The Science of the Butterfly Effect

[Jonaitis]

I enjoy Vertasium, and I thought this video was relevant in relation to the concept of determinism, and more theologically, predeterminism. He explains that whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along. Does this prove that free-will is an illusion of our limited mental capacity of what will inevitably happen? If God is the first cause, then everything happening now is its necessary consequence. It seems science confirms this. What are your thoughts? Please watch the video before replying.

 

[Sabertooth]

If God is the first cause, then everything happening now is its necessary consequence. It seems science confirms this. What are your thoughts?

“For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven,
And do not return there,
But water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower
And bread to the eater,
So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it." Isaiah 55:10-11 NKJV

God never loses at Pachinko.

 

[public hermit]

Our experience of choosing what we want is sufficient for free will even if we could not have chosen otherwise. It would be very odd to complain to God that I was determined to choose what I wanted. And, pace the video, the fact that we can't predict the future, in spite of the fact that it is -in theory- predictable, only undergirds the validity of our experience-we choose what we want in spite of the fact our choices are predictable, even if they are only predictable for God.

 

[Jonaitis]

“For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven,
And do not return there,
But water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower
And bread to the eater,
So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it." Isaiah 55:10-11 NKJV

God never loses at Pachinko.

I love that verse!

 

[Jonaitis]

Our experience of choosing what we want is sufficient for free will even if we could not have chosen otherwise. It would be very odd to complain to God that I was determined to choose what I wanted. And, pace the video, the fact that we can't predict the future, in spite of the fact that it is -in theory- predictable, only undergirds the validity of our experience-we choose what we want in spite of the fact our choices are predictable, even if they are only predictable for God.

Interesting thoughts.

 

[public hermit]

Interesting thoughts.

If you can find a copy of A.J. Ayer's essay "Freedom and Necessity" it's worth the read. Years ago, it changed my whole perspective on free will.

 

[public hermit]

If you can find a copy of A.J. Ayer's essay "Freedom and Necessity" it's worth the read. Years ago, it changed my whole perspective on free will.

@Jonaitis

He argues, as Laplace, that if we knew all the details, humans would be predictable. He argues that one must be determined in order to make responsible/reasoned/free choices. Either my choice is random or it is not. If my choice is random, then it is arbitrary and not free. If my choice is not random, then it is caused. If it is caused, then it is determined. What causes my choices? Ultimately, it's my reasons for why I made my choice, and my reasons can be traced back to some other causal factor, which in turn....causal chain.

Ayer from my copy: "But now we must ask how it is that I come to make my choice. Either it is an accident that I choose to act as I do or it is not. If it is an accident, then it is merely a matter of chance that I did not choose otherwise; and if it is merely a matter of chance that I did not choose otherwise, it is surely irrational to hold me morally responsible for choosing as I did. But if it is not an accident that I choose to do one thing rather than another, then presumably there is some causal explanation of my choice: and in that case we are led back to determinism."

Here is how he ends the essay: "But what is meant by saying that the future course of events is already decided? If the implication is that some person has arranged it, then the proposition is false. (A.J. was an atheist so he is not going to assume a divine cause) But if all that is meant is that it is possible, in principle, to deduce it from a set of particular facts about the past, together with the appropriate general laws, then, even if this is true, it does not in the least entail that I am the helpless prisoner of fate. It does not even entail that my actions make no difference to the future: for they are causes as well as effects, so that if they were different their consequences would be different also. What it does entail is that my behavior can be predicted: but to say that my behavior can be predicted is not to say I am acting under constraint. It is indeed true that I cannot escape my destiny if this is taken to mean no more that I shall do what I shall do. But this is a tautology, just as it is a tautology that what is going to happen is going to happen. And such tautologies as these prove nothing whatsoever about the freedom of will."

 

[Brad D.]

I don't think He rolls the marbles out of the jar having preprogrammed everyone of them to go where He wills. And though appearing to go every which away they to a more astute eye can only go one way.

I think rather He is the God who whispers His will into each of His little marbles and rolls them out of the jar. And at the very same time He is rolling them out of the jar, He is the same God on the other end making adjustments accordingly depending on what they do. To us they seem as two different times. To Him they are seamless. The one caveat to that. A very big caveat. Is that no matter which way they go it will always work to His end. Eventually all the marbles are forced through the cross and the whole thing is resolved on the other side.

I think that is why He can say " They could not enter my rest (because of unbelief) although the works were finished from the foundation of the world." Hebrews 4:3 -

In other words "I rolled the marbles out. The works I gave them to walk in had been finished from the foundation of the world. I had whispered my will into each of my marbles. But they unwilling to believe chose not to walk it out, though everything was made ready and completed beforehand. And in not walking it out, here we are today with this new opportunity I bring. I have made adjustments because I love you. Will you enter my rest?

God is the only one who can write Genesis and Revelation at the very same time making all the calculations precisely in the chaos of free will. We can never so out free will Him to run past His omnipotence. No matter what we do it reaches His end, so therefore it has an appearance of control. I would rather call it divinely orchestrated love.

PS. This of course comes from a finite man giving an opinion about the workings of an infinite God so take it for what it's worth

 

[Bob Crowley]

While I accept Chaos theory (in its proper place), I'm a cynic about the Butterfly Effect on large systems.

I grew up near a local tidal creek, and there was a footbridge at the end of the street, which joined our street to another.

I'd often cross the bridge, and frequently stopped to look down at the water and the creek bed below. Now I would assume the water flow would have all the characteristics of chaos theory, with eddies, barriers, tides, fish (aquatic butteflies?) and of course the occasional flood, in which the water could move very fast.

Yet despite all this, on those rare occasions I go back there, the patterns in the sand, gravel and mud of the creek bed don't seem very different from what they were when I left that address nearly 45 years ago.

In that time there have been around 64,000 tides, probably 20 or more local floods and at least two major floods.

So despite all that chaos theory, something else works to hold it all in a sort of steady tension.

 

[Roymond]

If you can find a copy of A.J. Ayer's essay "Freedom and Necessity" it's worth the read. Years ago, it changed my whole perspective on free will.

I'm not impressed. In essence he just redefined what "free will" means and applied some a priori assumptions that lead to his conclusion, such as the dichotomy that something is either an inevitable result of prior factors or accident: he deliberately excludes the possibility of actual free will and by doing so arrives at determinism.

Determinism fails in the face of quantum mechanics which tells us that initial conditions cannot be specified exactly because cause and effect become fuzzy since there aren't any certainties, only probabilities. So if we could duplicate the initial conditions of some system perfectly and run them ahead multiple times no two runs would be identical. As with the images in the OP's video, there may be general patterns that will be followed but no predictable path.

Someone noted some years ago that the possibility of free will hides in the chaos of the quantum, which interestingly makes the question impossible to truly answer because no observer would be able to tell the difference between a free choice and the occurrence of an improbability. Others have pointed out that there is evidence saying that mind is not the same as the neural activity of the brain, in which case Ayer's conclusions are invalid because he is excluding the effect of mind (thus making the a priori assumption noted above). It may be that mind can direct that chaos of the quantum not just on the scale of fundamental particles but on the macro scale as well; after all, the macro is merely a summation of the micro.

So Ayers is just engaging in mental gymnastics, not actually addressing the issue.

 

[Roymond]

While I accept Chaos theory (in its proper place), I'm a cynic about the Butterfly Effect on large systems.

I grew up near a local tidal creek, and there was a footbridge at the end of the street, which joined our street to another.

I'd often cross the bridge, and frequently stopped to look down at the water and the creek bed below. Now I would assume the water flow would have all the characteristics of chaos theory, with eddies, barriers, tides, fish (aquatic butteflies?) and of course the occasional flood, in which the water could move very fast.

Yet despite all this, on those rare occasions I go back there, the patterns in the sand, gravel and mud of the creek bed don't seem very different from what they were when I left that address nearly 45 years ago.

In that time there have been around 64,000 tides, probably 20 or more local floods and at least two major floods.

So despite all that chaos theory, something else works to hold it all in a sort of steady tension.

"Don't seem very different" is the result of what the video called "attractors". But there's another factor: the ability of a system to deviate significantly from a rough pattern is proportional to the amount of energy in the system and the system's resistance to the forces driven by that energy. In the case of a tidal creek, the relationship between the energy of the tides and the material in which the creek flows makes a serious difference; if the creek bed is nothing but sand, the tidal energy will be able to make much larger changes over time that if the bed is a jumble of rock -- and on top of that there's the question of living creatures, as plants can bind the bed material and the surrounding material also in a way that resists change.

Though there's something else going on there: where there are footbridges and streets, the courses of creeks are subjected to outside forces aimed at keeping the creek's behavior within parameters acceptable to those maintaining the bridge and streets. The ultimate example of that would be the Los Angeles River, which in some parts looks like this--

but is more famously known for looking like this--

and even this--

So while I doubt your tidal creek has anything remotely like the constraints imposed on the Los Angeles River, it most likely has some that aren't terribly obvious; an example would be a tidal river eighty or so miles from where I live -- it looks totally natural but is in actuality constrained by the placing of varying quantities of river rock brought in from elsewhere and deposited on the banks.

 

[Roymond]

I enjoy Vertasium, and I thought this video was relevant in relation to the concept of determinism, and more theologically, predeterminism. He explains that whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along. Does this prove that free-will is an illusion of our limited mental capacity of what will inevitably happen? If God is the first cause, then everything happening now is its necessary consequence. It seems science confirms this. What are your thoughts? Please watch the video before replying.

I think there's a misunderstanding here. There's a video I watched of Neil DeGrasse Tyson with a couple of other scientists in the field talking about the origin of the universe, and one point that was made was that if the Big Bang could be run again, it would not produce the same universe we live in -- and in fact if the interstellar cloud of gases and dust that coalesced to make our solar system could be exactly duplicated and run forward again it wouldn't produce the same solar system we live in.

Would things be similar? Almost certainly, but that doesn't mean everything is determined, it just means that the laws of nature are consistent. But even more, it doesn't apply to creatures with mind, which is a point John Lennox of Oxford makes well. It's pretty evident that our minds are not just epiphenomena of our brains but that they interact with and through our brains, and that factor can't be ignored.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

A good book on the subject is
"Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain" by Michael S. Gazzaniga.

He debunks the theory of cause and effect in our decision-making process. He defends
free will and shows how our decisions are ours alone.

I read the book a long time ago and not sure I can even find it again.

 

[public hermit]

I'm not impressed. In essence he just redefined what "free will" means and applied some a priori assumptions that lead to his conclusion, such as the dichotomy that something is either an inevitable result of prior factors or accident: he deliberately excludes the possibility of actual free will and by doing so arrives at determinism.

Determinism fails in the face of quantum mechanics which tells us that initial conditions cannot be specified exactly because cause and effect become fuzzy since there aren't any certainties, only probabilities. So if we could duplicate the initial conditions of some system perfectly and run them ahead multiple times no two runs would be identical. As with the images in the OP's video, there may be general patterns that will be followed but no predictable path.

Someone noted some years ago that the possibility of free will hides in the chaos of the quantum, which interestingly makes the question impossible to truly answer because no observer would be able to tell the difference between a free choice and the occurrence of an improbability. Others have pointed out that there is evidence saying that mind is not the same as the neural activity of the brain, in which case Ayer's conclusions are invalid because he is excluding the effect of mind (thus making the a priori assumption noted above). It may be that mind can direct that chaos of the quantum not just on the scale of fundamental particles but on the macro scale as well; after all, the macro is merely a summation of the micro.

So Ayers is just engaging in mental gymnastics, not actually addressing the issue.

Yeah, he's not for everybody.

 

[Jonaitis]

I think there's a misunderstanding here. There's a video I watched of Neil DeGrasse Tyson with a couple of other scientists in the field talking about the origin of the universe, and one point that was made was that if the Big Bang could be run again, it would not produce the same universe we live in -- and in fact if the interstellar cloud of gases and dust that coalesced to make our solar system could be exactly duplicated and run forward again it wouldn't produce the same solar system we live in.

Would things be similar? Almost certainly, but that doesn't mean everything is determined, it just means that the laws of nature are consistent. But even more, it doesn't apply to creatures with mind, which is a point John Lennox of Oxford makes well. It's pretty evident that our minds are not just epiphenomena of our brains but that they interact with and through our brains, and that factor can't be ignored.

Did you watch the video?

 

[The Barbarian]

The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1

Random processes serve His will just as all others do.