Against Determinism — in physics and society.

“God does not play dice” Einstein claimed. But he was wrong. The 2022 Nobel prize was a defeater against local realism and significant evidence in favor of quantum mechanics and indeterminacy.

Yet deterministic thinking remains, and is damaging to our societies and communities. Here’s why it’s wrong, and what to do to combat it.

Einstein’s conception of God was Spinoza’s, that is, ‘God’ is the sum of all natural laws in a self-existent, self-maintaining, uncaused universe. The idea that the universe was governed by laws, rather than by capricious actions of gods, emerged from Christianity, but it seems the pendulum swung too far, at least in Spinoza and Einstein’s paradigm.

Non-deterministic Themes in Science

Determinism, the idea that the current state of the universe can be used to calculate the exact future state of the universe, is popular in some circles. Although it was believed by various ancients, it became popular in the West only in early scientific thinking.

Newton’s mechanistic universe started the modern popularisation. Laplace described a “demon”, a hypothetical super-intelligent being who could determine the entire past and future from the location and velocity of all the particles in the present state of the universe.

Laplace’s demon ran into some troubles though.

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle stops Laplace’s demon from calculating precisely. Genuinely random processes such as radioactive decay, and subatomic particle decay (neutron is best documented) stop him from calculating at all.

And ‘random quantum vacuum state fluctuations’ strike at the heart of a deterministic universe.

Then there’s the Three Body Problem, which seems to have no analytic solution. Not one that we’ve found in a few hundred years of trying, anyway.

Chaos theory says that chaotic processes are deterministic, but appear to be non-deterministic. But very small changes in initial conditions (even within the Heisenberg’s uncertainty limit?) can have large changes in outcomes. A chaotic process that is intersected by a random process (eg radioactive decay) becomes truly random.

Complex sociological systems similarly feature very small perturbations leading to very large differences in outcomes. A single bullet began WW1. A single “boo” led to the downfall of Ceausescu in Romania in 1989. The conditions were ripe for it in the months leading up, but it still took one person light the proverbial blue touch paper.

What causes an individual to spark chaos?

There are numerous pseudo-random processes in nature. DNA mutations, mammalian conception, and weather systems, to name a few. Random processes in physics adds an additional layer of unpredictability to these butterfly wings of chaos. Therefore these ‘pseudo-random’ processes can become not just unpredictable, but genuinely random.

Physics proves beyond reasonable doubt the Universe is not deterministic, even before we consider interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, which opens a whole new vista of indeterminacy.

The future is not fixed.

Determinism and free will

Intentionality emerges from life. This remains a mystery, along with the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. “Emergence” is a tricky concept. Detractors describe it as akin to “magic”. Maybe that’s a fair critique.

I prefer to think of “Emergence” as a label for a process we have not yet understood; an admission of a gap in our paradigm.

Those labouring with a mechanistic deterministic view of the Universe such as Sam Harris deny any free will. Harris’s 2012 book on this topic has a cover graphic of puppet strings. He builds the theme that we are totally controlled by these strings, biochemical processes, society and genetics.

Much of the book relies on a series of now-debunked experiments conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s. In a barely coherent tweet from 2019, Harris expresses regret. Really?

“Always” regretted? Since when, a Planck-second after the book was published? But Libet was central in Harris’s thinking for decades.

And “makes no sense” is entirely subjective depending on your world view or paradigms. Ask Kuhn. Things that make no sense, such as our feelings and evidence for free will, are opportunities to revise your worldview, not double down on an evidence-filtering process.

Libet’s experiments were based on instantaneous choices in a meaningless game to choose left or right. Hardly possible to extrapolate to decisions about marriage or career, yet many did. I argued this when Libet first published in the 1980s and am now on the right side of history.

Ironically at the end of Free Will, Harris says we can, with effort, reach up and tug at those puppet strings. Yep Sam, that’s free will in action. Ask any psychologist (I’ve asked a few). Every act is a choice. Acts lead to habits. Habits lead to Character. Character leads to Destiny. That’s the entirety of the psychology and self-help industries, that Sam’s ideas would say is ineffective.

So the first and most damaging impact of deterministic thinking is the denial of individual agency. Poorer life outcomes and defeatism set in, as people are mis-led to believe somehow everything is pre-determined anyway.

Your future is not fixed. Your decisions matter. Your decisions will change your future you.

Determinism in Society

In Isaac Azimov’s “Foundation” trilogy, lead protagonist Hari Seldon invents ‘psychohistory’ which deterministically and probabilistically forecasts the future of the Galactic Empire. Like Laplace’s demon, he could calculate the future.

Parallels exist with Marxist historicism, where inevitable impersonal forces will lead to the overthrow of capitalism. But none of Marx’s prophecies came true. Maybe they were self-defeating. In the face of various threats, rampant 1850s capitalism reformed itself to liberal democracy, and continues to self-critique.

Karl Popper writes a devastating refutation to Marx not only on the failure of the prophecy, but a failure to even consider that the caricature of capitalism on which Marx based his prophecy would be interested in its own preservation.

Marx had no conception that the rich would have any sense of vocation for the betterment of humanity, nor any altruism nor sense of fair play. How wrong Marx was. How few factors he considered in his narrow world view.

Contrary to Marx’s fixed science, Henry Ford paid his workers much more than necessary so they could buy one of the cars they were making. What a great way to share wealth.

Yet Marx’s ‘fact’ that forces of captial were ‘deterministic’ and ‘scientific’ and ‘inevitable’ led to the assertion that the only way capitalism could be reformed was through violence. This led to millions of deaths.

Bad philosophy has bad social consequences. Today, we have a system that allows us to replace our leaders without bloodshed. That’s very unusual.

We can be proactive, take initiatives, make changes, roll them back, improve them and roll them out.

Nothing is inevitable. There are no scientific or physical laws that prevent us from improving our societies. Success is not guaranteed, neither is failure. But human nature must never be given up on.

The future of our society depends on us building the right culture. We can change it.

Fighting back

What can an individual do?

As they say in the flight safety briefing, please fit your own mask before helping others. That is, firstly get your own head in order.

The universe is not deterministic. You can today start habits that will improve at least your part of it. Encourage people around you. Build your family and career with care and commitment.

Choose your actions carefully. Use #NewMatrixEpistemology to understand how your worldview may be faulty, and use #TrinityOfEthics in every decision.

That way you will not be defeatist, nor fanatical, but make good positive progress for everyone.

Next post on this theme will be the implications of non-deterministic causation on cosmology.