Well, to refute Batty's theory a little, I always understood that these parallel universes, assuming they exist, come into existence when an action taken results in a change that otherwise would not happen in our universe. Basically, you're talking about creating timelines.

If I Go to cross the road, and in this universe don't, and a car flies by, I breathe a sigh of relief, think that was a good decision and move on.

But...

at that very instant, another universe is created where I DO go across the road, and get killed. I am now dead, and all the actions I would have from that point onwards on people, the world in general etc are now changed. So let's say I was going to marry a woman who would produce a child who cured cancer. I'm dead, so that child may not ever be born.

But...

meanwhile in another universe, this woman marries another man who then gives her the child, and in that universe cancer is cured.

That's how I understand it works anyway. In theory, obviously. Nothing massively world-changing may happen differently, but seemingly tiny, insignificant actions can change the course of a life, or indeed the world.

But you're never going to act differently when either crossing or not crossing the bridge. The world is governed by mathematical laws, and unless there is magic that can introduce randomness (where one plus one can sometimes equal three) then your actions are predetermined, just like everything else. Free will is an illusion.

Passion plays a huge role. Even if it's insane passion. Hence the marine shootings this past week.

To anyone who thinks that video is legit, the uploader even admits that he was proven wrong in the comments section.

Emotions are en evolutionary development meant to stimulate certain responses in an organism. Not magic. Just because emotions are complex doesn't make them necessarily mathematically unpredictable, anymore than the complexity of the universe proves the existence of God.

Expound please.

If you want me to give you equations that govern emotions, then even if they existed I don't know about them. But our models of the universe so far have shown that it is governed by mathematical laws, and not magic (magic being any force which governs the universe while contradicting natural laws which are fact rather than just descriptions of our current understanding of natural laws) -- Naturalism -- which means that anything is potentially predictable, assuming we had the right equations.

For this to not be true of emotions, then there would have to be a separate, non-mathematical, non-naturalistic mechanism which governed them (i.e. magic). So unless you believe that emotions are governed by some form of magic -- be it God, faeries, or Merlin -- then the only logical conclusion is that they are most likely governed by mathematical principles, making them predictable and unchangeable. And if the entire universe is also ruled by mathematical principles which would necessarily be governing every movement of every form of anything that exists (or even doesn't exist for all I know) then the situations which you find yourself in will always be the same, as will your reaction to them.

Granted, this stance is not one that can be 100% proven, anymore than the non-existence of God can be 100% proven, but since every observation and model of the world and the universe to date has shown that it operates naturalistically, and that any evidence to the contrary has so far been inconclusive at best, then the assumption should be that the universe operates naturalistically, until compelling evidence suggesting otherwise is introduced. Which would logically also include human action.

I like to call it Secular Calvinism. Not because there isn't already a word for a predetermined universe, but because "Secular Calvinism" amuses me.


A good thing to study on the subject would be incompatibalism vs.compatibalism.

The human mind has evolved to a point beyond mathematical laws IMO. It's capable of passion that can drive a person to do things that are beyond any sense of comprehension or logic.

There was a story years back of a woman who roasted her young child to death in her oven because she was convinced he had the devil in him.

Sorry, but stuff like that is never going to be explained by an equation. It's not magic. It's the human brain gone haywire.