Your views on fate

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Mike Rotch

Mike Rotch

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Do you guys hold any views on fate vs "you being in control". Fate, i guess can be rationalised as everything already having being set out in a "Book of all things You" somewhere in the heavens above. You cant chance anything, and any conscience decisions you make are a formality. You really have no conscience control over you life.

The opposing view is that fate is non-existent and you control your path through life. You have the power to define your future, and bad luck and unfortuitous events are bad planning.

Personally i feel fate is the ruler. Conscious decisions simply alter the course fate takes e.g. accidentally dropping your car keys makes you 3 seconds later on the road then otherwise, saving you from a car wreck. But if your number is up then no matter how many times you drop your keys, fate will catch up. Every decision carries a different "fate path" if you will. If anyone has seen the movie "Run Lola Run", they will know what i mean.
 
Originally posted by Mike Rotch

Personally i feel fate is the ruler. Conscious decisions simply alter the course fate takes e.g. accidentally dropping your car keys makes you 3 seconds later on the road then otherwise, saving you from a car wreck. But if your number is up then no matter how many times you drop your keys, fate will catch up. Every decision carries a different "fate path" if you will. If anyone has seen the movie "Run Lola Run", they will know what i mean.
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That's pretty much how I feel. I think we make our own choices for the most part, but some things (like death) are predetermined.

-Mark
 
I don't entirely believe in fate. Although I believe some people are destined to play a role in history that is already decided and that the rest of us are along for the ride so to speak. Not that we don't have a choices to make in our every day life thatwill effect our lives and the lives of people around us.It's just that those choices are not a big part of the big picture. I believe the world is set on a course that neither you or I can change.
It's a Christianity thing just in case you don't know where I'm comming from.
 
Originally posted by DGB454
It's a Christianity thing just in case you don't know where I'm comming from.
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thanks for putting that in - it helps me see where you are coming from. Im jewish (although as far from religious as possible) so it is interesting to see other views :)
 
I don't believe in fate in any way whatsoever. Nothing is specifically predetermined to happen. Conditions may be favorable for a given event to occur, but nothing external makes those events occur through "Fate" with a capital F.

We can determine our own courses through life to the extent that we can predict what conditions favor, and put our corresponding decisions into effect. But there will always be a large factor of unpredictability or randomness that limits that effectiveness.

And no, I don't think there is any single thing controlling that randomness.
 
Originally posted by Talentless
I believe I was fated to come here of my own free will.
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Thats not fate. Thats corporate america confusing your subconscious with subliminal messages in its advertising. It was fate to watch the advertising though.
 
I'll guote some Rush lyrics which describe my feeling on fate exactly.

I don't belive destiny
Or the guiding hands of fate
I don't believe in forever
Or love as a mystical state
I don't believe in the stars or the planets
Or angels watching from above
But I believe there's a ghost of a chance
We can find someone to love
And make it last
 
I dont believe in fate. I think it is more like every step you do, a future destiny is built, but future is changed and rebuilt each time you change steps, or take different paths. As of with me, destiny hates me. Today, I got another proof that reinforced even more, my theory.
 
The term has been butchered and abused by bad sci-fi, but it currently seems scientifically viable to say that there are actually an infinite number of alternate realities where EVERY possibility plays out, even - as they're so fond of saying - the unthinkable ones. Some lines may be separated by a molecule, others by significant differences. By this token, each individual among us has actually lived everyone else's life, and all of us have fulfilled the roles of all the others, to say the very least. Somewhere, sometime, I came up with E=MC2, composed "Beethoven's" 9th, only better, and started this message board. In some universe, somewhere, I actually did all three, and the planet itself is made of plush toys. Yeah, it's outrageous, but it's happening somewhere...

So, perhaps that's fate. Everything plays out somewhere, and everyone has a starring role in all of it. Inevitably.
 
If you take the law of the conservation of energy, assume the universe is finite, and time is infinite, then it must follow that every possible configuration of energy (every possible event) has already occurred infinite times and will occurr an infinite number of times.
 
If the universe is finite, then time is also finite. Space IS time, and vice versa.
 
I don't know - but I'm sure not basing my actions on fate. We (as in my partner and I) have a definite plan of what we want to acheive and where we want to be in the next five years, the first step of which was buying the house. If fate intervenes, we'll deal with it, but we're not hanging around waiting for it to happen.
 
[yoda]In motion, the future is.[/yoda]

I that for every possible choice you have, the outcome of all possible outcomes from that choice take place in parallel universes. It's kinda complex.
 
Ah the question of fate. Basically, it is the predetermined course of time. Nothing can stop the inevitable rolling of fate's treads. I say predetermined because I'm one of those people who believes in all the "Christianity Stuff" about the end times prophesy (not to mention I've experienced several "deja Vu"s in the past).
 
Originally posted by Famine
If the universe is finite, then time is also finite. Space IS time, and vice versa.
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That depends which time you consider to be real. "Imaginery" time as proposed by Hawkings is infinite and needed for an "infinitely" sized universe. "Real" time is what science is based on. He proposed that what we think is "Real" time is actually "Imaginery" time.

To grasp Imaginery time he uses the example of a running around a 2D sphere. Its surface is infinite yet bounded. You never reach an end, but the surface has defined area.

EDIT: the whole concept of having done everything in some or other universe is a casual way of viewing Fate. Sorta like "well, been there and done that, so who cares".
 
Originally posted by Mike Rotch


EDIT: the whole concept of having done everything in some or other universe is a casual way of viewing Fate. Sorta like "well, been there and done that, so who cares".
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Or... "This moment will repeat for infinity so I better not screw it up!"

A perspective that reconciles fate and choice.
 
Originally posted by milefile
Or... "This moment will repeat for infinity so I better not screw it up!"
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:lol:

"Under pressure, pushing down on me, pushing down on you, under pressure..." - Queen and David Bowie
 
I think we make our own decisions too. I just believe that someone already knows what those decisions are going to be. I believe in free will.
 
I believe that there may, possibly be a "predetermined outcome" that goes with your choices. But with a myriad of choices to make, you can't say that "such and such" an event was destined to happen.
In other words, while it may seem that "event a" led to "consequense b". The events leading up to "event a" may be related to some event that happened days, weeks, years, or even seconds ago.
Or, some choice made by someone else may put you in the big middle of a good or bad situation. But only because you turned to the right instead of the left when you came out of a public restroom.

In other, other words, there are so many things happening at once, that there are a googleplex of different outcomes for any action you take or a decision you make. Making the notion of "fate" seem far-fetched to me.
 
Fate? Whassat? I have the feeling Eris twists my life as she sees fit, but that's non-deterministic by definition. Fate implies determinism.
 

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