Fist off, go make some Indian grooves – thanks to
After that, ponder something with me.
Assuming, momentarily, that quantum physic’s many views of reality could be condensed into a naked singularity (what we will call “the real world” for the purposes of this discussion), how much of a role do you think chaos has on your existence within that singularity? I define chaos as an event or series of events (conceptual or physical) which lead to an action or reaction made without premeditation on your personal part. That, in turn, can be the start, middle or endpoint of an interwoven, or even a new chain of events.
An absurdest example to get you thinking about my question: Someone who prepares their entire life for an ELE. They stock up on water purifiers, parmalat, dig a steel/lead cement bunker, stock it with all the goodies needed to repopulate civilization. Now, one might argue that when that comet hits, he will be all set – his reaction to the chaos will have been nicely premeditated, and all he needs to do is go downstairs and engage the airlock.
However, what if the meteor is not an ELE level event, but, like in The Discovery of Heaven life comes down to a chance “jump or don’t jump” before you get hit by a flaming golf ball doing 3000/mph. Even with all the planning, chaos still rules his existence (in my view) unless you believe in some form of preordained order – he was destined to get hit by, or just missed by a golf ball sized meteor.
From my reading on the philosophical constructs of predestination (or “fate” as most people like to call it), I have found it fairly unlikely that everything happens according to a plan. If you were to subscribe to this view (and many do), it is common to attribute an author to the plan. This often takes the form of a divine being. Consider this in your contemplation of chaos – does your god, who has a plan for everything, allow for luck, or randomness? If so, how? If everything is according to plan, then luck usually is just an illusion of a nifty wrinkle in the seeming path the plan is taking you down.
Regardless of religion, in defending fate, one might argue that the patterns which emerge when running chaos models could be construed as the echoes of the framework static plan all around us, which we simply cannot see from our vantage point in life. I find this the strongest support for the possibility of a preplanned reality, but it quickly loses credibility beyond the thin paper boundaries i have framed this particular question within.
Some people buy into a mixed model – wherein there are static cubes of predestination within which mousetraps and pingpong balls of chaos can determine which paths you take to get from one end of the box to the others. I tend to call this the “Epoch View” – in between preordained start and finish points, there is no controls – chaos rules as it would in an orderless system – the only garuntee are the start and end points.
How much does chaos run your ship then?