Knowing a little more about the unpredictable

Marquis de LaPlace, whose name you might have heard in physics, math and astronomy once quoted about the universe and causality

“We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be the present to it.”

In simple words, he meant that if we knew all forces, all the positions and all values of the universe then we could put it into all the science we know of to predict the future and know about it. He was partially right until Heisenberg came and told that it is impossible at least on the quantum scale to know the position and velocity accurately of a particle. But what does this mean to me and you, how does this affect our lives and what can we learn from this simple fact?

After learning (more like exploring and getting basic understanding) concepts like quantum mechanics, abstract proofs, graph theory and set theory, I love applying these deductions in real world. As is the fundamental nature of the universe, it is unpredictable and purely random. That is the basis of quantum mechanics. Another fun fact in quantum mechanics is that this random state of interference (or entanglement) does not remain random/unpredictable when observed. If this is the first time you are reading this, then yes it seems really ambiguous. In some senses it still is, there is no way to define observing for general context, but for physics observing can mean measuring. But for life, I find a nice analogy to be expectations. Expectations, our imaginations are of similar complexity. We still can’t seem to understand what it really means when we say we image, we think or recursively we understand.

So if observing a particle breaks it’s randomness, expecting an outcome changes the causality. Lord krishna tells in Shrimad Bhagwatgita that you have the right to take action but not the right to expect the outcomes. One way of understanding this is science itself prevents you from knowing the future. If you expect, imagine a situation it won’t happen that way. At least not the way you expected it to occur. So thinking about the worst case scenario’s, decreases the odds of outcome being unfavorable. There’s also that one saying I used to love “Hope for the best; prepare for the worst” which falls in same line.

Well, for all the people who are starting to boil on me… all of this is not an advice. I am not here telling you the meaning of life or how you should control your thoughts. I am here telling you what I believe in. The meaning of meaning depends on which dictionary you use. And this one is mine.