this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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So you came up with this in your youth and that...Doesn't give you pause to reconsider? Also do you distinguish this concept from similar religious/spiritual concepts like fatalism, and if so...Why?
Yes, it has given me pause to reconsider, but I am no longer in my youth, and I have found no counterpoint in all these years that has turned me on the concept. The fact that children come up with the idea independently is just a testament to how simple the concept is, not evidence.
I do distinguish this from spiritual fatalism. Fatalism seems to be the concept that any path taken will always lead to a given destiny. I think I identify more with causal determinism, wherein there is only one path. In this way, I see the universe like an incredibly complex algorithm with an uncountable number of parameters. The state of the universe is based solely upon the previous state and the laws of nature. My "choices" are based on the many complex inputs of my past. If I was given the same inputs twice, including exact identical states of everything down to the atoms, for what reason would I expect a different result?
What are your thoughts?
Personally, I don't see much of a difference between those two, but I can see where one may view the former as more open-ended. If it's something divine pulling the strings or natural phenomena driving you to some fixed circumstances, I don't see much in the way of paths with either.
Regarding your last point, if you were given the exact identical states of everything down to the atom, why expect a different result? Because even if it's all the exact same, you set it in motion again, and again, and again, something on some level is going to vary each time. I don't know of any process or phenomena in the universe that, despite following many of the same basic processes as one another, results in the exact same results each and every time. There's always some variation, some divergence, something that despite everything clicks ever so slightly a different way, and that's basically why anything even is at all.
If you spun back the clock on this solar system, or even this galaxy, to the exact same conditions that gave rise to it and let it run again, I wouldn't bet on it coming out the same way, because each and every input is contingent on the other and any slight detail of those varies? Adds up and produces different results. The laws of nature are not nature, they're a good, educated attempt at understanding its operations, its processes, and they're undeniably useful, but it's wisest to remember just what they are, and what they are not. "The map is not the territory," as ol' Alfred Korzybski said.
I suppose this all boils down to whether true randomness exists. I am not of the notion that any divine pulls the strings, unless the divine is the true laws of nature. That is, not the map of nature that humanity can measure or describe, but the actual territory of nature and it's laws.
There is always some variation in results of anything we test because of the multitude of complex inputs the universe gives two situations. We can't know of any phenomena that has the exact same result twice, because we would literally need 2 identical universes down to the Planck. Quantum entanglement is theoretically able to impact particles across immense distances, for example. A mere solar system or galaxy is not of the proper scale to test this. That is, determinism cannot be tested experimentally unless humanity could control literally all variables in a system, which I cannot imagine as possible.
Many scientists have dubbed the unpredictable nature of subatomic particles to randomness, but as you mentioned with the map and the territory, I propose that the tools at our disposal simply cannot interpret these actions and their causes precisely enough.
It's one of those known unknowns that will likely be a question for all time. But as long as the argument against determinism remains that humanity doesn't know the territory - the true nature - of the universe and therefore can hope there is some randomness, I cannot subscribe to it.