A standard deck of playing cards has 52 distinct cards in it. The chances of picking a face card is 4 in 13. The chances of picking an ace card is 1 in 13. If a face card is drawn first and not put back in the deck, then the probability of picking an ace card gets reduced. It's known as conditional probability.
Life is a sample space, where all things are equally probable in the beginning. But the very moment after it begins, the unavoidable laws of conditional probability comes into play. Everything that happens in our lives is the result of everything that had happened so far. And by each passing instance of time an infinite number of possible outcomes are replaced by new ones. Whatever we've become is the result of a series of seemingly complex elimination processes, leading inevitably, here.
The thing about life is, once an outcome is eliminated from the instantaneous sample space, it cannot, under no circumstances, be considered in the new sample space. Such is the nature of time, or rather the way we experience it. Which leads us to one of the greatest questions, what happens to all those possible futures ? Do they simply cease to exist? Or they continue to exist parallel to this reality? I use the word parallel not because I expect them to converge at infinity, but because they do not seem to interfere with this life. Or do they?
I find it interesting that people possess an emotion called regret. A sad, deep longing for things that never happened to them. A lost object, an unrequited love, words that were never spoken... And in this state of regret, they invent alternate realities in their minds, trying to compensate for what they think as 'the wrong choices'. I am not immune to this feeling either, just to be clear. But would we think any different if those imagined lives were real? Would we stop wishing for a different outcome if we were living in that probable future?
This leads us back to the first question; Do the worlds in our imagination, the once equally probable realities, exist hand in hand with this one? The nature of our Universe, it seems, support the Principles of Entropy and the Arrow of Time. Things happen in one way only, as far as we can tell. But what if the numerical values we interpret as probability or chance represent another dimension of time, that we are incapable of recognizing? It had been our experience that mathematical values are not meaningless, they denote some part of Universe which is very real. So, what if the chances of getting a head in a coin toss or a 2 in a dice throw is an arbitrary value in an Axis perpendicular to what we experience as time?
The implications of such a notion are vast. It could redefine our understanding of the nature of time, luck, fate and perhaps the very thing we call God. It might lead to inventions that is considered as science fiction nowadays - time travel, infinite prolongation of life, universal peace and so on... The oldest questions asked by mankind could be answered it such progresses were made.
But what does it truly mean to us? The idea that everything we have ever thought, dreamed or spoke about doing are equally probable, and those lives exist side by side this one, and perhaps we still have a chance of living them, is the greatest feeling we can have. A chance to take a walk with dad, or a nice evening listening to mom's singing, or a chit chat with sister, or a second meeting with that lovely stranger on the train, or a last night out with the buddies before saying goodbye, who wouldn't want that?
As a faceless entity said in a late night's dream - " Present is what connects the Future to the Past ". So let all the probabilities exist, and direct our small, fragile lives to whatever end..
Run. Jump. Breathe. Live
The thing about life is, once an outcome is eliminated from the instantaneous sample space, it cannot, under no circumstances, be considered in the new sample space. Such is the nature of time, or rather the way we experience it. Which leads us to one of the greatest questions, what happens to all those possible futures ? Do they simply cease to exist? Or they continue to exist parallel to this reality? I use the word parallel not because I expect them to converge at infinity, but because they do not seem to interfere with this life. Or do they?
I find it interesting that people possess an emotion called regret. A sad, deep longing for things that never happened to them. A lost object, an unrequited love, words that were never spoken... And in this state of regret, they invent alternate realities in their minds, trying to compensate for what they think as 'the wrong choices'. I am not immune to this feeling either, just to be clear. But would we think any different if those imagined lives were real? Would we stop wishing for a different outcome if we were living in that probable future?
This leads us back to the first question; Do the worlds in our imagination, the once equally probable realities, exist hand in hand with this one? The nature of our Universe, it seems, support the Principles of Entropy and the Arrow of Time. Things happen in one way only, as far as we can tell. But what if the numerical values we interpret as probability or chance represent another dimension of time, that we are incapable of recognizing? It had been our experience that mathematical values are not meaningless, they denote some part of Universe which is very real. So, what if the chances of getting a head in a coin toss or a 2 in a dice throw is an arbitrary value in an Axis perpendicular to what we experience as time?
The implications of such a notion are vast. It could redefine our understanding of the nature of time, luck, fate and perhaps the very thing we call God. It might lead to inventions that is considered as science fiction nowadays - time travel, infinite prolongation of life, universal peace and so on... The oldest questions asked by mankind could be answered it such progresses were made.
But what does it truly mean to us? The idea that everything we have ever thought, dreamed or spoke about doing are equally probable, and those lives exist side by side this one, and perhaps we still have a chance of living them, is the greatest feeling we can have. A chance to take a walk with dad, or a nice evening listening to mom's singing, or a chit chat with sister, or a second meeting with that lovely stranger on the train, or a last night out with the buddies before saying goodbye, who wouldn't want that?
As a faceless entity said in a late night's dream - " Present is what connects the Future to the Past ". So let all the probabilities exist, and direct our small, fragile lives to whatever end..
Run. Jump. Breathe. Live
