BF2S Forums Coincidence, believe it?

Zimmer wrote:

This may be a bit complex to understand at first, but bear with me.

Everything we do technically is not out of choice. Nothing we do is random and everything that happens has been pre-generated.

Take this image : If we had a very very smart person back at the Big Bang, who knew all the current laws of science we know now and all the knowledge of particles and quantum physics, he would have, clearly, predicted that Earth was to be created, and thus, eventually predicted that you would ask this question, or kiss some girl at a party. This is correct, as back then, he could have accurately predicted the location and state of every particle in the universe ( just like we can for the future - technically ).

Thus, from this, we can deduce that these facts are fixed and so you are currently sitting at your computer doing something. I am not denying that it is your CHOICE, but the facts are still there, you were going to do it if you believed it to be choice or not. As you cannot randomly do something without it being able to be predicted.

So technically, there is no reason, there is no real choice and there is no coincidence.

Now, you can argue all you want that there is some "randomness" about the universe, but then again, that may be at a quantum level ( quarks ), and although quarks may be random in their movement and speeds, the particles they create can be predicted. Just like a person cannot be predicted in a crowd, but the crowd can.

Suppose that Fred existed shortly after the Big Bang. He had unlimited intelligence and memory, and knew all the scientific laws governing the universe and all the properties of every particle that then existed. Thus equipped, billions of years ago, he could have worked out that, eventually, planet Earth would come to exist, that you would too, and that right now you would be reading this article.

After all, even back then he could have worked out all the facts about the location and state of every particle that now exists.

And once those facts are fixed, so is the fact that you are now reading this article. No one's denying you chose to read this. But your choice had causes (certain events in your brain, for example), which in turn had causes, and so on right back to the Big Bang. So your reading this was predictable by Fred long before you existed. Once you came along, it was already far too late for you to do anything about it.

Now, of course, Fred didn't really exist, so he didn't really predict your every move. But the point is: he could have. You might object that modern physics tells us that there is a certain amount of fundamental randomness in the universe, and that this would have upset Fred's predictions. But is this reassuring? Notice that, in ordinary life, it is precisely when people act unpredictably that we sometimes question whether they have acted freely and responsibly. So freewill begins to look incompatible both with causal determination and with randomness. None of us, then, ever do anything freely and responsibly."

Zimmer wrote:

And you are who? A nitpicker? I explained it in my own words because I wanted it to be related to the actual post.

Nice one on finding the BBC article and showing how my post has the same concepts and explanation as it does.

Last edited by KEN-JENNINGS (2008-11-21 13:36:06)