Fate, Free Will, or Inevitability?

[Dathu]

in the name of misery

~x.X.x~

I personally believe in free will, but there is actually a branch of quantum physics that says all events are predetermined by an "observer." Not like a God, really, but like the ghost inside of the machine, except for the entire universe. We percieve things as this observer determines. It's really hard to explain. sweatdrop

You know how we see what our brain lets us? Everything that comes in through our senses is filtered through our brain, and only a very tiny percentage of what is actually out there is what we percieve. It can also modify our perception of the things that are actually there. You know how you'll see a word that isn't there sometimes, because your brain just automatically inserts it since it feels right? It's that sort of thing.

Matter and energy can be anywhere at once. In every infinitely small point of time, the matter or energy is everywhere at once, but our minds percieve it as in one specific place, which has been decided by the observer.

It also says that if we were brought up to think this way, and had the freedom of mind not to be restrained by the traditional beliefs set upon us, that the outside world affects us, and not the other way around, we'd be able to control our surroundings.

Another way to interpret that is:
Did Jesus really have the ability to walk on water?


Cool, eh? biggrin
Well I think so anyway. ninja

Kind of what I was thinking, minus the observer part. I don't know about you, but that just sounds like a scientific euphamism for god. As far as perception affecting our ability to manipulate our surroundings......eh, why not? I'd like to was on water. Or jump really high.  

[To Escape Detection]

Dathu

Kind of what I was thinking, minus the observer part. I don't know about you, but that just sounds like a scientific euphamism for god. As far as perception affecting our ability to manipulate our surroundings......eh, why not? I'd like to was on water. Or jump really high.

~x.X.x~

Well... it's really not at all like God. I didn't explain it very well. The observer is really just a name for whatever causes the events to be universally percieved the way they are, and not induvidually different. Damn, that still doesn't sound right. I don't know, I'm not the one to describe that sort of thing.

 

[Mechanism]

in the name of misery

~x.X.x~
Well... it's really not at all like God. I didn't explain it very well. The observer is really just a name for whatever causes the events to be universally percieved the way they are, and not induvidually different. Damn, that still doesn't sound right. I don't know, I'm not the one to describe that sort of thing.

Actually, it sounded like misery was referring to the way which measuring (observing) some quantum-scale things changes them.
But otherwise, it sounds like bullshit; no one knows whether events are universally percieved the same way, since a person can only percieve from their own point of view.

Misery, can you remember where you heard this from?  

[E_Night]

Does any one have info on the Chaos theory? I have only briefly learned about it and my mom wants me to explain it to her. Is there any good way to do this?

My two sence about fate and whatever: Okay lets just say that someone can predict that something will happen... say domokun is going to get raped. And of course domokun doesn't want to get raped (why? hes some christian dude/chick). The same profit says pirate Is gonna rape domokun . pirate doesn't want to rape anyone cause hes 15 and doesn't want to go to jail. They both try hard to resist their fates. domokun doesn't take alleys or go to mcdonalds anymore. And pirate watches blues clues to get his mind off of rape. Eventualy they each can't take it and pirate goes out to smoke a cigerate. he sees domokun who is watching lezbian porn. pirate thinks :GOD I'm so aroused by those chicks and that dude/chick watching it. The story goes on and what the propeht said what happened did happen.




If the Prophet haddn't said anything would anything had happened? Probebly because pirate had it in him to commit the crime. and domokun was a sexah dude/chick. But on the other hand the words of the prophet made the pirate think about the rape. I think you can make your fate what you want it to be, not your parents, a prohet, or bigbird can change that. pirate could have not thought about the prophet and domokun could have done meth to not look so sexah.  

[BuncyTheFrog]

Ah yes, the one thing that I always have an answer for.

I believe that "fate" in a way exists, but that we create our fate. For example, if you get a terminal illness, you ate "fated" to die. If you hit on someone's girlfiend, you are "fated" to recieve some sort of punishment. Who you are shapes how you act in certain situations, so a little quirk in your personality will change your future fates considerably. So.. I guess it's not so much "fate" but a set of pre-ordained sequences of events based on your character..." Kinda like the 2nd possiblity sugged in the first post (I believe it was second)  

[E_Night]

BuncyTheFrog

Ah yes, the one thing that I always have an answer for.

I believe that "fate" in a way exists, but that we create our fate. For example, if you get a terminal illness, you ate "fated" to die. If you hit on someone's girlfiend, you are "fated" to recieve some sort of punishment. Who you are shapes how you act in certain situations, so a little quirk in your personality will change your future fates considerably. So.. I guess it's not so much "fate" but a set of pre-ordained sequences of events based on your character..." Kinda like the 2nd possiblity sugged in the first post (I believe it was second)

yeah the hitting on someones girlfriend might result to unplesent injury... DO NOT ATEMPT  

[[Satan]]

Corrupt_Harmony

BuncyTheFrog

Ah yes, the one thing that I always have an answer for.

I believe that "fate" in a way exists, but that we create our fate. For example, if you get a terminal illness, you ate "fated" to die. If you hit on someone's girlfiend, you are "fated" to recieve some sort of punishment. Who you are shapes how you act in certain situations, so a little quirk in your personality will change your future fates considerably. So.. I guess it's not so much "fate" but a set of pre-ordained sequences of events based on your character..." Kinda like the 2nd possiblity sugged in the first post (I believe it was second)

yeah the hitting on someones girlfriend might result to unplesent injury... DO NOT ATEMPT

It tends to work sometimes. ninja  

[E_Night]

s0ul caper~

Corrupt_Harmony

BuncyTheFrog

Ah yes, the one thing that I always have an answer for.

I believe that "fate" in a way exists, but that we create our fate. For example, if you get a terminal illness, you ate "fated" to die. If you hit on someone's girlfiend, you are "fated" to recieve some sort of punishment. Who you are shapes how you act in certain situations, so a little quirk in your personality will change your future fates considerably. So.. I guess it's not so much "fate" but a set of pre-ordained sequences of events based on your character..." Kinda like the 2nd possiblity sugged in the first post (I believe it was second)

yeah the hitting on someones girlfriend might result to unplesent injury... DO NOT ATEMPT

It tends to work sometimes. ninja

rofl yes i supose it does sometimes  

[nonameladyofsins]

Dathu

I recently got involved in a discussion about whether or not "fate" was plausible. One hand, people believe that they have a destiny or a purpose, if you will, that they and they alone were borne to perform. On the other hand, anarchists and some realists would argue that nothing is predictable, especially the human mind.

To me destiny sounds too mystical to be believable, and complete unpredictability sounds too close minded. I came to a stand point in which I can accept the idea of all things being predetermined. One scientist argued that from the very beginning of the universe "balls" were set in motion to an unalterable finally. Things like "choice, free will, and randomness" are actually points of view and not fact. One thinks one has made a choice, but in truth, due to their genes, upbringing, and events in their life, their decision was quite predictable and inevitable. People tend to feel that such predictability is impossible because it is beyond our and our technologies comprehension. But with a mind capable of handling and processing all the variables, such a prediction would be simple.

I, in all honesty, believe this idea to be very likely, but I don't think there is enough evidence to give it my full confidence. So...which do you think is more likely?

Destiny (we're all here for a purpose)

Inevitability (we're all one an unchangable track)

Chaos! (BG*&*&%R*F8gg8o7r85FR*^o)

what you are talking about is physical determinsim, which has long since the dawn of quantum mechanics proven to be false. unfortunately for scientists it turns out that the laws of nature are not laid out by the path of solid particles, but that variations of the future exist as ghosts until the path itself is observed, and then the particle is made to choose a path and thus reality forms. I don't know how much of this you will understand, but I did a lot of reading on the topic and it turns out that the future is actually - completely unpredictable, and that is a fact. NOthing anyone else says can counter that. Enough tests have been carried out to prove this point.
If you have ever heard of Shroedinger, and Shroedinger's cat you will know what I am talking about. If one places a cat in a box completely isolated from the outside, where no information about it's state can exist outside the box (of course the cat will not die of suffocation, and let's say it does not die of food) and you also place a substance, which if it decays it's em waves will kill the cat instantly. But this substance has a 50% chance of decaying. Now you as the observer from the outside must decide whether the cat is dead or alive. The truth is, we don't know, and we cannot say. According to the Copenhagen Interpretation the cat exists in two different states at the same time and/or the cat does not exist at all, accoridng to the parallel worlds theory at the point where the cat was separated from the outsde world two parallel worlds were created where in one the cat was alive and in the other the cat died. The fate of the cat is completely up to chance.

I do not know why but shroedinger's thought experiment did not help me understand this concept as much as the wave/particle duality of the electron did. In the classic double or mutliple slit experiment if the recording filament is placed sufficiently behind the plate with the slits and the electron is given a (shall we say) "choice" as to which slit to go through, and interference pattern will be created on the other side. Thus the electron in this case acts like a wave. But if the filament is place at each slit separately, then the electron acts as a particle. In the latter case the electron is forced to chose either one, but in the former the electron is free to choose all. Thus we by the mere observation have pushed the electron to chose.
When the electron forms a interference pattern that is attributed to a wave this is called the shroedinger wave, and is not a concrete proof that the electron is a wave but it is a probability wave, mapping out all the possible directions the electron could have gone. Thus to explain this it was postulated at some point that the electron existed along with it's ghost particles, that is other duplicates of the electron itself around it, and when the electron travelled through the multiple slits, all it's ghosts took on different routes, thus the electron could have takne any one of them, and we can never say for certain which one it will choose.

It is impossible to predict the path of an electron, save by observing what has already happened. This means that it is impossible to predict where particles will go and thus things bigger then particles (which are results of the interaction of these particles) are even less predictable.

Now you know that according to Science the future is completely unpredictable. We can postulate, but we cannot know for sure. There is no such thing as destiny.  

[Dathu]

poweroutage

Dathu

I recently got involved in a discussion about whether or not "fate" was plausible. One hand, people believe that they have a destiny or a purpose, if you will, that they and they alone were borne to perform. On the other hand, anarchists and some realists would argue that nothing is predictable, especially the human mind.

To me destiny sounds too mystical to be believable, and complete unpredictability sounds too close minded. I came to a stand point in which I can accept the idea of all things being predetermined. One scientist argued that from the very beginning of the universe "balls" were set in motion to an unalterable finally. Things like "choice, free will, and randomness" are actually points of view and not fact. One thinks one has made a choice, but in truth, due to their genes, upbringing, and events in their life, their decision was quite predictable and inevitable. People tend to feel that such predictability is impossible because it is beyond our and our technologies comprehension. But with a mind capable of handling and processing all the variables, such a prediction would be simple.

I, in all honesty, believe this idea to be very likely, but I don't think there is enough evidence to give it my full confidence. So...which do you think is more likely?

Destiny (we're all here for a purpose)

Inevitability (we're all one an unchangable track)

Chaos! (BG*&*&%R*F8gg8o7r85FR*^o)

what you are talking about is physical determinsim, which has long since the dawn of quantum mechanics proven to be false. unfortunately for scientists it turns out that the laws of nature are not laid out by the path of solid particles, but that variations of the future exist as ghosts until the path itself is observed, and then the particle is made to choose a path and thus reality forms. I don't know how much of this you will understand, but I did a lot of reading on the topic and it turns out that the future is actually - completely unpredictable, and that is a fact. NOthing anyone else says can counter that. Enough tests have been carried out to prove this point.
If you have ever heard of Shroedinger, and Shroedinger's cat you will know what I am talking about. If one places a cat in a box completely isolated from the outside, where no information about it's state can exist outside the box (of course the cat will not die of suffocation, and let's say it does not die of food) and you also place a substance, which if it decays it's em waves will kill the cat instantly. But this substance has a 50% chance of decaying. Now you as the observer from the outside must decide whether the cat is dead or alive. The truth is, we don't know, and we cannot say. According to the Copenhagen Interpretation the cat exists in two different states at the same time and/or the cat does not exist at all, accoridng to the parallel worlds theory at the point where the cat was separated from the outsde world two parallel worlds were created where in one the cat was alive and in the other the cat died. The fate of the cat is completely up to chance.

I do not know why but shroedinger's thought experiment did not help me understand this concept as much as the wave/particle duality of the electron did. In the classic double or mutliple slit experiment if the recording filament is placed sufficiently behind the plate with the slits and the electron is given a (shall we say) "choice" as to which slit to go through, and interference pattern will be created on the other side. Thus the electron in this case acts like a wave. But if the filament is place at each slit separately, then the electron acts as a particle. In the latter case the electron is forced to chose either one, but in the former the electron is free to choose all. Thus we by the mere observation have pushed the electron to chose.
When the electron forms a interference pattern that is attributed to a wave this is called the shroedinger wave, and is not a concrete proof that the electron is a wave but it is a probability wave, mapping out all the possible directions the electron could have gone. Thus to explain this it was postulated at some point that the electron existed along with it's ghost particles, that is other duplicates of the electron itself around it, and when the electron travelled through the multiple slits, all it's ghosts took on different routes, thus the electron could have takne any one of them, and we can never say for certain which one it will choose.

It is impossible to predict the path of an electron, save by observing what has already happened. This means that it is impossible to predict where particles will go and thus things bigger then particles (which are results of the interaction of these particles) are even less predictable.

Now you know that according to Science the future is completely unpredictable. We can postulate, but we cannot know for sure. There is no such thing as destiny.

Aside for the cat thing I understand. Simply put, since particle behaviour is random, the universe can't be on set predictable course. However, it is only "fact" until it is proven false. Nothing with our limited understanding is absolute, just very likely. Concidering the how fragile sapce-time is and the affects of different gravities, that study could easily fall apart under the right conditions. There is still a possability that the future is set and that there is only one outcome. I don't really feel strongly one way or the other. Neither would surprise me. But that study doesn't prove anything about the universe, only about what we can manipulate on earth.  

[nonameladyofsins]

well, it isn't a study it's the fundamental principels of quantum mechanics. Basically it is the foundation of one of the two dominating branches of modern physics (that and relativity, einstein wasn't very happy about this), and it works. It is just because nothing can be known for certain that it works. You proved it. If you belevie that physical determinism works under certain conditions please provide an example, for I am unable to think of one.  

[Kyrkran]

Physics: Dealing with larger objects, predictable.
Quantam Mechanics: Dealing with extremely minute objects, mainly particles, wholly unpredictable.

According to Quantam Mechanics, if I walk into a wall for long enough, thereis a chance taht I will simply pass through that wall. An infintessimly small chance, but a chance non-the-less. According to Physics, this is impossible as the wall and I are both solid objects.

That aside I am a firm believer in free will. If destiny does exist, I think that it simpl leads us to be at a certain place at a certain time. Have you ever felt drawn to go someplace, for no apparent reason? Its like that. One destiny takes you there, according to this theory, it is your choice what you do, maybe shaping events later in history.

On one hand, the human mind is unpredictable, to humans. In fact, an individual is unpredictable. Groups might be predictable. Read Asimov's Foundation novels.  

[caustic 0_0]

" One thinks one has made a choice, but in truth, due to their genes, upbringing, and events in their life, their decision was quite predictable and inevitable." (in first post, I'm too lazy to quote)
I wouldn't say it's completely inevitable. A lot of factors influence your every decision but those factors also make up who you are, so then ignoring those factors, you (in your mind at least) have free will. I would say the factors don't make you do what you do, but perhaps they can be studied and used to suggest the most likely outcome. But, there are so many factors one could get into that the factors would probably get conflicting.. It's like trying to predict how a certain type of person will vote.

Whether or not I have free will, my life and my daily 'choices' aren't altered by that knowledge. If I have to do the thing I'm getting ready to do next...well then I guess I'm going to do it. I would like to assume that I have free will.
I've never felt the pull of destiny. I don't see how it could exist. Someone isn't 'destined to be great', they are talented or skilled enough to be assured success according to what's considered 'great' at the moment.  

[Dathu]

c a u s t i c

" One thinks one has made a choice, but in truth, due to their genes, upbringing, and events in their life, their decision was quite predictable and inevitable." (in first post, I'm too lazy to quote)
I wouldn't say it's completely inevitable. A lot of factors influence your every decision but those factors also make up who you are, so then ignoring those factors, you (in your mind at least) have free will. I would say the factors don't make you do what you do, but perhaps they can be studied and used to suggest the most likely outcome. But, there are so many factors one could get into that the factors would probably get conflicting.. It's like trying to predict how a certain type of person will vote.

Whether or not I have free will, my life and my daily 'choices' aren't altered by that knowledge. If I have to do the thing I'm getting ready to do next...well then I guess I'm going to do it. I would like to assume that I have free will.
I've never felt the pull of destiny. I don't see how it could exist. Someone isn't 'destined to be great', they are talented or skilled enough to be assured success according to what's considered 'great' at the moment.

I can agree with that.  

[Arios V]

I believe in free will, I believe I am the master of my own destiny and that whatever happens in my life, whatever path I may take, I choose to do it of my own free will.