Once again I'm thinking that the Universe is entirely deterministic; and it hurts my head. This happens every few months. The "evidence" is quite convincing; and yet the implications are terrible. How can "I" be thinking if every particle of the Universe moves like clockwork? There is nothing to do but follow the laws of physics.
Yet the argument of Pascal is that we might as well believe that there is no predetermined future. Because if there is then we cannot choose wrongly, as what we think we choose is no choice at all. Whereas to believe in fate if none exists, is to lose the chance to fully follow one's own path.
So conflict ensues. Logically I should believe that my future is not predetermined. But the best models of the Universe are deterministic. Not understanding quantum mechanics (no-one does) I thought that its probabilistic nature could save the day... but the wave function is deterministic, so are we still at square one?
Isn't it ironic that so many people work hard on deterministic theories? If they are right then did they discover anything at all? Does a ball discover gravity by rolling down a hill? No; there is no individual discovery, no invention, in a deterministic Universe. Everything unfolds. So why isn't everyone working on non-deterministic models of the Universe? Again, maybe quantum mechanics is such a model... I don't know.
My real conflict is not mathematical, it is emotional. I want to have free will because without it I am a machine; and machines are dead things. Yet I make choices which I cannot understand. I do things that I immediately regret. I make decisions and then repeatedly fail to act on them.
Take coffee for example. I decided to give up coffee years ago. I did give up and felt better for it. Since caffeine is addictive I am tempted from time to time to have just one cup of coffee. This often leads to several more cups. Then I get headaches from caffeine withdrawal and feel irritable.
Every time this happens, I say to myself "I will not do that again". Yet I do. I did it last week. Why? Why can't I enforce such a simple decision? Does caffeine subvert my free will, or are there "hidden variables" influencing me that I am not consciously aware of? Either way, I currently feel that the choice is both mine and not mine at the same time.
More and more it feels like my conscious self is not really as "in control" as I would like to think. As experiments have shown, many of our actions are driven by the sub-conscious, with the conscious just making up a plan after the event to explain to us why we did what we did. Does that mean the conscious is just too busy to sort everything out... and the sub-conscious falls easily to our animal addictions in the interim? Or does it mean that the conscious is just froth... sitting on the surface, for show.
A philosopher once told me that I should be happy to live in a deterministic Universe, because the alternative is a random one. In a random Universe there is no free will either. It is hard to argue against that without resort to an unknown "something" from somewhere magic. But it still doesn't help me.
There was an amusing article in the "New Scientist" magazine a while back. It wasn't meant to be amusing, I think. But it carefully explained why the Universe was most probably deterministic and then went on to examine various ways in which humans could cope emotionally with the implications. What? If the future is predetermined then we don't have any choice about whether we cope or not. There is no strategy. And that is the rub for me. If my life starts going down-hill then I have to be able to hope that I can turn things around.
If the Universe is deterministic then I had to write this, as you had to read it, as your opinion was predetermined and as I just can't handle it.