Intentions vs. Determinism

Last March, Tim Urban shared a very interesting visual of how we think about all the Life Paths that were closed in the past but forget about all the paths that are ahead of us.

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The black lines weigh so much on our minds that it is difficult to look ahead. This is where intentions have a role to play. Just the mere idea that there are so many potential paths available to us is powerful.

The responses to the tweet are even more interesting, invoking a debate on determinism.

Britannica defines ‘Determinism’ as

“.. a situation in which a person makes a certain decision or performs a certain action, it is impossible that he or she could have made any other decision or performed any other action. In other words, it is never true that people could have decided or acted otherwise than they actually did”

Lot of determinism indicate there is only one line that could and will happen. With pre-determinism, it looks like:

o——————————————————o

However, determinism fails to recognize the quantum randomness underlying our perceived reality. The likelihood of determinism is equal to the likelihood of free will. But even free will, fails to recognize the underlying factors in decision making

Now, while there are infinite choices that free will brings in and a single choice that determinism brings in, either does not take away one more dimension: people sometimes worry if they made the “right” choice or the “best” life choice, when in reality there is an entire range of results with multiple “right” choices (and “wrong/bad” choices)

On the flip side, even for the paths chosen by the individuals, it was not free that led so far. As Kenneth Lacovara says “There are an infinite number of histories that we could have had, but we only get one.”

It is surprising to see how much belief there exists on pre-determinism.

I leave you with a quote from Søren Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”

Note: The original tweet was published on March 5, 2021. ‘Replies’ section is a knowledge bank and I chose the one section that I was able to resonate with.