Predefined existence
- Thread starter Norris
- Start date
Roman Candle
Member
Actually he's quite right. Nothing can happen for no reason at all. Energy can't be spontaniously created, forces can't be spontaniously generated without a cause. Each single event has (in theory) a single outcome, and every circumstance has an infinite set of preceding circumstsances. Any one situation might have arrisen in an innumerable number of ways; but if you measure perfectly every factor involved, you will be able to accurately predict the single outcome (bearing in mind the 'noise' of randomisation in things like Brownian Motion). Think about it - it's the absolute foundation of all engineering, all mechanics - that you can accurately predict the outcome of any event.
So, if you could measure every fundemental piece of information in the universe, you could predict the future accurately, with an increasing inaccuracy the further forward you predict, (as far as I know, Laplace was the first person to propose this). Of course, it's not possible, because of that whole Uncertainty thing, (damn quantum physicists, always spoiling everyone's fun). But it doesn't change the fact that everything is derived from the events before it.
On the other hand, you can never be sure of what event led to an instant. You can't ever know if a memory of yours, for instance, was created during time awake or during your sleep. You can only compare it with other memories to see if it makes sense.
You cannot have a reaction without an action. So, on a scale far beyond human reconning, all our actions are indeed decided by what went before.
Just as a final example, if women eat high-chili diets, then they experiance more pain at birth, as the natural birth pain killers are blocked. After an excruciating first birth, the woman might decide to have a caesarian, during which the baby is accidentally nicked with a scalpel, is infected and dies. That's on a very large scale, with innumerable factors at play - the desire not to give birth naturally, the expertise of the surgeon, the sharpness of the scalpel, etc. But take a smaller scale example - a man's had a single pint in the pub, gets in the car and drives home. It happens by coincidence of molecular diffusion that a number of those alcohol molecules settle on a few neurons in the brain. And when a deer runs across the road, the reaction impulse is slowed down, so very slightly that he couldn't possibly have noticed. As a result, he hits the deer, skids, and drives off a cliff. He hits a gasoline station and kills twenty people. The only reason I use the repeating result of death is to emphasise what large and varried results can be derived from relatively minor, (by our consideration), events.
So, if you could measure every fundemental piece of information in the universe, you could predict the future accurately, with an increasing inaccuracy the further forward you predict, (as far as I know, Laplace was the first person to propose this). Of course, it's not possible, because of that whole Uncertainty thing, (damn quantum physicists, always spoiling everyone's fun). But it doesn't change the fact that everything is derived from the events before it.
On the other hand, you can never be sure of what event led to an instant. You can't ever know if a memory of yours, for instance, was created during time awake or during your sleep. You can only compare it with other memories to see if it makes sense.
You cannot have a reaction without an action. So, on a scale far beyond human reconning, all our actions are indeed decided by what went before.
Just as a final example, if women eat high-chili diets, then they experiance more pain at birth, as the natural birth pain killers are blocked. After an excruciating first birth, the woman might decide to have a caesarian, during which the baby is accidentally nicked with a scalpel, is infected and dies. That's on a very large scale, with innumerable factors at play - the desire not to give birth naturally, the expertise of the surgeon, the sharpness of the scalpel, etc. But take a smaller scale example - a man's had a single pint in the pub, gets in the car and drives home. It happens by coincidence of molecular diffusion that a number of those alcohol molecules settle on a few neurons in the brain. And when a deer runs across the road, the reaction impulse is slowed down, so very slightly that he couldn't possibly have noticed. As a result, he hits the deer, skids, and drives off a cliff. He hits a gasoline station and kills twenty people. The only reason I use the repeating result of death is to emphasise what large and varried results can be derived from relatively minor, (by our consideration), events.
I agree, but I don't think (at our technological level) that complete understanding of all factors in every event is possible. With quantum mechanics (physics at subatomic levels) at work, I still believe theres quite a bit a randomness in everything - or at least until we understand it better.
Roman the problem with his theory is it doesnt take into account the human condition. Call it ego if you'd like, but I cant see a universe filled with creatures with conditions similiar to ours ever being mapped. Outcome implies destination, I've already rebuked that part of your theory because destination requires an end and there is none. This theory doesnt key in the fact that tomorrow someone could do something really crazy either by accident or by will or by the unique ability humans have to do something that doesnt benifit them in any way just for the sake of doing it (free will variable). It can't be calculated. If it could, a psychiatrist could call the police after a single session with a patient because they'd be able to map a dangerous outcome for that person. Your equation doesnt map in the variables of ineptitute, rashness, and free will and the possibility that many creatures across the universe have those same variables or something similiar to them. The earth will rotate, the sun will eventually expand and implode, that's inevitable. But we could throw the moon off its axis tomorrow and the earth would no longer rotate and spin away from the sun onto jupiter or something, sending jupiter enough off its axis to slowly drift away. Cause, effect, reaction, they are the controls, naturally they can be mapped but they can only be mapped accurately if the variable is taken into account, which it cant be because it cannot be mapped.
No offence, but ego is indeed showing itself through your argument. I’ll try to explain. No one likes to think that how he or she live their lives are dictated by means outside their control. Ineptitude, rashness, and free will, these things you mentioned do not escape the confines of predictability. If they were, why did you not post what you posted here at some random time in the past? Why did you wait till I posted this thread right here, right now? Free will implies freedom from being dictated.
I have posted this before in the past. I posted it again because its relevent. You're not getting my point if you thought that'd win me over, lad. Why dont I suddenly start talking about dogs in the middle of a conversation about cars? People do stuff like that all the time, if you've never had the impulse to do something completely random with no benifit and with nothing to gain then you're simply not human. Sorry.
Imo, predefined exisistence is high show bullshit. Just something to stir up life regularity. I'm not saying shit doesn't happen for a reason, because basically EVERYTHING happens for a reason. People go to jail cause they do crime, but I doubt it was "destined" for them to commit the crime. I also doubt that unless previously plotted going to jail was suppose to lead to a higher motive.
Why even think about the shit? When you do shit you know you did it (unless your unconscious) you know for ever action there is a equal or greater reaction no matter how high said action is in scale.
As for "how we came to," who really gives a damn we're here aren't we? I saw don't look into the past look toward the future, but what do I know *shugs*
Why even think about the shit? When you do shit you know you did it (unless your unconscious) you know for ever action there is a equal or greater reaction no matter how high said action is in scale.
As for "how we came to," who really gives a damn we're here aren't we? I saw don't look into the past look toward the future, but what do I know *shugs*
@ryan: The human condition is nothing special. It's illogical and highly arrogant to think that 'everything’, aside from us, should follow these supposed 'laws' of the universe. As I said before, our actions are derived from our environment and our experiences, not because we simply will it so. We humans like to think we have control over our lives, but when you look at the facts CLOSELY, we’re just playing out a script.
One side may consider the very act of someone completely talking out of context as highly illogical/inexplicable/unjustified/etc. (qualities relative to free will), but when we look closely at the person doing the (supposed) random act himself, we are able deduce things that make such an act, in fact rational. Look at the following examples:
Bill says: “Hey Joe, how did your Bulldogs do yesterday?†(NRL team in Aust. football)
Joe thinks to himself: Is he talking about dogs, or the game last night? I’ll take a stab at it.
Joe says: “They’re fine. I’m taking one of ‘em to the vet today though. She’s hasn’t been eating lately.â€
Bill says: “What the hell?
Free will didn’t cause this discussion to derail. It was through Joe’s misconception that made him act that way.
At the pub, Bill and Joe are talking about the game. While Bill had about 2 schooners, our friend Joe had about 6.
Bill says: “Hey Joe, how did your Bulldogs do yesterday?â€
Joe says: “Argh… Damn bitch. I kept tellin’ er’ to get off the phone, ugghhhâ€
Bill says: “What the hell?
Free will didn’t cause this discussion to derail. It was through Joe’s drinking… get the point?
What may look completely random on the ‘outside’, is completely rational on the ‘inside’, when you look closely at it.
EDIT: You have yet to explain to me why you think that their is no 'planned destination', that this is an endless cycle. I see that statement as nothing but a hypothesis with no substantial base. Give me your reasonings as to why you think this way. Just because we cannot determine an 'end' doesn't mean the end doesn't exist. I've thrown in my arguments, hence this theory still stands.
EDIT2:
Bill says: “Hey Joe, how did your Bulldogs do yesterday?â€
Joe thinks to himself: I think I’ll do something completely random to prove Ambience wrong
Joe says: “Listen to me, I am talking randomlyâ€
Bill says: “Not you’re not. You acting just to prove a point. This is not free willâ€
Free will requires no reasoning, but as you see there are reasons for everything.
One side may consider the very act of someone completely talking out of context as highly illogical/inexplicable/unjustified/etc. (qualities relative to free will), but when we look closely at the person doing the (supposed) random act himself, we are able deduce things that make such an act, in fact rational. Look at the following examples:
Bill says: “Hey Joe, how did your Bulldogs do yesterday?†(NRL team in Aust. football)
Joe thinks to himself: Is he talking about dogs, or the game last night? I’ll take a stab at it.
Joe says: “They’re fine. I’m taking one of ‘em to the vet today though. She’s hasn’t been eating lately.â€
Bill says: “What the hell?
Free will didn’t cause this discussion to derail. It was through Joe’s misconception that made him act that way.
At the pub, Bill and Joe are talking about the game. While Bill had about 2 schooners, our friend Joe had about 6.
Bill says: “Hey Joe, how did your Bulldogs do yesterday?â€
Joe says: “Argh… Damn bitch. I kept tellin’ er’ to get off the phone, ugghhhâ€
Bill says: “What the hell?
Free will didn’t cause this discussion to derail. It was through Joe’s drinking… get the point?
What may look completely random on the ‘outside’, is completely rational on the ‘inside’, when you look closely at it.
EDIT: You have yet to explain to me why you think that their is no 'planned destination', that this is an endless cycle. I see that statement as nothing but a hypothesis with no substantial base. Give me your reasonings as to why you think this way. Just because we cannot determine an 'end' doesn't mean the end doesn't exist. I've thrown in my arguments, hence this theory still stands.
EDIT2:
Bill says: “Hey Joe, how did your Bulldogs do yesterday?â€
Joe thinks to himself: I think I’ll do something completely random to prove Ambience wrong
Joe says: “Listen to me, I am talking randomlyâ€
Bill says: “Not you’re not. You acting just to prove a point. This is not free willâ€
Free will requires no reasoning, but as you see there are reasons for everything.
Ambience said:
Agreed. But I'd also like to stress that while causality is maintained in all aspects of the human existence, that the factors and variables that preceed an effect are not all determinable -making life to still appear to be very much random, even though it still follows simple cause-and-effect relationships from the microscale levels to the macroscale levels.
Roman Candle
Member
Firstly, I never meant that it was possible for someone to actually predict the future by knowing the exact everything of everything. Firstly, it's not possible to know anything exactly, and secondly it would be impossible to store all the information held by the universe in anything smaller than the universe. Each peice of information in your record would also need to be recorded elsewhere in your record. In fact, all the information in the universe is recorded - as the universe. Furthermore, it's a contradiction in terms to measure something in an instant - to measure, you must interect, which requires time and therefore change. You cannot say that anything particular is, only that it changes in whatever way.
ryanwh, I'm talking about physics here, not biology. You can't measure someone's rashness exactly (by statistics, yes, but not in the way that you measure temperature). But the body is an engine and a machine. All the factors that make you up as a person have to exist. Fairly obvious, no? And if it exists, you can measure it, (can in theory). When you're angry, it's beacuse of the levels of whichever chemicals in your brain. What you have in your head is a thought engine. By knowing exactly every concrete piece of information about you, (that is, not abstract information), and the exact information about every particle that will come into contact with you, I could say exactly what you're going to do. It has nothing to do with logic. People do not operate on a level of pure logic anyway. If you take any system - for instance, the sun and earth, you can look at the potential of that system. To take a far more simple example, look at Schrodinger's Cat. Because of the configuration of that system - that is, that there is a cat, a box, a gun - you can say that the system has the potential for the cat to be dead, for the cat to be alive. Similarly, the solar system has potential for a certain number of acts. The only flaw is that there is no such thing as a closed system - the earth might be hit be a metorite, for instance. So if you include the amount of data you process, you might include the nearby solar systems, and all the atoms of all the meteorites out there. But what if a metor outside these solar systems entered, stuck one of the ones you've measured, and knocked in into the earth? You'd have to expand your records to include the whole visible universe.
Remeber, I never said any of this is possible. I just said that it is. Everyone is subject to it, everyone is a result of it. Essentially, it makes no difference at all. Our percieved free will is still there - we are all indivudual, and every decision we make is of our own doing. But they're a result of a secular, (in the true sense of the word), process, and therefore limited in their potential scope.
ryanwh, I'm talking about physics here, not biology. You can't measure someone's rashness exactly (by statistics, yes, but not in the way that you measure temperature). But the body is an engine and a machine. All the factors that make you up as a person have to exist. Fairly obvious, no? And if it exists, you can measure it, (can in theory). When you're angry, it's beacuse of the levels of whichever chemicals in your brain. What you have in your head is a thought engine. By knowing exactly every concrete piece of information about you, (that is, not abstract information), and the exact information about every particle that will come into contact with you, I could say exactly what you're going to do. It has nothing to do with logic. People do not operate on a level of pure logic anyway. If you take any system - for instance, the sun and earth, you can look at the potential of that system. To take a far more simple example, look at Schrodinger's Cat. Because of the configuration of that system - that is, that there is a cat, a box, a gun - you can say that the system has the potential for the cat to be dead, for the cat to be alive. Similarly, the solar system has potential for a certain number of acts. The only flaw is that there is no such thing as a closed system - the earth might be hit be a metorite, for instance. So if you include the amount of data you process, you might include the nearby solar systems, and all the atoms of all the meteorites out there. But what if a metor outside these solar systems entered, stuck one of the ones you've measured, and knocked in into the earth? You'd have to expand your records to include the whole visible universe.
Remeber, I never said any of this is possible. I just said that it is. Everyone is subject to it, everyone is a result of it. Essentially, it makes no difference at all. Our percieved free will is still there - we are all indivudual, and every decision we make is of our own doing. But they're a result of a secular, (in the true sense of the word), process, and therefore limited in their potential scope.
I suppose that's the impass. I dont think human behavior can now or will ever be able to be measured that way. We as a species have for the first time in earth history shifted out of the reactionary cycle. We're not merely existing in reaction to the earth, we're creating new things to react to therefore we are variables capable of inventing new controls(since the line of scientific progress can and has been measured, as it has very specific goals in mind during any given time) and weilding them in variable mannors, which can(in my theory I guess) change other controls into variables. IE knocking a planet off its axis, or turning jupiter into a star(yay 2010). And the longer we exist the more we'll spread and the more variables we'll create, therefore the longer we live the less predictable the universe as a whole becomes. That's assuming we dont all kill each other somewhere soon down the line. But that's the beauty, I cant foresee whether we'll be around another million years, or a thousand, or even ten. Nobody can definitively because of the random unmeasureable element in the human condition.
Roman Candle
Member
No. That's completely ignoring what I said. You're following the misconception that the universe at rest has a single state of normality - that the earth orbit the sun, or Jupiter be a planet, not a star. By measuring the universe and you perfectly, I would know that humanity was going to exisinct itself, that it was going to throw out the sun, because there is no physical difference between the actions of humanity and the actions of a computer, as we are all very complicated little machines. There is nothing random about the human condition:
Your decisions are bourn out by actions. That is, when you move your arm, energy is converted. That requires physical reactions to take place. Now, for a physical reaction to take place, something has to change - in your body, your brain takes in enery as input and makes a decision, sends the nervous impulse, etc. Now, if something is the result of physical reaction, ie the chemistry of the brain, then you can work out the outcome exactly. However, you seem to be saying that there is something above the level of chemistry and physics taking place, something specifit to human thought. Now, this can't be a chemical reaction, otherwise it would be definable and now random. So if it's something else, then the part of the universe which is your body is being altered - sending that nervous impulse - by something that is not actually constituted by energy. In other words, that nervous impulse is being triggered with the creation of energy. Except that's completely impossible.
And I never said that human behavior would be measured on a practical scale in the way of counting the exact state of every atom in the body. For a start, it's theoretically impossible to measure anything exactly once you get down to quantum sizes. However, it is done routinely on a coarser scale - someone might measure the levels of dopamine in my brain to assess the effects of Tourette's sindrome, for instance.
Your decisions are bourn out by actions. That is, when you move your arm, energy is converted. That requires physical reactions to take place. Now, for a physical reaction to take place, something has to change - in your body, your brain takes in enery as input and makes a decision, sends the nervous impulse, etc. Now, if something is the result of physical reaction, ie the chemistry of the brain, then you can work out the outcome exactly. However, you seem to be saying that there is something above the level of chemistry and physics taking place, something specifit to human thought. Now, this can't be a chemical reaction, otherwise it would be definable and now random. So if it's something else, then the part of the universe which is your body is being altered - sending that nervous impulse - by something that is not actually constituted by energy. In other words, that nervous impulse is being triggered with the creation of energy. Except that's completely impossible.
And I never said that human behavior would be measured on a practical scale in the way of counting the exact state of every atom in the body. For a start, it's theoretically impossible to measure anything exactly once you get down to quantum sizes. However, it is done routinely on a coarser scale - someone might measure the levels of dopamine in my brain to assess the effects of Tourette's sindrome, for instance.
I know this is a possible rehash of what RC just said, but I'll say it just for the sake of it. The universe itself is one gigantic system. A person’s belief in the concept of chance and randomness, stems from an outlook that focuses on a finite area.
I’ll try to explain this through a simplistic analogy, portraying the Universe as an equation (which it actually is):
This is the Universe people, who hold the same beliefs I do, see
3.2+1/5*1-3*2.568+1=-4.54688
This is the Universe people, who think otherwise, see:
3.2+1/?*1-?*?+1=random
For these people, the question mark represents factors that cannot be measured/justified (human condition) or simply factors not taken into account (The Moon getting knocked off its axis from a meteorite not indigenous to our region of space). Such ‘variables’ therefore make the outcome unascertainable. The answer (result) could be anything, hence random.
But when we take into account EVERYTHING, and actually consider things such as the human condition as nothing more than mere organic machines not capable of exceeding the natural bounds of our universe, these question marks turn into something more… definite.
I’ll try to explain this through a simplistic analogy, portraying the Universe as an equation (which it actually is):
This is the Universe people, who hold the same beliefs I do, see
3.2+1/5*1-3*2.568+1=-4.54688
This is the Universe people, who think otherwise, see:
3.2+1/?*1-?*?+1=random
For these people, the question mark represents factors that cannot be measured/justified (human condition) or simply factors not taken into account (The Moon getting knocked off its axis from a meteorite not indigenous to our region of space). Such ‘variables’ therefore make the outcome unascertainable. The answer (result) could be anything, hence random.
But when we take into account EVERYTHING, and actually consider things such as the human condition as nothing more than mere organic machines not capable of exceeding the natural bounds of our universe, these question marks turn into something more… definite.