A good friend of mine recently posted a status on Facebook: "Why?". Naturally I bit that status and bit it hard and it lead me to actually write down my thoughts on 'How stuff works' for the first time which I now release to you below...
Be warned, no one is going to like this answer:
Q: Why?
A: Consequentialism.
For any given event there must have been preceding causes - a car crashes because the driver lost concentration, the pole was placed in a certain position and the basic physics.
Now for every one of those reasons (and there are a hell of a lot more) there will be further reasons: why did the driver lose control? Because he was distracted. Why? Because he'd recently broken up with his girlfriend. Why? Etc etc etc.
For each of the many many causes of the car accident, there will be another large number of preceding causes. This gets extremely complicated very quickly, because at this point we have to recognise that pretty much everything that happens is dependent on everything else that happens - the old story of a butterfly flapping its wings and causing an avalanche on the other side of the world.
Here's the interesting twist - if we agree that a single incident has a wide number of causes and those causes have causes and so forth, we end up regressing further and further back until we get to the big bang or just infinitely. If we accept the big bang, then here we have a singular event that is the source of EVERY SINGLE CAUSE EVER.
In other words, the entire history of the world and universe, including all the causes that lead up to and caused the car crash, were determine in that one, single event.
Bear in mind that this also works forwards from the car crash - that event in itself will lead to consequences, which will lead to further consequences. Consequences viewed from the future are causes.
What I'm saying here is that the entire history of the universe is predetermined and unalterable. And I hate that conclusion.
The nail in the coffin here is science. If we were to deny Consequentialism we would have to show there is some random element or external input into the universe. If science is to work, then neither of these can exist because science relies on basic rules to predict outcomes. A random element would mean that there would be no laws we could rely on as they would change every time.
Demonstration: 1 + x = y
'x' is the random number that cannot be predicted or defined. We cannot find what 'y' equals.
In terms of external input, that's definitely possible, but frankly put has never been demonstrated, ever. The day a chair appears from thin air, please let me know.
As far as what this all actually MEANS for people, it's a bit cloudy. In theory it means that if we could access enough data and processing power, we could predict the entire future from now until the end of the universe. Of course that would require an insane amount of processing power and it would be virtually impossible to gather that much data, especially since that data is changing all the time.
As such we have the illusion of freedom and have to pretend we have freewill. But it does have some interesting social implications:
Consequentialism implies that we are the product of environments and circumstances, which heavily undermines the idea that everyone makes their own choices and should be held totally accountable. This means punishment is a foolish and unjust strategy and the focus should be on rehabilitation.
Consequentialism also implies that absolute laws for everything DO exist but are far far more complex than our current philosophies - meaning moral codes and religious institutions are highly arrogant.
Finally, consequentialism inspires compassion, empathy and cooperation lead to better results compared to individualism, exploitation and competition.
I always heard it referred to as determinism. The issue of reducing backwards and concluding that things could not be any different than they are now is true, in this arm of the multiverse.
ReplyDeleteAll the science dealing with this sort of thing takes an approach of chance. Broken down into two broad questions (with kudos to nelix).
What is possible? What is probable?
This is the basis of all experimental science. Without these two questions it is impossible to form a valid hypothesis that will stand up to experimentation.
What it means to Yusaf-average on the street is that things are not as certain as you would prefer. There is always a chance for the unexpected no matter what you do or how you attempt to shield yourself.
We live and work in a paradigm of uncertainty and chance, experimenting to find solid ground on which to build. This era of uncertainty will continue until predictive analysis incorporates all of what is possible instead of only what is probable.
Oh and just to bait you, here is a real stumper:
Why is time?