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Destiny

Although the functioning of the human mind is not perfectly understood, reasearch into psychology and artificial intellgence is beginning to take the mystery out of it. Computers can outperform the human mind in a number of ways, but the humans still have the advantage in learning and creativity. However, it is not inconceivable that machines might be developed in the future that do those things well too.

The more a machine learns, the less predictable it will be, because it's hard to determine what experiences it will have and what it will learn. There is a branch of mathmatics known as "chaos theory" that demonstrates the impossibility of exactly predicting some events, and this theory may well be applicable to the behavior of learning machines. Nevertheless, if you took an exact copy of the machines memory including all learned knowledge, and if you fully understood how it functions, it may be possible to exactly predict its next move.

We might infer that this is true of humans as well. This thought may be troubling to some people. Our concepts of law and justice require us to differentiate between a person's decisions and what is beyond their control, in order to pass judgement on their action. Does a full understanding of how a person's mind works invalidate this distinction? And how does it affect each person's concept of their own will and responsibility?

One reaction is for a person to assert, "I have no desire for effort when I know that both my desires and actions are already determined according to the rules of cause and effect." Oddly enough, this statement in itself assumes a cause and effect relationship (between knowledge of determinism and desire for effort). Nevertheless, this article is intended to uncover what cause and effect relationships exist and find whether the knowledge of these relationships reasonably results in futility. Thus, the study of destiny follows...

What destiny is not.

Destiny is not predictability. Because we can predict the actions of simple machines, we tend to associate predictability with a lack of consciousness and a lack of free will. But with a little consideration it can be seen that the other alternative--not predictable--isn't too appealing either. Obviously it's just as problematic to write off your free will to randomness as to an autonomic function or simple mechanism.

The definition of "free will" is a bit fuzzy, but generally it is the concept that a person is responsible for his (or her) own behavior.

The believer in free will, then, accepts consistent behaviour (or predictability) as long as it originated from our will. Setting up circumstances in order to get a person to act a certain way would not be destiny because the person is still acting of his own accord.

What destiny is.

Destiny is what results when someone else makes a decision for your mind. The following experiment, if successful, would show destiny:

Consider an electrical impulse, which when delivered to a nerve in a subject, causes his hand to close. Now suppose that the subject is blindfolded and a probe is used to stimulate various nerves in the subject's arm and brain. Every time his hand closes he is asked, "did you close your hand?" Normally he would be aware that his hand closed but also aware that he did not decide to close it. If however, he consistently answered "Yes" to a stimulus that closed his hand, it would be apparent that the experimenter had been successful in controlling his will.

Of course it might be pointed out that if the subject volunteered for the experiment then his actions were indirectly choosen by himself and would not constitute a destiny. But any decision made for him against his will, whether with drugs, electricity, or other means would definately constitute destiny. In fact, if a permanent alteration is made, more than destiny will have occurred--one person will have been destroyed and another created in his place.

Can we be destined?

Since the experiment described in the previous section has never been performed successfully the question arises as to whether or not it is possible to destine a human being.

One traditional response to this question is the idea that our mind is a spontaneous will that exists apart from our bodies and thus cannot be altered or controlled (as can a piece of machinery). There are several arguments involved with this idea:

Is "spontaneous will" possible?

A spontaneous will would occur in part like the predictable totalling of random numbers. Instead of being predictable by rules of probability, however, each will would have its own unique consistency. Like changing your past, finding cause and effect in a decision would be impossible.

There is, however, no evidence to indicate the existence of any such will--in all known cases matter and energy are conserved and do not appear spontaneously.

Can a mechanism account for our will?

Since we have designed no machines which duplicate human thinking yet, it is difficult for most people to conceive how a machine might be able to be a person. Arguments intended to prove that a machine cannot have will are generally based on a lack of knowledge of what machinery might accomplish.

When the first steam locomotives crossed the Russian countriside, the peasants wouldn't believe that there wasn't a horse inside. I myself, when I was a child, could understand how a robot could walk, but I could not conceive how it could see. But now we have computers and robots that get input from video cameras and process the pixels in order to identify objects.

What is the reality of our mind?

If your mind existed separately from your body, then damage to the link to your body (your brain) would limit your ability to act and perceive, but would not alter your ability to think. The fact is, however, that brain damage or even presence of certain chemicals does change your ability to think. When emotions are chemical levels and intellegence is computational ability, what is left to be decided by a mysterious, ghostly "spontaneous will"? Nothing significant.

The meaning of mechanism

As is evident from the previous section, we are sufficiently bound up in mechanism that an external being might be able to give us a destiny. No matter what we would normally choose, it could cause us to choose what it wants us to choose.

There is no reason, of course, to suppose that an alien being is controlling us since we are providing no service to anyone other than ourselves. If the idea that we could be destined seems to diminish our special identity as humans, how does the thought of being utterly stomped out strike us? If we are to fantasize about possibilities, we could imagine beings capable of doing either.

Obviously it just doesn't make sense to worry about how some strange being might conceivably victimize us. One can imagine a lot of things, but it doesn't make them real. Humans have existed for thousands of years and probably will continue to do so for a while longer yet. There may even be some sort of intergalactic agreement which would protect our freedom (for all we know).

What matters is how we live our life here and now. It is important for people to take responsibility for their actions, because it won't happen any other way. People make decisions, because that's the way they work, and there is no avoiding that.

At the beginning of this article it was suggested that life might not be worth living if it could be broken down into cause and effect relationships. But we are not just the effect of a cause; we are the cause and the effect. Our actions are not forced upon us by any machine; we are the machine. There is no future which exists apart from our choice; the future is our choice.

Conclusion

In this article I have shown that:

Whatever is or will be, we must assume ther responsibility to make decisions ourselves. To place the future in our own hands is the only way it could possibly become the future we want.

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