Soldato
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I offer a prayer to the Gods of Fate and Chance from time to time but they are fickle and don't often listen.
Fate/Destiny and luck
- Thread starter digitalwolf
- Start date
I offer a prayer to the Gods of Fate and Chance from time to time but they are fickle and don't often listen.
What we experience is simply a sequence of events unfolding.
When a ball is pushed off a cliff, is it fate that it will hit the bits of the cliff it does on the way down? No... its simple physics.
When you are run over by a bus, was it fate? No a sequence of events happened in the run up to the accident that meant you missed the bus or the bus driver missed you etc.
Our reality is a large collection (almost infinate in fact) of possible variables, each able to have an effect on others.
Statistically speaking, some people will always appear more lucky than others, however the way in which some people approach their every day decision making could also be construed as to "making your own luck".
Time we have not yet experienced, does not yet exist. It's as simple as that. Therefore it is impossible that the way in which the variables around us unfold can be predetermined, therefore, I do not believe in fate no.
Unless of course this is the matrix
When a ball is pushed off a cliff, is it fate that it will hit the bits of the cliff it does on the way down? No... its simple physics.
When you are run over by a bus, was it fate? No a sequence of events happened in the run up to the accident that meant you missed the bus or the bus driver missed you etc.
Our reality is a large collection (almost infinate in fact) of possible variables, each able to have an effect on others.
Statistically speaking, some people will always appear more lucky than others, however the way in which some people approach their every day decision making could also be construed as to "making your own luck".
Time we have not yet experienced, does not yet exist. It's as simple as that. Therefore it is impossible that the way in which the variables around us unfold can be predetermined, therefore, I do not believe in fate no.
Unless of course this is the matrix
Soldato
- Joined
- 8 Feb 2009
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- Sheffield
I just roll, baby. Anything comes my way? I roll right over it. Yeah.
Honestly, I don't know. And 'truthfully', nobody actually knows either. We just go with what makes sense to us. It is important, though, that we allow ourselves to be open to being wrong and not so stubborn/rigid that we can't move past that and accept our wrongness.
That having been said, as of late I tend to go with the "you make your own destiny" in that you shape and create your world by taking and not taking opportunities. But I could very well be wrong, and I am open to that.
That having been said, as of late I tend to go with the "you make your own destiny" in that you shape and create your world by taking and not taking opportunities. But I could very well be wrong, and I am open to that.
Well the problem is that deciding that the concept of fate is probably true and that an intelligent mind has effectively written how every single one of the variables we experience will fold out for eternity is unprovable. So if I accept that it might be true, what is the point in even trying to prove that it is not? I can never prove it is, therefore I can never prove it is not.
It cannot be proven either way, so very much in the same way as I consider God, I consider the concept of fate to be unprovable and also unlikely, based on the evidence I see around me.
If I said I was "open" to the idea then I would be lying, what I would say though is that, at the end of it all, if I found myself to be wrong, found myself talking to an infinate God while they predetermined the course of reality for all time, it wouldn't take me by suprise, just feed the cynic in me
I think it's more complicated than just saying fate doesn't exist - although if there is 'fate' there's no reason for any individual or being to be controlling it.
What manic_man said about everything being a series of events is definitely plausible. It depends completely on how you interpret the probability aspect of quantum mechanics though.
Disclaimer: This may be a complete mis-application of a principle but it's worth thinking about, however incredibly badly I can explain it. I know very little about physics
As the theory goes (general relativity when it boils down to it), just by moving relative to another object, you experience time differently to that object. You exist in the same 'time frame' as the other object did at a different moment in time. As you get further away from the object the effect is accentuated so that even moving at a low speed you exist at a time years in the past or future of the object. [Of course you never actually see the object in that state, as the light still has to travel the millions of light years to reach you.]
Extending this to the idea of fate, in a simplistic view someone just walking at a gentle pace on a distant planet has experienced every time frame of our entire lives and far beyond, as we have theirs. By jumping to conclusions
, this means that everything that has ever happened and will ever happen exists all the time, and there's nothing that's not predetermined.
There's a lot of big leaps in there which aren't all completely sound though, so I'm not saying that's the way it is... heh.
My rather vague information is from reading The Fabric of the Cosmos a couple of years ago and I don't have my copy around
What manic_man said about everything being a series of events is definitely plausible. It depends completely on how you interpret the probability aspect of quantum mechanics though.
Disclaimer: This may be a complete mis-application of a principle but it's worth thinking about, however incredibly badly I can explain it. I know very little about physics
As the theory goes (general relativity when it boils down to it), just by moving relative to another object, you experience time differently to that object. You exist in the same 'time frame' as the other object did at a different moment in time. As you get further away from the object the effect is accentuated so that even moving at a low speed you exist at a time years in the past or future of the object. [Of course you never actually see the object in that state, as the light still has to travel the millions of light years to reach you.]
Extending this to the idea of fate, in a simplistic view someone just walking at a gentle pace on a distant planet has experienced every time frame of our entire lives and far beyond, as we have theirs. By jumping to conclusions
, this means that everything that has ever happened and will ever happen exists all the time, and there's nothing that's not predetermined.There's a lot of big leaps in there which aren't all completely sound though, so I'm not saying that's the way it is... heh.
My rather vague information is from reading The Fabric of the Cosmos a couple of years ago and I don't have my copy around
