Stochastic Implications

The research behind a follow up to last month’s Money post grew past expectations. The history of the U.S. since 1934 involves complex and complicated financial creativity that appears challenging to break down in to understandable units.

I will persevere. IMHO, this history represents a significant force bearing upon our society.

Also, a follow up to First Four Steps To An Online Business is in the works. A hint: it all revolves around the capacity to produce content.

But recently, two revelations seem to have hit me in the head simultaneously. They both involve revealing limits of control and expanded freedom.

First, meditation upon the idea that maybe the universe we live in proceeds as a stochastic process, as opposed to a deterministic one, presents new understandings of the universe to me. For a moment, think about how a non-deterministic universe would work.

If one could no longer say, for example, that action “A” always caused consequence “C”, then how would things happen? Well, for a clue, stochastic processes are central to probability theory.

So, you may be able to affect the probable outcomes of a specific situation but not absolutely determine them. You may be able to shift the odds and make one thing or another more or less likely but never be assured of a “sure thing”.

Sound familiar?

1. Nothing for certain,
2. everything ultimately unknown and in a universe proceeding as a stochastic process,
3. unknowable.

How about all the plans of mice and men?

All of a sudden, a world of anomalous events may come out of the closet. And this says nothing about magical thinking.

Correlation was never accepted as causation by dogmatically deterministic mainstream science. But now the entire idea of causation seems out the window.

Activities once condescendingly dismissed as magical thinking have been proven to have a noticeable, but difficult to quantify, affect on situations. Mental causation proves to be a tough sell but mental influence appears to be another issue all together.

Remember, in a stochastic process causation seems out the window. Mental causation becomes a non-issue, misdirection and an example of the illogical straw man fallacy.

In a stochastic process there could never be blame. Nothing and no body could ever be found at fault.

Sure, someone could influence an environment modifying probabilities to favor certain outcomes, even pull the trigger themselves, yet still not be the cause of any specific outcome.

How would it change your life if you understood beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything, even your next breath and the very next beat of your heart, was no more certain than the results of a roll of the dice? Well, needless to say, the theological implications alone are staggering.

I could go on and on about where this particular revelation has taken my thoughts but I need to mention the second revelation. It concerns the psychological dimension and once again challenges the limits of control with the potential for expanded freedom.

I will get around to writing something about that, too, maybe.