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Life, the Universe, and Everything

May 22, 2008 1:58 AM

don't really believe in fate. I think the idea that certain things are meant to happen is laughable to me. I mean, if some things are meant to happen, then surely all things must be meant to happen--otherwise, how could the things that were meant to happen happen at all? You follow?

I'm not sure where I stand on God, but I reject out of hand the idea that if there is a God, he sat down a trillion years ago and decided that I would write this blog post and then misspell the word "blog" just now and have to backspace over it to fix my mistake. Seriously--I hope God's got more important shit to worry about.

And the idea of karma has always seemed similarly silly to me. I knew a girl in college who believe in karma and, therefore, never locked her bike up. She reasoned--if you can call it that--that since she didn't go around stealing bikes, karma would protect her bike. I couldn't help but make fun of her when she asked me for a ride and explained that her bike had been stolen.

No, I believe in free will. I believe that the mind is exempt from the mechanically deterministic nature of the physical universe. I believe that I can choose my own destiny--within reason, of course. I actually think the best statement of what fate is and isn't comes from the movie Can't Hardly Wait. Remember Jenna Elfman's stripper character? Here's what she said:

There is such a thing as fate, but it only takes you so far. Then it's up to you to make it happen.
Sometimes you get the interview or the phone number or the opportunity or whatever for no good reason at all. But the next step is entirely up to you.

Why am I talking about all of this? Frankly, because I think the universe screwed me and it owes me one.



3 Comments


Justine Henin said:

I agree up to the fourth paragraph where you say: "I believe that the mind is exempt from the mechanically deterministic nature of the physical universe."

I have no idea what I'm talking about here, but isn't the physical universe supposed to be indeterministic?

Suppose that it is deterministic. How could 'the mind' be exempt? Wouldn't it have to not be part of the physical universe? How could it not be unless there was God or some shit?

Speaking of strippers, family nudist camps, milf sex, and viagra: I know that if I gave a stipper $200, she'd do some shit. Why should I care whether she ultimately has free will or not? Why care about free will? (What does 'free will' mean anyway?)

What is 'fate'? Really high probability given the laws? Like "There is such a thing as what is really likely to happen if I leave my bike unlocked, but it only takes you so far. Some dirty hippie still has to steal the bike and ride it to East Flag"?

May 24, 2008 2:32 AM



erika said:

on my 18th birthday you gave me a fake flower and a story about being in charge of our own destiny...it's one of the best stories ever...

May 24, 2008 2:01 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

Mr. Henin,
Classically speaking, the physical universe is completely deterministic, which is to say that if you know all of the initial conditions, you will be able to perfectly predict the result. Think of a pool table. If you could take into account every single variable, you'd be able to predict exactly where each ball would go after each stroke. Expanding that relatively small-scale analogy to the entire universe, classical physical models suggest that if one both knew exactly what was going on just before and just after the Big Bang and could somehow apply the physical laws to those initial conditions, you'd be able to predict planets and stars and galaxies. So, classically speaking, the entire universe is like a giant, complicated line of dominoes.

That whole idea gets turned on its head by quantum mechanics, though. In the world of quantum mechanics, cause and effect goes out the window. When dealing with certain particles in certain situations, it is impossible--even given both perfect knowledge of initial conditions and perfect and exhaustive computational ability--to predict the outcome. Einstein rejected this reality with one of his most famous quotes: "God doesn't play dice."

It's clear, then, that the quantum world behaves indeterministically in some instances and that the observable world behaves deterministically most of the time. There must be some line, of course, between the one and the other, but the question of where that line is drawn is currently completely open.

All of this is a sort of intellectually masturbatory way of saying that, at least for now, it appears that the universe we can directly observe is mechanically deterministic in the same way that, for example, a clock is mechanically deterministic. That's all I meant.

Getting to your larger point about how the mind could be exempt from that sort of determinism, I don't really have an answer other than that I don't believe that the mind is a physical thing. that's not to say that I think that there's necessarily a soul in the same way that, say, Christians do, but I do think there's something about human beings that is both not physical and still necessarily tied to the physical brain. That's what I call the mind, and it's this thing that I think is exempt from the mechanical determinism of the universe. We have free will, is all I'm saying. Which leads into...

erika,
Wow... I can't believe you remember that. That warms my heart to a degree I can't really express.

May 28, 2008 1:08 AM



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