Monday, October 8, 2007

What tomorrow will bring

"You never know what tomorrow will bring"

I think we've all heard that one before. The quote is used to inspire hope, maybe even spark initiative in one's life. Before I go knee deep into it though I'd like to add a little perspective. Recently I've been reading a few things on string theory and I'm about half way through Stephen Hawking's book "A Brief History of Time". One of the sections mentions that if we knew the state of the universe during a given time period (meaning if we could get a snapshot of the universe at some point) we could figure out a formula that could describe everything in our universe at any time.
The abstraction doesn't seem that far fetched if you think about it. We can always start with a simple system with a few variables, and the more information we have about that system, the more we can deduce the value of each variable. What I find interesting is if the abstraction is correct, than there is a method to all this madness (life in general).
So its quite possible that our lives are quite predestined. Our every action, thought and movements are just a few variables neatly placed in the fabric of space-time. What keeps the future unknown to us is our lack of understanding. I doubt we'll ever come close to being able to fathom such a formula and it seems our future will alway be a mystery. Which really leads me to my next point.
This theory of being able to predict every outcome of our reality with a single formula lends itself to the conclusion that we are only free after we die. So long as we live in human bodies and remain within the plain of this existence, abiding by our set of mathematical rules and physical limitations we are submitting to some sort of a master formula. But after death, we could quite possibly be in an existence where we are no longer bound by the rules of the universe, we are no longer governed by the physical laws that hinder us from seeing beyond our so called reality. So honestly, even if we were to find such a formula would it change anything?
They say the only philosophical question of any importance is the question of whether one should commit suicide. Does knowing your every move, your every thought render your life pointless? Maybe free will has always been a myth. I honestly believe math can explain everything in our world, humans are no exception. Our concepts of personality, love, hate, what is good and evil, our 'isms' our traits, these can all be explained by some finely tuned calculation, yet these are the very same things we use to express our 'free will'. They say God has a plan for everyone, maybe he just wrote a formula and put everything on auto-pilot?

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