Do You Believe In Fate?

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The most ordinary events are massive events . How many sub atomic events would occur if I drop a coffee cup and it hits the floor and spills coffee.

Likewise, a larger event, like the second world war, would be a larger scale statistical manifestation of many coffee cup scale events. The sheer number of these independent events each with a probability, genates a sort of momentum of events. Probabilities become more certain with larger samples. With rare exceptions, such as an assasination, statistically unlikely single events do not affect the processes on the next higher level.

Likewise, no single war has altered the overall course of human history. Tribes have moved, or grown, or shrunk, or disappeared. They fought many wars with each other. Some tribes won, some tribes lost. Tribes often fused into confederacies or, more closely, into nations. These also fought wars. Nations sometimes fused into empires. Wars continued. When empires got too large, they became unstable and disintegrated.

Within each larger event are countless sub events which are determined by randomness guided only by statistical probabilities, quite a bit of leeway for each individual event. On the scale of coffee cup events, this could manifest as free will.

I don't think it would make any perceptible difference in ten years whether I threw a penny or a nickel. If I threw a penny and put my dog's eye out, it would have no effect a hundred years from now.

It seems likely that some set of processes we call the subconscious mind would have more direct interraction with these surrounding bundles of event sequences then the conscious mind, whether I threw the coin or someone else, as the coscious mind could watch a distant waiter drop a coffee cup, and predict a puddle of spilled coffee.

the universe is completely deterministic... what a lot of people don't take into account, or have a warped worldview where "humans are special" etc, is that humans are also machines within the greater machien we calle the universe.

you think you're making a decision of your own free will, but in fact you have no choice, because the configuration of all the subatomic particles that make up your brain and body, plus those of the external world, decide the future configuration of the same subatomic particles

Of course I believe in farts. You forget who you're dealing with. I once emptied Fenway Park after a breakfast burrito and taco lunch.

We are an experiment commissioned by the white mice.

"Of course I believe in farts"

Werbert believes in farts