I have a great friend named Joe that I'll occasionally get into these 
long discourses and exchanges with. This was one that started when 
he challenged/questioned my views on free-will vs. fate.
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Are you familiar with ideas of time as the fourth dimension?

Whether you are or not, I'll illustrate: Lets take a ball bouncing. For 
this example we'll say it bounces twice. Just there: one, two. Now 
let's squash out the dimension of depth. So the world of this 
example is completely flat, like an animation cell. And the world 
goes by like a  movie. One, two bounces. Now take all of the 
animation cells of this ball bouncing twice and stack them on top of 
each other. Lets say they are a thickness so that when we have two 
bounces worth stacked, they create a 1 foot cube. Now instead of 
them being a stack of individual sheets, lets say they're one 
continuous plastic block. Now we'd have what would look like a 
MacDonald's set of Golden arches in a block of clear plastic. This is 
a bouncing ball if its depth was time.

Every action is a sum of causes (chaos theory). A domino falls 
because the one before it hit it. A coin falls on one side because so 
many p.s.i. of force times its mass produced so many rotations. We 
look at a menu and order something because of our past 
experiences, predispositions and current stimuli add up to a certain 
preference.

Now if we take the fact that everything is the sum of what went 
before it and think of the world as a stack of animation cells, we can 
create a picture of the world. Everything has happened, is happening 
and will happen.

What you think of as "free will" exists in that we can decide where 
things go, but all of those decisions have already been made. "Free 
Will" is actually a component of the predetermined destiny.

If you don't agree with that think of this thought experiment: Let's 
say you're in a position to make a decision, exercise your will. We'll 
say you're deciding what movie to go to. You're looking in the 
paper, you go down the list of shows and decide to go see the new 
James Bond movie. Now why did you make that decision? Well, 
you've only heard about a certain number of movies and you've 
seen Bond ads and it's playing at the right time and you like Bond. 
You like it because you've had good experiences with them and 
similar movies and why ever else. Doesn't matter; you like Bond. So 
you make the decision to go see the movie. Now let's rewind time. 
We go back to when you open the paper and we DON'T CHANGE 
ANYTHING. If nothing has changed, same movies, same times, same 
Bond, same history, same Joe, do you think you'll choose something 
different?

That's the question. Now even if we can't account for every factor 
the simple fact is that these factors will always happen in a certain 
fashion and as a result the past, present and future are set and we're 
just living through them. In our thought experiment, you going to 
any movie other than the Bond flick at that point in time does not 
exist. Their was no possibility that you were ever going to go to 
another movie because things happen and Joe reacts to them as Joe 
will react to them because Joe is Joe. Sum of the factors. Thus you 
can say that you only have one path. That's predestiny...and "free 
will" is a part of it.

But interestingly enough...you might have gone to another movie. 
Now everything that I've said is true. But it's all true for a world that 
is bigger than an atom. I've read some things that elude to the fact 
that at subatomic levels reality is different. Everything may be a sum 
of the factors but those factors, on a small enough level, maybe 
shift. So maybe you would have gone to something other than the 
Bond flick if we rewound time.

An even more wacky angle is that our cross-sectioning of time as we 
experience it, like the flipping of animation cells,  may not be a 
cross section of a time that is a big fixed statue. Things may be 
moving fourth dimensionally. In which case if we rewound time with 
you sitting on the couch looking at the movie listings we'd find that 
the past we rewound to was not the same past that we grew out of. 
But the new past would or at least could work out to the present 
that we rewound from.

This is a theory that makes sense in my head and does make sense, 
but I don't have time to explain it further. I've got a club to get to.


'til we speak again, Bride

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I went out dancing, Joe responded and this is the following letter 
(unfortunately I have lost the letter in between).

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I think we're saying the same thing.

I'll just give you a mental demonstration: If we cross sectioned a 
line(1D), we'd get a dot (0D). If we take a square (2D) and cross 
sectioned it on one of it's non-existing axi (at  right angle to the 2 
dimensions it has) we'd have a line (1D). If we had a cube (3D) and 
cross section it, we'd get a square (2D). Whenever you cross section 
something you get a version of it that has one dimension less. A 
cube is the 3D cross sectioning of a 4D whatever.

Now picture this: Think of a laser and when they put it through one 
of those splitters so it comes out like a flat wall of light. Then they 
love the demo of where they run this flat sheet of light through a 
fog. And what you see is a swirl of fog in this laser. Here's a 2D 
cross sectioning (flat laser) of a 3D mass (fog). The idea is what if 
our consciousness is merely the 3D traveling cross-section of a 4D 
universe? So we're experiencing the swirls, but actually they're part 
of a fog bank.

But the traveling of our 3D cross section through the 4D or the 
movement of the 4D universe (swirling fog), implies movement and 
time beyond the fourth dimension. Which would mean a 5th 
dimension.  Interestingly enough I've heard of a theory eluded too 
called the "String Theory". I know nothing about it, but a sound bite 
that I caught on a PBS special said that mathematically it would 
require at least 10 dimensions. I think I'll look into it. But at some 
point these things are going to move beyond the realm of helping 
me get chicks.

I want to write about the idea of finite dimensions vs. infinite 
dimensioning, but I'm hungry and need some PB&J. So with your 
response, ask me about finite dimensions.


Hasta, Bride