30th March 2009, Michigan, USA
For those of you who have seen Slumdog Millionaire, you would kind of get the drift of this post by the title, those of you who haven't, I will let you watch the movie :-)
So, I have been going over some of the recent incidents in my life with my close friends and for some reason these discussions always lead up to a point where someone says Oh it was all for the good... or It probably wasn't meant to be... or It was not in any one's control... And then they will go on explaining how they know of certain events in the past that could only be explained by a concept called destiny.
I for one never believed in it. I think it's a side effect of being an engineer or having a scientific mind... I think of anything in terms of logic, rationale and a proof. Now I have conducted hundreds of experiments inside the laboratory to prove or disprove different hypotheses but what's unique about the theory of destiny is that you can't conduct an experiment to verify or reject it. If we want to put it in scientific terms, the hypotheses would say, "Any event that occurs in your life, would have occurred irrespective of any one's actions leading up to that event" e.g. if I am destined to get late for office tomorrow, it wouldn't matter whether I sleep in time tonight, sleep late or don't sleep at all, I would get late regardless. Now if I wanted to verify it then I can try and stay up all night and go to office in time tomorrow to disprove the destiny theory but the catch lies in the fact that no one tells the hypotheses before hand... it's always a hindsight and hindsight we all know is 20/20. If I stay up all night and go to the office in time, proponents of destiny would say, well I was destined to be on time then! For me to able to conduct an experiment to prove or disprove the theory, one of two things have to happen. I either need to be told what's destined BEFORE it happens or I need the capability to go back in time after the event happens to change my actions leading up to the event to see if the outcome differs. Let's consider these one by one.
The first condition - knowing what's destined beforehand. I don't know if this can be done or not. There are a lot of people in this world who make a living out of telling others their fortune. I wonder if such a person can tell anyone how much money he is going to make by telling fortunes on any given day before the day starts... Now, we all know that these people are sometimes right and most often either wrong or vaguely correct (when they say something like next year is going to be a very crucial year for you...). So, if these people are proven wrong on an occasion does that mean there is no destiny... not really... all we can say from this experiment is that particular person didn't make an accurate prediction... The event that he predicted may not have occurred either because he didn't know what he was talking about, or because of the fact that the knowledge of the future event led someone to change his actions to avoid it from happening or that the outcome was never meant to be fixed... and no one could have predicted it. And proponents of destiny will always tell you that it was the first reason... that you didn't talk to the right guy... what happened was indeed your destiny but the fortune teller wasn't good enough to tell... So, that's a deadlock.
The second condition - going back in time. Now, we have all seen Back To The Future, read about H G Wells Time Machine, fascinated by Arnold's journey back in time to save his folks in Terminator 2 and some of us have contemplated the possibility of time travel made possible by the existence of a unified field theory... but till someone gets a Grand Super Duper Noble Prize by making it possible I find it easier to stick to the theory of general relativity and say that nothing can travel faster than light and hence you can't go back in time.
So, now that both the possibilities are ruled out how do I conclude either way? There are two major kinds of explanations in science... hypotheses and law (there is a 3rd kind called theory as well but it's not going to make a difference to this discussion so let's chuck it). Let me explain the difference. Hypotheses is an educated guess based on general observation. It offers you a rational explanation of an event based upon an observation. It can't be proven but can be disproved, So once a hypotheses gains some acceptance by repeated observations, although it was never proven to be correct , it stands true until proven wrong. Most hypotheses however can be supported or refuted by experimentation or repeated observation.
A Law on the other hand explains events without telling you why it occurs. These are fairly simple, true, universal and absolute. There is no proof for a law and is taken at face value because it has always explained some events e.g. the law of gravitation... Newton never had to prove it, no one can... as long as it explains the apple falling towards the earth's surface, people will be happy to accept it.
Since we have already seen that destiny can't be proven or refuted, it's not a hypotheses. Do we want to call it a law? I think this is where the divide occurs... there are some of us like me who wouldn't even put destiny and law together in one room and others who can't imagine the two being separate entities. And once you say it's a law, you no longer require a proof. You make your observation and destiny will always explain that observation (remember by definition, whatever you observe is destiny!!) so for those people it's no less than Newton's Law of Gravitation... and non believers like me trying to find an answer to this question... we are sort of in the same situation as King Vikramaditya was when he had to fetch Betaal from the tree... we are trying to answer a question... if we know the answer Betaal flies back to the tree... the only way we can fetch him is to not know...
For those of you who have seen Slumdog Millionaire, you would kind of get the drift of this post by the title, those of you who haven't, I will let you watch the movie :-)
So, I have been going over some of the recent incidents in my life with my close friends and for some reason these discussions always lead up to a point where someone says Oh it was all for the good... or It probably wasn't meant to be... or It was not in any one's control... And then they will go on explaining how they know of certain events in the past that could only be explained by a concept called destiny.
I for one never believed in it. I think it's a side effect of being an engineer or having a scientific mind... I think of anything in terms of logic, rationale and a proof. Now I have conducted hundreds of experiments inside the laboratory to prove or disprove different hypotheses but what's unique about the theory of destiny is that you can't conduct an experiment to verify or reject it. If we want to put it in scientific terms, the hypotheses would say, "Any event that occurs in your life, would have occurred irrespective of any one's actions leading up to that event" e.g. if I am destined to get late for office tomorrow, it wouldn't matter whether I sleep in time tonight, sleep late or don't sleep at all, I would get late regardless. Now if I wanted to verify it then I can try and stay up all night and go to office in time tomorrow to disprove the destiny theory but the catch lies in the fact that no one tells the hypotheses before hand... it's always a hindsight and hindsight we all know is 20/20. If I stay up all night and go to the office in time, proponents of destiny would say, well I was destined to be on time then! For me to able to conduct an experiment to prove or disprove the theory, one of two things have to happen. I either need to be told what's destined BEFORE it happens or I need the capability to go back in time after the event happens to change my actions leading up to the event to see if the outcome differs. Let's consider these one by one.
The first condition - knowing what's destined beforehand. I don't know if this can be done or not. There are a lot of people in this world who make a living out of telling others their fortune. I wonder if such a person can tell anyone how much money he is going to make by telling fortunes on any given day before the day starts... Now, we all know that these people are sometimes right and most often either wrong or vaguely correct (when they say something like next year is going to be a very crucial year for you...). So, if these people are proven wrong on an occasion does that mean there is no destiny... not really... all we can say from this experiment is that particular person didn't make an accurate prediction... The event that he predicted may not have occurred either because he didn't know what he was talking about, or because of the fact that the knowledge of the future event led someone to change his actions to avoid it from happening or that the outcome was never meant to be fixed... and no one could have predicted it. And proponents of destiny will always tell you that it was the first reason... that you didn't talk to the right guy... what happened was indeed your destiny but the fortune teller wasn't good enough to tell... So, that's a deadlock.
The second condition - going back in time. Now, we have all seen Back To The Future, read about H G Wells Time Machine, fascinated by Arnold's journey back in time to save his folks in Terminator 2 and some of us have contemplated the possibility of time travel made possible by the existence of a unified field theory... but till someone gets a Grand Super Duper Noble Prize by making it possible I find it easier to stick to the theory of general relativity and say that nothing can travel faster than light and hence you can't go back in time.
So, now that both the possibilities are ruled out how do I conclude either way? There are two major kinds of explanations in science... hypotheses and law (there is a 3rd kind called theory as well but it's not going to make a difference to this discussion so let's chuck it). Let me explain the difference. Hypotheses is an educated guess based on general observation. It offers you a rational explanation of an event based upon an observation. It can't be proven but can be disproved, So once a hypotheses gains some acceptance by repeated observations, although it was never proven to be correct , it stands true until proven wrong. Most hypotheses however can be supported or refuted by experimentation or repeated observation.
A Law on the other hand explains events without telling you why it occurs. These are fairly simple, true, universal and absolute. There is no proof for a law and is taken at face value because it has always explained some events e.g. the law of gravitation... Newton never had to prove it, no one can... as long as it explains the apple falling towards the earth's surface, people will be happy to accept it.
Since we have already seen that destiny can't be proven or refuted, it's not a hypotheses. Do we want to call it a law? I think this is where the divide occurs... there are some of us like me who wouldn't even put destiny and law together in one room and others who can't imagine the two being separate entities. And once you say it's a law, you no longer require a proof. You make your observation and destiny will always explain that observation (remember by definition, whatever you observe is destiny!!) so for those people it's no less than Newton's Law of Gravitation... and non believers like me trying to find an answer to this question... we are sort of in the same situation as King Vikramaditya was when he had to fetch Betaal from the tree... we are trying to answer a question... if we know the answer Betaal flies back to the tree... the only way we can fetch him is to not know...
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2 comments:
hmmmmmmm....very interesting...some food for thought:)
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