A short story about a gadget that proves that that the future is totally determined [duplicate]

Question

I read this short story about ten or so years ago, in a collection.

It is not about Asimov's thiotimoline, but it has some common aspect.

There is a gadget with a light and a button. Whatever you do, the button is always pushed on one second after the light goes on. If the light did not go on nobody can push on it, however hard they try. If you manage to push on it, it will have gone on one second before you do.

It comes with a warning that many people who play with it become mad, fall into a deep depression because they really realise they cannot act on the future : everything is entirely already determined. Even if, before playing with it, they had "formally" admitted that determinism is total, having the proof under their nose just breaks the purpose in their life. Other people continue as before, unaffected by this realisation. Belonging to one or the other category is also completely predetermined, as well as the "predetermined" fact of playing or not playing with this gadget. So the warning is useless.

Then what is the point of the warning ? No point at all. But the person who wrote it had no choice !

Answer 1

This is Ted Chiang's What's Expected of Us, which you probably read in Year's Best SF #11 (2006).

A small device, the Predictor, looks like a remote control. It consists of a button and a green display. When you press the button, the screen flashes. However, it flashes a second before you click on the button—by receiving a signal a second from the future. Millions of these devices have been sold. The Predictors create a dystopic world by providing evidence that free will is actually a myth—the future is predetermined and fixed. As a result, people become lethargic and just stop eating entirely.

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The story is extremely short and is in the form of a short warning letter.

This is a warning. Please read carefully.

By now you’ve probably seen a Predictor; millions of them have been sold by the time you’re reading this. For those who haven’t seen one, it’s a small device, like a remote for opening your car door. Its only features are a button and a big green LED. The light flashes if you press the button. Specifically, the light flashes one second before you press the button.

...

I’m transmitting this warning to you from just over a year in your future; it’s the first lengthy message received when circuits with negative delays in the megasecond range are used to build communication devices. Other messages will follow, addressing other issues. My message to you is this: Pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t. The reality isn’t important; what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.

And yet I know that, because free will is an illusion, it’s all predetermined who will descend into akinetic mutism and who won’t. There’s nothing anyone can do about it; you can’t choose the effect the Predictor has on you. Some of you will succumb and some of you won’t, and my sending this warning won’t alter those proportions. So why did I do it?

Because I had no choice.