Fate and determinism

Just a philosophical though I had on fate.
One could argue that Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle rules out fate and determinism right of the bat and I would have to agree with him. However It only rules out the 100% predictiblity of future events. We as human beings are not sensitive enough to notice small changes and inconsistencies.
Lets say that you build the most powerful super computer which is able to look at the universe and measure state of every single particle and the interaction bewteen them. Or to make it simple just those in a closed system with earth. You should then be able to calculate future trajectories of the matter based on the data collected. Now quantum phenomena would create errors in those predictions. However as long as you keep the predictions vague enough and over short enough periods of time you should be able to effectively predict future events to a very small margin of error.
Of course I have no idea how big of an effect would HUP have on the predictions and how fast would the mistakes accumulate to make a visible discrepancies in the prediciton but if I was to pull numbers out of my *** it could centuries, milleniums or even longer. That is long enough to predict exactly how somebodies life is going to look like.
We could predict where exactly hes going to be at what time to a ruler precision, exactly what answers will he give to what questions and what intonation he uses. Who he meets etc. As long as you will not ask how many atoms will he have in 50 years and in what state will the atoms be you would be fine with your predictions.
Am I drawing the correct conclusions here or did I miss something?

As for everyday life though I reject fate as a valuable outlook on life, especially if you include god or supernatural forces in it. Although it is a bit scary to think sometimes that your life has a relatively set distance even though it may be always unknowable to us.

This is also big argument for theist to argue that our mind - free will is above the laws of physics because then we would just be machines responding to 1s and 0s. I say that we are machines responding to 1s and 0s, only immensly complicated one with much more stimulis than just 1s and 0s.

Anyway that is my 4 am rant. Tommorow I will wake up and be horrified at what kind of grammatic and spelling mess I have created here. Until then good night.

 

humans believe of something much more powerful that they think they could save them

 

Determinism, imo, is flawed. (check the end of the post for m0ar)

About the 'future predicting machine', well.. quantum fluctuations aside, I don't think a human being could be predicted in such a way. I think that by nature we are unpredictable. Our brains are made in such a way that we pretty much absorb our environment, learn from it, and act accordingly.. so I would argue that even the smallest change in a person's environment could trigger a completely different set of responses from him in the future.

Theists embrace the 'free' free will idea because determinism obviously leads to subjective morals (rendering things like the commandments totally useless).


What I hate about Determinism is that.. let's say you have a crossroad in front of you, one path goes left, the other goes right.
If you take the left path, Determinists say: OHH YOU WERE MEANT TO TAKE THE LEFT PATH BECAUSE EVERYTHING YOU'VE DONE/EXPERIENCED IN YOUR LIFE LEAD YOU TO THAT DECISION.
They will say the same thing If you take the right path.
But, what If I just randomly chose one? just like I sometimes ramdomly choose between vanilla or chocolate because I like them both.
Of course, the only way out would be to choose both paths at once, which is something I would gladly do If I was a quantum particle. Unfortunately I'm not.
So in short, while I do agree that the environment ultimately forges your personality and guides your decision-making tremendously.. Determinists are ignoring randomness and chance, which imo is a big mistake.


If you wish to talk about Religious morals (a.k.a objective morals), we can do so no problem. For now I'll stop writing because well... text wall is text wall

 

Please someone remind me not to make threads at 4 am.

First of all chance and randomness are still not a free will. And as long as you omit HUP such things can be predicted such as rolling a dice. Absolutely predictable with enough data. Of course that quantum mechanics can have large effects but nobody knows how long and how much would it take to significantly affect the macro world. I am assuming that the effect is small enough to be able to make predictions with a great deal of accuracy where few flukes here and there won't make a huge difference.
Eg: 99.85% that in 4 years you will stand on 5th floor of hotel X and be scratching your nose.
And our brains are nothing magical. They still obey the laws of physics and thus should be relatively predictable unless quantum mechanics mess with our neuron misfires too much than I am currently assuming.

Oh and I am trying to leave the supernatural and religion out of this since comparing fantasy A to dantasy B has very little benefit to this discussion.

 

But if we assume that our computer can calculate entire system ( again assuming Earth is a closed system here), we know exactly - within the small margin of error - which changes will occur around the person, who he'll meet, what he'll see etc. and based on these we make predictions about him.

And if this is right, then there's no such thing as free will. Or maybe more precisely there is, but it doesn't matter at all. We may not be predetermined, but all the choices we make (even the supposedly random ones) are based on past experiences, genes and the like. Kind of like in a
"sandbox" video game - theoretically you're free to play how you want, but you still can only do what the programmers allow you to.
Or maybe not like that, I got lost :x

 

Determinism is an iffy for me, to many variable to get even the simplest idea, that's why i believe more in probibillity.

You see on a sub-atomic all pyschical mechanisms are goverened by the random nature of quantuam mechanics. This is where order and chaos are seperated and every event is determined, made known and defined. Then every future and possible outcome are decided, every possible outcome has a dificultly challenge that take's place in order for it to become the future. A different probabillity that each might become the future. With luck, probabillity, quantuam decoherrence, but mostly with a dice is how this all come to pass.

That or god, either is good with me.

 

It's more of a creationism vs big bang, but still an interesting article to read if you have time:

http://nujournal.net/choice.html

 

Well I'm not saying you can't predict.. I'm saying that your predictions, due to the inmensity of factors involved, and the great amount of randomness, etc... won't be very accurate.
And I'm ignoring HUP, even though If you consider the amount of particles/atoms/quantums a person has.. you'd have a hell of a lot random events happening all at once.

Something as simple as: ''Tomorrow you will leave your house'', has so many variables that could modify the outcome that calculating it would be kind of pointless imo.
And so, given such randomness and the staggering amount of possibilites and ''paths'' that can be taken, you end up with very poor predictions.

''There is a 9.104284% chance of you contracting a heart related disease in the next 20 years.''

Yeah.. ok, so what? It's not accurate enough for it to motivate me to do anything about it. You could even look a it at the inverse and say: oh, there's a 90% chance I won't get a heart disease.. awesome.

And even if such predictions were accurate enough, what would you gain from it? Weather forecasts are for the most part useless, but sometimes they help.. especially when predicting natural disasters like tornadoes and such.
What would I learn from the 'health forecast' example I gave earlier? that I have to eat healthy food? .. well, duh. I knew that already xD


P.s: A little addendum in response to your main post: You don't need HUP to rule out Fate.. It can be ruled out with common sense xD

 

What else prevents determinism other than HUP? Quantum mechanics introduce the only real randomness to nature. Everything else is completely predictable.

 

I wouldn't say that everything in nature is completely predictable, look at the human mind for instance. Some behaviour can be predicted, but there is usually one person who looks at the world in such ways that no one else can even imagine.

 

You are looking at this problem way to superficialy Gforce. We all follow laws of physics including our brain functions. Most of science is completely predictable (except previously mentione dquantum mechanics) hence you should be able to predict the future pretty well with enough data (and we are talking MASSIVE amounts of data).

 

I see your point, but the problem the predicting the future is the human element, even with all the massive amounts of data that one may collect. One person can completely destroy the table of events that has been predicted and bring in another probabillity.

Also dont forget chaos theory.

 

You are missing the point. There is no human element. We decide based on physical stimuli which are largely predictable. Just like a complicated software.

 

Macroscopic processes are deterministic. HUP doesn't readily affect the mechanics of our day to day lives as it's only applicable to the subatomic.

So where does human choice come from? I am a macroscopic thing. I'm not subatomic. So where does my ability to choose (my non-deterministic element) come from?

With the current description of science, it can only really come from the subatomic. And this is what I'm inclined to believe brains do -- access quantum level information, and amplify it to macroscopic level.


One thing we do have is chaos theory. (One of my favourite subjects.) Chaos is where a system is complex to the extent that no matter how precise you try and be describing it, your imprecision will catch up with you as the system evolves. This is a macroscopic process. You can easily build things that are chaotic.


A pendulum is simple and predictable. If the mechanics doesn't change, it will swing very predictably for millions of years. It is not chaotic. Chaos is a situation where a system cannot be predicted far into the future. Chaotic systems can still be deterministic, but predictions simply don't work, the slightest error you make will be amplified over time.

So chaos can be thought of as an amplification process. It amplifies small things and makes them significant.

Quantum processes are small things. So if attached to a chaotic oscillator, we would have a macroscopic device that exhibits unpredictability due to quantum processes. I'd like to believe that such a machine could be a necessary component of an artificial person, as it is a thing that seems able to make choices through truely non-deterministic means.

Chaos has another property. Because it amplifies small changes, it allows us to effect big changes through small manipulations. We can model the chaotic process and understand how error is being amplified. The flip side of non-predictability is control. We can control chaotic systems. This is better than a mere prediction. If we make frequent tiny manipulations to a chaotic system, we can potentially drive it to be in a specific state at a specific time.

Life does this.

 

"access quantum level information, and amplify it to macroscopic level"
That makes no sence. What is quantum level information but more importantly how does it allow us to excercise free will? All that it is is randomness and probability. Rolling a dice. That's no free will.

 

Quantum information is something like "where the electron is".

The electron will interact with things, but data about it is incomplete/uncertain. If we allow those interactions to not be diluted in the noise around them, but to study one electron and amplify the interactions it has. Its uncertainty becomes a variable in our system.

Quantum is interpreted as probability, but I don't agree with probability. I think we are witnessing choice, not randomness.

Are you familiar with game theory and the prisoner's dilemma? Consider a similar problem of two particles that are wanting to move their relationship to a lower energy state. Either of them can move to a new configuration, and if they do, they will have reduced their energy state. But if they both move, they will end up in a higher energy state.

So obviously, one should move, but not both. But if they are quantum, there is uncertainty. One doesn't know what the other is doing. What is the best strategy for minimising their energy? They have the same rules because they are the same particles with the same relationships. How can they possibly decide to do different things?

The optimal strategy for this very mundane game -- surprisingly -- is to make a random choice with 50% chance of moving and 50% for staying put. The optimal strategy for this game is non-deterministic. But is it random, or it is choice?

 

"Quantum is interpreted as probability, but I don't agree with probability. I think we are witnessing choice, not randomness."
Well this is where you and me (and seemingly other physicists) disagree. It is random chance and it is not open to your way of interpretation. It does constitute to debunking determinism as in predictions cannot be 100% accurate but it is something very different to free will or choice. The number I get when I roll a dice is determined by chance, not my will. (assuming that rolling a dice is subject to pure chance which it of course isn't)

 

Dice are deterministic.

the choice I'm talking about is the particle's own choice. Or nature's choice. Not yours.

 

Why do you have to personalize inanimate objects all the time? Particles do not make choices. And even if they were then its the particles decision to be in state A or in state B is still does not provide you with anything simmilar to free will.

 

There are particles in my brain undergoing chemistry. Electrons moving from one place to another. My particles have energy states. If they choose to move, and that is amplified to the rest of my brain, then that becomes my choice.

The particles' choice is my choice. I am the choosing force behind the particle(s) that make me.