The flaws inherent in predestination.

The first one is obvious in that if predestination was a fact then if one was predestined to go to Heaven, or whatever reward you believe in, then no matter what one did then one would get there. The same applies the other way. If someone was destined for punishment then they could never do well enough to avoid it.

However, what if your life was predestined essentially but at certain junctures in your life you had a choice as to where you life would lead next? Like a choose your own adventure story. Imagine at certain times in your life you come to a train station. At the station are 10 trains. Some are luxurious, some are decrepit , some lead to happiness and some lead to ruin. ( the luxury train doesn't necessarily lead to success, and the decrepit one doesn't necessarily lead to ruin) Some lead to an average life bereft of any great thought or inclination. One leads to greatness... You choose. And once you have chosen, then that train is predestined to follow a certain track until you reach the next "cross road" in your life (to use a mixed analogy)

That would work.

I was going to make a contribution, but realised that it is not my destiny....

Well. What if there were no more hypothetical questions?

What if heaven is a never ending awesome dream of whatever you want with a clear conscious?
What if hell is a never ending nightmare of regret trapped the memories of hurt you created?

The train you catch becomes irrelevant, the choices you make on the ride may be the most important.

Heaven and hell and everything in between is a state of mind, not a state of location. Some are happy in 15 kts, others in 25kts.

Predestination, if we knew everything was predestined, we would still have to make choices and live life in whatever way. Predestined or not, is it irrelevant?

Indeed, the maths of it seems to break down to the idea that every "moment" in the universe is the inevitable conclusion of the moments before it. You try and balance a pencil on its tip and even though you don't know which way it's going to fall, it was always ever going to fall the way it did because of everything that led up to you leaning its centre of gravity just that little bit to one side of its balance point. The neuron firings in your brain at the point you let go are the consequence of the previous neuron firings, and in that way you can trace everything back to the big bang for predetermination.

The problem is, you can't measure and process the vast quantity of things at such a microscopic scale to a point where you could ever predict anything useful at a macroscopic scale. Just ask any weather forecaster .

Quantum mechanics raises an interesting perspective on this, in particular Hugh Everett (III)'s original insight into the widely accepted view that opening the box immediately determines whether Schrodinger's Cat is alive or dead. Everett's draft PhD thesis explored the idea that quantum uncertainty did not necessarily break down at the point of measurement, but instead the universe branched into parallel universes (or as it was known at the time - the multiworld), some of which revealed a dead cat, and the rest a live cat.

The thing about this is that in a universe where the cat is dead, all of us observers no longer have the option to observe a live cat, and continue through the rest of our days without ever existing in the universe of the live cat.

So perhaps you were at the train station as stated and in fact got onto all 10 trains. Some versions of you traveled to happiness, some to ruin, some traveled in luxury and some in "scum class". Perhaps there is both predestination and choice at the same time, and a whole raft of parallel universes out there to contain it all.

This all sounds thoroughly absurd of course, but at the same time it's a lot simpler explanation than quantum uncertainty all of a sudden disappearing at the point of measurement, that never really sat well with me. The maths reportedly works much better with the multiple universe scenario, and from a mathematical point of view an indeterminate problem sits much better with me than an artificially solved one.

The question this always brings me back to is: where are all these other universes kept? If String Theory has anything going for it, it could be the other spatial dimensions out there aside from the three we can currently perceive. Since we can't perceive them though, that's not much use.

What it really highlights to me is that although we, as a species, seem to know a lot of stuff, we really don't know much at all about how it really works.

^^^ No wind, or bored at work?

(nerds)

No wind, not at work this week, but definitely not bored. Physics is not boring .

Trains always get cancelled ....... Never rely on public transport ....... Get there any way you can .....