Is life random or deterministic? Does it have elements of "an accident" or is it a foregone conclusion.?

Question

A number of people disagreed with the basis behind some cited text in an earlier question that stated "life doesn't start by accident." There was suggestions the quote was a bit silly and old fashioned.

I'm wondering whether some light can be cast on this by explaining whether life is random or deterministic. Is life random (hence could be an accident) or deterministic (a foregone conclusion and therefore not an accident)?

If it is deterministic, yet an accident, how does that work? If random, yet not an accident, how does that work?

Can life be both random and deterministic? What would that mean?

I'm happy for you to give an opinion, but if you provide that, try to give an explanation as well so I can better understand any basis behind the opinion. If you provide no basis, I will assume you have none.

The earlier question is below, in case that helps https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20150624050111AAygBye

Answer 1

A long time ago an Austrian physicist named Ludwig Boltzmann revised our understanding of entropy.



Without going into excriciating detail, he demonstrated how order can spontaneously emerge from chaos.



With this thought in mind, life is neither random, nor an accident, nor determined in any way; it is a probalistic reality -- statistically predictable, but by no means certain, nor random/accidental.

Answer 2

I've heard this kind of question a lot, and it puts forward a false dichotomy.



Life is not random, and it is also not deterministic. It appears that life depends on previous causes and the effects of those causes, and is constrained by basic physical properties. Development of life seems to happen in response to the environment, so it is not random. And yet, there was no plan to end up at the emergence of a certain species, let's say. The result was just what the progression of the process produced.



Added later: I just looked at your earlier question. In regard to the start of a new human life, this is not random or an accident either. Although pregnancy may be unintended or undesirable, the forces that lead to it are not random, but specific drives bred into a complex organism. Again, cause and effect.

Answer 3

Life, or Reality, is a huge field of experience.

Think of life like an ocean. A meteor or comet smashing into the sea is a random event. The orbits of such things are governed by the laws of gravity, but this doesn't mean the orbits are consistent - lots of things can knock a body into a different path.

Similarly weather systems are chaotic. This is because we can't predict the behavior of trillions of molecules . There are far too many variables. We can have a pretty good idea of where the storm will go, but only for a short period of time.

In a forest the trees grow according to a natural rhythm. When the leaves fall in the autumn, there is a sequence: first the alders and birches, then the beeches and maples, and last the oaks. But the path the leaves take to the forest floor is totally random. This is chaos within order..

Answer 4

An accident is an unplanned event in a chain of events, in some ways it could be considered as unpredictable. Risk assessment seeks to address this point, but how far do you take it? It seems that most accidents occure "outside" what we normally consider as probable. It seems to me that it is the rare favorable result in a myriad of random events and nothing more. Conditions change and more random results occure, in short evolution.



Determinism is an arrogant human construct which enables the abrogation of responsibility, "I was only following orders" or "I didn't have a choice in the matter".



Perhaps, as in "real" life, you seek to combine a number of aspects into one philosophy. Life's source is random in the longrun, but deterministic in the immediate, constrained by social, legalistic, and physical constraints. If I were restricted to a wheelchair there would be some things I could not do.



There is also an element of free will within these constraints,for which we r responsible.

Answer 5

I would say that life is indeed an "accident", the cause of which we may never know.



Accidents of particularly common types (crashing of automobiles, events causing fire, etc.) are investigated to identify how to avoid them in the future. This is sometimes called root cause analysis, but does not generally apply to accidents that cannot be deterministically predicted. A root cause of an uncommon and purely random accident may never be identified, and thus future similar accidents remain "accidental".

Answer 6

Come back in a million years and whatever is here, if it is smart, will be asking what determined its existence just like we are now. Seems the whole thing has been determined to be an accident. A determinant accident. If whatever created us had been a little smarter and safer we probably would not have been such an accident.

Answer 7

Life is deterministic with random elements thrown in.

Answer 8

Reality is created by thought. Our subconscious mind is designed to take our predominant conscious thoughts and cause us to do and say things that create a reality congruent with them and lead us to aligned examples to further cement it. It is also tapped in to the collective subconsciousness in order to orchestrate the whole thing.



This means everything happens for a reason. There are no accidents. It also means that the reason is not outside ourselves.













Living life loving

Answer 9

The true essence of a theory can only be known through intellectual discussion with lot of brilliant people. You have a valid point. It seems to be genuine to me also. But unless you discuss these issues in a brain-storming session in a round table conference among various eminent philosophers, you cannot get the correct clue.

Answer 10

All events have (typically, many primary and secondard) causes. Hence, "determinism" is causality-based. "Accidents" do have causes. "Choices" are degrees of freedom in any given context: at some degree or level, one has the capability to "choose" "A" or "B."

Related: "Hume's Fork;" "Man, Master of His Destiny;" "The Path of the Higher Self."

Answer 11

I believe that random eventually subsumes order. A random universe would get more and more random. Ours seems to be getting more and more ordered.

Answer 12

We can't know that. Why dwell on what we can't know?