Mark Sheeky Artworks

Determinism, Freewill, and Relative Entropy

I've been thinking again about absolute determinism and how this can be compatible with freewill. This morning the answer became obvious.

On freewill, assume that every actor in the universe can control some aspect of their destiny, from atom to bee to human. The end result of this would create some reality which, one could say, was always destined. It's impossible to know if an alternative could have happened.

If time is a dimension then the past and future are laid out, the universe must be one multi-dimensional sculpture. Knowledge of this is the root of determinism; but such reality is not incompatible with freewill. The key element is predictability, knowledge of the future. The future can be laid out, and freewill can exist, providing the future is not predictable. This is clearly the case.

The key comparison is with the past. We assume that we know the past, that the past is fully predictable. It is perhaps this knowledge that frustrates us when trying to predict the future, this plus the human ability to make predictions, and the ability of science to do so; but the past is not fully known. Information about past events degrades over time and distance. More recent events are more certain, but more distant events are more obscure. This degradation applies to the past and future equally. Elements of the near past are much more certain than elements of the far past, and elements of the near future are much easier to predict than elements of the far future.

There is a difference between past and future, a 'flip' of types of knowledge; from predicted outcomes, to knowledge of the outcome. This flip defines the present, and the flip is dependent on our knowledge. We actors have knowledge, and this knowledge gives us a sense of 'now', when the present moment is.

The universe is timeless. The people and other actors across the universal domain always consider their time 'now'. From our perspective we determine the present moment by the flip from prediction of events to knowledge of events. This has an interesting implication: Because we can predict some things better than others, and know some things better than others, our sense of when 'now' is can vary compared to that of others. We can literally live a little in the future or a little in the past. If, for example, we don't know the result of last week's football game, then the football part of us is living in last week. Indeed, the phrase 'living in the past' applies to people with less interest in and knowledge of current affairs; the phrase is accurate.

Information decays over time, this is a universal law of thermodynamics. Time is ours, relative to each actor. I've outlined here that the present moment is relative too. Information can only decay when we know what the time is and with knowledge of that past, so this decay is a personal decay, not a universal one. If time is relative, entropy is too; but knowledge of the future decays with distance too, so information also decays forwards in time. The most certain moment is the present moment.

Knowledge-power is unique to each actor, so the strength of entropy is relative to each actor. Perhaps a new value of this knowledge-power could be assigned. It seems that there is a relation between actors with accurate knowledge of the past, and ability to accurately predict the future. Computers are high in this regard, humans too, and animals less-so.