I don't know if I've gone mystically overboard, but I'm beginning to think that almost the opposite is true. Namely, not "intention is illusory, but originates from the necessary interactions of moving particles" but that intentions cause the necessary interactions. This isn't to say it is ONLY human intention, but rather SOME intention, usually hidden.
Consider this concrete example. If I suggest that my bank balance is not correlated to my foot traffic at my office, I could make a plot and show the PDF shows no connection. If there is no foot traffic at my office for MONTHS a correlation might start to become manifestly present (albeit confounded by another, hidden variable). While a day's (or week's) absence of foot traffic in my office may mean nothing, three months or years of no foot traffic probably means I'm no longer working there and could start to generate a negative correlation on my account. This is a case where the observation is entirely driven by contextual parameters not usually visible to a casual observer.
I think this is more than an absurd example, but rather a metaphor for many available states that have a time or space aperture. While a bullet is in the air, the target's impact state is governed by non-Newtonian mechanics (IMO). Yes, there was a Newtonian ballistic trajectory, but even at 1800 fps velocity, 1/6 of a second exists between the the trigger pull and the moment of impact. During this instant it is not IMPOSSIBLE to dodge a bullet, just very, very difficult, unless another series of cues cause a reaction.
My mother related a first hand story to me about one of her friends. This person was on a plane that experienced simultaneous loss of 4 engines and a free fall descent from 35,000 feet over the ocean. The engines were able to be restarted but all 4 failed again causing the plane to descend to 2000 feet before the engines were restarted and the plane climbed yet again. This was on the national news and I remember it. The corker is that no cause was ever found for the loss of power. These people IMO, exist NOW in a rather strange parallel universe of people who have survived 2 sequential 4 engine powerplant failures over water, yet, are in the set of LIVING individuals. In quantum terms, this "state" is not allowed very often, yet it was available to everyone on that plane at that time. And further, it was available to them twice on the same flight.
I disagree that we can accurately calculate the motions of things. Or, as you put it, how the waves and particles will come out in 15 years...in a far more accurate manner than chance would dictate. This is in direct opposition to what I know about chaotic system behavior. This is known as the initial value problem for differential equations. If you extrapolate differential equations using some method like Runge-Kutta, the errors for predictions 15 years in the future for things as "trivial" as planetary motion makes it difficult know precisely where comets or asteroids will be in that amount of time. Does anyone remember the asteroid impact scare? This goes back to my multi-body problem in gravity. Systems consisting of weakly interacting bodies respond considerably to the very small and weak perturbances cause by other objects in their "system" due to moment on the time access. The problem is knowing which things are in your system.
Going back to dodging bullets, if you have an uncontrollable urge to sneeze exactly at the time the trigger is pulled, it is not inconceivable for you to have moved out of the bullet's path. Clearly the shorter the time of flight, the less an entity can do to save you (assuming it can cause a sneeze AND cares to do so). Making you sneeze doesn't seem like it would require that much tinkering with reality, though, and would produce a wholly different outcome. |
