Universally predictable
A couple nights ago I woke up with a slight ear ache. I wasn't happy about it, but a cool head prevailed and I decided I should focus my energy on finding a solution. So I picked up my best friend (my phone) and googled "ear ache". I clicked on a result which listed some possible treatments.
I then went into the bathroom and soaked a hand towel in steaming hot water. I went back to bed with the towel resting on my affected ear. I fell back asleep quickly and woke up to my alarm feeling great. I was so proud of myself.
Only at work the next day did I remember that this was the second time I've gone through this exact sequence of events -- the previous time being more than a year ago.
So this wasn't a moment of insight. I was just working through my protocol for problem solving, which involves (1) being angry; (2) looking at my resources; (3) usually googling something; (4) acting on my findings.
Here's another example.
I was in Paris. My hotel wasn't in an area of town with many restaurants. So I got on the metro. I predicted that I could find a good stop by watching which kinds of people were getting off the train. When lots of cool looking people got off the train, so did I. I exited to street level and looked around. I walked in the most promising direction. I looked down side streets until I noticed one that looked particularly welcoming. I peered into cafe windows until I found the one I liked best. I sat down and ate a delicious meal.
Several months later I was back in Paris and once again hungry. I thought I should try to find that same restaurant, but I hadn't noted where it was or the name. Starting from the same hotel I followed the same rational. I got on the metro, I followed the crowd, then I followed my instincts directly to the same street and the same restaurant -- without a single wrong turn on the way.
One thing that disillusions people about religion is that Someone or Something could be all knowing, and that choices aren't really ours to make. I think it's more like the above. If you know someone's heart, their tendencies, their approach to living and solving problems, then you can predict exactly what they'll do in any given situation. Looking at things from that perspective doesn't make me feel disillusioned, it makes me feel closer to everyone around me. For as many complexities as we have as humans, there are also universal truths: we're complicated, but for better or worse, we're also repetitive.
2 comments:
Read a great book about the predictability of human behavior but in relationship to predicting violent crime. Never thought about using his same theories to find a good restaurant. :)
Interesting/related:
From this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7739493.stm
#2: 4. DID YOU REALLY CHOOSE TO READ THIS ARTICLE?
Suppose that Fred existed shortly after the Big Bang. He had unlimited intelligence and memory, and knew all the scientific laws governing the universe and all the properties of every particle that then existed. Thus equipped, billions of years ago, he could have worked out that, eventually, planet Earth would come to exist, that you would too, and that right now you would be reading this article.
After all, even back then he could have worked out all the facts about the location and state of every particle that now exists.
And once those facts are fixed, so is the fact that you are now reading this article. No one's denying you chose to read this. But your choice had causes (certain events in your brain, for example), which in turn had causes, and so on right back to the Big Bang. So your reading this was predictable by Fred long before you existed. Once you came along, it was already far too late for you to do anything about it.
Now, of course, Fred didn't really exist, so he didn't really predict your every move. But the point is: he could have. You might object that modern physics tells us that there is a certain amount of fundamental randomness in the universe, and that this would have upset Fred's predictions. But is this reassuring? Notice that, in ordinary life, it is precisely when people act unpredictably that we sometimes question whether they have acted freely and responsibly. So freewill begins to look incompatible both with causal determination and with randomness. None of us, then, ever do anything freely and responsibly."
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