These reflections were prompted by reading the following passage:
"It is always tempting to wonder what would have happened if ...or if not. Usually it is a futile exercise, for what might have been is the greatest of all the mysteries."
-Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File (London, 1980), CHAPTER 1, p. 14.
If there is an answer that we do not, maybe even cannot, know, then the question is a mystery. However, if there is a question for which there is no answer, then I do not think that that counts as a mystery.
Some course of events would have come after, e.g., prevention of the Kennedy assassination, but, if crucial aspects of that course of events would have had to be intrinsically random, then it is pointless to speculate about them. We can imagine many outcomes.
8 comments:
Which is why predicting the future is so futile. Even if you isolate the maximum probability, the fact is that low-probability things happen all the time.
Alexander the Great living as long as he did was a low probability, for example -- he took "lead from the front" quite literally and was badly wounded at least six or seven times. "Dead" is about a half-inch from "badly wounded".
I wondered whether super-quantum-computers might be able to calculate details of alternative timelines - but not if some of those details were intrinsically random and indeterminate.
Kaor, Paul!
I seriously doubt even super quantum computers could calculate all possibilities. To use Stirling's example, Alexander the Great could have died any number of times for any number of reasons, before he actually did.
Futile to predict the future. All we can do is speculate. Or write Stirlingian alternate universe stories!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Here's a wild speculation I just thought of: Alexander the Great might have converted to Judaism as he passed thru Judae to Egypt, and then been killed by enraged Greeks!
Totally unlikely!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Just as possible as a lot of other things. What causes an individual conversion? Many factors are involved. The Andersons make Gratillonius' conversion to Christianity seem very plausible.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
True, what you said about the many factors leading to Gratillonius' conversion to Christianity. I was trying to think of something really far out and unlikely!
Ad astra! Sean
Alexander had an enormous investment (personally and politically) in his quasi-divine ancestry.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! Which is why I tried to think of something really wild and IMPLAUSIBLE, such as Alexander becoming a Jew!
Ad astra! Sean
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