The Snacking Sage

Flip a coin. Which way will it land? Nobody really knows. So Instead, We Decide that it’s up to ‘chance’. Truth Be told, Chance is the ‘God’ of science. But before that, It deals solely in absolutes. Something either is, or it isn’t. And things that can’t be squeezed into that mindset are called paradoxes. Sneaky little things. To Quote Fuzzy Thinking’s opening:

One Day I learned that science was not true. I do not recall the day but I recall the moment. The God of the Twentieth Century was no longer god. There was a mistake and everyone in science seemed to make it. they said that all things were true or false. They were not always sure which things were true and which things were false. But they were sure that all the things were either true or false.-bart kosko, fuzzy thinking.

Have you ever heard of the uncertainty principle? In essence scientists decided it was too hard to figure out how particles behaved, in essence throwing in the towel and instead decided that it was all random, Chaotic, and couldn’t be understood by the rational mind. A cop-out. I really enjoy this Paper on it. The first few pages, anyway. I wouldn’t bother with the rest. Here is the first paragraph:

Very few scientific principles had greater impact on humanity than Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle [1] even though the essence of the principle itself has always been highly controversial.The origin of the uncertainty principle is very simple: we cannot imagine and conduct sufficiently accurate and non-invading experiments that would expose the reason for the non-deterministic behaviour of sub-atomic particles such as electrons. Heisenberg argued, that since the experimental study with any material apparatus has proven impossible, we do not need to create any theory, simply because we would never be able to verify it experimentally.Instead, for practical reasons, he proposed to accept certain aspects of the sub-atomic reality as unknown and unexplorable. His uncertainty principle intelligently defined bounds of uncertainty and enabled us to use statistics as a way to quantify the sub-atomic processes. Heisenberg’s approach turned out to be very practical and enabled the unprecedented development of material technology to take place. This in turn reinforced the belief in the correctness of the uncertainty principle. As a result, the uncertainty principle itself seems to enjoy the status of the Law of Nature and is no longer questioned.

Now, Before I get too off track, I’m not interested in discussing atoms and Electrons and chaos theory and all the rest of it. I’m just looking at the way we approaches reality in general these days.

So take a Coin. In purely mathematical terms, It will always have a 50% chance of landing on either heads or tails. But say you have already had 2 heads? How about then? After all, universe is always seeking balance, Homeostasis, equilibrium, call it what you will. All systems strive for balance. That’s why atoms swap electrons in chemical reactions. To become stable. Balanced.

And it’s the same here. That’s why when you toss a coin 10,000 times you end up with a value of 0.5 for tails. But what does that have to do with chance? that’s just the universal truth of balance. I guess what I’m trying to say is that probability isn’t real. As Einstein Famously said: ‘God doesn’t play dice.’

Who said this was random? Isn’t there variables to discover? How many rotations the coin do? How much force are you using to flick it? And if you can find these out, suddenly, chance doesn’t exist anymore. I’m sure the more mathematically inclined among you could figure it out.

In science, they call it probablility.I love the way bart explains how he came to be disillusioned. He talks about an old film running on reverse, Watching apples fly upwards and reattaching themselves to the tree, among other things. In reverse, it was all so plainly Obvious. After all,. If you account for all the variables, measure them, chance disappears. Take an apple tree. study it. And then you can know for certain which ones will fall.

As einsten said, God simply doesn’t play dice. Chance is but a name for a law not yet understood.

Thanks for reading.