Warning! Posts are long! Only proceed if you've nothing better to do.
@vulcanlogician
Since this is definitely an new line of conversation, I have started this new thread separate from our current conversation. Our touching upon Free Will has had me thinking about it. As a consequence, I have formed a rough outline concerning my thoughts regarding the deterministic status of the universe and the capacity for human beings to exercise Free Will. Here is my speculation based on my very limited understand of cosmology and human behavior. I may use terms considered technical in a non-technical or non-standard usage. Hopefully context will supply sufficient meaning of my intent. This is a two-part post.
I do not see the cosmos as being fully deterministic, that all events are caused by and are the result of all previous events such that, once started, this chain of events will continue unaltered into the future resulting in only one possible future, the causal chain essentially making all future events preordained and inevitable. I speculate that in large systems of particles, there is an element of randomness injected into this process of cause and effect. This property of randomness means that just prior to each present moment, there is a slight possibility of variation in what may occur when the moment becomes now. If there is very slight variable outcome in the future second, the farther one looks into the future, the variability becomes cumulative and stronger the farther we project into the future from the present. The result then is that the distant future is not fixed. The present is determined strictly by the sum of all past events, and the immediate future is so strongly influence or determined by present conditions that any variability will be, or seem imperceptible. However, I speculate that there is some very small component of randomness exerting its influence. This, to me, indicates that if we were able to reset the cosmos to some prior condition, each restart from those initial conditions would exhibit some amount of drift from the first observed course or chain of cause and effect such that no two courses of observed events from the same initial conditions would be exactly the same over time, the drift becoming more apparent the longer time elapses from initial conditions. If everything is exactly the same, quantum states (whatever that is, exactly, or electron spins, etc) and there is no randomness or probability involved, then perhaps the cosmos is fully deterministic and the future is set, I don't think this is the case.
Why do I imagine this? If one considers the Big Bang, or if you prefer, the expansion of cosmos from a uniform, dense, high energy state, as this energy began to cool during expansion, matter began to precipitate out of this energy in a non-uniform way, and resulting matter began to interact in a random series of collisions, which eventually lead to the random accumulation of matter into the celestial bodies of the cosmos. What would happen if we were able to restart the Big Bang from its initial conditions? I contend that during the cooling expansion and the resulting clumping together of matter, the cosmos would not clump in exactly the same way. The resulting pattern of galaxies, stars, planets, etc would be different each time we set off the Big Bang due to the randomness in how cooling would occur and particles would interact and accumulate.
All this matter/energy, in constant motion and random interaction leads me to believe that any future state of the cosmos is not set, just the present and past. What if we wind back to only half the estimated age of the expansion? How different might the the present of that reset cosmos be to our current present? Exactly the same? Very similar, only slightly different? Different enough that life never materialized?
Is there an element of randomness in the continual change of the cosmos? Perhaps it has already been established or proven, I have no idea. Love to hear your thoughts though.
