Have you ever played Civilization, the computer game?
Determined and yet unpredicable
If you haven’t, it’s really fun. However, that’s not the point of this post nor the title.
What makes Civ or Sim City or any of the other sim games so interesting is that they are a great example of what it means to be completely determined and yet totally unpredictable.
So what, you say? It’s a computer game.
Ah, I contest this game is far more like the real world than one might suspect. Yes, I can “freely” control what I do with my civilization – move my citizens around, build different things, arm, disarm, trade, war, research, pray, etc. etc. However, I’m actually quite forced into almost every move once all the contingencies come home to roost. Did the computer just attack me? Do I have the money? Do I have the people? How much power do I have? All of those and more filter the space of all possible moves. Perhaps there’s a few “free” choices left on each move that become probabilities but even those are held under control based on contingencies (like my preferences for how to move).
So why then are the games (life?) unpredictable? For one, initial conditions. The set up of the geography, placement on the map, type of people and so forth change every time you start the game, so the game (under the same predetermined moves) takes a completely different form. I’m always careful in discussing initial conditions because you can’t really ever make a claim as to what a real “initial” condition is in the real world (or even the game), as something must determine the initial condition you are looking at (even if it is a “random number generator).
Amazingly, it’s not just interesting initial conditions. Simple rules (even the most basic rules you can imagine) can operate in fully unpredictable ways. examples: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Rule110.html and http://www.johnkyrk.com/DNAtranscription.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number. These three examples all of very simple rules of operation (how you generate them, how they evolve, etc. etc), yet their outcome/their behavior/their product is not predictable.
I digress (and don’t you hate when people say “I digress”?).
Perhaps my silly use of computer games does nothing for my argument about there being things that completely determined and unpredictable. I could, of course, turn your attention to cellular automata or turing machines or some other simple system -some of these types of systems are unpredictable and they all are completely determined. Unfortunately, many folks will complain that these aren’t “real world.” The real world is full of indeterminism and lots of messy things that aren’t like computer games or automata.
It’s true that the world is full of systems that aren’t computer games or automata! However, it’s not obviously true that these systems are indeterminate! How can we figure that out?
One way, if I can show you determined systems that exhibit the same behavior as the supposed indeterminate systems, that’s some evidence for determinate systems.
If I can drill down on your indetermined system enough I will like find your “rules” that drive it. That’s my conjecture. Send me a system, and we can discuss. (markets, DNA, whatever you want).
Human behavior exists in this world of determined and the unpredictable. Reinforcers/consequences, conditioned stimuli, unconditioned stimuli, discriminant stimulus — (biology + genetics + nervous system + environment) — control the behavior. Layers of rules applied to a complex biological system. It’s all weirdly determined but completely unpredictable.
Falsify my claim.
Suppose this is true. So what? The implications are relative to you. If indeterminism services your world view or scientific approach, perhaps the implications are grave.
Social Mode 
Hey Russ, great post. I think the parallel between SimCity, Civilization, etc and the real world with respect to unpredictability amidst determinism is apt. In fact, I think that’s pretty much what’s being expressed when one argues that everything “can be computed” — its computability = its deterministic quality, yet, as we can see from SimCity and Civilization (necessarily computable, since they are computer games!), things that are computable can be highly unpredictable.
I was interested and challenged by your post. I also found it ironical that you have one foot on the metaphysical canister and one foot in the world of reality defined by empiricism.
>>>>If I can drill down on your indetermined system enough I will like find your “rules” that drive it. That’s my conjecture. Send me a system, and we can discuss. (markets, DNA, whatever you want).
>>>>Human behavior exists in this world of determined and the unpredictable. Reinforcers/consequences, conditioned stimuli, unconditioned stimuli, discriminative stimuli — (biology + genetics + nervous system + environment) — control the behavior. Layers of rules applied to a complex biological system. It’s all weirdly determined but completely unpredictable.
For, in the first sentence, “If I can drill down…” we see the familiar autonomous man with something inside that is hidden and not obvious that is different from, and arguably more interesting than, what makes up that organism’s behavior…
The paragraph that follows that minor thought experiment… “behavior exists in a world of determined and the unpredictable” we see the loss of autonomous man or the ghost of the homunculus and the emergence of the tough stuff not covered with sugar plumb fairies or religious – cultural – or political dogma laying nude.
Genetics, the environment and the nervous system contain the map for the adventurer willing to look though the proverbial telescope. But note: even those adventurers that came before this time and these challenges needed to be reinforced [known as support]. The pioneers weren’t operating in a vacuum and neither can we.
Nature abhors a vacuum. So what does that do for you as an analogy?
Ah! I do not suggest there is autonomous man with something hidden. not at all. quiet the contrary. I should have said.
I CAN identify the rules. Sometimes I have to use biology, sometimes analysis of behavior, other times math and so on to best describe the functional relationships of what’s going on.
By “If I can”. I meant, if I had the resources (microscope, lab, skinner box, time, whatever…), I can find the controls.
Sorry for the confusion.
There’s no autonomous man. We are under control, always of some rule set.
Oh, and we’re very unpredictable.