Fate vs. Free Will

[shams]

That Guy said:
ok back to more crazy stuff.

So if the universe was strictly newtonian (i.e. we can describe everything in terms of forces, velocities, and positions), then could theoretically create a computer to model all the movements of all the bits of *stuff* ( i say stuff because things like photons and crap don't have *mass* and thus cannot be matter or something like that) out there. Also assuming that our thinking process is nothing more than simply a matter of *stuff* going back and forth in our brains, then we could mathematically prove that fate is what exists.

Let me rephrase, if we track every single thing out there in the universe, then we could also predict where everything would be in the future, taking into consideration all we know about physics.


Problem:

The universe is not strictly newtonian and we have stuff like quanta to worry about. Quantum mechanics deals with randomness and probabilities. With everything explained using quanta, then everything really is just random, disproving fate (oddly, though, not *proving* free will)

Even weirder:

Providing that string theory will lead us to a Grand Unified Theory, we can explain everything in strings and map out everything in the universe again, and thus we come back to fate.

Crazy, huh?

This is pretty much what I am saying.

Firstly, there is a certain amount of randomness present in everything. The quantum states thing doesn't really apply to macro situations - it just means you can never predict the exact value of an analog signal/value. This is why computers NEED to use digital signals/processing, and why they don't align with the way that our minds work very well.

Apart from the intrinsic "recursiveness" of the situation (i.e. how can you build a computer to model everything, when it would also need to model itself??), there are practical problems to overcome:

1/ Observation: How do we observe the state/value of everything, when everything we see is subjective?

2/ Enough data: When do we have enough data to build a model? How many inputs are enough? Potentially even missing one of them, would be enough to break the simulation.

...

Even though (IMO) there is no free will (i.e. all our decisions are determined by what is in our heads, plus inputs, etc..) - this doesn't ever mean that our decisions can be predicted (by any means possible).

So even though fate decides everything - no one can actually determine what this fate is before it occurs.

(you could argue that this IS free will anyway - but that is more a point of definition than anything else)

This discussion only holds from a philosophical point of view - rather than from a practical/engineering point of view. Its hard enough modelling (perrfectly) a simple device (such as the driving of a car on a road) on a computer - so we are a long, long way away from considering modelling the (real) behaviour of a person.