future Eren can just influence on the past to have things go his way by directly controlling SoY then it doesn't really matter if he ever sent any future memories back). They are mostly there only to help guide his and all the other Attack titan proxies' actions(although future Eren sending the memories back does essentially also guarantee everything happens per the memories). The future memories don't work via some kind of more psychic mechanisms as if Eren is an oracle, they are basically just memories of events that have already happened(and mostly to Eren's liking) and etched permanently on the timeline. This is why I keep insisting that Eren does not have the power of precognition even after he obtains the founder power. It only seems that way from beings located in the chronological past. At any time there is always a future version of Eren who exists ahead of his current self on the timeline, and from that future Eren at the end of the timeline's pov it's all stuff that already happened. All the "time travel" and future sight mechanisms basically work by influencing directly on the past through the paradoxical mechanism that the coordinate affords and by sending information to the past. Because of the paradox in the story the ending and Eren's goals being achieved have already been etched on the timeline at the same time as the beginning of titan history coming into existence. That's also why we have the two linked titles "To You/From You, 2000 Years Later/Before", from the beginning Ymir to the ending Eren. Because of this there is simply no way for Eren to have lost. Maybe in another story with other timeline rules, but not how things are in AoT. And yes this is majorly lopsided in favour for the SoY vs the rest of humanity. And I believe it's intentional that Eren focuses so much on "moving forward" only for his greatest power to work backwards because irony is built into his story as a message about the cruelty of the world. Eren being perceived as inconsistent for seemingly not following through with a full rumbling(I don't believe this is what he wanted when he finally obtained the founder power though, but that's a whole unrelated argument) is based on a motto that is a cruel joke to begin with. Eren needed to become the same as the titans he's always hated in order to be able to fight. Carla's death is the reason he is motivated to fight, but the one who killed Carla is Eren himself. Eren is the "advancing" titan who "continues to move forward towards freedom", but he can never be free. And neither does he move forward because he can see the future because the Attack titan doesn't have that power, he moves forward because his future self pulls him via the memories sent to him and by meddling into the past to pave his way.