What is determinism?
In: 1
Think about a Rube Goldberg machine. Once set into motion, if everything is set up properly, anyone watching it unfold will be surprised by all the things that end up happening as a result … but there’s no other outcome possible.
Determinism says that the universe is basically like this down to the very fabric of existence. Everything was set in motion at some point, and from that moment on, everything that happens is entirely determined by the state of things a fraction of a moment before.
Imagine taking a two full snapshots of the exact state of the entire universe a very short time apart. Reduce that time window down to the smallest amount it can physically be where the two snapshots are still not identical.
Determinism asks: Is the later snapshot an inevitable result of the first?
If the answer is yes, that there’s no way to proceed from the first in any other way than the second, and the same is true for any two such snapshots, then all of existence is set and can only unfold along that one possible path.
If the answer is no, then a determinist viewpoint would raise the following question: What are the different possible snapshots that could have arisen from the first after that tiny moment? What accounts for the differences? Clearly these two snapshots taken so close together are related *somehow*, you can’t just have *any* state of the universe arise from *any* other state, so there are some constraints. What are they?
If determinism is wrong, there has to be some source of randomness that is present between at least some of these snapshots. Either that, or perhaps randomness manifests not between two almost impossibly close snapshots, but only over some larger window that isn’t present at some finer granularity. But how can something that doesn’t exist between any two close moments arise only after many of those moments unfold?
Latest Answers