Fate and Freewill

[Psychonaut]

...continued from here.

Most folks tend to think of it as, either/or. But why not a mixture of both? There ARE certain inevitables in life

This is generally my outlook as well. It should be obvious to everyone that there is a certain level of physical and biological determinism that follows from the way matter works and the way our bodies are put together. Normally, I'll look at "free will" as our having a modicum of choice within a preprogrammed genetic framework that we are born with. I think that we are all born with a loose pattern and that our acts of "free will" fill in the details of the generalized pattern.

I like to see life precisely as the Norns woven tapestry...they might have the Fate issues already set into the pattern, but we`re free to add the colour, the richness of the thread, and yes, even the knots.

In this vein, I am reminded of a theory of time that enables us to, quite literally, view each persons life as a strand of thread in a multi-dimensional tapestry. What follows is an excerpt, hand types by your truly, from Rudolf von Bitter Rucker's book Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension (pp. 57-58):

As I write this there is a fly zooming around my desk. It's almost winter and he has come in to get warm and eat garbage. When he is in motion (and now that I am writing about him he is putting on quite a show) I do not actually see a moving black object. I see, rather, a sort of trail in space.

Pause here and wave your right hand in a complicated 3-D pattern. Look at the trails. In what sense do they exist? What would it be like if your hand was at each of its positions at once? What if you move your hand from your nose to your ear and then back to your nose--why doesn't the old hand at the nose get in the way of the new hand at the nose?

The viewpoint that we wish to develop in this chapter is that all 3-D objects are actually trails in 4-D space-time. "Space" is a fairly arbitrary 3-D cross section of the space-time which we imagine to be moving forward in the direction of the remaining dimension, "time."

Is, then, time the fourth dimension? Not necessarily. You could still have four dimensions--say three to live in and one to curve space in the direction of--and then throw in time as the fifth dimension. It is possible and useful to view time as a higher dimension, but the reader should not jump to the conclusion that whenever we talk about a higher dimension we are referring to time; many of the ideas about the fourth dimension that we have outlined are no longer valid if you insist that the fourth dimension is simply time. Some things that are possible in pure four dimensional space are not possible in four dimensional space-time.

To get a good mental image of space-time, let us return to Flatland. Suppose that A. Square is sitting alone in a field. At noon he sees his father, A. Triangle, approaching from the west. A. Triangle reaches A. Square's side at 12:05, talks to him briefly, and then slides back to where he came from. Now, if we thing of time as being a direction perpendicular to space, then we can represent the Flatlanders' time as a direction perpendicular to the plane of Flatland. Assuming that "later in time" and "higher in the third dimension" are the same thing, we can represent a motionless Flatlander by a vertical worm or a rail and a moving Flatlander by a curving worm or trail, as we have done in Figure 78.

We can think of these 3-D space-time worms as existing timelessly. We can use them to produce animated Flatland by taking a 2-D plane, moving it upward (forwards in time) and watching the motions of the figures formed by the intersections of the worms with the moving place. Try to imagine a picture like Figure 78 which encompassed the entire space and time of Flatland. A vast tangle of worms of varying thickness! Actually, each worm would be a tangle of threads, where a thread would correspond fo the trail of an atom. Given the fact that every atom in one's body is replaced every seven years or so, we can see that there is actually no single thread that goes the whole length of one's life. A living individual is a persistent pattern rather than a particular collection of particles.

It is an interesting mental exercise to try and see our world in terms of space-time. Walking through a crowd of people, for instance, one can try to see the people as trails in space-time rather than objects moving forwards in space-time. Under this view what our world really consists of is "worms" in 4-D space-time. The universe at any instant is a particular 3-D cross section of this 4-D structure.

Note: This selection is a bit easier to understand with the illustrations that you can see here.

[Loddfafner]

The settings that are possible at a given historical moment shape what we can become. They shape the resources we have to work with and the challenges that makes us.

[Oresai]

It is an interesting mental exercise to try and see our world in terms of space-time. Walking through a crowd of people, for instance, one can try to see the people as trails in space-time rather than objects moving forwards in space-time. Under this view what our world really consists of is "worms" in 4-D space-time. The universe at any instant is a particular 3-D cross section of this 4-D structure.

I won`t pretend to have fully grasped all of that...I know I`m generalising, but do think women think in terms of more ethereal, romanticised imagery on such concepts, and men generally think scientifically.
But...that quoted paragraph made me wonder if it is in part responsible for the feelings we can get from others, even strangers, that cling to them like a taint...for example (Not talking cold reading or simple body language here btw) I have sometimes walked into an empty room and known a certain person has been in there recently. No, nothing to do with the lingering scent of them, or hearing them elsewhere and putting two and two together...just a `knowing`, a sensing of them, somehow.
Or, have met strangers and somehow known that they have recently been `up to no good` as my granny would say, later corroborated, when I could have had no possible other way of knowing such a thing at all.
If we move through this 4D structure, if we leave imprints, flowing and interracting with every other thing, `behind` us, doesn`t it make sense that we may be able to view or tap into that somehow, like with the overview of time outside of time, and thus validify a few generally mocked `occult` exercises such as psychometry, or clairvoyance? Don`t get me wrong, I believe the bulk of such occultists are out and out frauds. But I`ve seen enough of otherwise, to convince me there is something people can tap into, and bring out information on.
Except, you explain it with science, and I waffle on about the occult, hee

If, then, our lives are already lived, if there is some `space` we could, in theory, stand in and view it all, the vast life of the earth, of each individual, of the dance of Fate with Free Will and the complexities rising from it, if we could just, for one instant, take the overview and really see it...what would it do, to our minds, I wonder?
Would it, for example, render a hopelessness in us? Because if folks realised that their lives were already `done and over with` on some level, would they feel futile at striving to make differences in unhappy lives, e.g? Or would they feel apathetic, thinking, what`s the point, it`s all preset and done with anyway?
I have to admit, I like the idea of at least some vital amount of Fate and destiny in my life. It`s rather freeing, promotes a healthy fatalism, an acceptance our heathen ancestors would have recognised.
What scares the Hel out of me tends to be the Free Will aspect...I never was so good at decision making.

[SouthernBoy]

Laplace had it right.

[lei.talk]

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

-Pierre-Simon Laplace

*

[HawkR]

When you say fate I guess you mean destiny(same shit, just a different word)

There's is no free will, but it's the illusion of free will, think about it, for 5 years ago you decided to something special, and today, you are where you because of that "descision". Now, it's fun sometimes, to think about "what if", what if you hadn't had that date that time? What if you hadn't bumped into him at that party and so on. When you think about this, it's easy to see that there's no coincidences, it would be to darn many of them.

[Loddfafner]

The settings that are possible at a given historical moment shape what we can become. They shape the resources we have to work with and the challenges that makes us.

I should explain a little further. Social, economic, and physical factors constrain what kinds of places are possible at any given moment. Our lives are limited by the places that are accessible to us. Places constrict us and also shape us.

If you look at society in terms of places and situations, then extreme individualism and abstract idealism collapse and bring down with them the notions of free will and determinism.

Place (or rather, the market of possible places) is like a bottleneck that constricts our free will. It also shapes what we would do with our illusion of free will.

We do have freedom to challenge the terms in each place, and to rebuild the world place by place. Even internet fora such as The Apricity qualify as places worth engaging in. We are not determined like billiard balls.

[SouthernBoy]

Man isn't content in saying "I don't know." All "luck," "free will," "chance," "chaos," "God," and "randomness" are are surrender.

There is a quotation that goes something like, "Never is man more enslaved than when he believes himself free, because he never thinks to look for the chains."

If there were ever an absolute worth clinging to, it is that everything is explicable. An entire lifetime in pursuit of the truth would not be a waste.

[Ulf]

If there were ever an absolute worth clinging to, it is that everything is explicable. An entire lifetime in pursuit of the truth would not be a waste.

"What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms -- in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.
We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors - in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all..."
------
"What are man's truths ultimately? Merely his irrefutable errors."
Nietzsche

[YggsVinr]

I agree mostly with what Loddfafner wrote, however, I do find myself inclined to a possibility beyond free will, fate, or a mixture of the two. I do not believe that our destiny is entirely determined by ourselves, nor that our destiny is determined at the time of our birth. To an extent we inherit certain traits from our predecessors or from our childhood environments that render certain outcomes more likely than others, but that does not mean that the likely outcome will undoubtedly occur. Beyond these inherited traits, either through genetics or environment, I do not believe that any other portion of our lives lends itself to "fate"; yet nor do they lend themselves entirely to free will. There is also the element of chance (or randomness, since there is some debate over which word is best), which is detached from our own will as well as any predetermined factors. Life is in many respects a chain of events, causes resulting in effects, however, those cause and effects are not predetermined "fate" as the variables may change with time (as Loddfafner said with respect to history and an era's effects on our own ideologies and so on).

Interesting quote on the issue of individuals as patterns, Psychonaut. Yet patterns may be altered or broken through the unforeseen inclusion of various obstacles following patterns themselves and likewise altered and manipulated by ever-changing elements. While the universe is made up of equations, "patterns" and so on, there is such a variety of variables that it is difficult to believe that the outcomes are entirely predetermined. Certain events must lend themselves to chance.

Thought I'd edit in that I'm using the word "believe" here rather superficially, as I am primarily interested in bouncing around possibilities than making absolute my own "belief" on the matter.