"If we had enough information, we could predict the consequences of our actions. Would you want to know? If you kissed that girl, if you talked to that man, if you take that job, or marry that woman, or steal that papel? If we knew what would happen in the end, would we ever be able to take the first step, to make the first move?"It just struck me. And, as I say, the movie's not good enough to engage me fully - I got headspace left over to mull the quote.
It made me consider - in a linear, deterministic universe, (which is one way to describe each individual life) everything, past, present and future has already happened, at least from a superdimensional point of view. Which view, by the way, is a mathematically and philosophically valid way to look at the universe. Is ignoring that that fixed destiny the only thing that allows us to live? If we actually knew the outcome of every action, every breath, all the way down through our future, would we be able to breathe at all?
Or is threading our individual destiny through the paths and jags and jogs of a quantum multiverse the thing that provides enough illusion of choice and indeterminacy to allow us to move forward, allows us to believe in indeterminacy?
Or is indeterminacy the reality?
And will anyone have the vaguest fucking idea what I'm talking about?
Yeah. I thought not.
In Our Next Episode: I say "OMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM" a lot as I meditate on on the grains of sand that make up the beach. Or something.
I know what you're saying. Even if there are no perfect choices, it's part of the human experience to accept a degree of risk when we take a step, whether it's a job change or asking someone on a date. Weird to think that we'd be able to read the ending first. Takes something away from it all ... I can see choosing something with an unknown, possibly worse, outcome *just because*.
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I think that is probably our biggest illusion: That we do have choice or free will. If we knew none of our efforts mattered because we are destined to walk only one path in only one direction with only one outcome, I think there'd be a lot more eating and drinking and risky sex and to heck with living to see retirement age.
ReplyDeleteSo the question then is: What purpose does such an illusion serve?
(Stuff like this makes me wish I'd stayed in college and continued being the most popular girl in philosophy class. No, really. ;-) )
Well, I'm wondering if I shouldn't be an adherent of the philosophy that says "We don't know, and we probably don't want to."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJkWS4t4l0k
(BTW if I'd known hot Norwegian speakers were attending, I might have actually taken a philosophy class or two, especially if I'd known they were hot Norwegian-speaking determinalists who think their future is predestined and are therefore more inclined to drinking and risky sex. Hell, if they'd put THAT in the class description, they'd have been turning people away.)
Here's a filthy quote from Dickens. I'm really sorry beyond words to have to set it forth in a place like this, without cutting it.
ReplyDeletePause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
Indeterminancy is the reality. That flicker of uncertainty that attends every quantum element's next turn, every electron's next spin, is the thing that throws infinite mathematical certainty to the winds. We can know some of the consequences of our choices, but no one could possibly know the final result. If there is a God, then that God is bound up in this well-known and proven randomness; which is another way of saying a God would have to be either an idiot, or bound by the same rules and thus no God at all.
ReplyDelete"Indeterminancy is the reality. That flicker of uncertainty that attends every quantum element's next turn..."
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with you - but multiverse theory (for which there is considerable support in the physics community in one version or another) means that each outcome of the probability spread actually occurs - in fact occurs an infinity (really) of times, creating a new universe with each choice made in an almost infinite profusion. The key word being "almost."
In a very large version of the Imelda Marcos shoe problem, the Plank limit means that the enormous number of possible states and positions of every particle in the universe LOOKS like infinite variety - but is in fact not even close. Viewing each of us from a superdimensional perspective, our universes split, split, and split again, looking like a rope unwraveling into more and more threads, till each individual thread disappears into a microscopic fuzz. And that would be the end of it, except.....
Remember, from a superdimensional perspective, the timeline can be viewed as running in reverse - so you can follow that microscopic thread back the other direction until it resolves back into a single beginning - which means THAT thread is predetermined. They all are.
The only thing that provides the illusion of "choice" is that we haven't figured out the trick of traveling backward along the time line.
"Planck"
ReplyDelete(I haven't corrected spelling in a long-ass time but come on. One of the greats. :) )
This near-infinity of alternate universes is how I justify spending precious daydreaming time on time travel stories and the connection of time travel machines to Star Trek-like transporters. Too bad I kind of don't like science fiction.
"Planck". Can't believe I did that.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the so-called "collapse" of the probability wave to into "reality" may mean that there is no alternate universe created, which makes common sense, but doesn't fit the physics. Eh, who knows what they'll find, maybe it's all BS. This is all fairly bleeding edge stuff.
In any event, it seems extremely likely that the universe exists as a multi-dimensional bubble which is only one in an infinitely large foam of bubble-universes being continually created. Which means, again, that finite numbers of particles will make a very large, but finite number of unique universes. After that, they repeat, which means each universe is only one of an infinitely large number of exact duplicates of every possible particle state and configuration, so the effect is for all practical purposes the same as probabilistically-created new universes budding off from decision points.
This all has something to do with redheads. Einstein was aware of that, and suspected redheads were somehow connected to Unified Field Theory. But he kept getting distracted, and still hadn't sorted it out before he died.
It happens.
I don't know jack about anything. I just need to slap the redhead's ass. If only to jolt me back into reality.
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