Chapter 12         Part B 

Under the quantum worldview, events in reality cannot be pictured as coming in predetermined connected sequences of cause and effect, but they aren’t random either. All events can now be seen as governed by rules of probability. Which objects in reality will collide or jump to other energy levels at any given nanosecond can be described only by laws of probability. 

Normally what we see at our level of reality is the average of quintillions of tiny events. Most of the time, these events are the high probability ones, and they fit together to create the classical, Newtonian pictures and patterns that we have seen over and over and have come to expect of everyday life.

  asternut butterfly beside a strange attractor graph

But quantum theory leaves open the possibility that once in a while, when enough unusual events at the atomic level coincide, they cause some observable event at our level – a hurricane, a supernova, a tornado, an avalanche, a failed bolt in one aileron of an airplane, or a sillytumble. None of these events is "uncaused". They all result from chains of other events. Our problem is that in principle we can't predict these outcomes in advance because we can't calculate the sums of all of the influencing links in the causal chain. 

And it's not just that there are too many factors involved. Even simple systems with only two or three objects and forces acting in them defy our best computer models. The possible ways in which the system may turn out depend on initial conditions of all parts of the system, and miniscule changes, some of them quantum changes, in any of these parts at any time during the unfolding can lead to any one of zillions of very different outcomes. The possibilities rapidly become, in practical terms, mathematically incalculable. 

 Hurricane Dennis approaching Pensacola, Florida

We can only say after the hurricane has passed that some of the predictors that we observed began to indicate near-certainty levels of the hurricane's making landfall about five days before the hurricane hit. Then, the evolving odds that it was going to hit a specific site, for example, Pensacola, began to approach 60% on Friday or 95 or 99% by Sunday. Tiny jumps by particles, sometimes even sub-atomic ones (the famous "Butterfly Effect"), way back in the hurricane's genesis off the coast of Africa, favored the likelihood of one outcome over all of the other possible outcomes. (3.) 

Gradually, a winning outcome-candidate emerges. But which candidate outcome that will be is not just unknown; in advance, it is unknowable. Unlike the Newtonian/Enlightenment worldview, the worldview of the New Physics is telling us that the outcomes in real life sequences of events are, in principle, unpredictable, in the exact sense of that word.

The key thing to see under this worldview is that, though this worldview, under its own terms, can't be proven true or false, it is looking more and more likely, and it has opened the further possibility that we can influence probabilities by our skillfully executed physical actions in the real world. The odds that the flap of a butterfly's wing will cause a hurricane are extremely remote. The odds that I will not get hit by a rock slide if I hear a roaring and duck beneath an overhanging shelf of basalt are much better. The odds that a field in April, left alone, will be full of sweet corn ripening by September are extremely remote. The odds that the same field will contain harvestable corn plants in large numbers if I seed it with corn now in April, and fence and water and weed it for the next five months, are much higher.

     planaria swimming away from a flashlight 

     

The programming in planaria enables them to swim to the side of the petri dish out of the direct light. To use their "intelligence", in other words, to alter the odds surrounding the possible outcomes associated with their interaction with incoming beams of light. How much more empowering is human programming? This is a view of ourselves that deeply resonates with our daily view of the daily actions of our daily selves. 

We are, within certain human, physical limits, free. We can take measures and do actions that alter the odds of some of the possible future's events happening. I may not be able to stop the hurricane, but I can fund research and then listen to the predictions of the experts on t.v., and then get out of the way. I can board up the windows on my home. I can choose to do so if I think there's time. The trees have much less choice; the beaches, none at all. 

We work, via our choices and actions, to increase the odds of our encountering events that will support our survival, health, and comfort, and to decrease the odds of our becoming enmeshed in the events that would lead us to pain and death. This is the nature of human freedom.

Scrooge on his own grave begs for a chance 
to go back to life and mend his ways

     

      (Alistair Sim in "A Christmas Carol", 1951) 

We gain a better understanding of how profoundly different this world view is when we contrast it with the old Newtonian one. Philosophers who understood the old Newtonian one believed absolutely that laws like Newton's laws of motion would eventually explain phenomena in the realms of Physics, then Chemistry, then Biology, Psychology, and History. In this model, every event, and even every action performed by animals or humans, is seen as being governed by rigorous laws that in each case lead to only one possible result. 

If a scientist could know all of the scientific laws of the cosmos, then also know the momentum and position of every particle in the universe at just one moment, she could apply scientific laws to the data, predict all of the future, and retrodict all of the past. This is the view called "determinism": it says that there is no such thing as free will because the future is already set, even if no human being will ever be able to know all of the natural laws and the positions of all of the particles. In principle, under the Newtonian view, there is no free will for humans or anything in this universe because the future is already fixed.


Notes 

3. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chaos/