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by browneyedbeauty on December 17th, 2006

browneyedbeauty

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If you could go back in time and turn left on that road instead of right, how different would the world be? Even if nothing happened on the road, would people be different?

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  • by teknimage on December 17th, 2006

    teknimage

    Things would be different, yes, but it would be virtually impossible to tell just what the differences would be unless you were able to go back and do it. This is because there are an almost infinite number of variables that are affected at each moment in time. Each single "choice" or reaction in the universe alters everything that follows it and everything around it, like ripples in a pond. Although, there are an almost infinite number of ripples coming from an almost infinite number of events causing them. This is the basis for chaos theory and is also involved in systems theory.

    Every single event in the universe's past has led to this exact moment, this snapshot of an instant of the universe as it is right now. Every cause has an effect, everything is interdependent on everything else.

    This is true even in our own, personal, little microcosms: our lives. Everything you have ever done and everything that has ever happened to you has led you to this exact moment and made you as the very person you are. If ANYTHING had happened differently, even ever-so-slightly and seemingly inconsequential, you would not be the same person as you are. It's almost like a personalized version of the Anthropic Principle in cosmology: everything is as we see it to be because situations and environments favored this particular outcome over any other, and if they had been different, we wouldn't be here to see things as they now are. In simpler terms, you are who you are because you were who you were.

    I don't think this does away with free will in the least. I personally feel that this reinforces it as it shows just how much control we have over ourselves and our world. It's just like saying, THIS moment is the first moment of the rest of your life.

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  • by singloud43 on December 17th, 2006

    singloud43

    Little things can make a persons life. If you made a different choice with your life, it would definitely throw your life in a slightly different path. One person can affect another. But than we can't go back, so it's just a bunch of what ifs

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  • by nona1789 on December 17th, 2006

    nona1789

    no

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