Out of sight, out of mind

Fate

For something to be predictable, absolutely certain, then the position, orientation and trajectory of all the objects in the vicinity would need to be known. This would include things moving at the speed of light heading over too. Objects are vibrating, dancing, and oscillating about. There is a limit to the precision at which you can measure the trajectory of an object. There will be rounding errors. Those approximations make it impractical to predict whether an object will head left or right after a collision. Each object you track might have its path interfered with by other entities. That includes spontaneous radioactive decay. The numbers involved in the computations are beyond huge. Instead of predictability we have probability. Randomness with most reliable statistical chance of a certain outcome.

Accurate simulations rely upon something that is impossible to overcome; You need hundreds of atoms to store the data regarding each atom you are tracking. You need to specify its position relative to other atoms, its velocity, and its temperature. Unless each atom can be mapped using sub-atomic particles then you will have an unsurmountable problem. Treating say a tennis ball as one object rather than a collection of gazillions of atoms introduces more errors. These errors count in the real world. Fate is a nonsense.

How can we explain away fate? It sure seems like people were fated to meet, fated to get a job, or fated to die young. You have interests in a certain field based on your inbuilt preferences. You will notice vacancies with your curiosity mechanism. Hence, you were set from birth to be drawn into certain occupations. As for meeting someone, you draw on the probability process. Those who stay in their bedroom everyday encounter very few people. Some become so ill they end up having a nurse pay a daily visit who then falls for them. For the rest of us, to increase the chance of romance blossoming we can tidy ourselves up, upping the probability of a match. We can go out, and out, and out, and that raises the likelihood of bumping into a potential partner. We can smile, appear happy and be a someone that people want to be with. We can give fate a chance. We can make our own luck by doing things that increase the probability of meeting the one for us.

Was it inevitable that you and your partner got together? Many random chance events led to the initial encounter for sure, but you select according to your inbuilt affinities. Your inbuilt affinities determine who you end up with. Some you rule out point blank. Some people you grow fond of over time. Whatever the case there are things that chime and things that jar. Nothing will change that. We get the impression that fate played a role, but our fixed affinities did most of the work. If you didn’t go out on a particular night, would you still have met on another night? Most of us tend to meet in places that we all go to regularly anyway, institutions, workplaces and so on. A singleton is on the lookout for another singleton. Our body language gives off signals. A coupling may appear fortuitous but there was always some inevitability to it. Luck is a wonderful thing. Luck stands out, we notice luck. It has such a big impact on us, whether that is when it is giving or taking things away. If you didn’t get that luck, you wouldn’t credit fate. There are a lot of things that could have happened but didn’t. One night, you may decide to flip a coin. Go out, stay in - based on head or tails. If you use a mechanical device to flick the coin, it will land the same way every time. Portents are at the mercy of human trickery.

Fate would take quite a lot of planning. God needed to get Laura’s parents together, encourage her conception and guide her towards me. Her role was to inspire and annoy me profusely. God then needed to do the same for dearest Megan. He then had to provide me with someone who drew me out of the pit of despair in time for me to do what I wanted to do.

Early deaths befall some of the most beautiful people on earth, many of which never paid much attention to the main risks that lurk unnoticed around them. Not noticing a bald tyre leaves you at the mercy of a blowout. The tyre may fail when you are not travelling very fast, and the incident is rather benign. However, luck may intercede, and the tyre failure can cause your vehicle to plough into oncoming traffic. A bald tyre affair gives rise to, when not if. When is key. When something else compounds the problem, the result can be most unwelcome. The compounding effect is notable. You may die in a house fire one day. An electrical fault may start the fire, but one thing leads to another. Having a decent fire extinguisher could be a great help. A mask gives you a chance as acrid smoke kills many, mostly those that didn’t wake up because they failed to maintain a fire warning device.

Balance being a killjoy with dying for a small joy. Are you aware of your surroundings and ready to react to someone else’s recklessness? Are you one to stop and consider safety before turning on a do-in-yourself power tool. People say you only live once. I say you only die once, and if it is well before you have had your fill it is not luck. I may be a boring damp squib sort, but I have dived amongst magnificent reefs, piloted small planes looping the loop and aggravated a spin, planted trees, refurbished my homes, skied slippery slopes, rode horses, surfed, shot thirty thousand clays, had eight thousand hours of tantric style sex, poured many a casting at eleven hundred degrees, floated in the dead sea, walked in the last of the rainforests and lots more. Risk with reason. Risk with hesitation prior. Some of us only come alive when taking risks. We decide how fast, how close, how much more we can push things. Our dedication to detail and good decision making allows us to repeat it tomorrow.

Pins arranged evenly spaced, triangular shape, balls drop down bouncing left right producing a bell curve at the bottom. This portrays our life - with more than one tringle in play. Your triangles overlap other peoples’ triangles. The overlap can cause a collision, sometimes a grievous car collision, or you spend the rest of your life with someone that has hit upon you. Shift the triangles to alter your fate. You can change the chance of something happening.

Nothing surpasses buying a child yet more plastic. You don’t want children playing with toys for longer by giving them wooden, felt or metal ones as that labours their senses. So long as they look different and feel the same. Some are cut into primary shapes and include a dodecahedral skeleton with respective orifices in which to push these shapes through. This is mating. We find the suitable match that suits our personal shape. Some you would hope and expect to fit but fit they do not. Toddlers have gnawed on some with their teeth, barring their entry. Others were left by the fire and melted, distorted by the heat. Some of us were destined to be cast aside.

dodecahedron-small

Could my fate be at the mercy of an insect flapping its wings in a distant land? No, or to be precise, unlikely. Systems have tipping points. A huge number of insects need to be on the move to get anyway near such tipping points. There are buffers that absorb the waves tiny insects make.

An accident hurts. An accident can cause us to suffer in hideous ways. It takes a long time to heal after a serious accident. We might not be the same after. These factors weigh on our assessment of risk. Lots fear dying in a certain way rather than dying per se. Climbing ladders can have a far higher casualty rate than drowning inside a tunnel beneath the sea, but what do some fear the most?

The probability of reaching old age unscathed is lower than you might expect. If one in a thousand fall victim to some calamity each year, then over twenty years each person could have a one in fifty chance of suffering the same fate. If you add up all the various potential perils you face, it can look quite alarming. A potential recourse; invest in yourself. Examine the main pitfalls. Focus on the big risks. Don’t be lazy. I will spend ten minutes tying off a ladder so that it will not slip sideways. I spend extra on a good diet. We think nothing of spending a fortune on getting an education, but many will scrimp on quality food.