The title may hint that I argue in favor of predestination, but I’m prefacing this whole topic with the fact that I don’t like the idea of predestination quite fundamentally and believe that debating its existence and value are two separate conversation topics. I will consider both here, but I intend for this blog to largely revolve around the second. Simply for the belief of devil’s advocacy, my goal is to reason with the concept as atheistically as possible and justify both existence and value under a framework of pure rationale.

Also, a huge thank you to my friends for continually and constantly entertaining these wild thoughts - such discussions are not easy and my beliefs and lines of reasoning would not be so complete without their intellectual company and support.

As some people joke, we may not possess free will, but we possess free won’t. — David Brooks, Canadian-American author and political commentator

definition#

We’ll define predestination as the idea that our life and the lives of everyone around us has been predecided, whether by the natural laws of the universe or some primal, omnipotent, allknowing entity. I like to think of it more conversationally as walking on a path that has already been set for you. Of course, you will feel as though you are exploring this path for the first time, but that does not mean that the path is changing with each step you take. It’s merely being discovered.

the closed environment#

Now, in the broader context, the first main problem most have with predestination is about the agency of choice, and we’ll address it in a series of comments.

First, our choices are based on what we evaluate to be optimal and not optimal - the criteria for this is a cumulative summation of our emotions, our beliefs, some social measure of objectivity, but we can evaluate it on some scale that is subjective to us. Not all things are universally optimal, but each person has an optimal decision they can make (whether it is obvious or easy is another point).

All of the things a choice depends on can be categorized into the nature vs. nurture debate, and it feels intuitive that there is a level of interdependency for either of these sides. Under behavioral psychology, nature is characterized inherently by what is encouraged and rejected when we are in developmental stages, and nurture is characterized by experiences, which depend on each other.

The prevalent argument then becomes the fact that there are so many interdependent experiences that affect our own experiences, and everyone’s experiences is affected by everyone’s experience, if we know everyone’s experience as well as the general model then we can “solve” how our own experience will be processed. The way I like to think about it (which I’m not exactly sure makes sense) is that from a forward perspective, every random variable has been not “evaluated”, but from a backward perspective, there is only one output that the random variable could have been “evaluated” as.

There are lots of points to be made about random chance, especially within the context of understanding how the brain works and assuming true randomness under quantum mechanics. I personally don’t have enough of an understanding of quantum mechanics to evaluate this. However, if we take the cynical and pragmatic assumption that for every effect, there is a cause, in retrospect, every choice is always solved.

infinite predestination#

So, we’ve now established that free will doesn’t exist, quite pessimistically so. Again, we can think about the choices we make as a probability distribution on all possible events influenced by your predispositions, but ultimately, you will pick the state you are most predisposed to pick.

However, suppose your predispositions are completely different. In that case, your choices and end state will be completely different. And because our initial conditions as humans completely shape our predispositions, a constant set of initial conditions will evaluate a constant life throughout, accumulating to a consistent predestination. In a video game, this is like beginning with the same set seed in my head.

We know that if our initial condition are constant, we can assume that our predestination is consistent through our life and conscious perspective. However, do we know if our initial conditions are constant? It may be true that rather than one set of initial conditions, every set of initial conditions exists simultaneously. Our conscious mind can only process the path we’re currently on, the trail we’ve been set to follow. But a separate conscious mind may exist on a separate plane, following a trail that it believes is the only trail in existence.

I enjoy the theory of infinite predestination because it still implies some uniqueness to our live, a part of our life that we can claim though we do not control it. If I were to believe predestination, that is the theory I would believe.

does any of this really matter?#

And so, now we turn to the second part of this conversation. If we have no control over our own lives, and although there are infinitely many end states, we can only observe the end state we are on, what is the point of all of this? It seems foolish to argue that predestination is relevant if we as humans can’t comprehend its meaning from the dimensions of observability we’re restricted to.

And indeed, I felt very similarly, until I had a conversation with a friend who explained it to me quite simply. He justified that all of modern justice went out the window if predestination were taken to be true, and I couldn’t agree more. Predestination removes accountability, as now if you do something, you can just say that the guy up there made you do it, and predestination means that you get off scot free. In general, taking the blame for something is a crucial part of being human, and it feels impossible to believe that the canon events of human development can progress in the same way without guilt and shame.

q.e.d.#

So, in conclusion, life is predestined if it’s predestined, predestination is almost useless but unfortunately not actually, and I remain almost as clueless as I was when I started these conversations with my friends. However, I seem to have gained a deeper appreciation for the novelty of closed environments and “solved” scenarios. The idea of life being causal still captivates me, which makes a lot of sense in the context of my will to further AI’s development for predictive power. But although it seems plausible that life itself can be represented by some pithy but grandiose equation, it seems even more plausible that everything about random chance I asserted was justified by an incomplete understanding of what frame of reference truly implies.

Still, I find that it was extremely important for me to take this mental journey for the same reason it’s important to debate predestination in general. It truly is about accountability in this specific sense and in a general sense: we should all have the accountability to pursue depth and reject what we believe for the sake of discussion.

If you’d like to contribute to my ongoing moral-ethical dilemnna, don’t forget to reach out!

- Karthik