The outcome of the simulation cannot be predicted without running it
One of my favorite philosophical brain busters is this question: Do I have free will?
Do I get to choose my path in life? Or am I mechanically acting out a logical procession of events, moment-by-moment, each instant linked to the previous one in an unavoidable cause-and-effect relationship?
This question is especially difficult to answer because the term “free will” is a little murky. Sometimes I take it from the flip side: Do we live in a deterministic universe?
A deterministic universe is one where the outcome is already ‘determined’ by the fabric of the universe. A human in a deterministic universe cannot alter its path. Even if it thinks it is making a choice, in fact, that choice is merely an illusion and only one outcome was ever going to happen.
Perhaps the notion that our lives “are already determined” is too weird, scary, and nihilistic to fully consider. Our brains “won’t go there” because they are so certain they are in control, and a pre-determined outcome is flatly impossible.
Perhaps our brains won’t go there because the word determinism is misleading. It implies that the events of the universe can be determined in advance of actually happening. But any programmer will tell you that certain simulations (or universes) cannot have their outcomes guessed until you run them and let them play out. The result of computer code, executed like clockwork, is often too complex to be determined by the programmer in advance, nor by any agent within the program during execution.
So perhaps when pondering determinism, we should use a more precise word. I’m not actually curious if some observer has determined what will happen in my life. I’m curious if life is playing out like clockwork in a logical procession of events since the creation of the universe. I want to know if the universe is alterable or not. Something that cannot be altered is “immutable”, so I’ve started using that word instead of “deterministic”. No breakthroughs yet, but there’s a noticeable increase in clarity.
It also depends on whether we are all singular pieces of programs running our own code on a platform,
or if we ARE the platform,
or if we are the Programmer,
or if we are all, super-imposed on each other, having found a way as Programmer to live as Programmer, the platform and the code, running the simulation to be able to experience all facets at the same time at different levels of awareness.
And whether you believe belief itself has anything to do with it on any level - or observation for that matter… because the things we look at change, simply because we looked at it, as science will tell us. The question is, how did it change?
We don’t know how to intentionally create into the past, but what if observation does that? And what if when it changes the past, for that moment it becomes our present while we were there, and so erases the memory of whatever past was before it? Which would explain why we wouldn’t remember it having happened any other way.
But then we’d be in a constant creation loop anytime we looked at whether we had anything to do with whether we have free will or not. Perhaps it oscillates due to our observations. Or singular/collective belief. Or mood…
