Here’s why determinism doesn’t bother me. I hope I get it across.
Deterministic systems still have to be simulated to find out what happens. Take cellular automata, such as Conway’s Game of Life or Wolfram’s Rule 110, . The result of all future steps is determined by the initial state, but we can’t practically “skip ahead” because of what Wolfram calls ‘computational irreducibility’: despite the simplicity of the underlying program, there’s no way to reduce the output to a calculation that’s much cheaper than just simulating the whole thing. Same with a mathematical structure like the Mandelbrot Set: its appearance is completely determined by the function, and yet we couldn’t predict what we’d see until we computed it. In fact all math is like this.
What I’m getting at is that all mathematical truths are predetermined, and yet I doubt this gives you a sense that being a mathematician is pointless, because obviously these truths have to be discovered. As with the universe: the future is determined, and yet we, or even a hypothetical outsider with a massive computer, have to discover it.
Our position is better than that, though: we’re not just looking at the structure of the universe from the outside, we’re within it. We’re part of what determines the future: it’s impossible to calculate everything that happens in the future without calculating everything we humans do. The universe is determined by the process, and the process is us. Hence, our choices determine the future.
Here’s why determinism doesn’t bother me. I hope I get it across.
Deterministic systems still have to be simulated to find out what happens. Take cellular automata, such as Conway’s Game of Life or Wolfram’s Rule 110, . The result of all future steps is determined by the initial state, but we can’t practically “skip ahead” because of what Wolfram calls ‘computational irreducibility’: despite the simplicity of the underlying program, there’s no way to reduce the output to a calculation that’s much cheaper than just simulating the whole thing. Same with a mathematical structure like the Mandelbrot Set: its appearance is completely determined by the function, and yet we couldn’t predict what we’d see until we computed it. In fact all math is like this.
What I’m getting at is that all mathematical truths are predetermined, and yet I doubt this gives you a sense that being a mathematician is pointless, because obviously these truths have to be discovered. As with the universe: the future is determined, and yet we, or even a hypothetical outsider with a massive computer, have to discover it.
Our position is better than that, though: we’re not just looking at the structure of the universe from the outside, we’re within it. We’re part of what determines the future: it’s impossible to calculate everything that happens in the future without calculating everything we humans do. The universe is determined by the process, and the process is us. Hence, our choices determine the future.