From: Yakwax2@aol.com
Date: Fri Aug 01 1997 - 11:19:28 MDT
Anton Sherwood wrote:
> : If you wanted to see a universe where I didn't write this post, you
would
> : have to change a few things:
> :
> : -- Me wanting to send the post - All that behavioural stuff in my brain
> : that made me want to reply to your post, which would mean...
> [... a chain back to the Big Bang ...]
>
> Naah. You could be prevented by
> -- a slip of the fingers that caused you to miss the post to which you're
> responding;
So now we're changing my behaviour so that at that moment I have a lapse of
concentration..... [all the way back to the beginning of time]
> -- a phone call, triggered by an association that might or might not be
> made in someone else's mind;
Now you're changing someone else's behaviour.... [all the way back to the
beginning of time]
> -- an urgent call of nature, contingent on how a bit of food settled
> in your guts;
Now your changing the food I ate (and so my behaviour) or the chemical
properties of the food I ate... [all the way back to the beginning of time]
> -- a stab of your cat's claws;
Now you're resurrecting my cat [shame on you]
> any of which could delay your posting long enough to forget what you were
> thinking about.
The thing is they didn't happen and for any of them to happen you're changing
more than one thing, you're changing everything... everything is a
consequence of everything that happened before it. There's no escape!!
For instance: Let's say we flip a coin, there's a 50% possibility of heads
right!? Possibility is something we have made to explain complex systems,
which we don't understand, can't observe or can't measure. In reality that
coin is heads was heads and will always be heads. 50,000 years ago that
particular coin, in that place, at that time, in my hand was going to be
heads. If we knew everything about that coin we would know that it was going
to be heads. Of course, we can't predict the future because we can't know
the position of everything.
--Wax
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