The underground man really got me thinking. Especially the table, or “the irrefutable formula
for human behavior.” What if this crazy
formula or table was somehow discovered tomorrow? How would it change the way we live our
lives? If there was a way to predict
every action I take, what would that mean?
Would my life simply become irrelevant because I know exactly what would
happen to me? I say no. In my eyes, having this table doesn’t mean a
motherfucking thing. So what if you can
predict my every action from here on out and turn it into some kind of a mathematical
formula or equation? Just because
someone can predict everything you are going to do, doesn’t change the fact
that I’m going to do it. I don’t think
it means that I somehow lack free will now.
I still get to choose what I do. You
can predict that someone is going to murder someone else. That doesn’t change the fact that someone
murdered someone else. Being able to
tell people what they are going to do can’t really accomplish anything. If the table truly can predict everything,
then it doesn’t matter because it’s going to happen whether or not you can say
it’s going to happen. Being able to say the
earth will explode tomorrow doesn’t mean shit.
But thinking about this in the way that I do, does that make me the
underground man? I don’t think so
because I’m not saying the table is wrong.
But I don’t think I’m the gentleman or scientist either. I see this table as a novelty. Just something that can make you say “oh, ok,
that’s cool I guess.” If the table is as it was made out to be, then its existence
is kind of pointless, because whether or not you can predict something will
happen won’t change that it will happen.
Andrew, I believe you may have missed the point Dostoevsky is attempting to make. In your blog post, you treat the predictability of man’s actions as though it could only have (or not have, as you claim) direct implications. I will give you that the mathematical tabulation of decision-making has no foreseeable direct effect on what actually occurs; however, this is not to say that the foresight of one’s actions will bear no indirect influence on choice. I would argue that an awareness of one’s course-of-action certainly predisposes them, psychologically, to seeing the act fulfilled. Further yet, this is just the thought of carrying said action out, not actually doing it. In regard to the latter, let’s reconsider your statement that “I still get to choose what I do.” Here I also must disagree. For example, if I were to tell you that for a certain event, you have two options, and by simple math I have, without an ounce of uncertainty, determined which it is you are going to “choose.” Your response has been along the lines of ‘Well, it doesn’t much matter, because I’m still going to choose what I wish.’ Yes and no. You think you are choosing. In reality, one could say that it is those parameters to which I have referred in calculation that have “decided” your fate, not you.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Yours Tru.ly